Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand(reseller.co.nz)
reseller.co.nz
Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand
https://www.reseller.co.nz/article/708342/tech-salaries-largely-unchanged-as-skills-shortages-continue/
366 comments
As a NZ developer that a lives in his own apartment with a salary less than $150k, I disagree. Yes, it's expensive and yes, our salaries are lower than our colleagues in some other countries, but it's too much to say that you can't afford to put down a deposit on an apartment after a few years of saving.
I agree. It is not easy to hear a person whose income is triple his country's national median refer to independent living as untenable. Even if only purely from a perspective of "if even they are struggling, then... how is the average person in that country even still alive??".
And if a country has plenty of land, and food, to go around - then for scarcity to become a norm, something(s) must have their hands pretty deep in the cookie jar.
And if a country has plenty of land, and food, to go around - then for scarcity to become a norm, something(s) must have their hands pretty deep in the cookie jar.
> if even they are struggling, then... how is the average person in that country even still [independently] alive??"
Either they accrued capital already, or borrowing from relatives who did, or they're not living independently. They're sharing accommodation that would be cramped for two among six.
Lifestyles once only necessary for students are now de rigueur for established graduates, with the possible exception of better food.
Either they accrued capital already, or borrowing from relatives who did, or they're not living independently. They're sharing accommodation that would be cramped for two among six.
Lifestyles once only necessary for students are now de rigueur for established graduates, with the possible exception of better food.
What about non-graduates - and why do we need that distinction? The few extra years of guided schooling it entails does not deserve to be a lifetime defining difference between the haves and the have-nots.
"You achieved a university degree, so you deserve to be elevated for life" is little different in its entitlement bias than "you achieved house ownership, so you deserve to be elevated for life".
Equality goes beyond such things.
"You achieved a university degree, so you deserve to be elevated for life" is little different in its entitlement bias than "you achieved house ownership, so you deserve to be elevated for life".
Equality goes beyond such things.
Non-graduates are also suffering, yes. Did I imply they deserved to suffer? If I did that's not the intention.
However, a degree usually requires hard work (being born wealthy does not), and has been widely recognised as the best legal route out of poverty for decades. We are not a communist society and do expect hard work to lead to greater standards of life, on average, even if there are exceptional non-graduates and lazy graduates. If even the best legal route is failing en masse, then we are screwed.
However, a degree usually requires hard work (being born wealthy does not), and has been widely recognised as the best legal route out of poverty for decades. We are not a communist society and do expect hard work to lead to greater standards of life, on average, even if there are exceptional non-graduates and lazy graduates. If even the best legal route is failing en masse, then we are screwed.
That's true, it's definitely not impossible. It's just relative to other countries we seem to be a bit worse off on the housing front
Which countries? It seems like a lot of the English speaking countries have a housing crisis in major urban centers. Toronto, Dublin, Melbourne, London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Austin, NYC, etc... All super expensive by the sounds of it. Is Auckland that much different?
Not just English speaking countries: housing affordability is low in most European and developed-Asian countries.
Auckland is pretty bad, but Sydney or Melbourne are worse for affordability (income versus mortgage):
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-...
Here's the 2023 version (original reference uses 2019 data): http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf, pages 7-9
New Zealand is an honourable 2nd place and Auckland clocks at 7th with ~11 (median household annual income for median house). The other cities worse off are around 11 as well, with Vancouver at 12 and Sydney at 13. Hong Kong is the usual autist at 18 in its own league
To answer another comment here, Melbourne and Toronto are comparable, London is 20% better off, Austin and Dublin are half that bad, can't even compare
New Zealand is an honourable 2nd place and Auckland clocks at 7th with ~11 (median household annual income for median house). The other cities worse off are around 11 as well, with Vancouver at 12 and Sydney at 13. Hong Kong is the usual autist at 18 in its own league
To answer another comment here, Melbourne and Toronto are comparable, London is 20% better off, Austin and Dublin are half that bad, can't even compare
I make less than $150K, am in my late 40s, and live in Auckland. My partner and I own our apartment (well, most of it -- we still have just under $20K left on the mortgage). She works part time, and while we don't have a lavish lifestyle we have enough money for a comfortable life. So, yeah, if you're making $150K or more and can't afford to live on your own (even renting) then you have to take a closer look at where your money's going.
I don't mean to engage in whataboutism, but by saying you're above 40, you suggest you may have bought into your mortgage at the much more affordable times in the past. Did you purchase in the last few years?
Purchased around four years ago. Our rate at the time was around 3%; it's gone up in recent years. That said, for the years leading up to that my partner and I were renting (first in Wellington, then in Auckland). We also have a now nine-year-old son and having kids ain't cheap :-) For some of the time, we were on one salary. Still managed a fairly comfortable life even under those circumstances.
Late 40s, so let's say fairly 47 or so. Which means you purchased around 43.
The housing market is broken (and not just in NZ; I'm a Kiwi living in London). In the 90s the outside London average first time buyer age was 29, now it's 33.4 and steadily increasing.
But the real kicker is; how did you get your deposit? Scrimping and saving? Never have house prices been such a high multiple of the average salary. The difference now between the haves and have nots are those whose parents can drop a 30-50kgbp deposit for each of their children and those children who inherit a stake in properties worth around 300-1000kgbp from deceased grandparents.
All of the "news" around properties is through the eyes of home owners and not prospective buyers. There are more people cheering when prices go up and booing when prices go down than vice versa, even when their house is worth many times more than the original price adjusted for inflation.
I had a Kiwi mate stay with me for a holiday recently (also late 40s) and in his mind the high house prices/ridiculous value increase made sense to him because "I pay my rates the whole time I own the house therefore the value should go up". I tried to explain that rates (known as council tax in the UK) were a _service_ just like paying your electricity bill but it just did not compute; he wasn't interested.
The housing market is broken (and not just in NZ; I'm a Kiwi living in London). In the 90s the outside London average first time buyer age was 29, now it's 33.4 and steadily increasing.
But the real kicker is; how did you get your deposit? Scrimping and saving? Never have house prices been such a high multiple of the average salary. The difference now between the haves and have nots are those whose parents can drop a 30-50kgbp deposit for each of their children and those children who inherit a stake in properties worth around 300-1000kgbp from deceased grandparents.
All of the "news" around properties is through the eyes of home owners and not prospective buyers. There are more people cheering when prices go up and booing when prices go down than vice versa, even when their house is worth many times more than the original price adjusted for inflation.
I had a Kiwi mate stay with me for a holiday recently (also late 40s) and in his mind the high house prices/ridiculous value increase made sense to him because "I pay my rates the whole time I own the house therefore the value should go up". I tried to explain that rates (known as council tax in the UK) were a _service_ just like paying your electricity bill but it just did not compute; he wasn't interested.
> But the real kicker is; how did you get your deposit? Scrimping and saving?
Pretty much -- more saving then scrimping. My parents and my partner's parents didn't help us, mainly because they couldn't. And we didn't expect them to. And, no, we didn't have other benevolent relatives or money magically appearing in our bank accounts. If only ... Also were also able to use some of our KiwiSavers (government retirement savings plan for those of you outside of NZ) to take advantage of the first home buyer's scheme.
Overall, though, for us it was a matter of living modestly, paying our bills, and remembering to pay ourselves. Not that we didn't/don't indulge from time to time -- pay a visit to our favourite local cafes and we take the occasional trip here and there.
I'm sure this all would have been a bit easier if I was making $150K or more annually (or even if my partner was making $20K or so more a year). But we're not unique or special or anything like that. I know several people in a situation like mine who are doing or have done the same thing.
Pretty much -- more saving then scrimping. My parents and my partner's parents didn't help us, mainly because they couldn't. And we didn't expect them to. And, no, we didn't have other benevolent relatives or money magically appearing in our bank accounts. If only ... Also were also able to use some of our KiwiSavers (government retirement savings plan for those of you outside of NZ) to take advantage of the first home buyer's scheme.
Overall, though, for us it was a matter of living modestly, paying our bills, and remembering to pay ourselves. Not that we didn't/don't indulge from time to time -- pay a visit to our favourite local cafes and we take the occasional trip here and there.
I'm sure this all would have been a bit easier if I was making $150K or more annually (or even if my partner was making $20K or so more a year). But we're not unique or special or anything like that. I know several people in a situation like mine who are doing or have done the same thing.
Aussie here. Similar, we’re a bit higher but it’s about the same.
I will highlight one difference between the US and Oceania - our currencies are at least a third less than the USD. So $150k in NZ is probably closer to $100k and in Aus it’s $110k.
I will highlight one difference between the US and Oceania - our currencies are at least a third less than the USD. So $150k in NZ is probably closer to $100k and in Aus it’s $110k.
Yea, I thinking of jumping the ditch in the next year. Housing is ridiculous here in nz, until that gets fixed it's not a very attractive place to live if you're trying to build wealth
Don’t come to Australia for better/cheaper housing. We have the triple threat of a runaway housing market, shoddy developers, and weaponised NIMBYs; we have a fledgling homelessness crisis and impotent leadership, so it’s not going to get better soon.
> even if you're on $150k you can't really afford to live on your own (even an apartment is a stretch) as housing and living expenses are so high
That's pretty standard outside the USA too.
That's pretty standard outside the USA too.
There is no city in America where a single individual cannot afford a comfortable lifestyle in a nice neighborhood on a $150k salary. is this not true in most of Europe? I feel like most of my European friends make well south of $150k and do just fine.
NZD is 0.6 USD or so, 150K NZD is about 90K USD, according to HUD, such an income for a single person is between Very Low Income (65K) and Low Income (104K) in San Francisco. You can explore income limits here https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html
I used to work in public housing so I know all about income limits and how they are determined by the average income of the specific region and household size. When talking about average income in ridiculous high income areas, "below average" can still be a very livable salary.
It very well may be very livable but I don't see how it can be "a comfortable lifestyle in a nice neighborhood". With the standard 30% of gross income limit you can rent at $2250/m, which limits you to tiny apartments in certain neighborhoods.
jchonphoenix(2)
Only in the Anglo countries. Other countries build enough housing.
(And it's not true in the US, only some coastal regions.)
(And it's not true in the US, only some coastal regions.)
I know people in their 20s in Sweden, Italy, Singapore, Greece and they're all struggling and/or living with their parents. The main point though was that developers dont earn loads in those countries.
True for Singapore - rent here is very expensive, could be 50% or more of monthly salary for younglings.
Singles in their 20's do not qualify for govt subsidised housing (HDB). Rents here in Singapore range for 3k + for a basic apartment, 4k for a basic Condo apartment. Salary averages are about 6 - 9k (gross) for developers in that experience / age range
Singles in their 20's do not qualify for govt subsidised housing (HDB). Rents here in Singapore range for 3k + for a basic apartment, 4k for a basic Condo apartment. Salary averages are about 6 - 9k (gross) for developers in that experience / age range
To expand on the terminology.
Apartments are govt provided public housing with a 99 year lease. Most of the population live in these. Only citizens and PR holders are allowed to purchase one per household.
Condos are gated compounds built by private developers, some have a 99 year lease too. These are for the rich. You can own as many as you like.
You may only own one or the other.
Apartments are govt provided public housing with a 99 year lease. Most of the population live in these. Only citizens and PR holders are allowed to purchase one per household.
Condos are gated compounds built by private developers, some have a 99 year lease too. These are for the rich. You can own as many as you like.
You may only own one or the other.
context matters though - society expects you to not rent, and will provide for you if you stick to its norms. If you are a foreigner, or don’t want to marry Singapore is not for younglings.
80% of housing is government subsidized ownership for citizen couples (or singles after 35). It’s brutal but philosophically aligned with the ‘good for the country’ - not enough space for people to be single.
BTO flats are very heavily subsidized and monthly payment will be in the hundreds for people matching the expectations.
80% of housing is government subsidized ownership for citizen couples (or singles after 35). It’s brutal but philosophically aligned with the ‘good for the country’ - not enough space for people to be single.
BTO flats are very heavily subsidized and monthly payment will be in the hundreds for people matching the expectations.
Yes, Sweden (Stockholm) at least is similar. I think Italy and Greece's problems are more just that they're poor and underdeveloped, so it's more like poor areas of the US than rich areas. But they don't have nearly the self-defeating housing planning systems of the UK.
I'm told Greece has some interesting housing typologies (polikatoikia):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-desig...
I'm told Greece has some interesting housing typologies (polikatoikia):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-desig...
The “poor” in the USA are difficult to compare with people in Europe:
The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most European Nations: https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-richer-than-most-nations-of-europe/Singapore as a country is designed that you are a local live with your parents until you marry (BTO.
If you stick to that societal expectation, the country is very affordable as the government will subsidize you a lot.
If you do not or can not, you will pay for it.
On one hand it’s brutal efficient and in many ways necessary (there just ain’t that much space for people to be single) and it’s reflected in immigration policy as well - trying to get PR/green card as a single is very very hard because that’s the only way for the government to seriously affect demographic curve without forcing people to have children.
If you stick to that societal expectation, the country is very affordable as the government will subsidize you a lot.
If you do not or can not, you will pay for it.
On one hand it’s brutal efficient and in many ways necessary (there just ain’t that much space for people to be single) and it’s reflected in immigration policy as well - trying to get PR/green card as a single is very very hard because that’s the only way for the government to seriously affect demographic curve without forcing people to have children.
Singapore is 699km² (may have expanded since I left) with a population of almost 6m not including migrants.
Tokyo is 619km² with a population of almost 10m [0]. And that's not accounting yet for the surrounding population that commutes into Tokyo. During the last census in 2020, Tokyo's daytime population surges to 16m. [1]
The difference between these two cities is that a large portion of Japanese real estate are micro 1~2 bedroom apartments (below 20m²) built specifically for singles and young adults. The SG govt has for years claimed that it doesn't have enough space, in reality they're just want to encourage multi-generational living.
0: https://ieagent.jp/blog/eria/tokyo23population-601355#:~:tex... 1: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGKKZO62846080T20C22A7EA4000/...
