We've all seen the big salaries job sites seem to tout around, but just how accurate are they? I've been talking with people who are full-time developers who barely made 20k a year at their job. In specific, I know a guy who works on huge projects with React and Redux etc who makes 15k a year. On the contrary, sites claim just knowing html, css, and some jquery can land you a job with $60k in the States. The guy I know is in Russia if that changes anything. Perhaps commenters could post what they do and how much they make? I believe we're being largely misrepresented in terms of pay.
After I came back from teaching English overseas, I was desperate for a job and applied across the boards of Craigslist. I got a bite on a programming job making $10 an hour. I was thrilled because someone actually considered me, a person with very little programming experience, for the job. I was just happy to take the job and get experience. Even with the $40,000 student loan debt I had. After my training period was over, my boss increased my pay to $12 an hour working in Visual Basic on auto-shop software.<p>I did this for a year and a half before I realized: I was being taken advantage of. And I get it: He took a chance on me, trained me, etc. I fixed tons of bugs in his system and improved his customer base by thousands. Aside from fixing bugs, they told me my job was to improve the user experience and user interface to make it more user-friendly. I did just that.<p>But at $12 an hour with $40k debt and bills to pay, where exactly was I going? It was corporate slavery -- which is all too common for most programmers. Coding monkeys. He was also an arrogant asshole.. one of those bosses who was a micromanager and would even make me email him our conversation that we had in meeting, and then he would critique our own meeting and my words as he wanted them. More time was wasted doing this than actually programming.<p>As much as I loved programming, I couldn't live on that salary, nor do anything or go anywhere with my life. He ended up offering me double my salary only when I had put in my 2 weeks. I really just had checked out and didn't want to be there, so trying to negotiate a salary would have come with too many strings. "I'm paying you do a job... why didn't you do it this way" etc. etc. Yeah, he was that type of person.<p>Luckily, I eventually got out of it... if you are interested in reading more about that: <a href="http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/" rel="nofollow">http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/</a><p>Unless you work on the coasts, like Silicon Valley area or New York, I think programming jobs around the country are much less. When the market is saturated though and people are desperate for work, companies can take advantage of that.
Canada you can expect C40k-75k unless you work for some unicorn startup in Toronto recruiting top talent or specialize in something and contract yourself out. The vast majority of salaries are C$35/hr for senior developer which is what a unionized janitor makes after you account for their benefits the developer doesn't receive. Almost everybody I know here is a contractor, working remotely at US companies these days or to large outfits that do city bids for websites/dbms work and sub-contract to them.<p>Russia, @homakov writes that he made $3/hr as a php dev there before specializing in appsec and contracting himself out. <a href="https://medium.com/@homakov/how-i-started-in-web-security-400b80824e86#.98oj82ecr" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@homakov/how-i-started-in-web-security-40...</a>
To be honest i dont live there, i just quickchecked some sites and 20k$ seems very good for russia:<p><a href="http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/en/figures/living/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/en/fi...</a><p><a href="http://rbth.com/business/2016/05/20/the-average-salary-in-russia-is-now-lower-than-in-china-and-poland_594893" rel="nofollow">http://rbth.com/business/2016/05/20/the-average-salary-in-ru...</a><p><a href="http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages" rel="nofollow">http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages</a><p>I think the best option for you/your friend is to get contract work outside of russia.
So salaries in the most job offers are real. That is obvious that you are making less in Russia than in US. Even on the same position. Only working remotelty for western clients may give similar earnings. Check out some offers <a href="https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;query=remote;location=" rel="nofollow">https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;qu...</a>
> We've all seen the big salaries job sites seem to tout around, but just how accurate are they?<p>Judging from the BLS salary statistics [0] (which are based on more comprehensive data than those gathered by any job site), they are, while probably <i>accurate</i> for the subset of jobs they are derived from, not generally representative of overall salaries.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrci.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrci.htm</a>
Lets look at a neighbor that is on friendlier terms with the US: Romania.<p>This would be ridiculously low salary there.<p>In the past (over 10 years ago), when dealing with Russian contractors rates were much higher (think $20 US an HOUR as a floor, so 40k a year).<p>However this is pre Ukranine issues. The market for programers there may have dried up over night as everyone is dealing with sanctions and money moving issues.
20k a year sounds about right. I am in former ost block EU country, median pay would be ~10k, monthly rent ~300$.<p>I might know a few people around here that might make more than 100k as programmers but, they are either project leads with a lot of responsibility, or they own the business and have a few large US clients.<p>Of course, all of my US colleagues earn much more.
$20k seems really low for most full time jobs in the United States. The average (median) job in the US pays around $30k. And software development jobs are above average jobs, so those numbers that you posted seem off.