If I google "clojure salary", I get $121,752 for Senior Software Engineer. Does that sound about right? (Talking about the US)

@isak It's very location-dependent but that sounds about right for some parts of the US, yes.

Seems very low. Maybe that is base salary.

yeah i wouldn't go for that

Like I said, very location-dependent 🙂

(SF Bay Area, fresh-out-of-college graduates tend to get $100K in almost any tech -- which is patently ridiculous)

For the naysayers, what do you think is a more reasonable number? (Let's say it isn't the Bay Area)

I would be considered fresh-out-of-college grad and don't get 100K in LA.

@mario.cordova.862 LA != Bay Area.

South Bay? Really south...

commute up the 5

I live in Portland, OR and that seems low to me

> what do you think is a is a more reasonable number? can’t speak for other regions, but in SF Bay - no matter what the number is, it will never be enough. Everything getting ridiculously expensive

the best bet is to live somewhere else and find a job in SF Bay that allows remote. Which is very rare. It is an arrogance of Silicon Valley - too much emphasis on being on-site

everything is unreasonably priced - from housing, to transportation and food. and it’s getting worse every year

Can you name a single city in the US, heck maybe even in entire world where average price for a salad is like $12-$15 dollars?

my advice for anyone offered a job in SF Bay - negotiate

and also, don't relocate there

It seems like the majority of job postings, in the Clojure job channel, for US locations is SF though

nope... that's not true

I can assure you that London salads are expensive AF 🙂

Also: yes, but negotiate to what value? That’s unhelpful. I understand the need not to expose one’s own earnings, but the avoidance of naming “reasonable/average” numbers hurts people, especially minorities who don’t have friends to give them hints.

(Hi. For a long time I had no clue how much money I should be earning in London.)

According to Glass Door "The average salary for a Senior Software Engineer is $157,429 in San Francisco, CA."

"The average salary for a Senior Software Engineer is $115,959 in Austin, TX."

"The average salary for a Senior Software Engineer is $105,223 in Columbus, OH."

The TeamBlind app seems to offer a reasonable and anonymous discussion on compensation (among other things).

"The average salary for a Senior Software Engineer is $100,369 in Memphis, TN."

(I know about Glassdoor; I have also heard people saying not to trust salaries in there; hard to say if it was paranoia or truth.)

"The average salary for a Senior Software Engineer is $98,214 in Louisville, KY."

Glassdoor is all self-reported -- hard to say whether that's going to be low or high on average, I agree.

It's also interesting to hear about Clojure specifically, because it is a different population than java/node programmers

(For salaries given on reddit - EU career questions - and London for example, I can definitely say people vary their “reasonable” wildly, some giving max salaries of enterprise Java bank developer, some a… livable small agency full stack dev)

I've seen reports that Clojure devs get less because it's an in-demand job environment that applicants really want to have -- and reports that Clojure devs get more because it's a hard-to-find skill...

I don't know that there are enough Clojure jobs advertised out there to get a true sense of the market as a whole?

seems like no - i've been finding it tough to get calibrated

My two Clojure roles have been paid based on job title and years of experience it seems... likely nothing to do with Clojure being in the mix.

yeah… I wonder whether “years of experience with tech X” aren’t used as convenient filters for gatekeeping, but what people then actually pay for is problem solving ability / production ability

It's been to my advantage in recent years to continue branding myself as a "generalist".

Most developers I have worked with were significantly underpaid. Because we cannot negotiate, most of us suffer from impostor syndrome, we're introverts and always carry fear of rejection. And businesses take advantage of that

I'm really curious about the distribution of salaries

in the industry overall

saying the median is $120k or whatever is one thing

but I very much suspect that is not a bell-shaped distribution

no, biased towards left and with a long right tail iirc

yep

Incidentally re: cannot negotiate, impostor syndrome

These two things are fixable. I’ve always wanted a practice group, like when you have sparring groups for martial arts etc, but one where you can practice negotiation and pitches, and get accurate feedback. (Incl. technical feedback to kill impostor syndrome)

(So basically Toastmasters, except for different skills than public speaking.)

hagglemasters

I read this book back in 2010 and I think it's been worth at least $100k for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes

I know there are books, I’ve read some: but there’s a big difference between knowing theory and having experience in practice.

yeah

+ 1 for a reciting-poetry-while-simultaneously-standing-on-one-foot club 🙂 https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

We don’t have enough opportunities for (deliberate, piecemeal) practice. When we do exercise these skills, it’s usually in stressful situations (which kills memory recall) with a lot at stake. And we don’t get feedback apart from “got what I wanted/did not get what I wanted”, whereas the valuable information is what worked

(Which is why I keep referring to Toastmasters: it’s got the best feedback system I’ve ever seen. I’ve done ~2 years, won a couple of awards as an evaluator; it’s amazing at teaching people how to help others improve in a way that preserves their enthusiasm.)

> reciting-poetry-while-simultaneously-standing-on-one-foot XD

I see you’re into experimental art XD

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended-ebook/dp/B014DUR7L2 ^ this one’s also interesting btw, it’s a big contrast to the more cerebral/strategic negotiation that has you figure out your BATNA etc

https://medium.com/s/powertrip/i-know-the-salaries-of-thousands-of-tech-employees-4841bc26d753

I was soooo tempted to offer negotiation practice for $500/hr.

Given career coaches helping women break into tech bill around $200/hr, I’m sure you could swing it if you pitched it to the right audience.

Possibly with a sprinkling of “my time is very restricted so I only have a couple of slots for very special people and ask for a lot of money to make sure they apply themselves”