Tokyo is 619km² with a population of almost 10m [0]. And that's not accounting yet for the surrounding population that commutes into Tokyo. During the last census in 2020, Tokyo's daytime population surges to 16m. [1]
The difference between these two cities is that a large portion of Japanese real estate are micro 1~2 bedroom apartments (below 20m²) built specifically for singles and young adults. The SG govt has for years claimed that it doesn't have enough space, in reality they're just want to encourage multi-generational living.
0: https://ieagent.jp/blog/eria/tokyo23population-601355#:~:tex... 1: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGKKZO62846080T20C22A7EA4000/...
Most cities in the developed world don’t provide the micro apartments of Tokyo. Their codes don’t allow for them.
In Sweden it's expensive in Stockholm, but in most cities it's perfectly fine. The average rent is less than a third of the average salary. In my city you can get a 2-3 bedroom apartment bike distance from the city center for 100k USD and it's one of the bigger cities
If you make equal to a 150k usd salary you can certainly live in a nice neighborhood in Stockholm (capital of Sweden) and a comfortable lifestyle.
There is nowhere in the US that someone with little debt and no major medical issues can’t afford to have their own apartment on $150,000 a year. Even SF and NYC would be no problem.
What countries build enough housing? In China, they build like crazy but housing is still expensive, even in third tier or worse cities.
I don't know the details of life in NZ, but I live in a highly desirable part of Manhattan and make just north of $150k. I eat out all the time, travel often, and ultimately feel very few financial constraints (aside from not saving as much as I'd like). What in NZ is driving up costs so high that $150k can't sustain a single individual in a nice urban apartment?
I suspect you're in USD and they're in NZD. At the moment, 150NZD = 90USD, 150USD = 250NZD.
Are you single? Do you have room mates? Did you buy several years ago and now have a locked in mortgage at a low rate? I think circumstances change things. I make north of $150k in California, but I'm married and have two kids. It doesn't feel like it goes that far after rent, childcare, groceries, and all your other bills like a car, insurance, utilities, etc.
A single renter who lives alone in a 1-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan. I previously lived on a slighted smaller salary in a studio apartment in downtown SF (about 5 years ago). I don't have or want children a car or to own a home, which if of course a gargantuan difference in how far $150k will take you.
He's bsing or after extremely desirable places. Even Auckland is affordable for a single on $150k pa.
No BS here.
The _average_ house price in Auckland is 1 million dollars. How long does it take to save a 20% deposit on 150k in a HCOL country?
And 150k is generally a senior level wage, no one in NZ is starting on 150k
Lol such bs.
Go have a look on real estate sites and tell me you cant find 1/2 bedroom apartments for well under 1 million.
Op is single and clearly not telling the whole story about what he is willing to buy or where he is willing to live.
EDIT: Here did it for you: https://www.barfoot.co.nz/properties/residential/region=auck...
Plenty of places OP could look at if they were serious but they aren't. I'm not saying housing isn't in a bad spot as it definitely needs serious attention as a key (perhaps "THE") political issue. But hyperbole and lies doesn't help anyone or anything.
Go have a look on real estate sites and tell me you cant find 1/2 bedroom apartments for well under 1 million.
Op is single and clearly not telling the whole story about what he is willing to buy or where he is willing to live.
EDIT: Here did it for you: https://www.barfoot.co.nz/properties/residential/region=auck...
Plenty of places OP could look at if they were serious but they aren't. I'm not saying housing isn't in a bad spot as it definitely needs serious attention as a key (perhaps "THE") political issue. But hyperbole and lies doesn't help anyone or anything.
Outside of Auckland you can do quite well on 150k.
Tech Immigrants outnumbering local techs happens in many countries.
I was doing a job in Australia in the 90s and I remember the ratio there being high. In my job in NZ there was also significant immigrant numbers (although tended to be immigrants from English speaking countries at that time due to NZ immigration laws).
I was doing a job in Australia in the 90s and I remember the ratio there being high. In my job in NZ there was also significant immigrant numbers (although tended to be immigrants from English speaking countries at that time due to NZ immigration laws).
Vertical movement in most tech companies has stalled for 25 years, and there are several reasons why.
However... in general, it is easier to transition into a more lucrative position at another firm, than try to negotiate with people/agencies that think employees can be outsourced for 20 cents to the dollar. FAANG colluded to prevent labor organization on several occasions, and political critters saw an opportunity to make a quick buck.
There is likely no real STEM shortage, but rather a shortage of people willing to work in poverty domestically. I would argue we need more politicians, CEOs, and investment bankers willing to work for just standard wage rates... think of the investor profit margins.
Best of luck, =)
However... in general, it is easier to transition into a more lucrative position at another firm, than try to negotiate with people/agencies that think employees can be outsourced for 20 cents to the dollar. FAANG colluded to prevent labor organization on several occasions, and political critters saw an opportunity to make a quick buck.
There is likely no real STEM shortage, but rather a shortage of people willing to work in poverty domestically. I would argue we need more politicians, CEOs, and investment bankers willing to work for just standard wage rates... think of the investor profit margins.
Best of luck, =)
Do you in FAANG...?
You know there are plenty of high level engineers under 45 so I'm not sure how you see a stalled vertical movement. 25 years ago was 1998.
You know there are plenty of high level engineers under 45 so I'm not sure how you see a stalled vertical movement. 25 years ago was 1998.
The probability a Division Manager was purely internally sourced approaches <0.001%... given the vast majority of Jr people are burned out... then churned out in less than 3 years. It actually was a joke tradition at Apple, where engineers tended to leave at the exact same position they started.
If you want to grow in tech, than expect to hop companies every 2 years.
Good luck, =)
If you want to grow in tech, than expect to hop companies every 2 years.
Good luck, =)
In Germany, two job board owners I know reported a marked drop in job listings. There are just as many job-seekers, but fewer employers that are hiring.
All of my friends are either reporting layoffs or belt tightening at work. It's hitting recent graduates and retrained workers really hard.
On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages.
The skilled worker shortage (Fachkräftemangel) is constantly in the news, although the worker response is the same as in other Western countries: have you tried paying more? Relaxing job requirements? Training people?
All of my friends are either reporting layoffs or belt tightening at work. It's hitting recent graduates and retrained workers really hard.
On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages.
The skilled worker shortage (Fachkräftemangel) is constantly in the news, although the worker response is the same as in other Western countries: have you tried paying more? Relaxing job requirements? Training people?
Same in Finland, the employer side constantly screaming about worker shortage, but I have been in several interviews where when I presented my salary request, I could see the person grin because they thought it is too high but it was just little higher than my current... Luckily, I got a new job in Hong Kong with decent salary and lower tax rate.
They want to saturate the market with massive immigration so the salaries never rise, but when there are too many developers, they can actually push them down. If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.
They want to saturate the market with massive immigration so the salaries never rise, but when there are too many developers, they can actually push them down. If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.
> If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.
Technically, a shortage occurs when an external mechanism prevents price from rising. Think price gouging laws as once such mechanism.
Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire. But a real labour shortage outside of such unique situations would be unheard of.
Technically, a shortage occurs when an external mechanism prevents price from rising. Think price gouging laws as once such mechanism.
Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire. But a real labour shortage outside of such unique situations would be unheard of.
>Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire
Where is this? In Austria the government also caps how much the public doctos can charge, but guess what, most doctors exit the public system and go fully private where they can charge however much they want leaving a shortage in the public system.
Where is this? In Austria the government also caps how much the public doctos can charge, but guess what, most doctors exit the public system and go fully private where they can charge however much they want leaving a shortage in the public system.
> On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages.
The immigration system in Germany is peculiarly hostile, getting visas is very hard, interacting with the local bureaucracy is a nightmare, there are so many catch-22 that either you pay an agency or… God knows how they do it. If you are not an EU citizen, it may take months to complete all the paperwork even to the perfect immigrant.
Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody, it would just make the lives of some people less miserable.
Consider that Germany has an almost endless reservoir of potential immigrants in southern Europe (and to some extent in Turkey), it has been there for the past decades and salaries keep going up.
The immigration system in Germany is peculiarly hostile, getting visas is very hard, interacting with the local bureaucracy is a nightmare, there are so many catch-22 that either you pay an agency or… God knows how they do it. If you are not an EU citizen, it may take months to complete all the paperwork even to the perfect immigrant.
Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody, it would just make the lives of some people less miserable.
Consider that Germany has an almost endless reservoir of potential immigrants in southern Europe (and to some extent in Turkey), it has been there for the past decades and salaries keep going up.
> getting visas is very hard
Compared to US visas, it's a walk in the park.
>Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody
It will defiantly hurt the housing market because Germany doesn't build enough.
Compared to US visas, it's a walk in the park.
>Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody
It will defiantly hurt the housing market because Germany doesn't build enough.
But the entire world wants to go to the US, Germany is not that attractive.
The population is getting older and they need more young people in order to support their standards of living and to care for the ageing population. So either they get more people and house them somehow, or they will have to accept that there won't be enough working people to support the country with their work. Another option, and I'm being sarcastic here, is to destroy the healthcare system like the Conservative government is doing in the UK and hope that eventually life expectancy will drop.
The population is getting older and they need more young people in order to support their standards of living and to care for the ageing population. So either they get more people and house them somehow, or they will have to accept that there won't be enough working people to support the country with their work. Another option, and I'm being sarcastic here, is to destroy the healthcare system like the Conservative government is doing in the UK and hope that eventually life expectancy will drop.
>But the entire world wants to go to the US, Germany is not that attractive.
Germany, along with UK, Canada, AU, NZ, is attractive for all those for whom a US visa is out of reach, a.k.a. almost everyone.
Most international workers who can't get into US, go for the next best thing which is those countries.
The difference is US is better at absorbing more immigrants due to already being a melting pot and being the country with the fastest growing economy due to VC funding so importing more workers means more fuel on the fire.
VC funding is almost non-existent in most of those other countries so importing more workers in a stagnat economy, means just wage suppression and increasing housing costs.
Germany, along with UK, Canada, AU, NZ, is attractive for all those for whom a US visa is out of reach, a.k.a. almost everyone.
Most international workers who can't get into US, go for the next best thing which is those countries.
The difference is US is better at absorbing more immigrants due to already being a melting pot and being the country with the fastest growing economy due to VC funding so importing more workers means more fuel on the fire.
VC funding is almost non-existent in most of those other countries so importing more workers in a stagnat economy, means just wage suppression and increasing housing costs.
> Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements
Time to buy a house if you can afford it. Immigration of skilled workers drives house prices up!
Time to buy a house if you can afford it. Immigration of skilled workers drives house prices up!
Immigration of any sort does. Whether it’s a house or a run down apartment it’s all the same supply pool.
If you couldn't afford a house before, you defiantly can't at these rates, and if you can't afford a house now, you definitely won't after the immigration boom.
This is the point of higher interest rates. It means monetary policy is working.
It's meant to lower growth and investment.
It's meant to lower growth and investment.
Tech salaries in West and South Europe indicate that there is no shortage.
Huh? Salaries in tech are lower in south europe than in east europe. Assuming there are any tech jobs in south europe.
Reminder that there is no skills shortage. There's a shortage of suckers.
As someone who graduated as a SWE from an NZ university; around 50% of my cohort moved over to Australia and around 20-30% somewhere else; I can count the number of friends I have left in the country on one hand (four year degree). NZ salaries are actually laughable compared to overseas where you're earning at least 25% more for the same work and a probably lower cost of living
As a Kiwi still living here I didn't feel like I was getting a fair deal until I started working remotely for a US company paying AU rates.
Making the move from an NZ employer to (essentially) an AU employer got me a ~40% pay rise.
I'm now afraid I've priced my self out of the NZ market and will have a rude landing if I'm forced back into the NZ market (you never know, things happen).
But it is frankly ridiculous how far NZ employers have their heads in the clouds. If remote work stays around and more US companies don't mind a few hours overlap with the West Coast timezone to get access to a native English speaking, Western culture, talent pool... well, I think those NZ employers will start banging the immigration drum a lot harder.
Making the move from an NZ employer to (essentially) an AU employer got me a ~40% pay rise.
I'm now afraid I've priced my self out of the NZ market and will have a rude landing if I'm forced back into the NZ market (you never know, things happen).
But it is frankly ridiculous how far NZ employers have their heads in the clouds. If remote work stays around and more US companies don't mind a few hours overlap with the West Coast timezone to get access to a native English speaking, Western culture, talent pool... well, I think those NZ employers will start banging the immigration drum a lot harder.
Yep, I'm priced out of the NZ market too, work remotely for a US remote only company who try to pay roughly equivalent salaries for equivalent positions.
When the recruiter told me the offered salary, I thought it was a typo, scam, or someone was smoking crack.
And the NZ software employers who cry the most about "a skills shortage" are ones that locals won't work for because they're known shit employers.
Looking at you, Orion Health.
When the recruiter told me the offered salary, I thought it was a typo, scam, or someone was smoking crack.
And the NZ software employers who cry the most about "a skills shortage" are ones that locals won't work for because they're known shit employers.
Looking at you, Orion Health.
> I'm now afraid I've priced my self out of the NZ market and will have a rude landing if I'm forced back into the NZ market (you never know, things happen).
Just go contracting - I charge probably on the low end for my experience but take home almost 2.5x what I used to as a salaried worker for less time on the clock. As long as you keep a decent chunk of cash (which is easier since you're making more) then you can ride out short-term gaps between contracts. That being said, I haven't been without work for the six years I've been contracting so haven't had to dip into it yet.
Just go contracting - I charge probably on the low end for my experience but take home almost 2.5x what I used to as a salaried worker for less time on the clock. As long as you keep a decent chunk of cash (which is easier since you're making more) then you can ride out short-term gaps between contracts. That being said, I haven't been without work for the six years I've been contracting so haven't had to dip into it yet.
As an Australian I'd like to say thank you to NZ Universities.
It's really true. We see a lot of New Zealanders applying for jobs in Australia and they are often good candidates.
It's really true. We see a lot of New Zealanders applying for jobs in Australia and they are often good candidates.
