Do software engineers really make that much?

ZilkyG

A friend of mine who I hadn't seen in some time, who is a software engineer told me that he makes €90000 per year. This guy just turned 25 and that seems like an eye-watering amount of money for that age! Is he pulling my leg or are software engineers actually paid that much?

JustJoe7240

ZilkyG wrote: »

A friend of mine who I hadn't seen in some time, who is a software engineer told me that he makes €90000 per year. This guy just turned 25 and that seems like an eye-watering amount of money for that age! Is he pulling my leg or are software engineers actually paid that much?

yes, at 25? Not so sure.

Qrt

ZilkyG wrote: »

A friend of mine who I hadn't seen in some time, who is a software engineer told me that he makes €90000 per year. This guy just turned 25 and that seems like an eye-watering amount of money for that age! Is he pulling my leg or are software engineers actually paid that much?

I’ve gone on a few dates with a fella just in the door of the sector. He drunkingly told me that there was “crazy money” in the sector. Might hang onto him :pac:

OEP

If he's very good it's certainly possible

Berserker

Might be the case if he or she is working as a daily rate contractor but it'd be unusual to be bringing home €90K, as a permie, with 4-5 years experience. Is your friend a junior, ... , senior, lead or principal software engineer?

Cordell

With perks and bonuses and stock options and all that in it's perfectly plausible for a junior-ish sw engineer.

ZilkyG

Berserker wrote: »

Might be the case if he or she is working as a daily rate contractor but it'd be unusual to be bringing home €90K, as a permie, with 4-5 years experience. Is your friend a junior, ... , senior, lead or principal software engineer?

He works as a lead in a very specialised field. He did say it himself that he was promoted uncommonly quick.

Berserker

ZilkyG wrote: »

He works as a lead in a very specialised field. He did say it himself that he was promoted uncommonly quick.

It's plausible that he's earning that much then.

Cordell wrote: »

With perks and bonuses and stock options and all that in it's perfectly plausible for a junior-ish sw engineer.

Junior-ish? I only earned that kind of money on reaching the principal level working in the financial sector. I trained and worked as an actuary for ten years prior to moving into software engineering, so I had an abundance of financial knowledge on entering the sector.

Cordell

Different fields pay different money, it's not all about seniority or lack thereof. If you ask me, principal engineer on 90k (all in, the figure on the P60) would be on the low scale, but I don't know all details on your particulars and particular field.

TuringBot47

ZilkyG wrote: »

A friend of mine who I hadn't seen in some time, who is a software engineer told me that he makes €90000 per year.

At 25 I'd assume he's just 3-4 years out of college.

If they have the right skillset, maybe specialized in a niche area like blockchain, cloud, AI/deep learning, then maybe. Although I'm just talking about permanent positions, as promotion implies it.

But that's not the norm for that many years of experience as a coder.
Senior devs probably €50-€75k.

But find the right start-up company early and you could rise up the ranks fairly fast.

€90k is low for principal engineers/team leads etc.

WhiteMemento9

In the buzz sectors, it is certainly possible. Stuff like machine learning and AI related fields. There just aren't that many people with the maths, technical, programming, required specific software skills (Eg TensorFlow) and experience so those that have all those together are in a very strong position. You can see that in the demand for masters this year. Trinity's Intelligent Systems masters was full before the start of this year.

typesafe

Software Engineering is not the most lucrative field. I know guys in Investment Banking industry making more than €90K. I know guys in Data Science making much-much more than €90K. And they are all 25 years or even younger.

Manach

Salary is one aspect of a job, but the balances of life such as working only a 40 hour week can level out the monetary benefits of a development which can be stressful.

beauf

typesafe wrote: »

Software Engineering is not the most lucrative field. I know guys in Investment Banking industry making more than €90K. I know guys in Data Science making much-much more than €90K. And they are all 25 years or even younger.

The jobs at those salary levels generally are looking for a fairly high skill set and years of experience, and qualifications. If someone has that fair play to them.

CathalC2011

90k is absolutely achievable by the age of 25. Your friend is likely including all forms of compensation, such as stocks and bonuses.

