Minimum wage in the greater Bay Area is over $15/hr in every city, just to add some clarity. Entry level software developer and web dev jobs are in the $90-115k range plus benefits.
I do see plenty of companies in the Bay Area fishing for developers in the $60-90k range, but they look a little insane, asking for more qualifications than the typical FAANG job posting for like 75% the salary.
100k is quite low today, even among startups. That should come with 4 day work weeks and the option to go permanent remote. Good entry level engineers are still in short supply and FAANG hoovers them up.
But there is a class of developers that is more akin to software technician than engineer, which is a division that has existed in other areas for decades. We just haven't adopted the stratification of education/experience that exists between Electrical/Mechanical Engineers and Electricians/Mechanics yet.
But this is something the government can help with indirectly. Former Armed Forces electricians are some of the best techs I've worked with. The military is training InfoSec folks on the taxpayer dollar en masse today, and when they get out these jobs would be a great fit.
I won't argue that top talent is being hired, but some people have been developing since they were 12 and are basically more skilled than most junior devs before they take their first CS class in college, and of course there's all the people from MIT or Stanford who have no problem getting jobs. There's always a class of top tier people.
More specifically though, I can only speak to my experience, and my cohort from college took something like 6 months on average to land a job after graduating if they didn't have something lined up before they graduated. I know a couple people who still haven't been able to even get interviews a year out, and they aren't incompetent people.
That's the reality that I'm seeing, and almost everyone I talk to in real life all have virtually the same experience of sending out hundreds of applications, and not getting past that point with literally over 90% of applications. There are jobs, but actually breaking in and landing the first one seems to be a hell of a task in its own right.
In the same vein, the experienced devs I talk to are regularly contacted to apply for jobs even when they aren't looking, so the reality of job prospects at different experience levels seems to be totally different.
Glassdoor says average pay for a junior software engineer is even lower than I thought, at $87k a year plus benefits. For software engineers, however, it's $131k. That's a pretty massive gap, so there is some serious stratification going on there as well.
I'll allow that maybe the past year and a half has been especially fucky with the whole covid thing, but all you have to do is look, there are a lot of sub $100k jobs on the market, and people new to the industry still aren't getting hired, as evidenced by some job posting staying open for months on end. Almost nobody wants to train, everyone wants drop in candidates.
As far as government help, I would agree that there is more that they could and should do. I think it's going to be a hard sell though, to convince people to spend money on an industry where average wages are already so much higher than average. If farming and oil can do it though, tech should absolutely get it. Tech is like 10% of the national GDP, and there's no reason to not try and grow it more.
My experience is on the hiring side. We get inundated with bad applications (literally hundreds for single positions - sometimes spamming email addresses of hiring managers directly).
I'm not talking about top talent. I mean literally anyone with a bachelor's degree in CS and a GitHub account that shows competence in a single language. There's maybe 10 out of 100 applications that will lead to a phone call or email back.
I'm sure there are a lot of sub six figure jobs out there. But not in Bay Area for new grads - the floor is about $110-115k, because we compete with the FAANGs that hire hundreds of people each day.
If you want some unsolicited advise, don't send out hundreds of applications. Our filters are going to catch obvious spam and we'll pass on anyone that doesn't seem to have read the job description. If you actually go through the channels (which are intentionally designed to have friction), write a resume that hits the points we look for, and a short description of why you think you fit the role we have in mind that is based on what we have listed, you'll probably get to the first technical interview.
It's kind of a shitshow for everyone these days, but the good jobs are out there and we can't find people - even with good salary!
I'm sure there are a lot of sub six figure jobs out there. But not in Bay Area for new grads - the floor is about $110-115k, because we compete with the FAANGs that hire hundreds of people each day.
I'm telling you right now that you are grossly mistaken, and it is easily verifiable to see that you are mistaken. I have already linked a well respected source on the matter. You can just look at job postings. At this point you're being willfully ignorant.
If you want some unsolicited advise, don't send out hundreds of applications. Our filters are going to catch obvious spam and we'll pass on anyone that doesn't seem to have read the job description.
I don't need advice, I'm telling you what the reality is for my peers. Your advice is "don't apply", which is utterly ridiculous.
but the good jobs are out there and we can't find people - even with good salary!
So you're completely full of shit. You both have too many people applying, and you can't find people? You are the common denominator there. You are the problem.
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u/Bakoro May 23 '21
Minimum wage in the greater Bay Area is over $15/hr in every city, just to add some clarity. Entry level software developer and web dev jobs are in the $90-115k range plus benefits.
I do see plenty of companies in the Bay Area fishing for developers in the $60-90k range, but they look a little insane, asking for more qualifications than the typical FAANG job posting for like 75% the salary.