✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Is dev compensation bimodal?

danluu.com · 4,194 words · saved by 1 readers

Developer compensation has skyrocketed since the demise of the Google et al. wage-suppressing no-hire agreement, to the point where compensation rivals and maybe even exceeds compensation in traditionally remunerative fields like law, consulting, etc. In software, "senior" dev salary at a high-paying tech company is $350k/yr, where "senior" can mean "someone three years of out school" and it's not uncommon for someone who's considered a high performing engineer to make seven figures. The fields have sharply bimodal income distributions. Are programmers in for the same fate? Let's see what data we can find. First, let's look at data from the National Association for Law Placement, which shows when legal salaries become bimodal. Median salary is $40k, with the numbers slowly trickling off until about $90k. According to the BLS $90k in 1991 is worth $160k in 2016 dollars. That's a pretty generous starting salary. By 2000, the distribution had become bimodal. The lower peak is about the sa

Is dev compensation bimodal? Developer compensation has skyrocketed since the demise of the Google et al. wage-suppressing no-hire agreement , to the point where compensation rivals and maybe even exceeds compensation in traditionally remunerative fields like law, consulting, etc. In software, "senior" dev salary at a high-paying tech company is $350k/yr, where "senior" can mean "someone three years of out school" and it's not uncommon for someone who's considered a high performing engineer to make seven figures. The fields have sharply bimodal income distributions. Are programmers in for the

Explore this link on the map →

related reading