I am also an economic migrant NZ -> Australia. Salary for me was something like 30% - 50% better with housing / cost of living about the same.
I still love NZ but to keep progressing in my career I felt it was really helpful to be able to access a bigger market.
I still love NZ but to keep progressing in my career I felt it was really helpful to be able to access a bigger market.
is it because NZ has immigration program inviting IT professionals?
do you know if there is big influx of IT immigrants in NZ?
do you know if there is big influx of IT immigrants in NZ?
The majority, perhaps even super-majority of the people I work with are immigrants. It's not a problem. The problem is that New Zealand employers are absolutely allergic to paying their staff; they are cruising on the idea that "New Zealand is a great place to live, it doesn't matter if you're paid less, the lifestyle benefits make up for it".
>The problem is that New Zealand employers are absolutely allergic to paying their staff; they are cruising on the idea that "New Zealand is a great place to live, it doesn't matter if you're paid less, the lifestyle benefits make up for it".
It's exactly the same in Austria (the one with schnitzel, not kangaroos). Employers will tell you, "you don't need more than 60k/year because the quality of life is so good, you know we keep winning most livable city in the world", to the point where I think the whole winning most livable city in the world is some paid BS advertising from Austria to sucker in foreigners willing to lowball themselves and fill in the so called "skill shortage", up until they move here and realize a house costs 1 million Euros, stuff is more expensive than in Germany while salaries are lower and then they fuck off.
It's exactly the same in Austria (the one with schnitzel, not kangaroos). Employers will tell you, "you don't need more than 60k/year because the quality of life is so good, you know we keep winning most livable city in the world", to the point where I think the whole winning most livable city in the world is some paid BS advertising from Austria to sucker in foreigners willing to lowball themselves and fill in the so called "skill shortage", up until they move here and realize a house costs 1 million Euros, stuff is more expensive than in Germany while salaries are lower and then they fuck off.
There are places in NZ (Nelson for example) that semi-formalize this as the 'sunshine dividend' making up the balance of payment compared to other towns or cities.
i.e suggesting because a place has nice weather that you should be paid less.
i.e suggesting because a place has nice weather that you should be paid less.
There is a strong correlation that I noticed in Europe as well between a place begin nice to live with nice weather which tend to have lower pay while depressing places
with shit weather having higher pay.
Basically the nice cities with nice weather attract a lot of candidates meaning employers don't need to pay so much, while employers in cloudy, windy, rainy and depressing cities need to pay good because otherwise there's no reason to move there. It's just supply and demand.
I could get a nice pay bump by moving to Netherlands or the UK, but I really can't stomach the weather in that part of Europe, as someone who like going outside for walks in the sun. Sometimes there's more to life than counting more money, and life is too short to spend it living somewhere where you don't like just to accumulate money.
Basically the nice cities with nice weather attract a lot of candidates meaning employers don't need to pay so much, while employers in cloudy, windy, rainy and depressing cities need to pay good because otherwise there's no reason to move there. It's just supply and demand.
I could get a nice pay bump by moving to Netherlands or the UK, but I really can't stomach the weather in that part of Europe, as someone who like going outside for walks in the sun. Sometimes there's more to life than counting more money, and life is too short to spend it living somewhere where you don't like just to accumulate money.
> I could get a nice pay bump by moving to Netherlands or the UK, but I really can't stomach the weather in that part of Europe, as someone who like going outside for walks in the sun. Sometimes there's more to life than counting more money
Weather is one of those intensely personal things. I am very much outside of the norm, especially when it comes to sun.
I've lived in Seattle my whole life and right now it is in the mid-80s and not a cloud in the sky; the whole week is predicted to be like this. The people I know have filtered, as they do every year, into two groups. One group is posting on social media about how they're out to "enjoy the sun" and "such marvelous weather". The other, like me, is sitting inside waiting for the grey to return. (Anecdotally to my friend group, people who move here tend to be in the first group; people who were born around here in the second.)
Which is to say, I would happily take a pay cut to get away from the sun so I suppose I'm glad the "gloomier" places tend to pay more.
Weather is one of those intensely personal things. I am very much outside of the norm, especially when it comes to sun.
I've lived in Seattle my whole life and right now it is in the mid-80s and not a cloud in the sky; the whole week is predicted to be like this. The people I know have filtered, as they do every year, into two groups. One group is posting on social media about how they're out to "enjoy the sun" and "such marvelous weather". The other, like me, is sitting inside waiting for the grey to return. (Anecdotally to my friend group, people who move here tend to be in the first group; people who were born around here in the second.)
Which is to say, I would happily take a pay cut to get away from the sun so I suppose I'm glad the "gloomier" places tend to pay more.
>Weather is one of those intensely personal things [..] I've lived in Seattle my whole life
Of course it is, and if you grew up in a gloomy place your whole life you're used to it, but if you grew up in nice weather area it's tough to move somewhere depressing, and even people from depressing places want to live in nice weather places.
There's the scientific correlation between sun exposure, or at least seeing the sun with your eyes, not just bathing in it, and serotonin levels. Also people form northern gloomy places (at least in Europe) have higher suicide rates and consumption of antidepressants than the people living in the south despite the inverse correlation in wages.
So yeah, it seem like the sun and nice weather is better for your mental health than bigger wages.
Of course it is, and if you grew up in a gloomy place your whole life you're used to it, but if you grew up in nice weather area it's tough to move somewhere depressing, and even people from depressing places want to live in nice weather places.
There's the scientific correlation between sun exposure, or at least seeing the sun with your eyes, not just bathing in it, and serotonin levels. Also people form northern gloomy places (at least in Europe) have higher suicide rates and consumption of antidepressants than the people living in the south despite the inverse correlation in wages.
So yeah, it seem like the sun and nice weather is better for your mental health than bigger wages.
> "you don't need more than 60k/year because the quality of life is so good, you know we keep winning most livable city in the world"
It would be amusing to see a list of "most livable city in the world". Vienna, Sydney, Auckland... they probably all win from slightly different orgs awarding.
It would be amusing to see a list of "most livable city in the world". Vienna, Sydney, Auckland... they probably all win from slightly different orgs awarding.
I love those 'happiest people in the world' where they somehow also have the highest suicide rates.
Well, if all the unhappy people kill themselves then only the happy people remain, meaning your country is now the happiest. Does my logic scan to you?
Yup. NZ employers claim there is a labour shortage, but in almost all cases I think NZ has a serious lack of business management skills. Basic ideas like staff retention and margins seem to be completely foreign to a bunch of "business leaders".
I assume manny immigrants work just long enough to get a NZ passport then use the freedom of movement granted to work in Australia?
Then once they get an Australian passport, they can use it to work in the US on an E-3 visa :-)
Then once they get an Australian passport, they can use it to work in the US on an E-3 visa :-)
I've heard that South Africans who can't make it to Australia directly use NZ as the stopover until, as you said, they can use the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement to move to Australia.
I wouldn't be surprised if their (and others') ultimate goal is the US. That's the case with Canada, where my understanding is that FAANG offices are staffed mostly with those who cannot (and often will never get) a US visa, plus the odd local who doesn't want to move to the US for personal or family reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if their (and others') ultimate goal is the US. That's the case with Canada, where my understanding is that FAANG offices are staffed mostly with those who cannot (and often will never get) a US visa, plus the odd local who doesn't want to move to the US for personal or family reasons.
You don’t even need to do that. Once you have Residency (distinct from Permanent Residency and Citizenship - the one with the passport) you are allowed to start your own company which you can use to contract yourself out to Australian companies for annual amounts double those of a lot of NZ roles.
(My last role paid 240-250K NZD depending on exchange rate; the local role prior to that: 120K NZD)
Didn’t know about E3 visa route. Very interesting, thank you
(My last role paid 240-250K NZD depending on exchange rate; the local role prior to that: 120K NZD)
Didn’t know about E3 visa route. Very interesting, thank you
Some of these are just laughable: https://web.archive.org/web/20230719150950/https://boards.gr...
Principal Engineer, DevOps
The expected salary range for this position is $130,000 to $155,000.This is taken way out of context.
1. It’s ProPublica - “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” Such a job is likely to appeal to someone who, despite the salary, is looking to make a wide social impact.
2. the job also states:
> This is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.
3. It is not in NZ:
> This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is headquartered in New York, but we have offices across the country and will consider remote applicants.
1. It’s ProPublica - “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” Such a job is likely to appeal to someone who, despite the salary, is looking to make a wide social impact.
2. the job also states:
> This is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.
3. It is not in NZ:
> This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is headquartered in New York, but we have offices across the country and will consider remote applicants.
They're still looking for a sucker. That's what they expect to pay someone coming into that role. They likely had the last sucker at that salary and hope to find another. It's possible you can expect to take a hit when going "social impact" roles, but who's willing to take $100k reduction just for that. Either that or they're inflating the title a lot and really just want a Sr. Dev. who again would be taking a salary hit at todays rates.
I just hired a couple of good guys around this salary. Especially if you hire remote, there’s no need to pay these types of roles $300k.
Some dude living in Buffalo will have a better standard of living at $150k than a $300k guy in SFO. And frankly, for the lower level roles where remote is fine, it’s hard to ignore Eastern Europe.
Sorry guys, but these premiums were all about Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc trying to keep talent away from competitors. If you were making $500k to be a sysadmin, that’s probably a gravy train that will slow down.
Some dude living in Buffalo will have a better standard of living at $150k than a $300k guy in SFO. And frankly, for the lower level roles where remote is fine, it’s hard to ignore Eastern Europe.
Sorry guys, but these premiums were all about Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc trying to keep talent away from competitors. If you were making $500k to be a sysadmin, that’s probably a gravy train that will slow down.
These companies are all making multiples[1] of that in revenue per employee. An "average" employee making $200K/yr at Apple is not even capturing 10% of the "average" value he's bringing in. If anything, tech should be paying much more than it already is. The shareholders are getting away with murder.
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-emplo...
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-emplo...
I'm afraid that's not how employment markets work. As an employee you are in a competitive environment and worth what at least one employer is willing to pay you. How that relates to the value you generate for the employer is largely irrelevant in an employer's market and that is what we have today. If you want to price based on value then you might consider a different path that leads to more of a B2B relationship such as entrepreneurialism, contracting or freelancing. The traditional alternative would be something like unionisation and collective bargaining but I don't see that happening effectively for software developers any time soon.
So, err, shouldn’t they also be paying their retail workers more? As in, much more? Since they are Apple employees too.
Don’t forget the janitors, accountants, HR people…
It’s all supply and demand. No (well run) company is ever going to pay their employees more than they need to.
It’s all supply and demand. No (well run) company is ever going to pay their employees more than they need to.
> Some dude living in Buffalo will have a better standard of living at $150k than a $300k guy in SFO.
It doesn't really matter what your standard of living is when you look at how much faster you can fill your retirement fund.
It doesn't really matter what your standard of living is when you look at how much faster you can fill your retirement fund.
Sysadmin is no longer a role because now every commit has a little bit of sysadmin rolled in.
The larger systems, AWS Batch, K8S, Fargate, etc... have all replaced sysadmin with specific commits in specific TF files. There's no longer a need for someone to "watch" for servers to go down or discs to run out of space if everything is using the appropriate service.
If you're unaware of this, of course you won't have a sysadmin job going forward. 8 9's is now guaranteed if you just choose anything but us-east-1
The larger systems, AWS Batch, K8S, Fargate, etc... have all replaced sysadmin with specific commits in specific TF files. There's no longer a need for someone to "watch" for servers to go down or discs to run out of space if everything is using the appropriate service.
If you're unaware of this, of course you won't have a sysadmin job going forward. 8 9's is now guaranteed if you just choose anything but us-east-1
So is $250K the salary for every location in the US or just for SV/NYC?
Honest question; my lair is a remote beach paradise.
Honest question; my lair is a remote beach paradise.
$250k is about right for a Principal "DevOps Enginner" for a company in a major city. Principal engineers are well paid, and SREs (what people often mean when they say DevOps eng) are often the highest paid engineers at a company.
You wouldn't get this in small or midsized towns in the US.
You wouldn't get this in small or midsized towns in the US.
> SREs (what people often mean when they say DevOps eng) are often the highest paid engineers at a company
Nope. It is usually the higher stack eng.
Nope. It is usually the higher stack eng.
What do you mean by "higher stack" here? SREs being highest paid is true for my anecdotal knowledge and what I've seen in salary surveys. I'd be interested in updating my understanding though.
My bad, I think you are right.
I did some more digging and couldn't find stats supporting this either way.
I was thinking more ML eng but it doesn't seem that widespread.
I did some more digging and couldn't find stats supporting this either way.
I was thinking more ML eng but it doesn't seem that widespread.
That's just in SV/NYC. Average is a bit lower, range is like 180k-300k in the US. Glassdoor has stats you can find here https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/principal-devops-engineer...
Is a person who is looking for more than just money from their job necessarily a sucker?
Comp packages inclusive of benefits, but I also think that there is a point of self respect that just because you're doing something you love you shouldn't get taken for a ride at the end of the day. That's why the entire game development industry has such low pay compared to business developer counterparts. Those developers have been taken advantage of excessively.
IMO, jobs where you have some other incentives (moral or otherwise) should still pay market and expect some competition for thier roles because they're highly desirable not just because of some idealistic stance. At the end of the day, ideals aren't going to pay the bills.
IMO, jobs where you have some other incentives (moral or otherwise) should still pay market and expect some competition for thier roles because they're highly desirable not just because of some idealistic stance. At the end of the day, ideals aren't going to pay the bills.
Good points. This estimate also looks like it is just base salary
As I've so fond of pointing out on HN "Principal" means two different things depending on the culture of the company. In SV/BigTech "Principal" is a step above Staff. In many other companies, however, it just means "non-junior employee"; these are the same companies that also have titles like "Lead Architect" and "Systems Administrator". Without context "Principal" is meaningless.
I've found Staff having very different qualities depending on the company.
Principal means above staff or at the very least above senior in every company I’ve ever encountered it.
