[HN Gopher] The Evolution of Developer Salaries: Looking Back 20...
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The Evolution of Developer Salaries: Looking Back 20 Years
Author : fagnerbrack
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-02-25 07:55 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (codesubmit.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (codesubmit.io)
| mfontani wrote:
| Both charts purportedly show stats for 2001-2011.
|
| Is it the case the first shows 2001-2011, and the second
| 2011-2021?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > Both charts...
|
| There are four charts. Are you referring to the just the top
| pair labeled median 2001-2011 and mean 2001-2011 which are in
| the "From 2001-2011" section? Those are 2001-2011.
|
| If you want later ones you'll have to scroll down to the
| section titled "From 2013-2019." There's a pair labeled median
| 2013-2019 and mean 2013-2019. Those are the 2013-2019 ones.
| mfontani wrote:
| Ha! Missed the tiny "mean" vs "median" difference between the
| first two. Thanks!
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "In the years to come, industry experts expect low-level
| coding and programming jobs to become obsolete with the
| development of new tools that remove the need to code completely.
| Take for example the role of Web Developers when it comes to
| building websites. With popular CMS tools like WordPress and
| Squarespace, almost anyone can build a website for their
| business, reducing the need for people who know "just a little
| bit of front end web development". "
|
| Yeah, not gonna happen. Low level code, if anything, is going to
| become even more popular with the current explosion of IoT. You
| have this 4th generation becoming in full swing (1st was
| mainframes in 50's/60's, 2nd was PC in 70's/80', 3rd was
| web/mobile in 90's to 10's, and now Arduino/Raspberry/MicroBIT
| for IoT) and I swear is the same stuff under new hood. Plenty of
| people want fully integrated stuff and blings around them, which
| means in next decade IoT is going to be what smartphones started
| from 2008 to 2015.
|
| Second - Sure mom and pop can do basic stuff in Wordpress, but
| once they want something unique guess what? PHP developer to the
| rescue to adjust their Wordpress site. So no, if anything, it's
| going the opposite direction, more code, more software. So the
| <need for people who know "just a little bit of front end web
| development"> is going to be shifted to mom and pop and that's
| all...at best.
| visarga wrote:
| > So no, if anything, it's going the opposite direction, more
| code, more software.
|
| That's the paradox, the more we automate, the more work we have
| to do. All because of scope creep.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| IoT is dead in the water right now because of the same reasons
| smartphones did not take off until iPhone. The dataplans suck.
| Steve Jobs insisted on unlimited data for a flat fee. If you go
| look at the M2M offerings for most data providers you will see
| they do not list prices. That is for a reason. I personally saw
| many of the actual prices. The ranged from 'not bad' to 'you
| got them to agree to _that_?! '
|
| You can piggy back on customers networks to a point on 'home
| automation'. Everyone is trying to be the next modbus/zigbee on
| that one but charge a monthly fee for the privilege of using
| their protocol, or even better their service. The integration
| between services is kinda crap and the ecosystem is very shaky
| with no clear winners.
|
| Bespoke systems are doing 'ok' but again no clear winners yet.
| Most seem to be setting themselves up to be bought out by some
| bigger player instead of shipping good product.
|
| What we found with IoT was it was not the software or hardware.
| We had that 15+ years ago. The problem is integration and
| maintenance and connectivity. The integration phase you can see
| sales cycles of 2-3 years. Maintenance ongoing cost no one
| really wants to pay for. Connectivity is at the mercy of
| someone elses price plans.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The data plan certainly doesn't help but the fact most IoT
| devices actively put time and money into providing anti-
| features like demanding an unnecessary connection for basic
| functionality, an unpredictable sunset period of 'whenever we
| go out of business, get bought up, or just feel like it',
| needless privacy issues, and needless vulnerability to
| hacking and viruses and expect people to pay more for it
| including recurring charges? Using ubiquitous computing to
| turn their devices into dumb terminals which must defer the
| home server?
|
| It is downright stupid runaway greed run amok while viewing
| themselves as entitled to customers - they couldn't make
| their contempt for their customers clearer if they had put
| photos of themselves flipping the bird twice to the customers
| on every box and giving making every product name a
| combination of three to five randomly chosen swears and
| insults.
|
| If they actually started with an appliance and asked "what
| features would a customer find useful" instead of "what can
| we charge them for and put behind a pay-gate" then we would
| have something worth considering. Washer/dryer unit which can
| text or email you when your load is done and can be
| programmed in sequence? Great. Smart locks for changing entry
| codes remotely and phone communication with an app? It is
| actually made for its niche.
|
| Instead their strategy is like including a remote triggered
| bomb in every product and then wondering why people rarely
| buy their stuff.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Most IoT devices do not need Internet for the home
| automation features that actually provide value to users.
| They need a LAN connection at most. They _say_ they need
| Internet but it 's typically just used for exfiltrating
| user's personal data and analytics, and as you say for
| implementing needless payment gates and remote-triggered
| bombs.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think the issue is that IoT is not really broadly useful
| for normal people.
|
| IoT devices have been a big thing in the
| manufacturing/industrial sector for a while now, because
| collecting telemetry on equipment is extremely valuable. The
| growth in ML has been a huge value-add in the sector.
|
| I can't really see the value in IoT devices for the consumer
| market. There are niche applications which may appeal to a
| small group, for example security systems or climate control.
| But, for the most part, there's really no obvious "killer
| app" for consumer IoT devices. The few ideas with potential
| are already getting integrated into the iOS ecosystem (health
| monitors).
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| Agreed. I'm working on an IoT platform and there is a lot
| of interest from big industrial players (energy sector,
| manufacturing, fleet managers of all sorts). IoT can help
| companies save money either through analytics or reduced
| need for labour, but I don't see too much value added to
| regular people.
| burnthrow wrote:
| CMS replaced the guy who turned your .doc into HTML (this used
| to be a job). Many of these people became LAMP CMF specialists.
| That transition was at least a decade ago. Sysadmin roles have
| been under the most pressure since.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| I think "low level" here means "low skill level", not the
| programming definition [0]
|
| 0 - low-level programming language is a programming language
| that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's
| instruction set architecture
| osigurdson wrote:
| I would like to see some concrete examples of what is meant
| by low skill level "programmer" work. In my opinion,
| programmer, developer and engineer mean the same thing. Is
| there a market for "Hello, world" that I am not aware of?
| sceadu wrote:
| Simple CRUD websites maybe, adding simple things to e.g.
| wordpress deployments.
