Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It is not the OPT students that are ruining the field, it is the discrimination.
A US Citizen goes to school, studies STEM, graduates, and then attempts to get a job. They get rejected for not having experience.
A foreign student comes to the US on a F1 visa. Studies STEM. Graduates, then attempts to get a job. They are hired, transition into an OPT visa and get up to 3 years of paid training, no experience required. Afterwards, they an transition into an H1B visa.
NO one claimed that every engineer or IT professional is making 6 figures.
Someone did claim it. This was the statement in question and it's wrong:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry88
This is bull****. And IT is so broad, if you are "the computer guy" at a small biz, yeah you don't make much, but IT professionals here in NYC avg 6 figs after 3-5 years in college.
IT professionals in NYC do not average 6 figures after 3-5 years. The software developer in NYC on this site confirmed that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii
You picked a random field within IT.
Nope, the statement made by Harty88 was IT professionals and $64K is their average in NYC. Furthermore our resident software developer in NYC doesn't even make 6 figures.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii
"IT Professional" isn't a career.
No one said it was, except for Harry88
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii
$106k is the average for the profession within IT I picked. I gave you a link and everything. I suggest going back and actually reading what you respond to.
You first argued developers averaged 6 figures in NYC, since that was a lie now you're backtracking to an argument no one was making. Most managers (of most careerfields) make 6 figures, your link proves nothing we don't already know. Hell, even sales managers average 6 figures, but that wasn't the argument.
The issue at hand: do IT professionals in NYC average 6 figures after 3-5 yeas. They don't, and a software developer in NYC confirmed it. I suggest your read his post again.
So City Data has taken Harry88's vague post of "IT professionals in NYC make 6 figures on avg" and applied it to our resident NYC developer yet it still doesn't work. Imagine that.
Speaking of H1Bs, what about them and the downward pull on the wages of developers? Also, how are OPT students ruining the field?
Is there really an increasing level of requirements to get into the developer field even for "entry level"?
They bring down salaries.
I work at a advertising agency, for about 6 years now. When I first started, we had a team of about 15 developers. We were mostly permalancers, which means we were temp but we worked a consistent 40hrs/week.
After the obama care mandate started, there was a new rule mandated by the government that any temp who worked more than 30hrs/week had to be given healthcare and made a full time employee.
This is when the outsourcing at my company started, gradually they let people go and converted some others to full time. But our team has only 4 developers now. Most of the other work is outsourced. A lot of the developers who use to make 6 figs 5 years ago have gotten laid off. Because companies do not see the value in keeping someone at that rate when you can find other options for cheaper and have one senior lead try to coach them.
Or companies prefer to get a h1b1, because they can offer them below market rate to compensate for the cost of benefits.
Nope, the statement made by Harty88 was IT professionals and $64K is their average in NYC. Furthermore our resident software developer in NYC doesn't even make 6 figures.
lol, no. you did a five second google search and reported the salary ($65k) for a completely different job just because it was the first thing that showed up in your google search.
Quote:
You first argued developers averaged 6 figures in NYC, since that was a lie now you're backtracking to an argument no one was making. Most managers (of most careerfields) make 6 figures, your link proves nothing we don't already know. Hell, even sales managers average 6 figures, but that wasn't the argument.
The issue at hand: do IT professionals in NYC average 6 figures after 3-5 yeas. They don't, and a software developer in NYC confirmed it. I suggest your read his post again.
So City Data has taken Harry88's vague post of "IT professionals in NYC make 6 figures on avg" and applied it to our resident NYC developer yet it still doesn't work. Imagine that.
You did a google search, didn't read the results you quoted, and now are arguing to try and get out of it. The simple fact, you did a quick google search without understanding what the phrase "IT professional" means.
But to be clear, your argument here is that you found a single person who makes less than $100k as a software engineer and in your mind that invalidates the number I gave, which is the average salary of $106k reported across 21,699 software engineers in NYC? Right.
Maybe. On one hand, sure it's best to just go somewhere else. There are definitely places out there with superb work/life balance for devs. You find a lot of these sort of jobs in financial services or even insurance. Where boring is good. However most devs don't want to work at these places, because they're, well, boring. They're a lot less likely to be using newer tech, and you're less likely to be working with anything that interesting from a technical perspective.