Senior may have diluted to just mean “non-junior employee”, but I’ve never heard someone using principal for that.
Senior may have diluted to just mean “non-junior employee”, but I’ve never heard someone using principal for that.
Word. Where I work that's 15-20+ years experience and often means "would become a director if there was an opening and they wanted the job"
It's usually above senior but it can be below staff at equivalent companies. Check out levels.fyi for salary bands.
Principal at Microsoft is between senior & staff at Google. Principal at Amazon is directly above senior, but is generally higher than staff at Google. Principal at Roblox is about the same as Microsoft.
Principal at Microsoft is between senior & staff at Google. Principal at Amazon is directly above senior, but is generally higher than staff at Google. Principal at Roblox is about the same as Microsoft.
Right that's what I meant by "at the very least above senior". Within a given company principal is generally always higher than staff, but for companies that don't have staff, principal is generally always higher than senior.
My point was that I've never seen principal used to mean "non-junior employee" in the way that senior occasionally is.
My point was that I've never seen principal used to mean "non-junior employee" in the way that senior occasionally is.
My god, sysadmin has become a meme title?
Really starting to feel old here because to me that's one the most legitimate and accurate titles in the industry.
There will be riots in nursing homes when they find out
I wonder if read that the same as others.
It sounds like they want someone 35+ years old, with top-tier skills, who doesn't prioritize a good night's sleep?
It sounds like they want someone 35+ years old, with top-tier skills, who doesn't prioritize a good night's sleep?
130,000 NZD is about 77,860 USD
Which is actually more than I was earning as a lead at a recent job in Canada
Which is actually more than I was earning as a lead at a recent job in Canada
most principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD
'Principal' in a lot of NZ companies just replaced the term 'Team Lead' and generally just means the most 'senior' person in the team. Sometimes it's used as a way to justify a raise.
The scale of difference and difference of scale between New Zealand and the USA cannot be overstated. There really are not enough people in New Zealand to make the level of differentiation between a Senior, a Principal and a Staff engineer meaningful in the vast, vast majority of our industry.
The titles are basically pointless and just word salad. They're also used very differently company to company, although I don't think that's unique to this geography.
The scale of difference and difference of scale between New Zealand and the USA cannot be overstated. There really are not enough people in New Zealand to make the level of differentiation between a Senior, a Principal and a Staff engineer meaningful in the vast, vast majority of our industry.
The titles are basically pointless and just word salad. They're also used very differently company to company, although I don't think that's unique to this geography.
Even that seems low. New college grad going to a large tech firm can make 200k these days.
I think that's only true if you pretend the equity grant all vests in year one. In reality it takes some time, so you won't get that amount until after several years at the company.
I think it depends on if it's like Facebook or Amazon. FB probably is paying $200k or close to it for first year vesting only. Amazon, probably not.
Amazon has a back heavy vesting schedule and the first two years you get a large prorated signing bonus to get market rates.
you’re wrong about that
And that’s not representative of most of the 2.7 million developers working in the US.
Check out comp for most “enterprise” jobs at banks, insurance companies, SaaS companies or even many YC companies.
Check out comp for most “enterprise” jobs at banks, insurance companies, SaaS companies or even many YC companies.
MSFT starting TC is ~250k.
It quickly decays to around 150-180k; the refreshers and bonus are lousy <L63 at MSFT.
"quickly" being 4-5 years?
Quickly being, 1 year and can go lower after 3 years if you don't get a SSA.
Don't know what an SSA is. But I've seen flat/gently-increasing payout curves over 4 years, ~250k each.
I worked at MS for 3 years after undergrad, My first year was 221k, 180k, 191k and would've been ~185k for Y4 then 160k after cliff.
SSA is Special Stock Award given arbitrarily (M2s are not sure or have any say in who/how much to be given) but believed to be used for retention by HR. Annual stock refreshers for <L63 at Microsoft are in the range of 0-20k vesting over 5 years.
I chose to move to Amazon then recently Apple.
SSA is Special Stock Award given arbitrarily (M2s are not sure or have any say in who/how much to be given) but believed to be used for retention by HR. Annual stock refreshers for <L63 at Microsoft are in the range of 0-20k vesting over 5 years.
I chose to move to Amazon then recently Apple.
false
e: really for HN i would think people had a better sense of the market, i am seeing wrong statements all over the place
L59 at MS is absolutely not paid $250k
e: really for HN i would think people had a better sense of the market, i am seeing wrong statements all over the place
L59 at MS is absolutely not paid $250k
k
e: I know for a fact TC for a new hire in 2019 straight out of college with a BS was 250k, just because it doesn't match what you have seen doesn't make it wrong
e: I know for a fact TC for a new hire in 2019 straight out of college with a BS was 250k, just because it doesn't match what you have seen doesn't make it wrong
So given the followups to this post, by "a" new hire you mean "one particular" new hire, not "a representative" new hire. Which, sure. There are highly sought-after candidates who get absolutely ridiculous offers in most markets. But the starting TC at MSFT is not at all "250K" under any normal interpretation.
(For context: I've seen new-grad-adjacent offers break 400K at FAANG for particularly in-demand candidates in the past, but I'm not going to claim that the starting pay at any company is 400K. It's not).
(For context: I've seen new-grad-adjacent offers break 400K at FAANG for particularly in-demand candidates in the past, but I'm not going to claim that the starting pay at any company is 400K. It's not).
At the hedge funds and prop shops, it is 400k if not more.
At a handful of them, sure, but the ones I got offers from didn't match what I had from FAANG.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software...
There are 100 pages of salaries for level 59 reported here. If you made $250k starting, you would be in the 99.5%-ile. So yeah, not common at all.
I don’t doubt that TC for some individual new hire you know was $250k but that is different from your claim about starting TC, you can easily look at the levels.fyi bands, and I know multiple people at Microsoft that are paid less than $200k out of college.
FWIW i was also paid $250k by MS out of college, but that is because I worked for a subsidiary. It is not the starting TC at MS proper.
There are 100 pages of salaries for level 59 reported here. If you made $250k starting, you would be in the 99.5%-ile. So yeah, not common at all.
I don’t doubt that TC for some individual new hire you know was $250k but that is different from your claim about starting TC, you can easily look at the levels.fyi bands, and I know multiple people at Microsoft that are paid less than $200k out of college.
FWIW i was also paid $250k by MS out of college, but that is because I worked for a subsidiary. It is not the starting TC at MS proper.
Not everyone starts at 59.
And it's on you for assuming the definite article, I only meant the indefinite. (A MSFT starting TC is...)
And it's on you for assuming the definite article, I only meant the indefinite. (A MSFT starting TC is...)
You are in such poor faith that I am not going to keep responding. fwiw, assuming the definite is the standard native english way of interpreting that sentence.
You clearly have little to no experience with the diversity of Microsoft new hire compensation packages. That's ok, you aren't expected to. But when someone makes a claim that new hires "can make"[1] 200k+, and someone else backs it up with data from personal experience, don't come flinging your ignorance around and accuse others of acting in "bad faith". Instead, sit back and learn. Maybe ask a few questions.
And I'm a native english speaker. But I've never felt I had to stick to the "standard" way of doing things. You shouldn't either. Certainly not when reading text you can't be sure is pulled straight from Strunk's.
I just realized you might be getting so emotional about this because you claim you also made 250k straight out of college and want to feel superior in some way?
[1] "Can make". Not "all make", "must make", "will make", "should make", or even "expect to make". "Can make". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37115731
And I'm a native english speaker. But I've never felt I had to stick to the "standard" way of doing things. You shouldn't either. Certainly not when reading text you can't be sure is pulled straight from Strunk's.
I just realized you might be getting so emotional about this because you claim you also made 250k straight out of college and want to feel superior in some way?
[1] "Can make". Not "all make", "must make", "will make", "should make", or even "expect to make". "Can make". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37115731
Median is much lower, but I know a few ~$230k. Basically top school/good internship/competing offers.
Far cry from the starting pay being $20k above that, which is blatantly false.
agree, totally! but also worth noting that there are a bunch of freshers who get paid more than "principles" in non-tech companies.
That is staff band at a company without inflated titles and if we are only talking about the cash part of the offer.
Yup, I’m right in that band.
not in the bay lol
Outside of the tech bubble, this is the average range of salaries for most tech workers in most major cities in the IS outside of the west coast.
It might be off on the high end by $20K
It might be off on the high end by $20K
Yeah, in Michigan I really can't find anything over 165. Remote has me above that, but not too much.
There is wage fomo or insecurity that I am a sucker, but I do not dwell on that thought too much. Have to live with the cards in your hand at some point.
There is wage fomo or insecurity that I am a sucker, but I do not dwell on that thought too much. Have to live with the cards in your hand at some point.
I’ve been on both sides of the compensation divide since 2020 - enterprise dev vs BigTech.
In the beginning of 2020 I was making $150K and entertaining offers making $165K as an experienced developer with cloud experience.
Then I fell into a role working at AWS ProServe making - a lot more working remotely.
I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be a long term thing and that Amazon was going to Amazon.
I made my money, paid off debt, built savings, decreased my fixed expenses, built my network, learned a lot of soft skills and now I’m looking at very senior/team lead roles on the enterprise architect side making $170K - $185K. I’m actively interviewing and I am sure I will have something in two weeks (found opportunities based on my network at smaller companies).
On one hand, emotionally I have the same FOMO. But logically I know our expenses are $1000 less per month than they were 3 years ago and I moved and I’m also paying $700 less in taxes than I was then.
I’m also having a lot of fun working remotely.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
In the beginning of 2020 I was making $150K and entertaining offers making $165K as an experienced developer with cloud experience.
Then I fell into a role working at AWS ProServe making - a lot more working remotely.
I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be a long term thing and that Amazon was going to Amazon.
I made my money, paid off debt, built savings, decreased my fixed expenses, built my network, learned a lot of soft skills and now I’m looking at very senior/team lead roles on the enterprise architect side making $170K - $185K. I’m actively interviewing and I am sure I will have something in two weeks (found opportunities based on my network at smaller companies).
On one hand, emotionally I have the same FOMO. But logically I know our expenses are $1000 less per month than they were 3 years ago and I moved and I’m also paying $700 less in taxes than I was then.
I’m also having a lot of fun working remotely.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
I wouldn't compare that to a position with a similar title at a tech company.
It's not uncommon for tech roles on non-tech/IT teams to have some title inflation so they can match compensation better based on the pay-scale of their business unit.
It's not uncommon for tech roles on non-tech/IT teams to have some title inflation so they can match compensation better based on the pay-scale of their business unit.
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Laughably low or laughably high?
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There's an excess of frauds. Large amounts of money will obviously attract them.
JFC, if you have "an idea for an app, bro", but you can't build the product, and you can't raise the honest VC necessary to build or acquire the team that builds the product, YOU DON'T HAVE A PRODUCT.
I don't know how these people get to go around without being challenged on the obvious fact that, for there to be seniors, there has to be someone training juniors. The level of hypocrisy and greed are beyond words, and the fact that every two-bit podcaster and reporter doesn't call these people out loudly and repeatedly is worse.
JFC, if you have "an idea for an app, bro", but you can't build the product, and you can't raise the honest VC necessary to build or acquire the team that builds the product, YOU DON'T HAVE A PRODUCT.
I don't know how these people get to go around without being challenged on the obvious fact that, for there to be seniors, there has to be someone training juniors. The level of hypocrisy and greed are beyond words, and the fact that every two-bit podcaster and reporter doesn't call these people out loudly and repeatedly is worse.
Here in Finland they are screaming WORKER SHORTAGE too, but when you talk about salary, suddenly there is no shortage. It's interesting view of the market that when there is a shortage, they should be able to import more and more workers from the outside so they don't have to increase the salaries, but when there is less demand, the salaries should also go down. By this logic they should never increase
This is a lump of labor fallacy - importing workers increases your salary because immigrants, being prime-age consumers with complementary skills to the natives, increase labor demand more than supply.
(They don't have complementary skills to themselves, so they're more likely to suppress wages of other immigrants - so you could say the rational thing would be for them to shut each other out and you to encourage it.)
(They don't have complementary skills to themselves, so they're more likely to suppress wages of other immigrants - so you could say the rational thing would be for them to shut each other out and you to encourage it.)
Skills shortage means "We could make so much more money if skilled labor was cheaper. Our countrymen are so greedy. Can we please undercut them by importing more desperate and compliant people? Can we get some taxpayer spending to push more young people into this field with the promise of low pay and low job security by claiming there is a shortage? Can you tell them that they will be in high demand and well-respected?"
PhDs get paid nothing and yet there's been a "shortage" for half a century.
PhDs get paid nothing and yet there's been a "shortage" for half a century.
This is happening in Germany at the moment. The government will dramatically lower the work immigration requirements to compensate for a labour shortage and find new tax payers at a discount.
As a work immigrant myself I can't complain, but it's hard to ignore the cold calculation behind it. We're meant to be cheap labour that shows up pre-trained, and leaves before they get old.
As a work immigrant myself I can't complain, but it's hard to ignore the cold calculation behind it. We're meant to be cheap labour that shows up pre-trained, and leaves before they get old.
You are basically meant to prop up the pension ponzi-scheme because they are running out of payers and the amount the boomers paid was quite little relative to now
>You are basically meant to prop up the pension ponzi-scheme
Also the housing Ponzi scheme. Germany says they're desperate for workers but actually is lacking the housing for them and puts no real effort in building more because it has Co2 caps in places (lol).
You got a new job in Berlin? Great, now good luck finding an apartment. Germany housing prices are completely out of whack. Munich land prices are similar to SF but wages are 1/3 those in the Bay.
So yeah, you're just cannon fodder for the German economy. Great time to be an employer or landlord in Germany though.
Also the housing Ponzi scheme. Germany says they're desperate for workers but actually is lacking the housing for them and puts no real effort in building more because it has Co2 caps in places (lol).
You got a new job in Berlin? Great, now good luck finding an apartment. Germany housing prices are completely out of whack. Munich land prices are similar to SF but wages are 1/3 those in the Bay.
