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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

That's insane. Are you in a small market or something?

That's what I was thinking. $45K is absurd for an engineering job, so it's gotta be in a place like Kansas.

I worked in Kansas and made 45k at a small agency. It was one of the larger college towns and I worked my way up from $12/hr as the company grew, thanks to my help.

Rural Kansas dev might aspire to 45k but even then. I think they might just live in a small town and don’t want to look for work elsewhere. Which is fine, just know the salary comes with the territory. Half the reasons tech pays what it does is because a lot of the jobs are in expensive cities.

I was in a medium sized city with college and engineering firms. I've moved to a major metro for my first job and then several times since for my partner, to non-tech heavy cities as their career is more specialized and isn't available everywhere.

Current city has repressed wages across the board. It's a place with a "low cost of living" and several universities that pump out local students who want to stay here at any cost and a very healthy foreign worker scene.

Currently, I'm willing to move.

Even $45k sounds ridiculously low if you have a few years of experience. Is there any reason you haven't tried getting a remote job? I can't imagine anywhere even offering less than $60k for someone with a few years and is remote (and is US based).

I made less than that starting in a small city (just under a million in the MSA) in a poor state working for the state government (one of the employers constantly hiring and willing to take a chance on an uneducated kid with a couple of years of freelance experience) and this was after mass applying to positions all over the country.

There were a ton of issues on my part and things I still don’t understand and can only ascribe to chronic poor luck, though I won’t go into it all in this particular comment. I make better money now, more than most people my age probably make on average, but probably significantly less than most developers with similar experience. I probably won’t be able to recover the rough start which is likely annoying seeming as for the amount of money I’m likely to cap out at I probably could have done something much more interesting.

I make better money now, more than most people my age probably make on average, but probably significantly less than most developers with similar experience

You might be surprised. The salaries reported in this forum are higher than normal, because of the large membership from the west coast/FAANG.

Here in the DC suburbs, I'd expect a non-FAANG developer without a TS/poly to earn $100k-$150k (straight out of college, more like $85k-$100k). Add a TS/poly, working in a SCIF for a 3-letter agency or military, add $20k-$50k to the ends of that range. Yes, many earn more, either working for a FAANG in the area, or in niche areas, or in some sort of management/ownership/partnership arrangement (BAH consultants, etc).

Your story sounds a lot like mine.

I'd say unless you have really experienced it first hand, or know someone who has, it is hard explaining to others how having a short stent of misfortune can really snowball and keep you down. As much as we hear the great fortune of those that get lucky at the right time, we never hear about those that miss out at the wrong time.

I spent the first two years of my post college time deeply unemployed and then severely underpaid for a few months. I get it. I had to interview with about 80 companies and do over 15 half-day or full-day onsites to get an okay job. Even that job was terrible in its own ways and I left only a year or so later.

So, I get it. I just don’t get the part where it seems like you’ve given up.

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