Stock inclusive, I'd say pretty much every large scale engineering shop will pay over 90k plus for junior engineers.

lozenges

typesafe wrote: »

Software Engineering is not the most lucrative field. I know guys in Investment Banking industry making more than €90K. I know guys in Data Science making much-much more than €90K. And they are all 25 years or even younger.

Sure, but you'd be working a lot longer hours in investment banking than software engineering! Software engineering combines a reasonably nice lifestyle with good money IMO.
Don't know anything about data science.

WhiteMemento9

lozenges wrote: »

Sure, but you'd be working a lot longer hours in investment banking than software engineering! Software engineering combines a reasonably nice lifestyle with good money IMO.
Don't know anything about data science.

Longer hours in the actual job but you probably don't do as much self-learning outside of work so they probably balance themselves out.

GreeBo

CathalC2011 wrote: »

Stock inclusive, I'd say pretty much every large scale engineering shop will pay over 90k plus for junior engineers.

What do you consider junior? How many years exp?

I would say 90k is not at all standard for a junior or even senior developer in Dublin and have never seen any salary survey that would suggest otherwise, do you have links to any that would back up your above statement?

antimatterx

I'm 24, I've been working 19 months (I spent 4 months unemployed), and I only make 32K ��

Creamy Goodness

Certainly plausible to be on 90k but it certainly wouldn’t be the norm at that age. I’ve been at this lark for 10 years professionally and even longer if you count making php websites from my bedroom when I was 15-16 and tbh guys (let’s face it it’s always guys who gloat) especially straight out of college A few years tend to inflate their salaries to try and show off and make people feel awful.

Earning €90k puts you in the top 3-4% of earners in the country.

https://twitter.com/paulodonoghue93/status/1221769362891296768

WhiteMemento9

It should be also be kept in mind that when these threads come up that they almost exclusively mean the Dublin job market.

retalivity

90k is possible but you are talking people with 5+ years or more experience. Top-end/highly specilaized devs in companies like Google, Facebook etc. could be well over 100k, depending on tech and experience. Guys that came came straight out of college into companies like above, with a track record of achievement etc. could potentially be on that by 25, but i'd say they are few and far between.

Fccwontletmebe

A lot of peoples problem in IT is that they are not moving companies to get the higher salaries. I don't work in programming but work as a system administrator.

I moved four times in 10 years and hitting the 60K mark every year which is probably towards the higher end of system administrators.

Some people i know are still working for the same company out of college whom i worked for and probably only hitting 40K a year as for some reason they don't want to leave.

One example is a friend of mind was earning 30K in one company and was highly talented in Cloud computing. Left and ended up getting 70K a year in another company.

You have to move to get the higher salaries. There is endless amount of jobs in IT at the minute, 1700 on irishjobs at the minute.

Generally companies won't up your wages unless you are absolute critical to the business and will just let you leave.

dazberry

There are huge variances in salaries across the industry, even within the same tech stack and relatively same experience. I personally don't know anyone at 25 on 90k but it wouldn't surprise me.

If you can get talking to one of those (most likely American) companies that talk about Talent Acquisition (and not only the likes of Google etc) you could easily be looking at 90 - 100k+. If you're spending your time talking to agencies, similar roles could be capping at 65k. It's a crazy difference.

D.

Fccwontletmebe

antimatterx wrote: »

I'm 24, I've been working 19 months (I spent 4 months unemployed), and I only make 32K ��

Have a look at what other companies are paying on irishjobs.ie

32K isn't that bad for a grad really but I'd probably start looking.

WhiteMemento9

antimatterx wrote: »

I'm 24, I've been working 19 months (I spent 4 months unemployed), and I only make 32K ��

As others have said if you want to move up salary quickly then moving jobs is the best way to do it in the current market. I know a few people who started on similar Dev grad salaries almost at the same time as you and recently moved to jobs for a bump in salary to 55-60k.

antimatterx

WhiteMemento9 wrote: »

As others have said if you want to move up salary quickly then moving jobs is the best way to do it in the current market. I know a few people who started on similar Dev grad salaries almost at the same time as you and recently moved to jobs for a bump in salary to 55-60k.

Even as a frontend engineer

Fccwontletmebe

antimatterx wrote: »

Even as a frontend engineer

Did you have a look at irish jobs? There's 170 frontend development jobs ranging from 45K to 85K.