So yeah, you're just cannon fodder for the German economy. Great time to be an employer or landlord in Germany though.
Germany also does a piss poor job of showing that it actually wants immigrants. The Berlin immigration office is a disgrace. German bureaucracy is downright hostile. Oh and now they literally stopped accepting citizenship applications in Berlin.
I know that it's not personal - the system is broken for Germans too - but it diminishes my feeling of belonging. I accept this relationship as transactional.
I know that it's not personal - the system is broken for Germans too - but it diminishes my feeling of belonging. I accept this relationship as transactional.
> Germany also does a piss poor job of showing that it actually wants immigrants
That's because it really doesn't. Businesses and parts of the government probably do, but public opinion is definitely divided on the issue. Germany as a country was founded less than 200 years ago as a nation-state, that is a to say, a country bound by common ancestry and language. The idea that a country like this (or any European country founded the Westphalian system) was just going to turn into a "melting pot" pro immigration state in just a few decades has always struck me as foolish.
The problem is that modern life destroys fertility rates, everywhere from the USA to South Korea the pattern is the same. But the economic systems, particularly pensions and retirement systems, are built around the fundamental assumption that, at the very least, there is a large enough working-age population to support retirees.
So to keep the system going you either need to increase birth rates (which is quite hard, Germany pays you £200 per month per kid and still has abysmal TFR) or increase immigration.
Using immigration to try to solve this issue is either a band-aid solution or a form of population planning "technical debt".
Because if you effectively integrate immigrants, they behave almost exactly like your existing population, including not having enough kids to sustain a workforce and then you're back at square one, needing to either solve the fertility rate issue or increase immigration.
On the other hand, if you fail to effectively integrate immigrants, you run the risk of them forming parallel societies, where even second and third generation individuals from these groups don't feel any attachment or loyalty to the host country, don't properly learn the local language, reject the local culture in favor of their heritage culture, and so on. The problems associated with this become their own issues that the country needs to deal with in addition to the population problems.
So yeah, the entire system is sick, beyond Germany as well. So your take of: > I accept this relationship as transactional. Is probably the right one to have.
That's because it really doesn't. Businesses and parts of the government probably do, but public opinion is definitely divided on the issue. Germany as a country was founded less than 200 years ago as a nation-state, that is a to say, a country bound by common ancestry and language. The idea that a country like this (or any European country founded the Westphalian system) was just going to turn into a "melting pot" pro immigration state in just a few decades has always struck me as foolish.
The problem is that modern life destroys fertility rates, everywhere from the USA to South Korea the pattern is the same. But the economic systems, particularly pensions and retirement systems, are built around the fundamental assumption that, at the very least, there is a large enough working-age population to support retirees.
So to keep the system going you either need to increase birth rates (which is quite hard, Germany pays you £200 per month per kid and still has abysmal TFR) or increase immigration.
Using immigration to try to solve this issue is either a band-aid solution or a form of population planning "technical debt".
Because if you effectively integrate immigrants, they behave almost exactly like your existing population, including not having enough kids to sustain a workforce and then you're back at square one, needing to either solve the fertility rate issue or increase immigration.
On the other hand, if you fail to effectively integrate immigrants, you run the risk of them forming parallel societies, where even second and third generation individuals from these groups don't feel any attachment or loyalty to the host country, don't properly learn the local language, reject the local culture in favor of their heritage culture, and so on. The problems associated with this become their own issues that the country needs to deal with in addition to the population problems.
So yeah, the entire system is sick, beyond Germany as well. So your take of: > I accept this relationship as transactional. Is probably the right one to have.
>Germany also does a piss poor job of showing that it actually wants immigrants.
Germany doesn't want immigrants, the business owners do, because they need labor.
Germany doesn't want immigrants, the business owners do, because they need labor.
Then German consumers should want immigrants as well, if they want the products created by said businesses, no?
Who said there are no immigrants? Every new year is a record immigration year. Also for housing prices.
The whole "we need even more immigrants" is wage suppression propaganda. Many of the big German business crying wolf have had record sales, only beeing kneecapped by the disappearance of cheap Russian gas and are trying to compensate it with cheaper labor.
The whole "we need even more immigrants" is wage suppression propaganda. Many of the big German business crying wolf have had record sales, only beeing kneecapped by the disappearance of cheap Russian gas and are trying to compensate it with cheaper labor.
> The whole "we need even more immigrants" is wage suppression propaganda.
No, it's required to keep the pension scheme solvent.
No, it's required to keep the pension scheme solvent.
You're describing a Ponzi scheme. Maybe the Pension pot shouldn't be dependent on quantity of people and more on amount they put in.
And also to keep the low prices of German products which keeps German businesses competitive and thus Germans employed, taxes paid, etc.
You're making the race to the bottom manufacturing sound like an advantage Germany should aspire to. You have it backwards.
I think German themselves made that race to the bottom when they selected cheap Russian gas as their main competitive advantage - as you very well noticed.
Do you think German manufacturing can compete with Chinese one once salaries grow?
Do you think German manufacturing can compete with Chinese one once salaries grow?
I don't know for Germany, but you'll usually have option to receive your pension from abroad, or have it dumped in a local account for later, or transfered to your permanent residency country.
It's always a PITA with no straightforward way, but if you paid for 20 years you'll probably be motivated to go through the hoops to see that money back in some form.
It's always a PITA with no straightforward way, but if you paid for 20 years you'll probably be motivated to go through the hoops to see that money back in some form.
And if you don't qualify, you can get your pension payments refunded (but not your employer's share). If you left Germany, you definitely ought to do it.
https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/pension-payments-refund
https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/pension-payments-refund
Comments like this miss the point.
Literally every "shortage" regarding any good in the world follows the same pattern you described which is "well it is a just a shortage at this low of a price. If price increases then there wouldn't be a shortage!"
So you describing literally every shortage ever for any good, but doing it in this weird moralizing way isnt particularly useful.
Literally every "shortage" regarding any good in the world follows the same pattern you described which is "well it is a just a shortage at this low of a price. If price increases then there wouldn't be a shortage!"
So you describing literally every shortage ever for any good, but doing it in this weird moralizing way isnt particularly useful.
There are no 50-plus-year skill shortages in market economies. The point is that there is lying going on. Which is not surprising, but that doesn't mean it's not the primary problem or that it somehow goes without saying. It needs to be said early and often.
If you redefine shortage to mean literally anything that people wish was cheaper, then it becomes entirely detached from reality and economics. But if you think it's the appropriate definition, then let's make sure everyone is on the same page. We don't want half the population thinking that shortage means something acute, negative, and resolvable.
If you redefine shortage to mean literally anything that people wish was cheaper, then it becomes entirely detached from reality and economics. But if you think it's the appropriate definition, then let's make sure everyone is on the same page. We don't want half the population thinking that shortage means something acute, negative, and resolvable.
It means not being able to find available people with the needed skills. Typically this results from locking talent into exclusive arrangements.
As a tech worker in NZ, the headline is absolutely right (I just skimmed the article). It's weird to see companies offering the same rates as six years ago, and crazy that research institutions offer a junior salary for a senior job.
And don't get me started on mid-level developers looking at spending 50% of their net earnings on paying even a small mortgage, even with the small price drop happening right now.
And don't get me started on mid-level developers looking at spending 50% of their net earnings on paying even a small mortgage, even with the small price drop happening right now.
> The survey was conducted in January and February 2023.
As an NZ based CTO - I feel things have slowed quite a bit since the start of the year. That said, the market is more buoyant than the US based on comments from others here. I think things will pick up in the new year again.
As an NZ based CTO - I feel things have slowed quite a bit since the start of the year. That said, the market is more buoyant than the US based on comments from others here. I think things will pick up in the new year again.
Here in the US I find this largely untrue. My job prospects have plummeted, almost everyone else in my network is also feeling the burn. I have had one interview in 3 months where I used to have multiple in a given week. Life ain't breezy any more from what I can tell, and I'm in DevOps for 10 years as mid-level/senior, which used to be highly in demand. Having to slash like $80k on my previous salary prospects just to get in the interview pipeline again.
Dude, I don't even live in the US but I've worked with PR before (huge firm) and as soon as I started reading this my bullshit radar went off, this is clearly reads like a PR fake story, and when that happens it's always 1) to sell you a product or 2) to plant a fake idea on your head. Since there's no clearly a product, yeah, this article is clearly a psy0ps.
Side note: when they report "...72% expects easier jobs..." they are talking about their expectations, while hiding employment data (which probably says otherwise). That's another cheap old "dark pattern" in lying PR article. They call it "soft data" (instead of real data, so you can lie easily. It's like Marlboro would tell you "...72% of smokers expects health improvements due to smoking...
I live in NZ. Hiring is not easy at the moment.
Also our wages are low. Look at the current job postings. https://www.seek.co.nz/Software-Developer-jobs
Then take into account that $1 NZD is equal to 0.59742741 US Dollars. So if you are earning $100k in NZD that is not even $60k USD. Our national average house price is $888,999. It's much higher in big cities. Our food costs are rapidly increasing as well. I pay over $1,000 NZD for power and gas.
Smart developers are leaving.
Also our wages are low. Look at the current job postings. https://www.seek.co.nz/Software-Developer-jobs
Then take into account that $1 NZD is equal to 0.59742741 US Dollars. So if you are earning $100k in NZD that is not even $60k USD. Our national average house price is $888,999. It's much higher in big cities. Our food costs are rapidly increasing as well. I pay over $1,000 NZD for power and gas.
Smart developers are leaving.
I'm also in NZ and everything you say is true, except wtf $1k in electric and gas?! I'm not a conservative energy user, and I'm paying around $280 (mid winter) for a family of 4. Hard to believe/understand the $1k remark.
I have a 1910 villa and a Vietnamese wife with a new born. She has been here for 14 years but still likes it warm.
I'm working on getting her to understand that we don't need to heat rooms we don't use.
But $280 is cheaper than I pay during summer. I'm averaging about 20KWHs in the summer. At the moment it's closer to 75KWHs per day. Our hot water is all gas. About 1 x $150 bottle per month in the summer. That moves up to 1 per week in the winter.
Double glassing is in the wish list. Then wall insulation. But we have a mortgage and an asbestos roof to deal with first.
I'm working on getting her to understand that we don't need to heat rooms we don't use.
But $280 is cheaper than I pay during summer. I'm averaging about 20KWHs in the summer. At the moment it's closer to 75KWHs per day. Our hot water is all gas. About 1 x $150 bottle per month in the summer. That moves up to 1 per week in the winter.
Double glassing is in the wish list. Then wall insulation. But we have a mortgage and an asbestos roof to deal with first.
> 75KWHs
That's a lot of energy per day, mate. I'm in the US and not particularly careful with usage and I'm averaging about 25KWH a day. You might want to get a usage meter that lets you check various appliances/lights/switches in real time to find the heavy usage
That's a lot of energy per day, mate. I'm in the US and not particularly careful with usage and I'm averaging about 25KWH a day. You might want to get a usage meter that lets you check various appliances/lights/switches in real time to find the heavy usage
Yeah, that kind of thing makes me think 'why do they have six refrigerators?' or 'is the electric dryer running literally 24/7?'.
Three chest freezers, one fridge freezer, dryer goes five to six times a day, three heat pumps and two radiant electric heaters.
So you live an unbelievably excessive existence.
No, I don't think so. I just want to keep my family warm and in clean clothes.
We do need to get down to less freezers but we have some home kill that we need to get through first.
We do need to get down to less freezers but we have some home kill that we need to get through first.
How big is your family and how big is your house? Your situation is so far from anything that I've experienced in my life that I cannot even imagine it. How can you use a dryer that many times per day? Do you even need to use a dryer? Can't you air dry things?
I normally don't stay in places with a dryer and just let things air dry. If you're running heating/ac, they normally lower humidity so things dry really fast anyway.
I normally don't stay in places with a dryer and just let things air dry. If you're running heating/ac, they normally lower humidity so things dry really fast anyway.
2 adults, 2 infants. 110 Sqr metres.
6 a day is on the high side. It's probably an overestimate.
When there are no new borns we might dry 3 loads a week.
But the house is a work in progress. The curtains blow on a windy day.
6 a day is on the high side. It's probably an overestimate.
When there are no new borns we might dry 3 loads a week.
But the house is a work in progress. The curtains blow on a windy day.
> Smart developers are leaving.
I'm in Ōtepoti/Dunedin (best city in NZ!), and within my social network most developers work remotely for overseas companies.
I'm in Ōtepoti/Dunedin (best city in NZ!), and within my social network most developers work remotely for overseas companies.
Kia ora from Tauranga
100%. There are 2 NZ employment markets. Those working for NZ companies in the $100k region, and those working for US firms for the $200+k region.
I've had an annoying time explaining this to past US employers when they present median values for NZ salary fudge factors.
100%. There are 2 NZ employment markets. Those working for NZ companies in the $100k region, and those working for US firms for the $200+k region.
I've had an annoying time explaining this to past US employers when they present median values for NZ salary fudge factors.
Where do people find jobs in the US that can be done from outside the US?
The few job boards I've seen all have either low salaries, or are US-only...
The few job boards I've seen all have either low salaries, or are US-only...
People tend to post interesting jobs that they find in the #jobs channel on the DevelopNZ Slack if it's something you're interested in.
I got my first remote gig (firmware work) through a friend's referral, however that was years before COVID-19. These days I'd suggest looking for a remote-first company. Or, maybe apply for remote gigs that say US-only (assuming there's not an obvious or stated reason), then bring up your location when talking to a real human.
FWIW - technically I run a NZ company, so am a contractor and not an employee of the company that my day-to-day manager works for. This arrangement seems to be common among people who work for US companies, or are US citizens, which brings up some questions about the stats in the article...
FWIW - technically I run a NZ company, so am a contractor and not an employee of the company that my day-to-day manager works for. This arrangement seems to be common among people who work for US companies, or are US citizens, which brings up some questions about the stats in the article...
You forgot all the Kiwis working remote for Atlassian and Canva in the $200+k region.