| spartan831 wrote:
| This is good to hear, and I've felt that a lot of people are
| underestimating the IoT explosion that is to come. The
| automotive industry is just finally on the cusp of it. Buy a
| new high end appliance, and you can probably connect it to a
| network. Everyone loves "smart home" accessories. I think
| demand is going to sky rocket.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| So from $62890 to $92610 in 18 years.
|
| That is only a 4% increase per year.
|
| I am surprised it is so little. I recently looked up some old
| receipts I paid in restaurants and cafes from 11 years ago. And
| then looked up the same items in the same cafes and restaurants
| now. The prices roughly doubled. So these increased by about 6%
| per year.
|
| If developer salaries increased slower than inflation, why is it
| still so hard to find good freelance developers? Could the
| explanation be that the market has been flooded with people who
| call themselfes developers but hardly grasp what is going on
| under the hood? And just glue external code together until it
| kinda works?
| Loic wrote:
| For another reference point, the "cost of life index"[0] in
| Germany went from 79,9 (in 2000) to 105,8 (in 2020), a 32%
| increase.
|
| DESTATIS provide all the details of the calculations of this
| index and also how it changes over the years to adapt to the
| real cost of life (like everybody having a smartphone now but
| not in 1991).
|
| [0]: https://www-
| genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?operation=pre...
| enriquto wrote:
| > hardly grasp what is going on under the hood? And just glue
| external code together until it kinda works?
|
| Wait, isn't this what all of us do? Do some folks really
| understand things?
| ben_w wrote:
| I try to, but I guess it depends what you mean by "really
| understand" -- I'm happy so long as I know about the product
| logic, but @pjc50 has said of themselves something along the
| lines of "full stack at every level from the transistor to
| the UI" or similar (I can't find a link to the actual
| comment, they post too much for that).
| jlokier wrote:
| Possibly this one.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191777
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Yes, I do.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, I won't pretend I understand everything I do, but
| working in video games there's frequently no "external code"
| you can draw from, not even a Stack Overflow where you can
| ask questions. Over a year ago we got few prototype PS5
| devkits dropped on our desks with some basic documentation
| available and were told to make it work - that's not
| something where you can ask for any help anywhere, because
| it's all NDA'ed and Sony engineers are extremely busy, so you
| just....have to figure stuff out by yourself.
| ido wrote:
| Restaurant prices are not the only mark for inflation. Has
| inflation in the past 18 years been more than 4% per year on
| average?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It doesn't look impressive against the CPI.
|
| According to the BLS calculator, $62,890 in 2003 is worth
| $90,538.76 in 2021.
|
| So after adjusting for inflation, salaries have risen by all
| of 2%?
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| That's pretty depressing.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| Depends on what you look at. Gold increased about 9% per
| year. The Nasdaq increased about 11% per year.
| ploika wrote:
| Neither of those represent inflation in consumer prices
| particularly well.
|
| The price of a new washing machine (amortised maybe, I
| don't know), a litre of milk, a pair of jeans, a monthly
| phone/broadband bill or a tank of petrol would be more
| useful in tracking inflation.
|
| Gold, copper, pork bellies, shipping, storage costs etc
| would be tracked in something like the Purchasing Managers
| Index.
|
| Share prices are pretty much irrelevant since buying shares
| isn't really consumption.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The price of a new washing machine (amortised maybe, I
| don't know), a litre of milk, a pair of jeans, a monthly
| phone/broadband bill or a tank of petrol would be more
| useful in tracking inflation.
|
| That's pocket change compared to the change in price for
| real estate, healthcare, education, childcare, taxes, and
| savings (assets for retirement and emergencies).
|
| At least for where I want to live. If I made a budget 15
| years ago of my purchases in the next 15 years, the total
| price for the total of those purchases increased at far
| more than US government CPI figures. I get more bang for
| buck for my TV, but that's offset by the extra few
| hundred thousand dollars for land, healthcare, etc.
| ploika wrote:
| Of course. Depending on where you live, most of what you
| mentioned is probably included in the CPI calculation.
| Rent, health insurance, education and childcare are all
| included in Ireland's CPI in some form, for example.
|
| I was trying to differentiate between increases in
| consumer prices (like the cost of a watch or running a
| car) and increases in cost/value of other stuff (like
| gold bullion or Tesla shares or whatever).
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| When I start eating gold and living in a Nasdaq, then that
| might matter as a measure of inflation.
| ben_w wrote:
| This inflation calculator says the USA has had cumulative
| inflation of only 20%, not 100%, in the last 11 years; of 42%
| in the last 18 years; and of 48% in the last 20 years:
| https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
|
| I suspect your restaurant and cafe receipts are not
| representative of general price changes.
| csomar wrote:
| The CPI that the government tracks is as good as their
| unemployment rate. It's indicative (it should raise if
| inflation raises) but has nothing to do with reality. These
| numbers were twisted so that they do not look very bad. If
| you read that unemployment is at 30%, you'll be protesting.
|
| The reality is, life got a lot better in the last decade. If
| you are measuring by that, prices are actually down (or did
| not increase that much). Today's iPhone would have been
| prohibitively expensive (if possible) and many houses did not
| have the amenities they have today (washing machine, cable,
| tech gadgets, etc...).
| [deleted]
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| This is unfortunately another one of those cases where the
| "government" + sycophantic institutions are essentially and
| deliberately fudging the numbers to make people believe
| something other than what is really happening, in essence,
| essentially also committing fraud. In the case of inflation,
| one way the trick works is that the basket of goods and
| services that are used to calculate the inflation are not at
| all reflective of the lived experience of regular people, let
| alone of most people.
|
| It's not really all that different than the fraudulent way in
| which the intentionally deceptive unemployment rate is
| calculated that is pushed by all the governments' sycophants.
| In the USA that process drops people from the calculation by
| simply assuming disinterest in employment if one has been
| unemployed for a certain time (yes, it's intentionally
| deceptive and manipulative, largely to defraud and cheat the
| markets and countries that are honest about their
| unemployment rates).
|
| ShadowStats has been tracking the real inflation rate for a
| few decades now since a major change was made to fudge the
| number. It should be pretty eye opening for some people.
