Well Paying Jobs

He's working as an Instrument Tech, in Ireland, and he's going to buy a house for cash?

You're defo not talking SCD. Ill grant you that good instrument techs are making a reasonable wage, and are in demand, but don't think that a reasonable wage is really that much:)

Writers can make a fortune. Rarely though.

Property development used to be a good bet this one time...

UCDVet wrote: »

People get caught up on job titles and pay. 'That guy does ______ and makes _____. I should do _______ and I'll make ______ too!'

The thing is, people aren't interchangeable. That's why you find large salary ranges for the same position. There are a lot of factors that go into it.

It's far better to look at median salary - but even that is biased. The median doctor has done a lot more work to become a doctor than the median businessman. Most people, they *couldn't* become a doctor, even if they wanted.

This is particularly true when you start talking about exceptional cases. High paid consultant in the financial industry? That's an exceptional case, IHMO.

Basically, what you end up with is that, in order to make a lot of money, you need to be exceptionally good at something, or you need to be averagely good at something that is exceptionally difficult. An average doctor makes a lot. An exceptional software developer makes a lot. An exceptional businessman makes a lot.

When you get into niche job markets - like a guy who is really good at some particular financial software - you find very high wages....but also lots of risk and uncertainty. It's a trade-off. It can also be very difficult to get involved/trained on those things.

Really though, if it were super easy to get a high paying job, everyone would do it. And wages for that job would drop. It's just how life works. If you are really good at it - you'll make millions kicking a ball around a field. But if you aren't amazingly good at it, it's worth nothing.

Nope. This is the fallacy called just world theory. Bankers pay software devs more but the coding isn't necessarily as hard as other projects - OS development, technical architect in search, the writers of scalable systems like AWS. And bankers pay bankers extraordinary amounts of money for trivial work. And this is before we get to the CEOs.

Bank pay bankers more because that's the tradition, and it's cost less to fail. And they make **** loads.

everdead.ie wrote: »

As a contractor you can get 3-400 a day as a senior developer but you don't get paid for holidays and you get 6 months to a year long contract.

Then you have to have a company that has to pay for an accountant etc and all that goes with it and you still have to pay prsi usc etc when you eventually get paid.

I think there are about 250 working days a year but then you take away all your holidays etc.


Should also mention you probably won't get a mortgage as a contractor because you aren't a permenant employee.

On £1500 a day would you need a mortgage? Put 5 hard years in and buy a house with cash.

Speaking as a contractor, its not for everyone, and you need to look at the broader picture - earnings over time (lifetime even) rather than just a daily rate. Lets not mention the discipline and expense of keeping yourself trained in the latest technologies.

Also, some of the figures thrown about are figures paid to agencies, who then take a cut before paying you. Its rare you will have an organisation that will employ you directly unless you're running an established company, which is not how many contractors operate.

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

Nope. This is the fallacy called just world theory. Bankers pay software devs more but the coding isn't necessarily as hard as other projects - OS development, technical architect in search, the writers of scalable systems like AWS. And bankers pay bankers extraordinary amounts of money for trivial work. And this is before we get to the CEOs.

Bank pay bankers more because that's the tradition, and it's cost less to fail. And they make **** loads.

Nothing about my post implies there is a just world. Just that there exists some resemblance of a free market (and it does). I work in the financial industry - and I say with 100% confidence, the bankers DO NOT pay software developers more, just because. It's nonsense to think that. They keep track of every expense and place a value on each employee's contribution.

The financial industry tends to pay higher wages to software developers, relative to the industry standard, because expect/demand/employ better than average developers and have higher than average expectations with regards to holidays and work hours. The company I work for closes the office three days per year and expects everyone to work the rest. Unrealistic deadlines, usually due to outside legal obligations are expected and long hours are assumed. If they didn't pay more, they would have a lot of trouble finding and retaining talented developers.