My team of ~12 is nearly ~30% kiwi at this point.
My team of ~12 is nearly ~30% kiwi at this point.
this city is so damn small, I didn't even need to know your real name to know who you were :D
All you other NZ devs should join the Slack server I founded for IT people in NZ. https://dev.elop.nz/ a lot of us work remotely. We have a dedicated jobs channel and all - we also have some very good recruiters. (700ish people)
All you other NZ devs should join the Slack server I founded for IT people in NZ. https://dev.elop.nz/ a lot of us work remotely. We have a dedicated jobs channel and all - we also have some very good recruiters. (700ish people)
Good to meet you. I'm in Palmy, (most average city in NZ).
That is something I need to look into. I'm guessing now is a bad time to be looking for international work. It seems like the job market is not great internationally.
That is something I need to look into. I'm guessing now is a bad time to be looking for international work. It seems like the job market is not great internationally.
Kia ora from Hawke's Bay.
"Smart developers are leaving" - or working for overseas employers. This seems to be quite common. Too bad NZ is a small market which I feel make many jobs not that interesting.
"Smart developers are leaving" - or working for overseas employers. This seems to be quite common. Too bad NZ is a small market which I feel make many jobs not that interesting.
Wrong things, often ridiculously wrong things get written all the time. It doesn’t mean it’s the result of a “psyop”. Here’s a roughly accurate flowchart for determining if you’re currently being subject to something that could non-ironically be termed a psyop: “is this a psyop?”—>”no”.
It sounds like you're saying there's No True (Scotsman's) Psyop.
Where are you drawing the line separating it from aggressive targeting marketing and PR?
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Where are you drawing the line separating it from aggressive targeting marketing and PR?
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
If the actions are well precedented and widely known such that normal people would not find them shocking, I suppose. So things which we’ve made it since the beginning of the English language without finding the need to call them “psyops” and thereby assigning them fake intrigue. An article saying wrong things about the job market: no. Cambridge Analytica: sure.
I think you could replace "psyop" with "marketing campaign" for most of the times the expression is used today.
Cambridge Analytica is also entirely fake, in the sense that it's highly unlikely any votes were affected by it.
I doubt I would ever utter the word seriously to describe something, but operations can fail, no? If it indeed didn’t have any effect, the operation was still pretty shocking and intriguing.
Not really. It was more a marketing gimmick for the company. The kind of advertising targeting Cambridge did (based on cheap 2010s Era fb personality quiz responders) had absolutely no targeting value. It just sounded like techno magic to journalists.
Like imagine a developer consultancy said they used latex to fizzbuzz people's computers to get them to vote for Trump. If you understand advertising targeting, CA makes just as much sense as that.
Like imagine a developer consultancy said they used latex to fizzbuzz people's computers to get them to vote for Trump. If you understand advertising targeting, CA makes just as much sense as that.
Calling something a psyop is just a meme. But it is true that everybody has a perspective they want to promote. People have the ability to think and speak more or less objectively to differing levels, but people don’t tend to say things unless the want other people to think those things are true. If somebody makes a claim that is substantially different from your own experience of reality, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask yourself why does that person want me or others to think that that is true?
I can also create a roughly accurate flow chart to demonstrate this: “does this person want me to believe something that aligns with their own agenda/perspective/goals?” -> “yes”.
I can also create a roughly accurate flow chart to demonstrate this: “does this person want me to believe something that aligns with their own agenda/perspective/goals?” -> “yes”.
There’s a branch of the Canadian military that admitted that they were running an information warfare campaign against actual Canadians during COVID.
Small and insignificant as it may have been, there are real psyop’s out there, and dismissing them all as a meme is lazy thinking.
Small and insignificant as it may have been, there are real psyop’s out there, and dismissing them all as a meme is lazy thinking.
Use of the word is a meme. But any use of information to try and influence what other people think is basically what a psyop is, and everybody does that all the time. People only tend to call things a psyop if they think the motives are especially sinister, but that's just a pointless distraction imo, as you can never know what somebody's motives truly are. Every statement the government makes is a psyop, or an act of information warfare. Same for journalists, or social commentators, or HN commentators, or anybody else...
You are probably right but this is about NZ. I can also attest to it being really difficult to find good hires in Australia at the moment. We have what you might call a grass roots tech scene, not heaps of startup activity, most work is in established businesses or new but bootstrapped going concerns. Sydney and Melb might have a bit more startup activity.
Wages here are good for the area, but not SV level good, and I think that makes it slightly less attractive but also less inflammatory. More sustainable as wages are pegged to real dollars in and out of a business.
Wages here are good for the area, but not SV level good, and I think that makes it slightly less attractive but also less inflammatory. More sustainable as wages are pegged to real dollars in and out of a business.
Honest question: do you have resources or materials that you could refer me to so that I could learn more about how this part of the pr/publishing industry works?
I don’t doubt you, and it sounds like one of those “seedy underbelly of the industry” kinds of things that I’d be interested in knowing more about.
I don’t doubt you, and it sounds like one of those “seedy underbelly of the industry” kinds of things that I’d be interested in knowing more about.
Ryan Holiday’s “trust me I’m lying” may reveal the corporate underbelly you are curious about.
What is the goal of this PR piece then?
Increase the pool of software engineers, specifically in New Zealand, so companies can hire more easily and don't need to increase salaries.
Here's a tip for reading PR pieces: if a company is mentioned in the article and one of their executives is quoted, they are almost always the ones who paid for (and probably wrote) the article. Here, it quotes "NZTech CEO Graeme Muller". If you click through the one link in the article, that one also quotes NZTech CEO Graeme Muller, and all the source data is from NZTech. Reading through it, you see that NZTech is an industry trade association of New Zealand's tech companies. They have a pretty obvious vested interest in increasing the pool of tech workers in New Zealand.
Here's a tip for reading PR pieces: if a company is mentioned in the article and one of their executives is quoted, they are almost always the ones who paid for (and probably wrote) the article. Here, it quotes "NZTech CEO Graeme Muller". If you click through the one link in the article, that one also quotes NZTech CEO Graeme Muller, and all the source data is from NZTech. Reading through it, you see that NZTech is an industry trade association of New Zealand's tech companies. They have a pretty obvious vested interest in increasing the pool of tech workers in New Zealand.
> Here's a tip for reading PR pieces: if a company is mentioned in the article and one of their executives is quoted, they are almost always the ones who paid for (and probably wrote) the article.
Here's another one that a surprising number of people still don't realize: If you're reading an article where any company employee or exec is "quoted", the quote is almost always something written by the company's professional PR team and not an actual quote from the person.
Here's another one that a surprising number of people still don't realize: If you're reading an article where any company employee or exec is "quoted", the quote is almost always something written by the company's professional PR team and not an actual quote from the person.
I had a manager once who said that "[famous company] executive, [name]" should be an anti-Hearst pattern that shows [name] is clearly not an executive.
Isn’t it more likely that the CEO of an industry wide association would be the best person to comment on trends impacting the whole industry?
Edit - I’m a recovering publisher so have a lot of experience being the target of PR and choosing what kinds of articles can be printed.
Edit - I’m a recovering publisher so have a lot of experience being the target of PR and choosing what kinds of articles can be printed.
Not really. When assessing the credibility of a source, you have two main questions: do they have the information you need, and do they have an incentive to lie? Industry-wide associations usually have significantly worse information than people who are actually performing the jobs at companies in the organization, and they also have a responsibility to their member orgs to get the best outcomes for them (i.e. represent information in a way that achieves member organization goals).
If I wanted accurate information on the state of hiring in an industry, I would look for someone who had recently performed sourcing/interviewing/recruiting for one of the big companies in the industry but had also recently retired, left for another field, or become a stay-at-home mom/dad. They have the firsthand information as part of their job, but they also have no dog in the fight and hence no reason to distort that information.
If I wanted accurate information on the state of hiring in an industry, I would look for someone who had recently performed sourcing/interviewing/recruiting for one of the big companies in the industry but had also recently retired, left for another field, or become a stay-at-home mom/dad. They have the firsthand information as part of their job, but they also have no dog in the fight and hence no reason to distort that information.
You have never published, have you? Your last paragraph is all about finding impossible sources whose credibility won’t be apparent to average readers.
A few years ago a similar move was making rounds in the US to promote increasing of the visa quotas or reforming the system due to the “shortage”
Edit: 2013
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/h-1b-visas-and-the-stem-s...
2021
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/h-1b-visa-reform-is-...
First you plant studies in the news, then you can quote those studies when lobbying lawmakers
Edit2:
The issue dates back to 1959. There’s always been a “shortage”
Kenneth Arrow: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1883726
Edit: 2013
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/h-1b-visas-and-the-stem-s...
2021
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/h-1b-visa-reform-is-...
First you plant studies in the news, then you can quote those studies when lobbying lawmakers
Edit2:
The issue dates back to 1959. There’s always been a “shortage”
Kenneth Arrow: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1883726
And strangely enough, the goal of these articles is never to increase the number of Americans trained for these plentiful jobs. The idea is always to bring more workers from other countries, so the industry will have an easier time to pay lower salaries.
I have at least one LinkedIn connection at nearly every company for which I'd like to work / for which I've been tracking open roles. In the past, getting a referral would almost guarantee a recruiter screen (vs just applying online).
Now, I get cold-rejected via automated email, even with a personal referral from someone I worked with directly, about 85% of the time.
I'm seeing 600+ applicants for a Bay Area FAANG+ EM role listed on LinkedIn, 2 weeks after posting the JD. That doesn't include those that applied directly on the company's career page...
Job market rn is wack, yo.
edit: specifically front-line EM roles managing ICs
Now, I get cold-rejected via automated email, even with a personal referral from someone I worked with directly, about 85% of the time.
I'm seeing 600+ applicants for a Bay Area FAANG+ EM role listed on LinkedIn, 2 weeks after posting the JD. That doesn't include those that applied directly on the company's career page...
Job market rn is wack, yo.
edit: specifically front-line EM roles managing ICs
Don’t conflate EM and IC prospects, EM are going to be considerably worse for the immediate future as companies try to slim up on middle management
The job market many of you all are describing seems to have been standard for new grads for the last few years
The job market many of you all are describing seems to have been standard for new grads for the last few years
Correct, specifically front-line EM roles. I added clarification.
Not quite sure what you mean here. "Front-line EM" is still in much worse shape than ICs. While you may argue that front-line EM is not technically "middle" management, I think a lot of companies realize they can be much leaner at pretty much all levels of engineering management - e.g. have a "tech lead" or similar role do much of the work that was previously under an engineering manager.
If you're not willing/can't write and ship code, companies are taking a much harder look at those roles.
If you're not willing/can't write and ship code, companies are taking a much harder look at those roles.
I think of front-line managers (of ICs) as part of "middle management" (anything "in the middle" between ICs and executives) but I can see how some might think of middle management as managers of managers. Anyway, that's why I added the clarification.
To your point, yeah, I'm also seeing a lot more "hands on" call outs in JDs for EMs, if not writing code, at least doing code reviews.
To your point, yeah, I'm also seeing a lot more "hands on" call outs in JDs for EMs, if not writing code, at least doing code reviews.
> IT employers
Idk what EM means, but IT is looking for admins. Try Kansas.
Idk what EM means, but IT is looking for admins. Try Kansas.
Engineering manager.
I suspect in the US there has been a shock effect of interest rates causing the big source of money for high tech salaries to fall off a cliff. Everywhere else VC is not as much of a big thing. You typically work for a bootstrapped company (all of mine have been, or taken their first investments at the $1bn valuation level) or a large bank or public sector job. These sorts of jobs are not impacted. You need a global crisis type recession like 2001 or 2008 to cause this.
You are slashing $80k. Over here (rest of the world, $80k is the TC typically, and often much less!)
This is going to be bad for SF real estate I suspect. People will leave to adjust to their new salaries.
You are slashing $80k. Over here (rest of the world, $80k is the TC typically, and often much less!)
This is going to be bad for SF real estate I suspect. People will leave to adjust to their new salaries.
$180k -> $100k -> ??. Not FAANG level salary from the outset, not going to be able to reach a comfortable retirement at this rate while retaining my financial independence.
Money is a claim on energy, materials, and/or labor. Given that none of these are growing more abundant (except perhaps labor, depending how hard you squint), it may not make sense to plan for the same retirement prospects as the currently retired generation. This is neither fair nor easy to accept but internalizing it now may save some pain later.
This is not to say one should accept injustice handed down from on high. There are some who will try to exploit contraction for their own short-term benefit at everyone else's expense. Be wary, and be prepared.
This is not to say one should accept injustice handed down from on high. There are some who will try to exploit contraction for their own short-term benefit at everyone else's expense. Be wary, and be prepared.
My current plan is to live with my parents as long as I need to to at least get out of debt, hopefully that doesn't take more than a year but yes you're not wrong. Of course that raises another question of who is going to accept a 70 year old cloud admin/devops engineer/whatever-it-is-in-40-years on their team when the time comes but hey, you never know.
> Given that none of these are growing more abundant (except perhaps labor, depending how hard you squint)
While that sounds obvious, it’s not necessarily true. Empirically the real price of many commodities has come down, even in the face of growing population.
https://www.aier.org/article/review-of-superabundance-by-mar...
While that sounds obvious, it’s not necessarily true. Empirically the real price of many commodities has come down, even in the face of growing population.
https://www.aier.org/article/review-of-superabundance-by-mar...
> neither fair nor easy to accept but internalizing it now may save some pain later.
that's a bit of a defeatist attitude though.
I expect a better retirement than the current generation of retirees right now, and i expect to achieve that by purchasing as many assets as possible, while earning as much as possible, before i retire. Of course, one does not know what the future holds - so the method i am using may turn out fruitless.
that's a bit of a defeatist attitude though.
I expect a better retirement than the current generation of retirees right now, and i expect to achieve that by purchasing as many assets as possible, while earning as much as possible, before i retire. Of course, one does not know what the future holds - so the method i am using may turn out fruitless.