|
| http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
|
| On a side note; it strikes me as a rather perplexing
| challenge that people seem to have a hard time adjusting
| their thinking to control for deceptive and manipulative
| practices, e.g., everyone who pays attention knows very well
| that the U.S. governments inflation numbers are literal
| fraud, yet they are the very number that drives so many
| aspects of everything. It's like that meme scene in Idiocracy
| ... "but fraudulent inflation rates are what the market
| craves" ... "yes, but they're causing illusion and deception
| to spread throughout the system that will cause collapse and
| ruin" ... * blank stare * "but fraudulent inflation rates is
| what the market craves"
| a_c_s wrote:
| I take issue with this narrative of an "intentionally
| deceptive unemployment rate": the Bureau of Labor
| Statistics publishes six different figured depending on who
| you want to count as 'unemployed':
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
| em500 wrote:
| Shadowstats is a crank website, and "eye opening" in the
| same way as anti-vaxers and 5G radiation truther websites
| are "eye opening" to a significant number of people without
| much expertise in the field.
|
| Shadowstats are not "tracking the real inflation for a few
| decades", they're just adding about 3 to 4 %-points to the
| BLS inflation and peddling those numbers as a paid
| subscription. If you want to want to know the *shocking
| truth about the Real Inflation* accoding to shadowstats,
| save yourself the money and brain damage of reading
| conspiracy sites: just download the official inflation from
| BLS or FRED and add 3-4%-point every month.
|
| The implication of these shadowstats "true inflation
| numbers" is that the US economy has been in constant
| depression since the 1980s or so. I'll leave the
| credibility of that up to the reader.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the USA that process drops people from the calculation
| by simply assuming disinterest in employment if one has
| been unemployed for a certain time
|
| No, it doesn't. You are dropped from unemployment
| _benefits_ after a certain time, but from the headline
| unemployment _rate_ [0] only when you stop actively
| searching for work.
|
| [0] and even then, those "discouraged workers" remain in
| other unemployment measures published by BLS. (U-4 through
| U-6, just not the headline U-3 rate, or the even smaller
| U-1 and U-2 rates.)
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I am reading the graphs incorrectly or does ShadowStats
| claim inflation rate has been 10% per year for the past 24
| years? That would mean prices are 1.1^20=10 times higher
| now that they were in 1996.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Why don't more people talk about this? The CPI is clearly
| broken. I've seen things stay the same price but get
| smaller in shrinkflation. Housing/rent prices go up 20% in
| a year but CPI barely budges. Do they just find 20% smaller
| houses every year? Just fixing the index would have a huge
| impact
| ahelwer wrote:
| Housing (and healthcare and education) will never be
| included in US inflation metrics because the inflation of
| those cost categories is a government priority. In
| particular the US gov wants homeowners to experience a
| consistent annual return on their investment, aka it
| wants housing to inflate. The CPI hides these issues and
| enables them to lie by omission, why would they change
| it?
| mywittyname wrote:
| You're attitude doesn't make sense when put into the
| context that housing inflation, as a whole, tracks
| inflation. It's only pockets of the country which
| experience high rates of housing inflation.
|
| Even if you did include it, the numbers wouldn't change.
| For every Seattle or Denver experiencing heavy growth in
| the housing markets, there's a dozen Lafayettes
| experiencing slow/no growth.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Okay, so weight the costs by how many people experience
| them then. Oh! More people live in those big cities? Huh.
| And those cities are the only places with jobs that have
| experienced decent wage growth? Man.
| jonfw wrote:
| > Do they just find 20% smaller houses every year? Just
| fixing the index would have a huge impact
|
| The opposite, people are in significantly larger and
| better equipped houses than they used to be.
|
| I also think 20% is pretty steep outside of the most
| desirable areas in the US, which are akin to complaining
| about the pricing becoming unreasonable in your country
| club. The top end of the market shouldn't be used to
| track inflation, we should use the median.
| adjkant wrote:
| I've found that most people in the economics space know
| how broken the CPI is, so it's boring. That's why no one
| talks about it. The reality is the CPI doesn't affect as
| much as people think, so there's little pressure to force
| its needed changes. And if you do ask people to change
| it, the factions that split in terms of what changes are
| desired leaves the "keep it the same" camp being the
| largest.
|
| At a personal level, the CPI really isn't set up for
| cities. It is simply not considered in the CPI that
| housing would be such a big cost that would outweigh
| anything else. The "why" seems to be speculated by
| another poster, though I can't speak to that as I'm not
| deep enough into economics.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Like most things, there are trade-offs involved.
|
| Including X & Y may greatly skew the results higher or
| lower, but if the percentage of people purchasing X & Y
| are low, then they don't have much impact.
|
| The CPI methodology isn't great, but it also isn't bad.
| Removing volatile sectors makes sense when trying to
| identify trends, but it doesn't make sense when those
| volatile sectors are a large component of consumer spend.
|
| Since most of the data used by the CPI calculator is
| publicly available, it is possible for people to
| construct their own CPI metric and track it over time.
| This is helpful if you want to get an accurate indicator
| of the inflation you've experienced over time, or if
| you're wanting to push the narrative of higher/lower
| inflation over a period of time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The CPI methodology isn't great, but it also isn't bad.
|
| It's bad for any discussion involving wages since your
| earnings need to go up by more than CPI to tread water,
| in popular areas.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Wouldn't you expect roughly 50% of areas (population
| weighted I guess) to be "above average"?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, but with widening income/wealth gaps, I would expect
| the popular areas to have a larger deviation from the
| mean.
| albertop wrote:
| The greater (lower) the degree of government involvement
| in the provision of a good or service the greater (lower)
| the price increases (decreases) over time, e.g., hospital
| and medical costs, college tuition, childcare with both
| large degrees of government funding/regulation and large
| price increases vs. software, electronics, toys, cars and
| clothing with both relatively less government
| funding/regulation and falling prices.
| https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-
| century-5...
| [deleted]
| potatoman22 wrote:
| I don't get why I should believe this one guy's numbers
| versus an experienced governments' bureau's calculations.
| Because it's all a conspiracy?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Anyone who was alive 20 years ago will tell you it's not
| a conspiracy. How much does health insurance cost now vs
| 20 years ago? Rent? A university degree? We can see the
| massive inflation with our own two eyes (and feel it in
| our wallets).
