Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick

Five years of experience as a programmer is like becoming a "made man" in a crime family. Before, you're nothing. After, you're trusted and respected.<p>I was in the same job from years 2-5 and didn't see much of a raise. Then when I got a new job it was more than double the salary. And it does seem like you have to leave to go somewhere else, or else you're a prophet without honor.<p>It's also clear from the graph that after 5-10 years of experience, much of the increase in income growth will be expected to come from non-salary compensation. Which may be equity, bonuses or stock plans, but it's all about getting a piece of the action. Which, again, makes programming sound like it's the mob. Sorry about that.

In economics the reverse hockey stick growth is known as diminishing marginal returns. This simply means the market values the earliest years of experience as much more beneficial to a developers skill than the later.<p>While I understand the idea behind hiring young and inexperienced, it should be noted that the wage rates are there for a reason. The training costs/possible managerial time may be greater for the average college graduate. (Clearly not always true- I am just trying to postulate why the market values experience this way).

This is true in most industries. You either move on to a management position or stagnate. The problem is it doesn't really work in the development world where you can get better and better the more deeply you use and understand the technology. Plus it has the side effect of pushing highly technical people with no management skills out of jobs they're good at and into jobs they can't do well (imagine Woz trying to be a manager)<p>That's why many big tech companies have moved to a "level" system (to the best of my Knowledge Microsoft started this trend but I could be wrong). In that type of system you can continue to be a developer but move up in level and salary. That way great developers can stay great developers and not be penalized for it.

This has created a pretty serious issue at my current job. My experience is increasing in value faster than policy lets my salary appreciate.<p>Policy is forcing me to find a job elsewhere. I cannot rationalize continually taking a relative pay cut to stay where I am.

There is an interesting subtext in this article, which is to suggest that you take <i>more</i> risks as you get closer to the asymptote of salary growth, because it's the way to avoid diminishing returns for the additional skills you've learned between hitting the level of "experienced" and now.<p>It's the opposite advice that makes up common wisdom, which is to take risks when you are young, inexperienced and without responsibilities, and then settle into the comfortable long-term job with small raises once you get past that phase. I'm not surprised by this; if technical skills compound at <i>all</i>, it would seem that a developer's value would trend exponential and not logarithmic. That is, so long as they don't weary and stagnate.<p>But then, there is also value for the inexperienced in a startup, in that you'll learn a ton, and be given a lot of responsibility and autonomy. It might be that common wisdom is only half-broken.<p>Granted, there are opportunity costs involved. You might be in a position where you have to trade capitalistic striving for a paycheck, as a ribbonfarm article posted here a while back put it. It's as much being aware of those opportunity costs, though, as it is knowing whether or not you are in a position to need to accept them.

It's more of a 180-degree rotated hockey stick.

Just thinking out loud here.<p>Could it be that after 5 or so years engineers are in long term relationships, perhaps kids, etc and thus are less inclined to rock the boat and ask for a significant raise.<p>Could it be that a lot of developers leave after about 5 years or so and go into other fields (management, startups, etc) so that the people left in the job for 10+ years are actually comfortable with just plodding along?<p>Then again I'm left thinking that it could be because there actually isn't much of a difference between a developer with 5 and one with 10 years of experience (in the general sense).<p>This is interesting to me, since I've just gone past the whole 5 years of experience thing, hit a limit with one company, and moved elsewhere for nearly 2x the money. Wondering what/where I should go next.

It seems to me that this assumes developers never get promoted (which makes the long term look unappetizing). But developers become lead developers, architects, and (<i>gasp</i>) managers.

How do I get a job at 0 years working remote from Houston?

A labeled y axis or error bars would be nice...just to dispel that vague link-spammy feeling.

I'd probably call it a logarithmic function where dying is a problem in more than just a "boundary value" sort of a way ;)

This got blocked by the proxy server at work. Can anyone summarize (if a summary is even needed beyond the title)?

For a moment I feared to see that chart the other way round (starting high, ending low).

Anyone have a sense of how true this is at big places like Google and Microsoft?

I'm surprised nobody has discussed the selection bias going on here. The better programmers are the ones that will stay on. IDK what the general turnover is in coding, but it makes sense that some people won't be able to hack it, appearing to boost the salaries of the "better" workers.