7 replies to this topic

[Scroty McBalls]

I am working on a project about my future for my English Comp. class and I was hoping you guys could answer a few questions. I'd really appreciate it.

1. What do you think is the average salary for people in the programming field? (This is not necessarily your salary, just what you believe to be average.)

2. Compared to other careers, how available are jobs in the programming field?

3. Do you think that, in the future, jobs in this field will be available or scarce compared to their current availability?

Thanks in advance to everyone who answers.

[BlaineSch]

1. What do you think is the average salary for people in the programming field? (This is not necessarily your salary, just what you believe to be average.)

I believe it's based on experience, availability, and location. I'd probably say you start out around $35,000 to $45,000 a year.

2. Compared to other careers, how available are jobs in the programming field?

I find them rather scarce, however I don't live in the most populated areas on earth.

3. Do you think that, in the future, jobs in this field will be available or scarce compared to their current availability?

No, I only see them to grow, except I see them in different areas, the day you stop learning is the day you start to see the end of your job approaching.

[John]

Quote

I believe it's based on experience, availability, and location. I'd probably say you start out around $35,000 to $45,000 a year.

Woha, talk about underpaid. I could barley afford rent for that salary. It is definitely geographically dependent. A junior software engineer (fresh out of college) in New York, NY would start at about $70,000-$100,000/year.

[BlaineSch]

John said:

Woha, talk about underpaid. I could barley afford rent for that salary. It is definitely geographically dependent. A junior software engineer (fresh out of college) in New York, NY would start at about $70,000-$100,000/year.

You need to account that the cost of living is a ton higher in New York compared to Oklahoma (where I'm at), which is a major factor in how much you get paid, right?

[gregwarner]

Cost of living has a lot to do with it. I'm extremely underpaid, but Arkansas is an extremely cheap place to live. As for average salary, I would expect 40k a year to be minimum starting (based on average cost of living).

How available are the jobs? Less here than, say, in India. Programming jobs are more and more being outsourced due to cheaper labor overseas. Yes, there are still plenty of programming jobs here in America, but you have to work harder to get them than you used to.

The future? It's hard to say. I believe there will always be programming jobs, but some day, we will have sufficiently advanced natural language processing such that any problem could be described to the computer in plain English and the computer will be able to come up with a program to solve that problem. It's very iffy, but that's how I see it.

[John]

BlaineSch said:

You need to account that the cost of living is a ton higher in New York compared to Oklahoma (where I'm at), which is a major factor in how much you get paid, right?

Of course.

[BlaineSch]

$70,000 though? That's a dramatic difference. How much is a small apartment where you are at? I had a 1 bedroom apartment (550 square feet) for $475/month. With you're salary doubling I can assume it's close to twice that amount?

[John]

Easily $1000+