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > How much does health insurance cost now vs 20 years
| ago? Rent? A university degree? We can see the massive
| inflation with our own two eyes (and feel it in our
| wallets).
|
| People mention exactly these three things every single
| time they say "actually inflation is super super high".
| The fact that nothing else ever comes up is evidence that
| the bulk of things have not inflated at rates outpacing
| the government documentation.
|
| These three things are getting very expensive very fast.
| That's bad. Policies can be put into place to limit this.
| This is not evidence that the government is full of liars
| and really inflation is at 20%.
| jjav wrote:
| Compared to ten years ago:
|
| My electric bill is 10x. My water bill is 6x-8x. I live
| in the same house and have the same consumption then and
| now.
|
| My supermarket costs are 5x-7x.
|
| So yes, real inflation has been pretty scary the last 10
| years. On a silicon valley techie salary I can absorb
| these costs but it's still a huge increase.
|
| Talking with some friends the other day about this topic,
| I projected the numbers for the next ten years if things
| were to continue on this path and the result would be
| that in ten years I won't be able to pay utilities + food
| on my salary. So presumably something will change or
| break, because that's not sustainable.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Other things don't come up because these three are
| _major_ expenses for most people, percentage-wise
| dwarfing the rest of their spending. I don 't care that
| the price of steak is only up $5 /lb when I have to pay
| $3k more a month due to housing, insurance and education
| costs.
| em500 wrote:
| You shouldn't. Shadowstats is a crank website, praying on
| people are already convinced that everything is more
| expensive than according to official numbers. They're the
| economics equivalent of homeopathy, anti-vaxers, 5G
| radiation truthers and sellers of homebew crypto-algos.
| I.e., they have a nice business and a good susceptible
| audience, but they're not providing you the Secret
| Information that the Authorities don't want you to know.
| jjav wrote:
| I don't know anything about Shadowstats, no opinion on
| that.
|
| But the fact that prices have risen far faster than the
| official inflation numbers suggest is a trivially
| confirmable fact. Just look at what you paid for things
| years ago and now, compute percentage increase.
| tryonenow wrote:
| >experienced governments' bureau's calculations
|
| Why do you trust an "experienced government bureau" which
| has institutional incentive to cook numbers? At the very
| least it's an alternative perspective to be evaluated.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They really aren't; I don't have concrete numbers, but most
| people agree that prices for restaurants and cafes have
| doubled since they introduced the Euro here. Even though
| officially it was illegal to do price hikes, many companies
| took the opportunity to do so, because while the new currency
| was worth 2x what the old one was, people still thought in
| the old currency's numbers. So 1.50 for a coffee or a beer
| stayed 1.50, after a little while people stopped trying to
| convert the value and just accepted the new normal.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I find that very difficult to believe. It flies in the face
| of everything I have been told about how the markets
| behave. If cafes double their prices and people's salaries
| don't double, people won't just get used to the new prices,
| they stop going to cafes. Such a price increase would
| capture the interest of economists and academics. I am sure
| papers and books will be written on it, as well as
| capturing the attention of the general public and the
| journalists and having lots of news segments and articles
| written about it. Could you please try to find some of
| these and share them with me. I do not know which country
| we are talking about and unless it is Ireland, I don't
| speak the language to search the internet on my own.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| I suspect that website is not representative of general price
| changes. Maybe it looks at things that got easier to produce
| so they got cheaper via efficiency. They just don't sell
| cheaper because of inflation.
| rory wrote:
| Things getting cheaper to produce via efficiency is (a
| negative) part of inflation. It's not a separate
| phenomenon.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| That's the elephant in the room with inflation measures
| (CPI CPIH RPI) the selection of the basket of goods can
| have a massive effect on the actual recorded rate - which
| may not be what the average person on the ground
| experiences.
|
| Governments have incentives to use this to flatter the
| results or change inflation measures eg the UK and its
| switch to CPI from RPI for a lot of things.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| In addition there's another complication - the BLS also
| makes (downward) adjustments for improvements in product
| quality over time to reflect that they have more value.
| zelos wrote:
| Presumably there's a big difference in the level of
| inflation experienced based on income level as well:
| someone just scraping by is going to be much more exposed
| to food and rent inflation than a developer on $100k.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| True, but the chosen measure is going to be the lowest
| inflation imaginable since it relates strongly the global
| price of goods instead of services cost.
|
| Poor people actually can't escape service costs and pay
| for a lot more (seemingly) mandatory service costs that
| go away when you have enough money to stay away from
| them. I.e. the costs of not having a fridge at all vs
| being able to bulk shop at a warehouse are all massively
| higher.
| [deleted]
| adamc wrote:
| The article needs to compare against salaries in general to
| distinguish changes in developer salaries from other trends.
| swyx wrote:
| this is subject to the same issues all salary surveys have - they
| dont take into account stock based comp, which is responsible
| both for the huge amount of variance in comp by years of
| experience and for the increase in total comp over time. the
| conclusions you can draw from this are really not that meaningful
| in total.
| fatnoah wrote:
| That is definitely a big miss. Looking only at cash, my rate of
| compensation increase was about 7.5% per year (in reality, it
| was typically a couple years at 1-2% with some big jumps). When
| stock is factored into the equation, the average jumps to about
| 12.5%!
| [deleted]
| parentheses wrote:
| I feel that these numbers hide a lot:
|
| (1) There is a small percentage that are being paid what I
| consider to be a fair income. They are being paid in very
| competitive markets. They are getting valued in a HCOL market
| where demand for engineering talent is higher.
|
| (2) There is a large percentage that are being paid something
| like a "developer status quo". A salary that:
|
| - doesn't acknowledge that software developers are _capable_ of
| generating inordinately large amounts of value (and considered in
| aggregate, mostly do)
|
| - treats all work done by college-educated individual
| contributors as of roughly equivalent value
|
| - cannot be too high because "we can't pay you 2x what
| $other_person_of_value makes"
|
| - cannot be too high because "we can't pay you more than what
| $your_manager makes"
|
| (3) Developer skill levels vary greatly. This means that the
| average developer is just that: average. Average developers
| simply do not generate the kind of value that top-end developers
| do.
| durnygbur wrote:
| As a dev based in EU, in any year I was at around 50% of the
| expected American level. The healthcare and social systems are so
| underfunded and overloaded in most of the EU countries that in
| case of any health or life problems I expect to receive
| "American-style" support (ie. ending up on the street, with bills
| and debt collection hounding me). Why even bother being employed?
| aweb wrote:
| I'm sorry but you're exaggerating quite a lot. Were are you
| based? In France this is definitely not the case. Public care
| works and is efficient enough.
| finikytou wrote:
| I wouldn't say france works and is efficient enough. You can
| see the covid crisis as a revelatory of what doctors and
| hospital are going trough in france. underfunded, directed by
| people from business schools looking at profitability (less
| beds, merging services between hospitals, promoting their
| buddies/network, hiring people to recreate company-like
| hierarchy where you undermine anyone that is not in your
| team) the goal of the current government is to cut everything
| that they can and obviously they would love to have less
| public hospitals.