WhiteMemento9

antimatterx wrote: »

Even as a frontend engineer

I don't know the specifics on your particular area so I don't want to give you bad advice but generally, it applies across all jobs in tech. Someone posted earlier in this thread saying the exact same thing applies for Sys Admin jobs. A frontend Dev with a Computer Science degree and working within something like Angular is going to be a completely different prospect to another guy making a few things look pretty in HTML/CSS. It is all relative and only you know the type of jobs you are capable of applying to and where your worth stands in the current market.

I will say the worst place of all is to be is in a job which doesn't pay well and isn't furthering/developing your skillset or giving you experience in the kind of areas you want the experience.

14ned

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

Earning €90k puts you in the top 3-4% of earners in the country.

https://twitter.com/paulodonoghue93/status/1221769362891296768

Those figures greatly underrepresent the top end of earnings because they only report taxed personal income. If you have a choice, you don't take home more than 100k, and avoid all that high tax. And if you reach the top of any industry, you structure yourself to minimise the income taken home because you gain the power to do so.

A high end software developer might, for example, earn 250k/year, run it through a personal services company, and only take home 100k/year. The rest gets spent on training expenses, and maxing out your annual executive pension contribution. Such a software developer would not be accurately captured by those statistics.

People in the media, or executives, do the same. For example, Graham Norton only earns a few hundred K in take home income, but his total remuneration is about 17 million if I remember rightly. He's in the UK, so very different tax wise over there, but the principle of reducing one's tax burden is the same: wrap yourself in tax efficient structures. If you're taking home more than 100k in Ireland, either you have no choice, or you have a lousy tax advisor.

Niall

Creamy Goodness

14ned wrote: »

Those figures greatly underrepresent the top end of earnings because they only report taxed personal income. If you have a choice, you don't take home more than 100k, and avoid all that high tax. And if you reach the top of any industry, you structure yourself to minimise the income taken home because you gain the power to do so.

A high end software developer might, for example, earn 250k/year, run it through a personal services company, and only take home 100k/year. The rest gets spent on training expenses, and maxing out your annual executive pension contribution. Such a software developer would not be accurately captured by those statistics.

People in the media, or executives, do the same. For example, Graham Norton only earns a few hundred K in take home income, but his total remuneration is about 17 million if I remember rightly. He's in the UK, so very different tax wise over there, but the principle of reducing one's tax burden is the same: wrap yourself in tax efficient structures. If you're taking home more than 100k in Ireland, either you have no choice, or you have a lousy tax advisor.

Niall

Of course, there's always way to 'game' (for want of a better word) the system. It's by no means 100% accurate but it can help paint a picture of the landscape of Irish workers (based of 2018 Revenue Data btw).

CathalC2011

GreeBo wrote: »

What do you consider junior? How many years exp?

I would say 90k is not at all standard for a junior or even senior developer in Dublin and have never seen any salary survey that would suggest otherwise, do you have links to any that would back up your above statement?

I'd consider anyone with under 5 years experience junior.

And im including stocks in that 90k figure.

I don't have references to surveys, only my own experience and insights from friends, family and colleagues.

Note, I never said it was standard, I said it was absolutely achievable!

14ned

CathalC2011 wrote: »

And im including stocks in that 90k figure.

Did you discount the stock proportion of income appropriately?

• If it's not a big multinational, the discount rate is 100%.
• If it's stock options rather than actual stock, the discount rate is 100%.
• If it's actual stock, but with a time or condition delay, the discount rate is 100% for the first year, and less than 100% in following years.
• Finally if it's actual stock in a big multinational, does it fall under an Approved Share Scheme as according to Revenue (https://www.revenue.ie/en/additional-incomes/employment-related-shares/approved-share-schemes.aspx)? If so, discount by as little as 30% as a gross income, if under an Unapproved scheme, discount by your marginal rate of income tax, and then a further 40%.

There is a nasty habit coming out of Silicon Valley that Stock is equivalent to cash in salary. It is not. Payment as stock has many unpleasant tax consequences in Ireland, unlike in other countries, it is also illiquid, and subject to large swings in value over a ten year period.

