2023 Software Professional Compensation Survey Results

Published in

Leaky Abstractions

11 min readJul 15, 2023

By Yvette Menase, Director of Surveys

Code & Supply, an international community of software professionals based in Pittsburgh, has released our 2023 compensation survey report, a snapshot of tech workers’ compensation and lifestyle. We’ve discussed some highlights below. You can access the full report via a link at the bottom of this post, or you can click right here:

👉 Read the full C&S Compensation Survey Report

Making an impact

Many Medium readers who are also Code & Supply members may be familiar with our 2017 & 2020 compensation surveys and the blog posts that served as the project’s primary summary reports. There were many tangible and intangible outcomes resulting from the survey findings. Some of these outcomes included greater transparency into the software and tech job market in the Pittsburgh area, increased knowledge-based leverage capability during job negotiations, and a desire to dig deeper into how software and tech folks are compensated. Community members reported anecdotally that the data here has been instrumental to their salary negotiation.

This is precisely our intention of the survey and the report: to equip the community with knowledge to make better decisions about their career, especially when it comes to compensation for their time, labor, and expertise. This is what Code & Supply is about: building software, community, and friendships that enable all of us to be happy with our work and life as software professionals.

Past surveys

The first survey effort emerged from conversations during C&S Build Night spontaneous coworking sessions in Pittsburgh in late 2016. Launched in 2017, the inaugural C&S Compensation Survey was largely a one-person effort with input from dozens of C&S members. 256 people, mostly C&S Slack members, responded. The report was limited to a pair of blog posts. After some false starts in the intervening years, finally, in January 2020, we initiated the Compensation Survey Working Group. We launched the survey collection drive coincident with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, where C&S is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We had 785 valid responses and produced a 107-page report. In 2022, we launched again, but with a clearer long-term vision, a more focused set of questions, and the intent to build a reusable and mostly automated analysis pipeline for our 781 valid responses.

A brief colophon: The 2017 survey analysis pipeline was a collection of Ruby scripts that generated tables imported into Apple Numbers to create graphs. This was a mostly unrepeatable process. In 2020, we used Tableau to generate the graphs, a mostly manual process that was not easily automated or shared among our authors.

For 2022, we committed to the content of the survey questions for the long term after reducing the number of questions asked to focus our analysis on the sections our readers felt most relevant to them. Keeping the data easily compared from survey to survey became an architectural value of the project. We built the graphs and analysis tooling as an internal data pipeline product developed primarily in Python with tools like Plotly for graphs and Polars for data manipulation in Jupyter Notebooks. We aimed to keep the report shorter than 2020’s 107 pages, reducing the time commitment from a whole day to an afternoon or evening, but in our exuberance failed. The first published version of the 2022–2023 report was 109 pages but featured far more charts and less dense text than in 2020.

Stay tuned for a series of C&S Meetup and PyData Pittsburgh technical talks about how we built the analysis pipeline.

Salary surveys are crucial tools that provide valuable insights into compensation trends and help organizations make informed decisions about their employees’ salaries. These surveys gather comprehensive data on salary ranges for specific job roles and industries, enabling companies to benchmark their compensation practices against industry standards and ensure they remain competitive in attracting and retaining top talent.

Additionally, salary surveys help identify wage disparities and ensure fair and equitable compensation practices, promoting employee satisfaction and engagement. Code & Supply’s survey is intended for hiring managers and candidates.

Foundational results

The compensation section includes the foundational results of the survey. We received responses from 42 different job title families, and most were professions related to software development, software engineering, and product management. As could be expected of those participating in a compensation survey distributed by a community focused on software engineering, 61% (476) of respondents reported their job title as an engineer. However, we did try to represent the results of those who are not software engineers or developers.

The previous survey was taken in 2020, a time of instability and unpredictable factors. This survey was taken in 2022, shortly after the period known as the Great Resignation. As companies worldwide were forced to adapt to remote work, many tech workers were in high demand as businesses scrambled to transition to a digital-first approach. However, as the pandemic and the “great resignation” continue, the job market for tech workers has become increasingly complex and competitive.

Despite the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the tech industry continued to grow. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the tech sector added 91,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2021 alone. The demand for tech talent was so high that some companies offered unprecedented perks and benefits to attract and retain employees. By the time we distributed the survey in the summer of 2022, the job market had generally settled. However, we did ask about job changes and respective salary jumps.

NOTE: Remember, this survey was conducted before the mass layoffs of Q4 2022 and Q1 2023 at Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, and other sizeable employers of those toward whom our survey is oriented.

States and Salary

In the future, we’d like to track salaries in the states with salary disclosure laws, specifically the higher-encompassing ones such as Colorado, with its Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (2021). According to Zippia, some other states also have laws requiring disclosure during the interview cycle. The below displays the salary laws per state — about half the states don’t have laws regarding disclosure.

Some states have laws that allow disclosure later in the interview process. For context, we asked people how many interview rounds they had during their last job search.

This survey is intended to be another data point. Below, we compare three compensation websites (Payscale, Glassdoor, Salary.com) and their 2022 data for the two mentioned most-common job titles. All of these sources have robust data analysis, minimum responses to create a reliable report, data validation rules, and checks for duplication of data but they also have inherent limitations, as does any survey.