|
| Not even talking about the building renovations that are near
| impossible, the medical devices that will never be next-gen
| and the idea of counting beds rather than patients.
|
| Yes it works. it is not efficient. And it is putting immense
| pressure on doctors that are underpaid, underappreciated by
| management.
|
| I can see where it is going and I think we will be very sad.
| They want all the bad sides of the american model + the bad
| sides of the french model. None of the good ones. And then on
| their business model and powerpoint the picture will look
| amazing. Just like any BS company tweaking their financials
| to look great.
| durnygbur wrote:
| Poland.
| ornornor wrote:
| I do t think you've ever experienced the brutal reality of
| living in the US: barely any employment insurance compared to
| the EU, two weeks notice before you lose your job only, just an
| ambulance ride and seeing an MD in the ER is a few thousand
| dollars before they even start treating you, getting cancer
| also means hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills
| (good luck without insurance), 0 days a year vacation
| prescribed by law, to only pick a few. Oh and free or nearly
| free education all the way to a masters degree at least. Not to
| mention other public services like mass transit. Or life
| expectancy. You're better off in Europe.
| np- wrote:
| Pretty much none of this comment is true besides maybe the
| mass transit thing, which again depends where you live, if
| you're a dev in the US (as the OP you responded to said is
| their profession). This almost strikes me as a Reddit-
| comment-style parody, so maybe I was whooshed.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| Two weeks notice? Only if the company cares about reputation,
| there's zero legal requirement for notice or severance.
|
| It is also pitifully easy to be denied unemployment. 8 years
| ago I was laid off from a failing startup with the option of
| 1 week's severance or 2 weeks if we signed non-disparage /
| non-entice.
|
| Everyone who choose 1 week was "fired for cause" and had
| their unemployment contested. Mine was contested after 4
| months and I was forced to pay it back with a 50% "fraud"
| fee.
|
| In America money talks and bullshit walks.
|
| The irony is that this is why we hop startups every year or
| two. The only reliable way to get a significant income
| increase is to level up on popular new technologies at
| employer A and get employernB ton pay more.
| ido wrote:
| I don't know where in the EU you are but I live in Germany and
| had to have cancer treatment a few years ago & got outstanding
| care for no cost. Also having two children the amount of
| support we (and everyone who has kids) get from the state here
| is excellent.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I live in the Netherlands and I pay nearly 150 / month in
| health insurance, my employer pays another heap, and on top
| of that I have a mandatory minimal deductible, medication
| that isn't on a list gets billed extra, and a lot of things
| are not covered by default (like glasses, physical therapy)
| or have a max coverage (like dental work).
| balfirevic wrote:
| > I pay nearly 150 / month in health insurance, my employer
| pays another heap
|
| Not to digress too much, but it's worth pointing out that
| it is you who is paying for both parts, even if only half
| of it gets listed on your salary slip.
| jbn wrote:
| Yes! this cannot be highlighted enough. It is scandalous
| that this is not listed on salary slips, this is an
| invisible tax and it makes people think insurance and
| health care have little cost.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. My first time being in a leadership position I
| pushed to get better health insurance and to have my
| company pay for more of it. The CEO said something to the
| effect of, "This will be a 2% raise for our employees"
| which was true but not how I or probably any of the
| employees would have looked at it.
| rory wrote:
| The same thing is done with Social Security and Medicare
| in the US. I hate it when governments try to obfuscate
| things like this.
| jbn wrote:
| in the US, the employer also pays a share of the
| employment tax (split in 2 between employer and employee)
| and doesn't always show you the true cost of benefits...
| all of these should appear and employee should be able
| negotiate the complete package (wishful thinking...).
|
| I'm sure many countries do the same. See
| https://entreprise.pole-emploi.fr/cout-salarie/ for the
| true costs in France...
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| No, it's wrong: the employer is paying. The same goes for
| personal VS corporate taxes.
|
| They apply financial pressures on different spots.
| Unsurprisingly, they have different effects on increasing
| o decreasing inequality.
| balfirevic wrote:
| No matter where you decide to draw the line that
| delineates which part of health insurance is paid by you
| vs. by employer - the amount of money that employer
| parted with, the amount of money in your pocket and the
| amount of money in healthcare budget remain the same.
| durnygbur wrote:
| There are two "sliders" - net salary, gross salary, then
| the total cost of the salary to the employer on top of
| the gross salary. One starting a job negotiates the gross
| salary. In EU positioning of these two "sliders" varies
| widely from country to country and one could rarely have
| mistaken impression that the contributions and deductions
| are low.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| ...but various balances of power change greatly.
| durnygbur wrote:
| > nearly 150 / month in health insurance, my employer pays
| another heap
|
| This contribution is in line with public health insurance
| in Poland, which in practice doesn't cover any services and
| is completely disfunctional. German one which actually
| delivers is twice as much.
| em500 wrote:
| The total spending on health care in the Netherlands in
| 2019 was EUR510 per person per month[1]. That need to be
| paid in somehow.
|
| [1] https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2020/24/zorguitgaven-
| stegen-...
| ido wrote:
| I pay a lot more than you, but I'm ok with it cause it's a
| % of my wage and it means people much poorer than me get
| free/cheap healthcare. I'm not familiar with what is
| covered in the Netherland but here the normal public
| insurance really does cover a lot.
| consp wrote:
| Not just poor people. Kids are insured by the ZVW premie
| which the employers pay for everyone. They are subscribed
| on one of the parents insurance but for the basic
| insurance this is free. Additional insurance can cost
| money for kids.
| ido wrote:
| That's true! And when my wife was home when they were
| babies all 4 of us were insured on my contribution alone.
| jjav wrote:
| I can't tell if you're bragging or complaining.
|
| But compare to the US: I pay over $2200/month in health
| insurance (and company pays more on top of that). And of
| course there's a lot of stuff the insurance won't cover so
| it's typically an additional 4K-8K out of pocket on an
| average year.
| durnygbur wrote:
| This will last at most only 5-10 years more [1]. Poland,
| Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain and Greece are brain-drained
| to the bone already. There is noone to come over.
|
| [1] https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2020/
| luch wrote:
| Holy shit, I knew from anecdotal evidences that young
| people from Spain and Italy were "fleeing" their country
| but the demographics are frankly scary !
|
| I don't know how what the retirement scheme is implemented
| over there, but if it is generational (young gens pays for
| older gens) they willy have a BIG problem in 15/20 years
| ...