It's like saying Google pays more than the industry standard because....Google is rich. Well, sure, Google is rich, but that's not why they pay their developers more. They HAVE to pay more to attract the talent they want.

Bankers are not known for their generosity.

UCDVet wrote: »

Nothing about my post implies there is a just world. Just that there exists some resemblance of a free market (and it does). I work in the financial industry - and I say with 100% confidence, the bankers DO NOT pay software developers more, just because. It's nonsense to think that. They keep track of every expense and place a value on each employee's contribution.

The financial industry tends to pay higher wages to software developers, relative to the industry standard, because expect/demand/employ better than average developers and have higher than average expectations with regards to holidays and work hours. The company I work for closes the office three days per year and expects everyone to work the rest. Unrealistic deadlines, usually due to outside legal obligations are expected and long hours are assumed. If they didn't pay more, they would have a lot of trouble finding and retaining talented developers.

It's like saying Google pays more than the industry standard because....Google is rich. Well, sure, Google is rich, but that's not why they pay their developers more. They HAVE to pay more to attract the talent they want.

Bankers are not known for their generosity.

Rubbish. The best engineers actually work for google etc. But they don't earn the same as people who work for the financial industry. You would get nothing like that rate contracting for google.

The real question is why bankers and people who work for the financial industry are overpaid relative to the difficulty of their work, which is hardly the most intelkectually onerous work, it's not rocket science. There is no evidence to me that bankers actually know what they are doing, but it's costless to continue paying great bonuses for little work seeing as they are too big to fail.

So there can't be a free market in jobs for bankers, if there were they'd be on something approaching minimum wage.

That said the software devs who work for financials are very smart, just not smarter than the best devs elsewhere. In fact most of the real work done in financial institutions are based on the back end software, the rest is button pushing. But the button pushers get paid even more than the devs, so why?

I jacked a job as the pay was too low- they rehired me as a contractor and paid me a weeks worth of wages per day without a blink. I wondered if they needed their heads examined - all I wanted was €100 extra a week. Go figure..

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

Rubbish. The best engineers actually work for google etc. But they don't earn the same as people who work for the financial industry. You would get nothing like that rate contracting for google.

The real question is why bankers and people who work for the financial industry are overpaid relative to the difficulty of their work, which is hardly the most intelkectually onerous work, it's not rocket science. There is no evidence to me that bankers actually know what they are doing, but it's costless to continue paying great bonuses for little work seeing as they are too big to fail.

So there can't be a free market in jobs for bankers, if there were they'd be on something approaching minimum wage.

That said the software devs who work for financials are very smart, just not smarter than the best devs elsewhere. In fact most of the real work done in financial institutions are based on the back end software, the rest is button pushing. But the button pushers get paid even more than the devs, so why?

I think quite a few of your assumptions are wrong....

First, the average salary at Google is higher than the average salary for software developers in the financial industry.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm
Senior Software Engineer averages 150k USD

Compared to the Financial industry average of 130k USD
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Senior+Financial+Software+Engineer&l1=Palo+Alto%2C+CA

Google developers earn 15% more than software developers in the financial industry, in the same area. If you compare Google devs to financial services devs in other cities like Chicago and New York, the Google devs earn even more.

Second, salary isn't (and shouldn't be) related to how hard a job is. Hardest job I ever had was digging holes for swimming pools. The pay sucked.

Third, while I agree that the bailouts and 'too big to fail' stuff is mostly crap and doesn't reflect a true free market...it's worth noting that almost every industry is regulated in some way, even if it's just minimum wage and safety laws. So a true free market is really just an academic concept. Still, lots of companies in the financial services industry weren't bailed out and only stay in business by earning a profit.

Anyway, as for the button pushers vs. software developers....yes, the button pushers get paid more. Why? Because they make money And that's what businesses are all about. I can write some 'okay' code - but it doesn't generate any revenue. It's just code. Big deal. We don't sell it, and if we did, nobody would buy it. All of the money the company makes is a direct result of the button pushers correctly pushing the right buttons.