The data in “Total Base Compensation” — salary or other regular, recurring wages — indicates that there is a significant range in salary changes for tech workers, with a base compensation for Q1 at approximately $101,000, a median of $140,000, and a Q3 of $172,000, with the lowest reported being $35,000. This suggests that while some tech workers may earn relatively modest salaries, others are highly compensated.

Overall, we found that the full-time median total compensation was $150,000 for engineers and about $120,000 for non-engineers, and the minimum total compensation was $28,000 for engineers and $44,000 for non-engineers. Total compensation includes base compensation and significant other expected payments like merit and profit-sharing bonuses, equity in the form of stock options or stock grants, retirement contributions, and other perquisites that the respondent considered a part of their compensation package. This suggests that while engineering roles may offer higher salaries on average, there may also be a wider range of compensation for these roles. The difference in minimum compensation could be attributed to factors such as experience, education, and location.

Overall, this data suggests that engineering roles may offer higher compensation than non-engineering roles, but it is important to consider factors such as experience and location when analyzing compensation trends. Additionally, the wider range of compensation for engineering roles highlights the importance of negotiating fair salaries and benefits, regardless of industry or role.

Salary changes and job switches are common occurrences for many respondents. Interestingly, a significant portion of respondents (12%) received raises that were 5% or less, while 19% had raises in the range of 6–10%. This suggests that while some employees may see small salary increases, others may see more substantial changes. Additionally, it confirms typical advice that job switching can lead to larger salary increases, as 65% of respondents who switched jobs saw more than 11% raises. This could indicate that some employees may be more likely to switch jobs to achieve higher salaries rather than relying on raises within their current position.

Based on the provided data (see chart below) for the question “How much did your salary change after a promotion?”, it appears that promotion salary changes can vary significantly for respondents. Interestingly, most respondents (38%) received raises in the range of 6–10% following a promotion, while a significant portion (36%) saw even larger increases in the range of 11–25%. This confirms that promotions can lead to substantial salary changes for many employees.

However, it is also notable that a small percentage of respondents (16%) received less than 5% raises, indicating that not all promotions lead to significant salary increases. It is possible that these individuals may have received promotions with added responsibilities but without a corresponding pay increase, or they may have been promoted to a position with a lower pay range than their previous position.

This next graph reflects the base compensation for all full-time respondents reporting $300k or less, which was around 98% of respondents.

This next graph reflects the base compensation for all full-time respondents reporting $300k or less by gender. We found that non-men were earning about 15–20% less than the men, with the median non-men’s salary being 18% less than the men’s.

The graph below shows a relationship between years of experience and total compensation. Anecdotally, in some sectors of the tech industry, passing the five-year mark indicates a significant change in seniority and this is reflected in showing that while respondents at years 1–8 of experience all have approximately the same lower salaries, many salaries at six years’ experience or higher is double what might be earned otherwise.

We found that over half of our respondents negotiated their most recent job offer, and most of those were successful. This visualization displays how our respondents handled negotiations.

This shows that if you are hesitant to negotiate, you should try because your about-to-be-new employer is likely prepared for it. Negotiating a salary in the tech industry can have numerous benefits for workers. Firstly, it can help ensure they are paid fairly and in line with industry standards. This can be especially important in the fast-paced and rapidly-evolving tech industry, where skills and experience can quickly become outdated. A negotiated salary can also help employees feel valued and motivated, increasing job satisfaction and productivity. Additionally, negotiating a salary can set the stage for future negotiations and career advancement opportunities. Therefore, while negotiating a salary can provide numerous benefits, it is also important for workers to remain aware of broader economic and industry trends and to continue to build and improve their skills and experience.

We also looked at the age range for the job level. Predictably, older people held more senior roles. The box and whiskers, excluding outliers, the graph displays the age range per job level across various positions in the industry. For entry-level positions, the age range is between 21 to 49, while mid-level positions have an age range of 22–50. The senior and lead positions have a wider age range, from 25–55. Finally, for the most experienced and high-ranking positions, such as Principal, the age range is between 32–59. This data provides valuable insight into the age demographics of each job level, which can inform career planning and recruitment strategies. It is also worth noting that these age ranges are not necessarily fixed and may vary depending on the industry and individual company practices.

We asked respondents about their experience levels and years of experience in the tech industry. It’s not uncommon for individuals to transition to a career in tech from another field, and many newcomers are eager to know when they will be considered “senior” or “principal.”

Our findings revealed that most entry-level individuals in tech have around five years of experience. The first quartile for those in a “senior” position is at nine years, with the second quartile at around twenty years. Lead and Principal positions were slightly higher, with quartiles offset by 1–2 years. These results indicate that the number of years of experience in tech correlates with job level, with seniority typically achieved after around nine years of experience. However, it’s important to note that individual circumstances and skill sets may vary, and career progression is not solely dependent on years of experience.

Overall, this data can serve as a useful benchmark for those seeking to understand the typical career trajectory in the tech industry and the years of experience typically required for various job levels. In the full report, we plan to analyze this with age.

The C&S Survey Team appreciates you reading our summary of the independently-conducted 2023 Pittsburgh Code & Supply Compensation Survey. The survey collected data from more than 750 technology professionals, including 527 in Pennsylvania. It covers topics such as salary, benefits, and job satisfaction. The report highlights the increasing demand for tech talent in the region and the growing importance of skills like cloud computing, data analysis, and software engineering.

While the highlights are intriguing, the full report is accessible here: