Where are software developers paid the most? The answer depends on two factors: raw salary and cost of living. When a raw salary is combined with a cost of living index an adjusted salary can be determined. The adjusted salary represents the actual buying power of a salary. As an example, it costs 65.7% more to live in Oakland than Phoenix. This means that a developer earning $50,000 in Phoenix would have the same buying power as a developer earning $82,870 in Oakland. This difference in cost of living becomes a wash if developers in Oakland do in fact earn 65.7% more than those in Phoenix. A bit about the numbers... The cost of living index is based on 100 being the average score. A score of 110 means the cost of living is 10% greater than average while a socre of 90 means a cost of living less than average. I took the average software developer salary and adjusted them based on the cost of living to determine the adjusted salary that indicates the true buying power of the average developer in each city. All salary data comes from the Department of Labor for 2005. http://www.delatores.com/blog/default.aspx?id=14&t=Top-10-Best-Worst-Cities-For-Software Houston ranks fourth overall and #1 when adjusting salary to cost of living. Austin is 9th overall and #2 in adjusted salary.
Wow, that is very interesting. I'm a CS major, and I always thought Dallas is the place to go for software works in Texas. I guess now I have a reason to come back to Houston.
Good to hear... I'm about to graduate from UT with a Computer Engineering degree with a focus on Software. I've been planning to stay in Austin or Houston if I can... this gives me even more reason to do so...!
What's weird is that I look for job postings in Houston for software-related positions and Houston just doesn't have that many when compared to tech centers like Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, etc. I'll give you an example : go to computerjobs.com and search for Windows Developer positions. Filter by Texas. You can further filter by city. If you filter by Houston you get 44. Note that Dallas has so many postings, it's split up into cities : Dallas, DFW Airport area, Addison, Richardson, Plano, and if you want to throw FT. Worth in there, go for it. If you choose "Dallas" alone, you get something like 120+ jobs. That's not counting all the other 'burbs. Hell, Atlanta by itself has over 500 postings - more than the entire state of Texas on this particular job site. It's one thing to make more, but if you can't get a job, you ain't gonna make more. I wouldn't mind moving back to Houston some day, but this is about the only thing stopping me now. I need to check out places like dice and elsewhere to see how many positions are available in comparison.
Dallas and Austin have been the 2 tech centers in Texas for the past decade or more, and they really still are. The problem now is that you have a lot of influx of people from out of state (Cali, Oklahoma, Florida, etc.) taking a lot of the jobs here, so the competition for jobs has gone up thanks to that influx as well as the telecom/dot com bust. This reduces the salary in the area - I've noticed this over the past 5 or so years. Jobs that were paying $75/hr now "only" pay $40/hr. for example.
That's true. All said and done, Dallas still has one of the largest high-tech areas in the United States. And another reason for the lower salary is that we now has a lot more CS/SE/CE graduates than 5 or 6 years ago.
Not for .NET developers. The current market here in Austin is $90k-$110k for JUNIOR LEVEL .NET programmers. It's crazy. From what I understand, the .NET craze is not as strong yet on either coast, so few developers will be relocating from there. And if it catches fire there also, it will be a while before the supply/demand and thus salaries reach some kind of equilibrium.
I also do not see income levels for those kind of jobs. Developing has really started to fade in my opinion and I think that jobs in that area are going to become fewer and fewer. Too many IT pros understand programming and the days of being a developer with no other skills is going to be a thing of the past. Of course there will always be high level programming but with the way most programming has gone "visual" and with the ability to google tons of code, making simple to medium difficult apps and/or scripts is way too easy.
I agree. Programming is pretty blue collar right now. The real salary from what I have seen for .Net in Austin is 40-55. And there doesn't seem to be much room for advancement in programming at most companies, there are programmers at my job that have been here 20 years and still don't make 6 figures. I really need to quit
Software development doesn't just implies coding though. Most of coding jobs has been sent overseas now. But the design jobs are still here. So-called software development now days is basically build the use case, gather requirements, write the UML, and send them to India.
Why, you been hiring lately? We've been hiring/paying this and others concur. As for contract work, we've been paying an experienced developer $80/hr and it's challenging to find good ones in the $60-75/hr range. Find your own job.
Have you been looking around at all lately? It's obscene. One start-up CIO/Developer that I was speaking with had one applicant (e.g.) who was little more than an Access developer (using the term loosely) turned .NET developer and he wouldn't accept less than $90k ... and he had other offers. Any of these $40-$55k .NET developers any good? And I mean architect tyeps. Fluent in C#? I'll take 1 now and give'm a nice raise. Do you attend ADNUG?
overall, this is true. However, based on what i've seen, i don't think it's true for entry-level software people. Houston has been pretty low overall and adjusted for entry-level sw of late..
I've seen .Net developers with a wide range of salaries lately, so you're probably right. But I can tell you now there are .Net positions in Houston and the DFW area that pay $85-$100k, but there are also ones that pay $45-$75k. I think the prices for developers in that area need to stabilize. It's getting to the point I don't think anybody knows what they're worth anymore. lol. I guess you're a recruiter? Have you seen a bunch of people from California and elsewhere enter the Austin market? I'm just curious. They're invading the DFW area like fleas on a dog. They're jacking property values up, but taking jobs at the same time. Hehe.
Feels like that sometimes but nope. ISV struggling to find competent, reasonably affordable .NET developers. Know any?
