Do software engineers really make that much?

ZilkyG · 14-06-2019 1:31pm #1

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 · 14-06-2019 1:33pm

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 · 14-06-2019 1:33pm

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 · 14-06-2019 1:35pm

If he's very good it's certainly possible

Berserker · 14-06-2019 1:40pm

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 · 14-06-2019 1:43pm

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

ZilkyG · 14-06-2019 1:44pm

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 · 14-06-2019 1:59pm

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 · 14-06-2019 2:03pm

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 · 14-06-2019 2:31pm

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 · 14-06-2019 2:36pm

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 · 14-01-2020 9:28pm

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 · 14-01-2020 9:53pm

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 · 14-01-2020 10:46pm

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 · 01-02-2020 4:18pm

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 · 01-02-2020 4:37pm

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 · 02-02-2020 1:52am

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 · 02-02-2020 2:44pm

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 · 02-02-2020 2:46pm

I'm 24, I've been working 19 months (I spent 4 months unemployed), and I only make 32K &#55357;&#56837;

Creamy Goodness · 02-02-2020 3:59pm

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 · 02-02-2020 5:16pm

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

retalivity · 02-02-2020 5:22pm

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 · 02-02-2020 5:39pm

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 · 02-02-2020 5:54pm

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 · 02-02-2020 5:59pm

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 · 02-02-2020 6:35pm

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 · 02-02-2020 6:49pm

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 · 02-02-2020 7:11pm

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 · 02-02-2020 7:16pm

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 · 03-02-2020 4:27pm

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 · 03-02-2020 4:33pm

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).

Do software engineers really make that much?

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