One thing universal everywhere is that stock in privately held non-multinationals is usually worthless, which is why startups award it so lavishly.

Niall

CathalC2011

14ned wrote: »

Did you discount the stock proportion of income appropriately?

• If it's not a big multinational, the discount rate is 100%.
• If it's stock options rather than actual stock, the discount rate is 100%.
• If it's actual stock, but with a time or condition delay, the discount rate is 100% for the first year, and less than 100% in following years.
• Finally if it's actual stock in a big multinational, does it fall under an Approved Share Scheme as according to Revenue (https://www.revenue.ie/en/additional-incomes/employment-related-shares/approved-share-schemes.aspx)? If so, discount by as little as 30% as a gross income, if under an Unapproved scheme, discount by your marginal rate of income tax, and then a further 40%.

There is a nasty habit coming out of Silicon Valley that Stock is equivalent to cash in salary. It is not. Payment as stock has many unpleasant tax consequences in Ireland, unlike in other countries, it is also illiquid, and subject to large swings in value over a ten year period.

One thing universal everywhere is that stock in privately held non-multinationals is usually worthless, which is why startups award it so lavishly.

Niall

I'm no expert in tax, but I know enough about shares to tell you they're far from worthless.

Even after the insane tax I pay on shares, they still account for a large proportion of my total income.

And this is not the point of the conversation. The point of my original response to OP was to explain that when people (especially in tech, and especially at that age) say they make X amount per year, a large amount of that figure comes from shares.

So in a sense I'm agreeing with you here. I'm well aware of the high tax on shares, but people tend to leave that bit out when others ask how much they make, ie OPs friend.

dubrov

Stock options are certainly not worthless but generally overvalued in stick market boom times.

E.g. An employee might be paid 50k salary plus 5k worth of stock options.
A year later, the options vest and are worth 30k, then the employee pats himself on the back and thinks he is really getting paid 80k by his employer.
In reality he is getting paid 55k and his investment in the market generated the other 25k.

Just to add, no one is paying 90k for a junior developer even with stock options

14ned

CathalC2011 wrote: »

I'm no expert in tax, but I know enough about shares to tell you they're far from worthless.

Even after the insane tax I pay on shares, they still account for a large proportion of my total income.

And this is not the point of the conversation. The point of my original response to OP was to explain that when people (especially in tech, and especially at that age) say they make X amount per year, a large amount of that figure comes from shares.

So in a sense I'm agreeing with you here. I'm well aware of the high tax on shares, but people tend to leave that bit out when others ask how much they make, ie OPs friend.

I suppose one should always discount salary claims by 50% so. Daft. I'm increasingly feeling that Ireland could do with a nice-defrothing sharp recession, stop all that madness happening once again.

Niall

Apiarist

dubrov wrote: »

Just to add, no one is paying 90k for a junior developer even with stock options

Exactly. Unless he is somehow doing a senior developer job -- for example, if he did a Master's degree in some hot field (Machine Learning) and is applying his recent knowledge to drive/define a profitable project.

14ned

dubrov wrote: »

Stock options are certainly not worthless but generally overvalued in stick market boom times.

E.g. An employee might be paid 50k salary plus 5k worth of stock options.
A year later, the options vest and are worth 30k, then the employee pats himself on the back and thinks he is really getting paid 80k by his employer.
In reality he is getting paid 55k and his investment in the market generated the other 25k.

Under an Approved Revenue Share scheme, you can be paid up to 11k in stocks per year. Those are taxed with everything apart from Income tax however. You then pay more tax again if you ever sell them.

Most Share schemes are unapproved however, and the tax consequences far more unpleasant. And most startups might pay 15-30% of your cash income in shares or share options, which in Ireland means you pay income tax on cash you never received, because they're treated as if cash in Ireland. And the shares are usually held privately, and cannot be sold for years, so what all this really means is that getting paid in shares means a decrease to your cash income.

Unless you are committing tax fraud of course. Which tons of people do here, and claim ignorance of the tax law when caught. And then Revenue triple the punishment, and you lose everything. C'est la vie.

