Roy Tang

Why do people keep asking about salary? That’s not really a programming or software dev question. I am a freelancing consultant at the moment, so I can’t really give a simple answer to that anyway (it’s almost always “it depends”)

I will answer the experience one - 15ish years in the industry (yeah, I’m old).

Edit: Also, there is a high range in the salaries of software devs in this country (not sure if the same elsewhere, probably), because:

• some people are better at selling themselves than others
• some devs are way better than others (and thus are more valuable)
• each dev’s career path and growth is often unique, so it’s difficult to compare, especially once you rack up some years of experience

i.e. for a given number of years of experience, the salary band will be quite wide.

I get that when you’re starting out, salary is a big deal, but honestly if you’re a decent enough programmer, you can get into any place with above average salary. You can grow your salary a bit faster by hopping jobs every so often, but too many hops looks bad on a resume.

Anyway, my advice is that once you get to a decent salary range that is good for you (i.e. you’re not starving), focus less on comparing yourself to other people, and more on increasing your own value and managing your work/life balance. Money isn’t everything, beyond basic survival.