Most devs like cutting edge stuff. Hence they gravitate to smaller shops with either limited money, or limited headcount. And most of these places are more concerned with time-to-market, so it's all about pushing changes out as fast as possible. This usually is better for your career and resume than the boring finance, medical, or insurance company.
Development has a bit of a equilibrium. Finding the right balance of "stable" vs "innovating and exciting" can be difficult.
I won't further question just what "most" means, as I have no actual figures to confirm nor refute that claim. Amongst those I've talked with, YMMV. It seems more on the younger side of the workforce veer towards them tech companies, esp. the larger and well known ones (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, and various video game companies). Some enjoy and continue working there. However, in semi-recent years, others began to see that a place like Google gives you all these perks (e.g. free meals, other food, laundry service, dry cleaning, gym membership, etc.), but you lose the one thing that counts the most... time.
As such, you do see folks, young and old, migrate away from these positions. Their jobs may now be boring, but at least 50 hour weeks is the EXCEPTION, not the norm. I've talked with someone who met someone like that... that person used to work for EA Games. Video games are quite exciting, but he was putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks. That guys now making some simulation for some other company. He described it as "the world's more boring video game", but he's down to 40 hour weeks. He can now spend much more time with his family, and as a bonus, he doesn't have to spend that much time in front of a computer, so his health should improve.
Last but not least, even if you're doing boring stuff at work, if you got more free time, you can always use that time to pursue the stuff that IS exciting to you.
Why do people assume that wages are a lot higher in NYC, or any big city? For the few that are making a lot of money there are thousands who do not.
Precisely.
There is no guarantee that someone relocating to NYC will receive a pay raise commensurate with the increased cost of living. Most of the time it is not.
I won't further question just what "most" means, as I have no actual figures to confirm nor refute that claim. Amongst those I've talked with, YMMV. It seems more on the younger side of the workforce veer towards them tech companies, esp. the larger and well known ones (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, and various video game companies). Some enjoy and continue working there. However, in semi-recent years, others began to see that a place like Google gives you all these perks (e.g. free meals, other food, laundry service, dry cleaning, gym membership, etc.), but you lose the one thing that counts the most... time.
As such, you do see folks, young and old, migrate away from these positions. Their jobs may now be boring, but at least 50 hour weeks is the EXCEPTION, not the norm. I've talked with someone who met someone like that... that person used to work for EA Games. Video games are quite exciting, but he was putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks. That guys now making some simulation for some other company. He described it as "the world's more boring video game", but he's down to 40 hour weeks. He can now spend much more time with his family, and as a bonus, he doesn't have to spend that much time in front of a computer, so his health should improve.
Last but not least, even if you're doing boring stuff at work, if you got more free time, you can always use that time to pursue the stuff that IS exciting to you.
I don't think tech is becoming a sweatshop. It basically can't become one. Because generally if there is enough burnout and churn, senior management makes automation a huge initiative. And if the current workforce doesn't prioritize automation, they'll hire in a workforce that does. With that said how much you make depends largely on what you're doing and how in demand your skills are.
If you're writing Perl and using a MySQL database based on CGI, sure there is a job out there for you. But you'd be looking to eek out a 70k a year salary with that. If you're a Big Data Enginener with financial experience? you can wipe your ass with anything under 120k. Java tends to be middle of the road, and seems to represent the widest spectrum of payrates. And stuff like web development is so commiditized and the barrier to entry is so easy, that a lot of these guys can be stuck at something like 60k if not lower. You can toss a rock and any random direction in a city like NYC and hit some random ReactJS front end developer.
The reality is, tech is a very "it depends" type of role. It depends on your market, your tech stack, how up to date and/or out of data your are. I mean I know guys today who make north of 150k working in NYC just doing Excel and VBA. Simply because they're with financial clients who need someone to be amazing with spreadsheet and statistics. And I know guys who are highly technical who can barely get 80k because they refuse to leave a company and/or go to a better market.
Tech is embedded into any company and any industry. And with this, mindsets among senior management varies greatly in how much they respect their tech resources. But generally if you get with a tech focused company, and you have a reasonable amount of skills and experience, you will almost always be able to negotiate 6 figures. If you have an up-to-date skillset and good experience and you can't break 100k, then your negotiating skills need work. Or you need to pick better projects.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
