These numbers sound accurate. However, let me bring some sobering facts to the table. Even if you’re really good, you’ll probably only go up by 50% from these numbers over your entire career, unless you’re the sort of back-stabbing, evil psychopath who makes it into tech’s executive ranks (in which case, you don’t need to listen to what I have to say).
Compensation has a near-zero correlation with how good you are as a programmer. I’ve seen enough numbers to verify this. And I’m one of the highly compensated ones.
This field overvalues the young and undervalues experience for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that the young have collective backing by being part of a prestigious school. When you’re 22, employers are decent to you, because the last thing they want you to do is poison an entire college’s CS department against them in a way that will last for years. If Google treats a college kid poorly, it can damage Google’s ability to hire at that department for 10 years, even after that student is forgotten. From age 27 onward, though, you’re out on your own. Unfortunately, programmer guilds (like Hollywood’s actors' and writers' guilds) don’t exist and there are no agents. Recruiters work for the employer, not you, and the people who purport to be “programmers' agents” are so incompetent that they can be ignored.
Programming can be intellectually rewarding (although the kind of programming that’s done in a typical open-plan Scrum body-shop is mind-numbing) but going into software for the money is a “greedy algorithm”. It doesn’t end well. By your 30s, you’ll be earning less than people not one-tenth as talented who got MBAs.
This could be changed, but I feel that programmers are stupidly opposed to organizing around our interests. (Also, read up on my past if you want to see what tech execs do to people who even discuss this topic in the open.) This is exacerbated by the industry’s tendency to push people out once they’re experienced enough to see how rigged the game is.
Cross-posted with the Reddit thread.
These numbers sound accurate. However, let me bring some sobering facts to the table. Even if you’re really good, you’ll probably only go up by 50% from these numbers over your entire career, unless you’re the sort of back-stabbing, evil psychopath who makes it into tech’s executive ranks (in which case, you don’t need to listen to what I have to say).
Compensation has a near-zero correlation with how good you are as a programmer. I’ve seen enough numbers to verify this. And I’m one of the highly compensated ones.
This field overvalues the young and undervalues experience for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that the young have collective backing by being part of a prestigious school. When you’re 22, employers are decent to you, because the last thing they want you to do is poison an entire college’s CS department against them in a way that will last for years. If Google treats a college kid poorly, it can damage Google’s ability to hire at that department for 10 years, even after that student is forgotten. From age 27 onward, though, you’re out on your own. Unfortunately, programmer guilds (like Hollywood’s actors' and writers' guilds) don’t exist and there are no agents. Recruiters work for the employer, not you, and the people who purport to be “programmers' agents” are so incompetent that they can be ignored.
Programming can be intellectually rewarding (although the kind of programming that’s done in a typical open-plan Scrum body-shop is mind-numbing) but going into software for the money is a “greedy algorithm”. It doesn’t end well. By your 30s, you’ll be earning less than people not one-tenth as talented who got MBAs.
This could be changed, but I feel that programmers are stupidly opposed to organizing around our interests. (Also, read up on my past if you want to see what tech execs do to people who even discuss this topic in the open.) This is exacerbated by the industry’s tendency to push people out once they’re experienced enough to see how rigged the game is.