The implicit problem here is that US tech salaries have been far higher than anywhere else in the world for the past decade. You had kids graduating and starting their first job with zero professional experience who were getting TC that was a multiple of what seniors with a decade of professional experience would earn in places like Europe or Australasia. Most of the world was never able to get a job as an IC doing development and expect to retire comfortably and turn into an angel investor before their 40th birthday.
That was always going to make the US less competitive once the economic foundations that supported those very high compensation levels broke. Unfortunately for those in the industry in the US that probably means there will be a sharp contraction in both the size of the market and the TC being offered. Those affected have my sympathy but pragmatically they also need to realise that what they're going to have to get used to for the next few years is probably still (slightly) better than what everyone else in the world doing the same jobs with the same skills and in some cases with a similar cost of living has had available all along.
That was always going to make the US less competitive once the economic foundations that supported those very high compensation levels broke. Unfortunately for those in the industry in the US that probably means there will be a sharp contraction in both the size of the market and the TC being offered. Those affected have my sympathy but pragmatically they also need to realise that what they're going to have to get used to for the next few years is probably still (slightly) better than what everyone else in the world doing the same jobs with the same skills and in some cases with a similar cost of living has had available all along.
U.S. doctors’ salaries have been higher than anywhere else in the world for the last 5+ decades.
It all depends how effectively you can lobby for your rights & prevent foreign competition (and control the pipeline of new entrants / gatekeep / keep your industry profitable)
It all depends how effectively you can lobby for your rights & prevent foreign competition (and control the pipeline of new entrants / gatekeep / keep your industry profitable)
It doesn't necessarily tell us much to make comparisons across industries like that though. US doctors' salaries are paid to people who literally save lives. US tech workers' salaries are often paid to people who are working at a big firm with big past investment that found its golden goose a long time ago and has business people who have successfully defended its moat since. These are very different situations in terms of bargaining power for both personal compensation and larger scale effects like unionisation and regulatory capture.
Bad and good comparison. The bad part: unlike tech, a doctor consultation is really hard to transfer across border. The good part: the US is not a destination for doctors’ (not medical) exports. If we consider medical tourism as doctors exporting their expertise. In this case, the industry has failed to attract this additional flow and actually lost some (since many Americans will go outside of the US to seek medical professionals). All of this for the profit of some doctor’s establishment.
>(since many Americans will go outside of the US to seek medical professionals)
No, they won't. They will go to Mexican border cities for a routine dental treatment. Nothing more serious than that.
Certainly no equivalent of what various Canadian politicians have received over the years in trekking to the US, such as Chretien's secret trips to the Mayo Clinic while PM. <https://web.archive.org/web/20160624132234/http://www.ezrale...>
No, they won't. They will go to Mexican border cities for a routine dental treatment. Nothing more serious than that.
Certainly no equivalent of what various Canadian politicians have received over the years in trekking to the US, such as Chretien's secret trips to the Mayo Clinic while PM. <https://web.archive.org/web/20160624132234/http://www.ezrale...>
But we are not far now from Github being all you need to manage a global dev project. There is no “coders without borders” as there are no real borders to begin with. The only sticky things are legal issues / culture / time zones.
well in CA at least, we have a situation with housing that grew to be stupidly expensive. So $180k is really not very much. So if companies want to keep people here, they would have to pay up.
Ok ouch that is a drastic cut, and must be hard to deal with if you have set up your life based on $180k income.
Just for comparison, $180k would be out of range for anyone outside the US, unless in High Frequency Trading, managing a team of > 200 people, or working for a hot AI startup, Crypto or similar. It is quiet exceptional.
I say this as someone who is, compared to East Europe, Indonesia, Cuba, India, etc, earning a high salary. Same thing could happen to me quite easily if I am out of a job and looking again. It is scary.
Just for comparison, $180k would be out of range for anyone outside the US, unless in High Frequency Trading, managing a team of > 200 people, or working for a hot AI startup, Crypto or similar. It is quiet exceptional.
I say this as someone who is, compared to East Europe, Indonesia, Cuba, India, etc, earning a high salary. Same thing could happen to me quite easily if I am out of a job and looking again. It is scary.
$180k? I never worked FAANG, but my understanding is the jobs were in the $250k+ range. I have a sister in law that works for oracle cloud computing and pulls in $350k.
Most tech jobs are not FAANG or similarly massive, super profitable goliaths. It's something we should all remember all the time. Most tech workers are second rate staff working for [name any big company that is not primarily a tech company].
Examples on the far end of the extremes only serve to skew our perspectives, unless we remind ourselves these are the extremes, not the norm.
Examples on the far end of the extremes only serve to skew our perspectives, unless we remind ourselves these are the extremes, not the norm.
> Just for comparison, $180k would be out of range for anyone outside the US
I don't think it's too far off the mark for Australia. Mind you, that's gross. US$180 is about AU$280k. Of that, you'd pay around AU$100k in income tax (and then there's a 10% sales tax).
I don't think it's too far off the mark for Australia. Mind you, that's gross. US$180 is about AU$280k. Of that, you'd pay around AU$100k in income tax (and then there's a 10% sales tax).
It’s also out of range for most people outside of SV. There are definitely jobs paying $180k where I am (Southeast US), but they aren’t anywhere near entry-level and also aren’t abundant.
> This is going to be bad for SF real estate I suspect. People will leave to adjust to their new salaries.
Everyone disagrees with me, but I believe we're already seeing it. I moved down to the Los Angeles area after college, as I took a job down here. The houses here that used to rent for $3000 10 years ago currently rent for $5000+. Meanwhile in the Bay Area, I can still find a number of comparable houses for $4000 or less. Granted, those are more like - outer sunset, fremont, concord, etc...
But those are still pretty nice areas!
If I moved right now I'd have to pay $1000/mo more in rent - at least. Probably more. The housing market in SoCal is basically stuck because nobody can afford to move, and so nobody's moving unless they have to lol. And that drove the prices up.
As far as I can tell, the rent market is still fairly healthy in the Bay. So the prices haven't escalated quite the same.
Everyone disagrees with me, but I believe we're already seeing it. I moved down to the Los Angeles area after college, as I took a job down here. The houses here that used to rent for $3000 10 years ago currently rent for $5000+. Meanwhile in the Bay Area, I can still find a number of comparable houses for $4000 or less. Granted, those are more like - outer sunset, fremont, concord, etc...
But those are still pretty nice areas!
If I moved right now I'd have to pay $1000/mo more in rent - at least. Probably more. The housing market in SoCal is basically stuck because nobody can afford to move, and so nobody's moving unless they have to lol. And that drove the prices up.
As far as I can tell, the rent market is still fairly healthy in the Bay. So the prices haven't escalated quite the same.
Same, there have been a few positions I've applied to with a 100% match for the needed qualifications and even "nice to have"s, with basically a 0% response rate. At a point where I'm happy if they even bother to shoot a "we've had some many great candidates, no thanks!" email.
Compare to a ~year ago when I was easily making in the low single digit (1/N) millions.
Damn interest rates, I tell myself.
Luckily I saved enough in bigtech to give me a few solid years of runway for working on things myself. Wouldn't want to have a family right now, that's for sure.
Lately it's been seeming my best career option is to enlist in the armed forces. They seem to be the only ones with an actual "skills shortage" around.
Compare to a ~year ago when I was easily making in the low single digit (1/N) millions.
Damn interest rates, I tell myself.
Luckily I saved enough in bigtech to give me a few solid years of runway for working on things myself. Wouldn't want to have a family right now, that's for sure.
Lately it's been seeming my best career option is to enlist in the armed forces. They seem to be the only ones with an actual "skills shortage" around.
"Same, there have been a few positions I've applied to with a 100% match for the needed qualifications and even "nice to have"s, with basically a 0% response rate. At a point where I'm happy if they even bother to shoot a "we've had some many great candidates, no thanks!" email.
"
Feels like 2003. Back then I went from getting an interview whenever I wanted to not getting any response for almost a year.
Feels like 2003. Back then I went from getting an interview whenever I wanted to not getting any response for almost a year.
You were making the in the low single digit millions and are now considering the military?
You could have saved in one year what you’d make in 10 years in the military.
You could have saved in one year what you’d make in 10 years in the military.
He meant making in the medium hundreds of thousands : 1/N millions, where N is low. I have never heard anyone describe income this perversely
I thought maybe that’s what that meant but then dismissed it because I thought that’s just too odd to consider.
We're all making high quadruple digit (1/N) billions here.
I assumed this to mean "around 1". But really, why be coy in a scenario like this? Just say the damn number... it's not going to change anything.
There's no single number. Ranges from 1/4MM to 1/2MM depending on when/how you account stock grants, 401k matching, ESPP, etc.
If it doesn't change anything why make a big deal about it?
If it doesn't change anything why make a big deal about it?
still doesn't discount the 1/N drop in pay to go into the military.
I don't really care about pay as I've said I saved a lot already. Just looking to do something Good (USCG, for instance).
>> wouldn’t want to have a family right now…
People had families during economic downturns, wars and famines. It is also a long term commitment so there are going to be bad times no matter when you decide to take the plunge.
People had families during economic downturns, wars and famines. It is also a long term commitment so there are going to be bad times no matter when you decide to take the plunge.
Don't see the implied disconnect between people being in bad situations in the past and me not wanting to be in one now.
That said, I would like a family. Preferable I'd have some way to provide first though.
That said, I would like a family. Preferable I'd have some way to provide first though.
Good thing housing prices have at least come down with these high interest rates!
Sorry to hear you're struggling. Anecdotally, this hasn't been my or my friends experiences, but none of us are dev ops, we're all senior backend devs (mix of C# and Node) - all located in the U.S.
I wish we could get a more granular breakdown on demand in the tech world. There's a vast difference in skills, requirements and pay scale for strict DevOps positions versus more traditional software developer roles.
I wish we could get a more granular breakdown on demand in the tech world. There's a vast difference in skills, requirements and pay scale for strict DevOps positions versus more traditional software developer roles.
I also do mostly backend, mostly C#. I’m curious what kind of companies and projects you and your friends work on if you’re willing to share. Don’t need to name names or anything, I’m not fishing for a referral. I’ve just been in the same niche market for a long time and I’m curious what else is out there.
https://layoffs.fyi about as granular as it's going to get unfortunately and that is overly broad, but we can at least see it's been happening for mid 2022-2023 so far and it's not just me.
I. The tech world we need:
Less AI hype
Less HR personnel
Less restrictions on where tech work may be performed
Better hours for on call staff
Less spending on fancy HQ offices (from an aesthetic)
Hot-desks
Lower executive pay
Better transparency in business costs which companies hide in their compensation considerations based on their money
Etc etc etc
Less AI hype
Less HR personnel
Less restrictions on where tech work may be performed
Better hours for on call staff
Less spending on fancy HQ offices (from an aesthetic)
Hot-desks
Lower executive pay
Better transparency in business costs which companies hide in their compensation considerations based on their money
Etc etc etc
The idea that programmers should make $200k or $300k or $400k is irrational and unsustainable, only sustained for the time being by a tiny number of massive, hyper-profitable companies and an endless stream of easy venture capital cash that allows some startups to spend their money like complete idiots. We all know that most tech workers make less than $200k as base salary, just as we know that all skilled professionals typically make less than $200k. If you took an $80k paycut and are still living a comfortable life, consider yourself lucky to have collected as much cash as you did in the previous job and maybe accept that rational, sustainable salaries are the future for most tech workers.
Programmers should make what the market will offer, I'm not sure why you think otherwise. If there's easy money floating around on dumb projects, good on labor for capturing as much of that as possible, instead of it going towards another yacht.
I was explicitly describing distortions in the market that we should not assume are perpetual.
Citizenship used to mean that you had privileged access to your birth country's job market.
Slashing 80K from what baseline? 160k dropping to 80k is very different from 500k dropping to 420k.
Yeah the growth story hasn’t come back so most places aren’t aggressively hiring to meet future demand right now. We’re sort of in a consolidation phase right now. Use this time to improve your skills so when we begin to shift back into growth you’ll be ahead of the curve.
> Yeah the growth story hasn’t come back so most places aren’t aggressively hiring...
Dumb money (and unimaginative executives) waits for someone else to tell a "story" in order to act. Smart companies should be hiring like crazy, sucking up all the great talent these dummy companies are shedding. Tech companies, more than at any time I can remember, seem to have no ideas--they're just watching their competitors and aping whatever they are doing. Competitors are laying off? We're laying off! Competitors are returning to the office? We are returning to the office! Competitors are getting into AI? We are getting into AI. Everyone is chasing each other's tail and sniffing each other's farts and there isn't even a spark of creativity left.
Dumb money (and unimaginative executives) waits for someone else to tell a "story" in order to act. Smart companies should be hiring like crazy, sucking up all the great talent these dummy companies are shedding. Tech companies, more than at any time I can remember, seem to have no ideas--they're just watching their competitors and aping whatever they are doing. Competitors are laying off? We're laying off! Competitors are returning to the office? We are returning to the office! Competitors are getting into AI? We are getting into AI. Everyone is chasing each other's tail and sniffing each other's farts and there isn't even a spark of creativity left.
Learning TypeScript, Pulumi, and Argo Rollouts and such and reading every scifi book I can get my hands on while waiting. Moved back in with the parents so going homeless isn't an issue it's just extremely embarrassing given I had 10 years of career and financial independence before this. Ugh.
Yeah good call catching up on things you enjoy line reading. You’ve got skills and a desire to keep them up. You’ll be fine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34163233
7 months ago you got a new gig in two weeks and making bank. Now you're unemployed and can't find a single job?
7 months ago you got a new gig in two weeks and making bank. Now you're unemployed and can't find a single job?
Based on their post history[1], I would wager the poster’s job prospects have dried up due to their own circumstances rather than the state of the devops hiring market. They also claimed to be job hopping every six months during the pandemic.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37116238
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37116238
Entirely possible, I have been trying to find what the middle ground is. I have trouble believing my whole career is suddenly over because of a few short term stints during this pandemic.
