Why Zig programmers are making so much money

Are you wondering why Zig programmers make so much money? Guess what? It is not what you are thinking.

Disclaimer

I am not Zig evangelist. Even more, I cannot see a clear reason for what type of projects I would use it for. In my opinion, if the language is not revolutionary enough, it is not worth spending time building a whole new community ecosystem and tooling around it.

People love counting other people’s money.

A few months ago, after StackOverflow published another round of surveys, the programmer’s community was overflowing with questions: Why is Zig the highest-paid programming language on the market?

YouTube bombarded me with videos in which yet another “programming teacher” said something like, “I do not understand why Zig developers are paid so much.” It is wordy, pure VS code support, with no class, blah, blah.

Generally, if a programming teacher tells you “do not understand why a programming language is paid well or not,” find another teacher. It is very likely that your teacher does not have enough experience to teach. Many artists use the same brushes, but you do not think they must all be equally paid.

Simple stuff first

First, look at the companies using Zig:

Zig Software Foundation

Andre Kelly is making — $159,790

Employees are making — $102,000

And contractors are making — $60, which would be 60 * 160 * 12 = $115,200

They are core developers and programming language experts. Is it surprising that they make good salaries?

Bun

Bun is a well-funded startup that raised seven million dollars and received much publicity. Do you think its funding members, including the CEO and senior engineers on its team, make pennies?

TigerBeetle

The startup raised 24 million dollars in A round. Same story — funding members and core developers are fintech and database experts, making the next-generation database able to process massive transactions.