| durnygbur wrote:
| The population pyramids of Germany, Spain, Italy are
| interestingly similar while the economies of the latter
| two are in deep problems. Retirement age in Germany is
| 67, wait for it. Putting aside the tabloid hysteria I
| dare to presume that this was one of the main reasons of
| Brexit. The entire Europe will hiccup.
| ido wrote:
| I've worked at tech companies since we moved here in 2013
| and at least for developers most of the "imported talent"
| were from non-EU former Soviet countries (Russia, Ukraine,
| etc), India or Latin America.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| This is huge exaggeration and generalization. Some parts of
| EU are doing very well economically and have very quality
| of life. Cherry-picking specific countries does not
| represent the totality.
| iamlucaswolf wrote:
| This might be a fair assumption from a birth statistics
| viewpoint, but completely misses immigration.
|
| I met a lot of brilliant people from all over the world
| during my undergrad at TU Munich; many of them stayed.
| Google, Apple, Microsoft have expanded rather aggressively
| over the past years, and the startup scene is growing.
| Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt seem to follow suit.
|
| Granted, it's much less likely (and also less politically
| incentivized) to become a "millionaire employee", but I
| guess ultimately, the correlation between wealth and
| wellbeing is simply weaker in (northern) European
| economies? As long as immigration policies don't change
| (and why would they? the current model aligns well with
| lobby incentives), I don't see much reason for this to
| change.
|
| Also, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, and Greece have a
| different political and economic history than Germany,
| France, Denmark, Sweden, etc.
| msh wrote:
| I think you are generalizing way too much. While there are
| underfunded healtcare systems in the EU I dont think its
| realistic to say in most.
| gambiting wrote:
| Where the hell do you live in the EU. I had to go to the
| hospital several times in the last 2 years and the level of
| care I received in public hospitals(for absolutely free) was
| great, wouldn't say a bad word for it. My father has been
| treated for cancer for over 8 years, medicines, operations,
| hospital stays - all provided without any delay.
|
| I'm sorry if you have been wronged by public healthcare at some
| point, but you're just talking nonsense for the sake of it I
| feel.
| durnygbur wrote:
| The experience is nothing like this in Poland. One still pays
| the contributions.
| gambiting wrote:
| I am talking of Poland, I'm Polish myself. My father has
| been treated at oncological hospitals in few different
| places and the experience has been very good.
| durnygbur wrote:
| We must be living in two different Polands. Me and many
| acquaintances of mine don't even have GP doctor assigned
| from public health insurance, that's how hopeless is
| dealing with them. Nowadays the waiting times are as
| hopeless as always plus there are exclusively phone
| consultations. The doctor calls whenever they please and
| the appointment is void if noone answers.
|
| Perhaps your father is a politician, or high ranking
| person in public administration or public services? I
| cannot imagine how otherwise one could be satisfied from
| the healthcare services.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Perhaps your father is a politician, or high ranking
| person in public administration or public services?
|
| Lol, what? I mean, I guess you're trying to imply he got
| some special treatment, but I assure you he didn't, and
| neither did I when I needed help. He was a truck driver
| and then ran a car workshop, then when he got cancer he
| was under constant care of the oncological hospital in
| Warsaw. Not only his level of care was very good, the
| drugs he was getting from NFZ for free are incredibly
| expensive(look up the cost of Glivec treatment), he was
| even getting reimbursed for travel to the hospital every
| time he needed to go - that's all standard NFZ procedure,
| no VIP treatment.
|
| I mean, perhaps you were just unlucky? I have no other
| explanation.
| jlokier wrote:
| If it's anything like the UK, the hospital experience,
| and life expectancy, will vary a lot between regions.
| z92 wrote:
| His conclusion :
|
| > In the years to come, industry experts expect low-level coding
| and programming jobs to become obsolete with the development of
| new tools that remove the need to code completely.
|
| Me wondering how much of it shall we see.
| RegBarclay wrote:
| As the developer tooling improves and parts of my job get
| easier, I sometimes think I may be out of a job someday. But
| then I talk to some users or other non-devs about technical
| issues and realize I will always have a job.
| after_care wrote:
| The delta in technical expertise between the average dev and
| the average user is so large that there will always be
| economically viable ways for the dev to spend their time.
| rory wrote:
| The thing is, high-level languages like Python are already a
| really efficient way to communicate requirements to a computer,
| and we've already seen a massive shift from low-level languages
| to high-level languages in applications that don't need low-
| level control.
|
| Developer tools and user interface components will likely
| continue to get easier to work with, but chunks of
| functionality that we compose with arbitrary code in between
| will always be a better model than a "no-code" monolith we
| configure.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Personally I see lawyers as "proof" that taking the highest
| level won't be sufficient to do away with devs. That and many
| of the non-technical specifications emphasize that there must
| always be someone to specify the details and make sure they
| are consistent and handle the nasty corner cases.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Yes, I think the doom-and-gloom predictions are dramatically
| over-hyped.
|
| I'm pretty sure that software development has had by far the
| most effort put into automating it of any job that has ever
| existed, simply because every person capable of doing the job
| has the same skills necessary to automate it.
|
| That has done nothing to decrease salaries for developers. If
| anything, it has raised them, simply because developers can
| now produce more useful things in less time and at lower
| overall cost.
| danjac wrote:
| Without context, I could guess that quote could have been
| written at any time in the past couple decades. It's the
| "nuclear fusion" of our industry: one day someone will make it
| happen, but not as soon as you think.
| durnygbur wrote:
| It's like instant on demand video and voice calls. Science
| ficiton had been dreaming of it since the end of 19th
| century. Then suddenly... Skype. It will happen in the most
| obscure place.
| visarga wrote:
| > Me wondering how much of it shall we see.
|
| Have you heard of RPA? It's a low-code/no-code way to automate
| mouse and keyboard actions on top of desktop and web
| applications.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| It's been discussed ad nauseam here, but companies love "no-
| code" tools until they find their limitations (which is often
| sooner rather than later) and then they desperately get out
| their wads of cash to have the problems they caused sorted.
|
| This creates an entire ecosystem of "low-code-real-developers"
| who have the skill, commercial foresight (and possibly
| patience) of working inside the guts of low-code tools, doing
| Java, JS or what-have-you, but inside an ugly, sparsely-
| documented propietary API instead of an open-source framework
| with literal gigabytes of documentation and knowledge
| accumulated in Stack Overflow over the course of fifteen
| years...
|
| So now instead of two in-house analyst-developers building
| business applications, you have Mark from Marketing & Sales
| building apps in low-code, and four "low-code-high-code"
| contractors on expensive contracts cleaning up behind Mark.
|
| And so it goes...
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Being able to do something by oneself is such a huge
| advantage over telling someone else to do something that it
| can compensate for lots and lots of disadvantages. HyperCard
| was a great success, and I have high hope we will have great
| low-code tools like HyperCard in the future.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I was being facetious.
|
| I agree there can be massive advantages to tools in the
| "lower-to-no-code" spectrum; even software developers
| benefit from the abstraction that frameworks and tooling
| provide. At a business level, many organizations that offer
| products and service in said spectrum have been successful
| at a massive scale: Wordpress, Salesforce, Tableau,
| Shopify, just off the top of my mind.
|
| However my point about these applications creating a
| cascade of new jobs still stands. And I don't think more
| hand-crafted "high code" solutions are going anywhere
| either; for starters I don't think anyone making this sort
| of prediction understands the literal oceans handcrafted of
| code we swim in. Who's going to take care of that, and how
| long would it take to replace with "no-code"? Well over a
| century, would be my guess. Software hasn't eaten the world
| - it has devoured it.
|
| Then there's the natural limitations of these tools. I had
| to look up HyperCard as I didn't know about it, and it was
| indeed an initial hit, but it seems like (a) it was limited
| (for example, Wikipedia mentions people were making
| "choose-your-own-adventure" games with it, but I know as a
| fact that some games made by solo devs in the late 80s
| where infinitely more intricate and deep) and (b) it didn't
| have that much lasting power. I wonder if the latter is yet
| another limitation of these tools - that they tend to quick
| obsolescence as tech trends move at breakneck speed.
| ebiester wrote:
| I will say, as much as I agree with you, even software
| organizations have problems that are well suited toward
| these low code platforms. After working through some of
| the quirks of retool, we have developers just adding
| things in the fraction of the time as they took with our
| first solution. I also saw another developer create an
| "excel++" solution with Airtable that allowed us to solve
| some problems that would have taken twice as long with
| twice as many people otherwise.
|
| Now, this isn't _every_ problem, but it 's a very useful
| tool that will reduce the number of developers for _some_
| tasks. I think there is a world where a business has six
| or seven licenses for no-code solutions that reduce the
| head count by 10-15 FTEs (or redirects them)
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Haha this is the business model for every project I've ever
| worked on in Tech is.
|
| Hire low paid developers to 'save money' at the start.
|
| Low paid developers present working prototypes that aren't
| scalable or maintainable but the biz people don't know that
| ,they just see working demos.
|
| Years later the app is a nightmare and the low paid devs have
| moved on and now they have to pay out the nose to get people
| to actually work on their stuff.
|
| And so it goes.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Years later the app is a nightmare and the low paid devs
| have moved on and now they have to pay out the nose to get
| people to actually work on their stuff.
|
| You forgot the part where they keep trying to lowball
| competent developers, struggle to find someone willing to
| duct tape their system together for "competitive" pay, and
| throw their hands up declaring there's a Shortage Of
| Developers(tm).
| rutthenut wrote:
| I think that sort of claim has been made for decades already,
| repeated by each generation of programming language, 4GL tools,
| AI and graphical tools.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| An example from forty years ago:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software)
| np- wrote:
| The way I see it, at the end of the day we still live in the
| real world with real, imperfect business/social/etc processes.
| Unless the entire world is 100% standardized and run by robots,
| any technological no-code solution would still need to be
| Turing Complete. At that point, basic computer science
| principles need to be learned to use it, so all you've done is
| create another programming language, which again...we already
| have plenty of those.
| vfc1 wrote:
| At least the freelance rates of today are about the same value as
| in the early 2000's, for the typical enterprise job.
|
| I used to work as a freelance around 5 years ago, and I still
| receive some recruiter emails with occasional mention of the
| going rates.
|
| It's the same as 5 years ago or less, which is the same since I
| remember in the early 2000's.
|
| The rates took a hit with the 2008 crisis and stagnated since
| then. I think the golden age was somewhere in the mid-90s, where
| developers got paid really well.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I stopped contracting in 2001 (in the UK) and the rates I was
| charging then don't look much different to what is on offer
| today. It doesn't help that the UK tax authorities have been
| waging war against contractors, their latest wheeze is to force
| them into being employees.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| The rates are heavily dependent on the skillset. I.e. for
| people well-versed in the latest and "greatest" tech, it's
| typically 500-600 pounds per day, for everyone else it's
| 300-500.
| fy20 wrote:
| That's what it's been for at least the last 8 years (when I
| started contracting). For sure you can earn more if niche
| down, but for a generic 'mid-senior level dev turned
| contractor' those are the going rates.
| tosswayaway wrote:
| Question: Should I be struggling to afford a 1000 sq ft house and
| maintain it? I want to get a bigger house but it feels like I'm
| getting priced out of the market right now. Fortunately I already
| have this small home which I used a loan from my retirement to
| put the 5% down payment on, paid off the loan and refinanced a
| couple of times, so I'm not struggling to pay for that, but it's
| nowhere near big enough for my partner and I to both work
| remotely. It's not in a super trendy area or new, actually near a
| bunch of seedy motels and pawn shops. I'm taking off work and
| crawling under my house to fix the furnace so I don't blow
| through my savings. I don't go out to eat often or much more than
| the occasional fast food or take extravagant vacations, usually
| just road trips to visit family or national parks. I have spent
| some money on replacing appliances and remodeling, but nowhere
| near a down payment on another house. I only bought this place
| because I was living in someone's attic and it was getting old.
| I've been dev for 8 years, have always gotten stellar performance
| reviews, manage people, and get bonuses. Just feels off to me.
| Everyone else I know doing well has some kind of side hustle like
| managing properties. I myself was freelancing the past year in my
| free time trying to make some extra cash. True I'm doing better
| than many people and I am saving for my retirement, but it seems
| like a dev salary in this day and age should at least buy you a
| decent house. Everyone I know got a down payment from their
| parents. Is this normal? Where's the money at?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> I want to get a bigger house but it feels like I'm getting
| priced out of the market right now._
|
| LOL, come to Germany where you're by default priced out of
| buying any house period unless you get some sizable assistance
| from the bank of mom and dad.
|
| _> Everyone I know got a down payment from their parents. Is
| this normal?_
|
| It's normal if you've won the lottery of birth. If not, then,
| as someone else here said it, _" get richer parents"_.