Edit: https://layoffs.fyi shows 2023 has been fairly rough as well as late 2022 for confirmation. My troubles started around early 2020 so something to consider. 5 years or so of steady employment and gainful experience before that.
Edit: https://layoffs.fyi shows 2023 has been fairly rough as well as late 2022 for confirmation. My troubles started around early 2020 so something to consider. 5 years or so of steady employment and gainful experience before that.
My employment history has been a mess of 6 month gigs since the start of the pandemic. I'd say it was just me due to additional circumstances but I did a poll of my LI network to see if anyone else was feeling it, most everyone said they were. Surprised some on HN aren't but these are additional data points to consider.
My compensation has been the same for the last 3 years... But the stock price and inflation mean that I'm making 25% less in real terms.
> Having to slash like $80k on my previous salary prospects
Reading in between the lines, these were mostly just prospects and they were also 2021 numbers which were aberrations.
Reading in between the lines, these were mostly just prospects and they were also 2021 numbers which were aberrations.
You regularly do multiple interviews a week?
Did. Did multiple interviews per weeek. Not these days.
But regularly? How often were you hopping jobs?
It got pretty bad at the height of the pandemic in 2021-2022 or so with job switches every something like 6 months due to mental health issues and the pandemic causing the instability that it has. My employment history was stable before the pandemic happened, HM's and recruiters should be able to understand the context of the pandemic at a minimum (most don't).
Presumably this was while job hunting.
While actively looking to move? Or just a background level of interviews per week all year?
I've talked with a few people actively interviewing the past couple months, including myself, and fairly consistently people are passing hiring bar, having done the entire battery of interviewing and the company wanting to hire, but there not being any job which to hire them into. 'wait til next quarter maybe more headcount will free up'
What companies are spending time doing full rounds of interviews without a open role available these days?
Keep in mind that what you are experiencing is related to the compensation change you get when changing jobs. The article isn't completely clear on this, but I sounds like they are talking about the salary for all jobs, including people staying in existing jobs. That one changes much more slowly, especially when people don't change jobs.
Also I expect to see minor cuts to compensation for existing jobs to first come in the form of slashing of bonuses, yearly raises and promotions. For various, mostly social, reasons employers are reluctant to cut the nominal salary of existing employees, even more so than they seem reluctant to fire people.
Since the article brought up NZ, and so we are already talking about 'weird' job markets: here in Singapore the market is also supposed to be down, but I'm still getting pitched good jobs left and right by recruiters for my particular speciality.
Also I expect to see minor cuts to compensation for existing jobs to first come in the form of slashing of bonuses, yearly raises and promotions. For various, mostly social, reasons employers are reluctant to cut the nominal salary of existing employees, even more so than they seem reluctant to fire people.
Since the article brought up NZ, and so we are already talking about 'weird' job markets: here in Singapore the market is also supposed to be down, but I'm still getting pitched good jobs left and right by recruiters for my particular speciality.
Good heavens I'm feeling this. With my last few employers being acquired by private equity or having layoffs my resume doesn't scream, "Will grow in the role," anymore... and it didn't have the chance to do so.
Things are rough out there for sure.
Things are rough out there for sure.
Honestly I’m not seeing much point in even living nowadays with prospects so bad. I’ll give it like maybe another month or two but after that I’m out. The amount of suffering being laid off has caused me in my life is just not worth it.
Hey man, that’s never worth it. Please don’t. There are so many levers you can pull to get to a better place and you might just not be seeing that clearly now.
This has been my experience too. My son is starting college and was planning on studying software development. I’ve started encouraging him to look at other majors or consider the trades instead. It doesn’t feel like tech is going to be a good career path going forward.
“Tech” is very broad but it’s still a field where the impact of a single individual’s effort scales disproportionately, because for the most part it’s all 1s and 0s over a wire. That’s fundamentally why tech salaries are high imo.
I think that's probably because "tech" was never a career path. Just think about the word itself, what does it even really mean? I suppose most people would answer with something about making new technology, but then you've really got your work cut out for you, because damn near any company can make that sort of claim.
In my view, tech just means IT but you've got a ping pong table at work and can wear jeans. IT isn't going anywhere and can be a good career path still, but the wild salary increases were clearly driven by speculation, and there was absolutely a lot of hiring of less than qualified people going on, which will probably take another year or two to wash out.
If it were my son, I would tell him to do what he likes, and if that's computer stuff then that is still a better than average career path. That being said, I'd make sure they really understand that what they are really probably getting into is IT, i.e. its highly unlikely he will end up working at a startup that is going to make it big and change the world with some hot new invention. The reality is, you are probably going to be working at a bank or something at some point, and that's okay if you didn't get your expectations way out of wack.
In my view, tech just means IT but you've got a ping pong table at work and can wear jeans. IT isn't going anywhere and can be a good career path still, but the wild salary increases were clearly driven by speculation, and there was absolutely a lot of hiring of less than qualified people going on, which will probably take another year or two to wash out.
If it were my son, I would tell him to do what he likes, and if that's computer stuff then that is still a better than average career path. That being said, I'd make sure they really understand that what they are really probably getting into is IT, i.e. its highly unlikely he will end up working at a startup that is going to make it big and change the world with some hot new invention. The reality is, you are probably going to be working at a bank or something at some point, and that's okay if you didn't get your expectations way out of wack.
People are doing short certifications for security and immediately earning more than people who racked up $100K debts over 4 year computer science degrees. Everything you need to work in IT (except actual science and engineering roles) can be learned through the Internet and experience, for free. There's no value in a university debt for such.
Except, of course, the companies like my own still require a 4 year degree to get hired. It doesn't matter what the degree is in, you just need to have one. I've asked HR if we can get rid of the requirement and have been told no. Sigh.
Do the HR people have 4 year degrees?
Absolutely. It is required for all full time employees.
You might be suffering from too much experience for DevOps? I am in the market for devops roles in SF and I’ve had about 2 interviews a week for roles from devops, SRE, and product engineering. I’m at 3 yoe
How's the contract scene?
There's a difference between hiring staff and getting a job done. Most companies choose one or the other, but they're peanut butter and chocolate!
There's a difference between hiring staff and getting a job done. Most companies choose one or the other, but they're peanut butter and chocolate!
IME consulting is where you can really win in a market like this. Especially moonlighting. If you can find an extra 10 hours per week reliably to work on something you can easily supplement your income by $60k or more. It’s not guaranteed to be interesting work, but there’s no shortage of people just trying to get a new thing over the finish line or an keep an old thing afloat for a bit longer. It’s a good value for the company because they don’t have to hire a “whole” developer, and it’s easier for especially smaller organizations to bucket all your hours into either CapEx or OpEx based on the project.
Yeah, the article is ridiculous. In the past 15 years I've never seen it this bad for me or anyone else I know.
When I was hiring in Q422/Q123, I saw plenty of big tech candidates (Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft) applying to the few roles I had open, and on average, they were willing to sign for $100k less than what you see on sites like levels.fyi given their experience. Also, I was hiring in CA, so I doubt the data was biased.
A lot of levels.fyi salaries are skewed because people report their current equity comp value instead of the value at the time of their offer.
I agree, but still, you could tell a couple of these candidates had been affected by layoffs and were willing to sign for $100k less than what they were previously making.
As a hiring manager, I definitely felt the shift. It was a complete opposite from my hiring experience pre-pandemic.
As a hiring manager, I definitely felt the shift. It was a complete opposite from my hiring experience pre-pandemic.
> were willing to sign for $100k less than what they were previously making
My point is that after tech stocks dropped, they probably weren't making that much money anymore. They were likely already making $100k less, or would have been if they were still employed there, because their equity is no longer as valuable.
My point is that after tech stocks dropped, they probably weren't making that much money anymore. They were likely already making $100k less, or would have been if they were still employed there, because their equity is no longer as valuable.
I see, that is a fair point, people will report their compensation at peak. Nevertheless, I was still seeing 50+ candidates per job opening. Just by ranking resumes and discarding those to whom we couldn't give an interview due to time constrains, I was eliminating some amazing candidates to whom I'd have given an interview in a different situation.
In the US the market has dried up considerably in terms of open reqs. Probably won’t pick back up until interest rates ease.
yeah probably so. tough time to be making a career change back into tech after 8 years out lol
The recruiters that reach out daily on LinkedIn are still there, but the rates seem to have dropped back down 25% or so.
During COVID they shot up so I guess it's just returning to normal. Which is good in a way, I saw too many very unqualified people making way more than I would have expected.
I know we haven't been hiring for many roles at all and very reluctant to replace people that have been retiring etc.
During COVID they shot up so I guess it's just returning to normal. Which is good in a way, I saw too many very unqualified people making way more than I would have expected.
I know we haven't been hiring for many roles at all and very reluctant to replace people that have been retiring etc.
The recruiters in my inbox are mostly offering enormous downgrades from my current role - 50-70% salary, usually some form of an in-office component (hard dealbreaker), lots of synchronous meetings and explicit timezone requirements (I have exactly three standing meetings a week in my current role, the rest of my schedule is async and the team is distributed), and often title de-leveling.
So I mean, sure, for mid-levels with low standards/expectations, or for folks who just have to take any job they can (trust me I've been there, folks, this isn't a dig on you), the market is still bumpin. For senior to staff (and beyond) folks with strong work-life balance or team layout opinions, this market is still laughably atrocious in the "I guess I should probably start prepping a consulting outlet so I'll have it ready in case anything happens to my job in the coming year or two, huh?" kind of way.
So I mean, sure, for mid-levels with low standards/expectations, or for folks who just have to take any job they can (trust me I've been there, folks, this isn't a dig on you), the market is still bumpin. For senior to staff (and beyond) folks with strong work-life balance or team layout opinions, this market is still laughably atrocious in the "I guess I should probably start prepping a consulting outlet so I'll have it ready in case anything happens to my job in the coming year or two, huh?" kind of way.
A bunch of engineering departments got told to work to a budget, and that budget was built on the assumption there'd likely be a recession in 2023. I could very well see things get out of the funk by 2024. The halcyon days of COVID tech job market are over tho and aren't coming back, but we could see something that looks like it did in 2014-2015.
Had a look, NZ tech wages are laughable. 140k for a tech lead in Welligton, where a 2 bed rent is 3k/mo?
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Skills shortage? What a load of shit. There’s a massive oversupply of qualified tech workers in the US. There’s a shortage of tech workers willing to work for what employers want to pay. But that’s an entirely separate issue.
You don’t even need to look hard to see how many people are out of work. Simply post a job on LinkedIn and you’ll get nearly 1,000 applicants in a few weeks. It’s genuinely alarming how many people need work right now. I’m not sure how it ends, but there’s no way at it ends well.
You don’t even need to look hard to see how many people are out of work. Simply post a job on LinkedIn and you’ll get nearly 1,000 applicants in a few weeks. It’s genuinely alarming how many people need work right now. I’m not sure how it ends, but there’s no way at it ends well.
This week, I talked to a friend from MIT’s machine learning grad program who said the job market sucked.
That’s when I believed.
That’s when I believed.
Machine learning doesnt pay high salaries, at least not in the uk.
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Silicon valley salaries are way down but average dev salaries are about the same.
Specifically in the US, for the past 5 years there has been an influx of code schools and boot camps grads entering the workforce.
I want to say that we have an oversupply of non-traditional tech workers that were from these schools that couldn’t or didn’t sustain a job.
Now when companies are trying to find qualified individuals, there’s a challenge weeding out these from actual skilled and experienced individuals.
Combat this with experienced non-US tech workers who are willing to work for lower wages, makes locals finding jobs a challenge.
For companies looking to hire US-only workers, too many people are applying drowning out actual qualified individuals.
I want to say that we have an oversupply of non-traditional tech workers that were from these schools that couldn’t or didn’t sustain a job.
Now when companies are trying to find qualified individuals, there’s a challenge weeding out these from actual skilled and experienced individuals.
Combat this with experienced non-US tech workers who are willing to work for lower wages, makes locals finding jobs a challenge.
For companies looking to hire US-only workers, too many people are applying drowning out actual qualified individuals.
It’s honestly ridiculous how poorly paid SWEs are in Aus / NZ.
Seriously consider working in the states for a few years if you can get an E3 visa, and if you don’t like it head home in 4-6 years with a million bucks.
Seriously consider working in the states for a few years if you can get an E3 visa, and if you don’t like it head home in 4-6 years with a million bucks.
Interesting dichotomy of responses here that reinforce my belief that dev salaries are bimodal or even trimodal. I'm still getting recruiters daily in my inbox and LinkedIn for web development in React, Node and TypeScript. I guess full stack still is in vey high demand because it's the actual skill that is for building the core product while devops and the like are not as important, as they could be deferred once product market fit is reached or even maintained initially by full stack engineers.
That's my skillset and I'm not getting these messages daily anymore. Maybe monthly at this point.
I wonder if it’s the engineering roles drying up or the amount of spammy recruiters has decreased.
Anecdotally, I know a number of recruiters (some were even good ones) that got cut in recent years.
Anecdotally, I know a number of recruiters (some were even good ones) that got cut in recent years.
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The article states the median income for tech warders is static since 2021, but it is perhaps more insightful to look to New Zealand's official quarterly employment statistics, which show "Information media, and telecommunications" earnings have increased by 8.4% in the 12 months June 30, and 13.4% over the two years to June 30.
Train new people ! That is the only long term sustainable option.
Where I used to work, IT staff were treated like garbage. The HR folks and project managers all got huge pay increases, while the increases for tech staff was always less than the increase in cost of living. So I left, started contracting, and now I'm making more than the directors in that old place. I drive a luxury car with very available option, but just to keep me in my place, I just went outside and found a flock of about 60 billion birds have crapped all over it. Stupid universe. /shakes fist
I think it really depends, and for many unique and lucky individuals they won't feel this.
nemo44x(2)
NZ salaries are also pretty laughable, even if you're on $150k you can't really afford to live on your own (even an apartment is a stretch) as housing and living expenses are so high. It's only really good if you're in your early twenties and can find flatmates or live with parents and save.