HackerNews will always make you feel underpaid. That’s okay.
Do you ever get that “Why in the world is everyone getting paid so much more than I am!?” feeling while reading the internet?
I do. All the time. Whenever the topic of salaries for software engineers comes up, some asshole always makes me feel bad. “Those numbers look really low. Are you sure your data is right?”
Or my favorite: “You must be a pretty bad engineer then”.
No, I’m not. Fuck you.
Two weeks ago, Max Woolf posted an Interactive salary/equity chart for jobs offered in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s a great chart. Looking at it, you learn that the median salary for engineers is $115,000, and the median salary for non-engineers is $90,000.
Sweet numbers, right? Sounds like it’s not too hard to get a nice salary in The Bay Area.
Here’s the top-rated HackerNews comment:
I think it’s inportant to point out the source of data is Angel List and therefore the numbers predominantly reflect those of startups.
~ @smaili
We don’t know if @smalili thinks that means they’re low or high. He’s just saying that they’re startups that advertise job openings on Angel List.
Here are some more comments:
Lower range for engineers than I would have expected.
~ @misnamed
Their career-wide median is just barely north of what I was offered coming off a college internship, with no competing offers or negotiation.
~ @superuser2
This is based on angel.co data, so it’s woefully lowballed.
~ @ddebernardy
Angel List’s salaries are literally a joke.
Same. I would’ve guessed mid 100s for engies, easily. Probably closer to high 100s
~ @dclowd9901
Aaaaaand I feel bad about my life choices. Seriously, where do these people work? What is their life? What’s normal!?
Why is there never a salary chart posted online that makes me feel like I’m compensated fairly? Why does everyone only ever talk about astronomical numbers that are so far removed from my experience that I’m half convinced people are just trolling?
Turns out, I’m not alone in feeling like this.
Hah, HN gives me the same feeling pretty consistently. If/when I leave the game industry I’ll be disappointed if I have less than $500K total comp as a result of years of reading HN comments on what decent engineers should get paid.
~ @Impossible
I love this comment. I’ve been running my own small game studio for nearly five years in San Francisco and this resonates deeply. After reading HN for a while I constantly question my life choices work-wise.
~ @shinymark
And you know what? It’s okay.
HackerNews, and the internet in general, will always make you feel bad. Especially when it comes to salaries of software engineers.
There’s no big conspiracy. No evil secret. It’s just that everyone who isn’t making these insane amounts of money doesn’t say anything.
When somebody says, “Pssh, that’s a really low number,” they’re not saying really it’s a low number. They’re bragging. What they want to say is, “I make more than that!”
That’s it. That’s all they’re saying. They personally make more than that and they want everyone to know. They’re proud. It’s an achievement.
But they can’t brag about it to their friends — that’s impolite. They can’t brag about it to their coworkers — that’s insensitive.
They are left trawling for opportunities. Trawling for that one glorious moment on the anonymous internet when their experience matters. When their brag is relevant. When it might even be socially acceptable if you phrase it correctly.
The correct phrasing, by the way, is “Pssh. That looks really low for decent engineers”.
But why do some engineers get so much and others don’t?
It doesn’t fucking matter.
Most of the time, it’s because they asked. That’s it. You’re far more likely to get something if you actually ask for it.
Or they’re better negotiators. Or they have more leverage.
Hell, maybe they just got lucky. They lucked out once, and now they’re holding onto their job for dear life. They’re hanging tight, deathly afraid of losing their status.
That’s called golden handcuffs. It’s common in very crappy jobs because it makes people afraid to leave, no matter how much they hate going to work.
Often, when somebody has an obscene paycheck, it’s because their job absolutely horrendously sucks.
Think about lawyers who work 12 hours per day poring over mind-numbing legalese to find a loophole. How much 💵 💵 💵 would you want to endure that for 40 years of your life?
Or imagine fixing legacy COBOL code from the 1950’s for a bank mainframe where even the smallest mistake could make millions of dollars vanish. Shit like that pays 💰💰💰.
Thanks, but no thanks.
That said, do continue to expose yourself to those brags. Keep reading them. Read every discussion about salaries and salary negotiation that you can. It smells toxic, and it hurts like hell, and it will make you feel bad.
But that’s okay. You need that. It will push you to ask for more.
You can’t get more if you don’t ask.
PS: I write about being a better engineer and creative every week. You should subscribe by email.