| tosswayaway wrote:
| If there's any Daddy Warbucks out there that wants to adopt a
| 30 year old son, please let me know.
| zeku wrote:
| I feel the same way. I've been a dev for a few years now, make
| 150% of the median household income in my area by myself.
|
| Even once I finish my student loan payments I will be in the
| same position as you. I live in a Medium cost of living area of
| a LCOL state.
|
| All of my friends are doing okay even with way less personal
| income than myself, because of their parents money. I happened
| to come from a single parent home with no resources.
|
| It's pretty damn clear to me that people of our generation can
| not expect "The American Dream" unless their parents give them
| a bunch of money or they become a very high income earner
| themselves.
| kingnothing wrote:
| Leave the Bay Area, you'll afford a large house and car just
| fine.
| ecmascript wrote:
| Answer: Yes, but it depends.
|
| I have basically double the size of your house as living house,
| a guest house that is about 800sq ft and a big ass barn. I
| could afford it pretty easily but it needs a bit of
| renovations.
|
| Also, I live about 45 min drive from the nearest city with a
| population of about 12k. I basically live in the middle of
| nowhere but with a big house.
|
| I work remotely so I can live here, which a lot of people today
| struggle with. The trick is to live where no one else lives. In
| my country there is a massive urbanization going on and living
| in our capital where I am from is very expensive. A 3 bedroom
| apartment would cost more than my farm.
|
| I don't know if you should be struggling, but I guess everyone
| kinda is. Everywhere I look there is people that seemingly have
| huge amounts of cash but what you need to know is that
| basically everyone sucks at money. Most of the western
| lifestyle is provided thanks to loans.
|
| This talk changed my life for the better when it comes to
| economics and I recommend it to everyone:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Li_sFNc4Q
|
| I sold my new car, bought an old volvo from -97 and I save
| about 60% of my income. That is helping a lot so I can afford
| to renovate the house. What you need to do is simply to live
| for much less than you earn, that way you will for sure end up
| financially secured.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| In the US, in the states where we can make decent money, yes,
| it is normal. If middle class is defined as being able to
| afford a modest house/condo and retire at 65, yeah, this
| country is fucked.
|
| My experience parallels yours for 20-40 house owning friends in
| the Pacific Northwest. People got help from parents, or got
| lucky with IPOs (a minority of us for sure), or have trust
| funds, or bought in when houses were less than $500k.
|
| So much of the market is a combination of real estate
| investors, private equity and foreign investors. I know a bunch
| of boomers who basically own several properties, and just keep
| buying them up. One guy in LA owns several hundred now in his
| later years.
|
| EDIT: Also obviously massive asset inflation due to QE
| Infinity, which has more or less fucked everybody who has cash
| or a low net worth.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Same observation here. Things are bifurcating into 1. a
| (mostly younger) underclass whose savings will never catch up
| with prices to the point where they can own real estate /
| stocks without help from parents, and 2. a (mostly older)
| capital class who own multiple, sometimes dozens of
| properties, robust 401(k)s and pensions, and use those assets
| as leverage to buy more and more assets. The middle class
| "family without help owning a single home they live
| comfortably in" is vanishing.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Same place right here.
|
| I've been living WAY WAY below my means. I drive a 15 year old
| car, I live in a 1br apt (wife and I, 650 sqft). I've also been
| pushing forward in my career with as much zeal as I can muster.
| I'm also putting my wife through grad school (though she'll
| never make much, English degree - I'm just glad I can enable
| her to chase her passions) I don't have high other bills,
| currently have an iPhone 7 and don't plan to upgrade, my PC is
| 8 years old, etc.
|
| I've managed to just this year save up the down payment for
| houses in my area... but it's kinda dumb, because I really
| can't afford a house (mortgage/higher utilities/repairs/etc).
| So I'm in limbo: I have a LOT of cash saved, that should be
| invested (especially now), but I might buy a house in 5 years
| so I keep it liquid.
|
| I also want to say that I tied home ownership (or at least
| living in a house) to having children - I don't want the stress
| of bothering my neighbors on top of child stress. So I haven't
| started a family, and I don't see a path to starting one. I
| think I have been priced out of having a family and it makes me
| so so sad.
|
| At least I'm a dev, my non-dev friends may as well not even
| bother getting up in the morning. They will never, ever, ever
| gain enough capital to be a owner. If their parents are broke,
| they'll die having only lived in apartments. This also makes me
| very sad.
|
| I don't see prices going down. I guess I could move, and I am
| kind of planning a remote/low cost play after COVID is over and
| I can get an understanding of how stable remote work is. I'd
| hate to be stuck in the boonies of South Dakota looking for a
| dev job because things "went back to normal". Holding pattern
| forever.
| Kalium wrote:
| > I also want to say that I tied home ownership (or at least
| living in a house) to having children - I don't want the
| stress of bothering my neighbors on top of child stress. So I
| haven't started a family, and I don't see a path to starting
| one. I think I have been priced out of having a family and it
| makes me so so sad.
|
| I see this a lot. Generally I see it from people who were
| raised outside urban areas, with a very white-picket-fence
| lifestyle. It turns into a great deal of stress in people's
| lives and relationships, as they often literally cannot
| imagine having children without a detached single family
| house and a yard and so on. I've seen some of them take major
| financial risks to try and work up what feels like enough
| money, with depression resulting if doesn't work.
|
| The people I know who grew up in urban apartments often have
| none of these hangups. They regard occasionally hearing your
| neighbor's children as a fact of life.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| That's interesting! I actually grew up in single-parent
| household, have never lived in a house, and certainly have
| heard my neighbors children. Not urban, but suburban
| apartments. I guess I buck the trend (or maybe I'm reaching
| too high :-P )
|
| I've even thought that, after infancy, apartment living is
| potentially BETTER for kids. Reasoning that there are more
| nearby friends and usually a playground or field to play
| in. I certainly had lots of fun with the neighborhood kids
| in the pool/large field/playground on the apartment grounds
| when I was young.
|
| But, kids are noisy during quiet hours (before you can
| reasonably control them). I remember it being hard on my
| mom when my brother was young. Always 1/2 a step from
| eviction for noise complaints. I felt the stress as a
| child, I cannot imagine how hard it was on her. I don't
| want to do that...
| zaphod12 wrote:
| Only comment is that keeping your money in cash instead of
| invested for a 5 year horizon isn't wise. Put them in
| something on the safer side - I'm not saying buy Bitcoin or
| something - but that's a long time to have your money not be
| working for you at all. Interest rates at way below
| inflation.
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