Niall

Finty Lemon

antimatterx wrote: »

I'm 24, I've been working 19 months (I spent 4 months unemployed), and I only make 32K ��

He will have 170k tax paid by his 30th birthday
You will be 54 by the time youve paid that

TuringBot47

CathalC2011 wrote: »

Even after the insane tax I pay on shares, they still account for a large proportion of my total income.

Depends on the company.
I know the likes of Workday throw stock at staff and they get more stock each year.

antimatterx

Finty Lemon wrote: »

He will have 170k tax paid by his 30th birthday
You will be 54 by the time youve paid that

What?

GreeBo

CathalC2011 wrote: »

I'd consider anyone with under 5 years experience junior.

And im including stocks in that 90k figure.

I don't have references to surveys, only my own experience and insights from friends, family and colleagues.

Note, I never said it was standard, I said it was absolutely achievable!

Well you said
pretty much every large scale engineering shop will pay over 90k plus for junior engineers

If every large scale engineering company are doing it I would consider that largely equivalent to standard.

A tiny percentage of large scale engineering companies are paying a tiny percentage of junior developers 90k plus.

To me that's not equivalent to your statement at all.

Creamy Goodness

antimatterx wrote: »

What?

They’re saying he’ll have paid 170k in tax by the time he turns 30.

If you stay on the same salary (which is unlikely) you been blowing out 54 candles on your birthday cake before you paid the same amount of tax.

wally1990

I'm work in an accountants and most of my contractor software developers are on 350 to 550 per day.

WhiteMemento9

TuringBot47 wrote: »

Depends on the company.
I know the likes of Workday throw stock at staff and they get more stock each year.

Companies like workday offer very good salaries to grads straight out of college for roles as Application Developer's but they use a proprietary framework/language which for someone straight out of college looking to gain experience may not be the best move career-wise when thinking further down the line. There are a few other companies like this in Dublin. Personally think taking less money and a chance to gain experience with more industry-standard focused technologies is the better move.

antimatterx

WhiteMemento9 wrote: »

Companies like workday offer very good salaries to grads straight out of college for roles as Application Developer's but they use a proprietary framework/language which for someone straight out of college looking to gain experience may not be the best move career-wise when thinking further down the line. There are a few other companies like this in Dublin. Personally think taking less money and a chance to gain experience with more industry-standard focused technologies is the better move.

What other companies use proprietary languages? Although I do understand why companies would use them, it might reduce the number of staff who leave each year.

WhiteMemento9

antimatterx wrote: »

What other companies use proprietary languages? Although I do understand why companies would use them, it might reduce the number of staff who leave each year.

Salesforce and companies who use the SF platform are another off the top of my head. From a quick google, Apex is the SF proprietary language and WorkDay uses Xpresso. It probably does reduce the number of staff leaving and it is Quid pro quo, in that they do compensate staff very well (I guess you could argue they need to or no one would take these jobs) but taking a job in a proprietary tech stack straight out of college just seems like a really bad idea.

CathalC2011

WhiteMemento9 wrote: »

Salesforce and companies who use the SF platform are another off the top of my head. From a quick google, Apex is the SF proprietary language and WorkDay uses Xpresso. It probably does reduce the number of staff leaving and it is Quid pro quo, in that they do compensate staff very well (I guess you could argue they need to or no one would take these jobs) but taking a job in a proprietary tech stack straight out of college just seems like a really bad idea.

I agree with you about taking an app Dev job straight out of college, but Workday offer the exact same salaries to software dev engineers out of college too!

Computer Science Student

The way it works when you join a new company is you get stock options + 10k salary bump. So if you keep moving companies to the right roles, you can get up to 90k within a few years of leaving college plausibly enough.

AndrewJRenko

Computer Science Student wrote: »

The way it works when you join a new company is you get stock options + 10k salary bump. So if you keep moving companies to the right roles, you can get up to 90k within a few years of leaving college plausibly enough.

BUt you would generally lose your stock options when you move, right? That's generally the whole purpose of options - the long term incentive to stay with the company. You have to stay for the five year vesting period to get any benefit from the options.


Or have things change from my day?

beauf

They used to release X amount per year in my day. So if you walked you lost any shares that hadn't been released. Haven't been in a company that offered shares in a long time.