Quick salary question



  • Hello,

     what would be a reasonable salary range for a web application developer in the S.F. bay area?

    Specifics:

    • 5 years of industry experience
    • work would involve mainly ASP.NET
    • strictly in house, no costumer contact involved
    • small publicly traded company with international ambitions

    Reading ads, I got the impression that anything between 60-100k could be possible?

    Thank you for answering,

    Skurry



  • @Skurry said:

    Hello,

     what would be a reasonable salary range for a web application developer in the S.F. bay area?

    Specifics:

    • 5 years of industry experience
    • work would involve mainly ASP.NET
    • strictly in house, no costumer contact involved
    • small publicly traded company with international ambitions

    Reading ads, I got the impression that anything between 60-100k could be possible?

    Thank you for answering,

    Skurry

    I've just obtained ~$75k for "Software Engineer I" in the Bay Area, with only a BS in CS and two summer internship/co-op's worth of serious, full-time preprofessional experience. It's not Web App development per se, and I don't know what the rest of your resume looks like, but if you have 5 years of experience, and are generally pretty well-qualified, I suspect you would be able to surpass this...



  • I don't think he's looking for a job.  He's looking to hire.  That's why he knows what the work involves, that there is no customer contact, and details about the company.



  • Actually, I was contacted by said company. The interesting thing is, I live in Germany, and they are looking for someone to work for them in their bay area office. The CEO happened to be in Germany two weeks ago and asked me if I could meet him then. For various reasons, I would only consider this move if it would be a financial improvement for me, so I wanted to figure out if it would be worth the two hour drive to meet him. So I asked him flat out what the compensation range would be, but of course he avoided that question. So I posted it here.

    I went to see him, anyways, and he said something like that the salary wouldn't be a problem, i.e. I would be making more than I am now (developing J2EE applications in the banking sector), plus a little extra to compensate for the higher cost of living there.

    Now I'm basically waiting for an offer or a refusal...



  • @Skurry said:

    I went to see him, anyways, and he said something like that the salary wouldn't be a problem, i.e. I would be making more than I am now (developing J2EE applications in the banking sector), plus a little extra to compensate for the higher cost of living there.

    The bay area is very expensive, so it had better be a lot extra. There are few places in the world where everything is as overpriced as it is there.



  • @asuffield said:

    The bay area is very expensive, so it had better be a lot extra. There are few places in the world where everything is as overpriced as it is there.

    Tell me about it. I lived there for six months in the summer of 2001, paying USD 800 per month for a small furnished room in a crappy house with cardboard walls, about the same I am paying now for a 700 sqft flat with a lovely view of Lake Constance and the Alps. I have the equivalent of USD 70k now, but that only nets to about 42k after taxes, social insurances and state pension. I'll have to do some calculations to see what I would need in CA to get even.

    But the thought of escaping the "enterprisey" world of application servers and "sophisticated" XML subsystem interfaces to do more straight forward stuff like ASP.NET and even a little HTML editing, for the same money... There may be a chance that this will hurt my career, and even ASP.NET will have its pitfalls, I'm sure, but somebody wise said you should turn to something completely different every five years. We'll see.



  • Quick update: Got offered 100k and accepted after doing a lot of thinking and calculation. If I get the visa (should be easy), I'm there in August. :D



  • One thing to look at is the tax situation between the two countries; because you'll be in Germany for part of the year and here for part, you'll probably be responsible for paying taxes in both countries -- and you might even have to pay German taxes on your US earnings (it seems to vary from country to country).  This can really eat into that extra money you'd be making, so it's definitely worth looking into before you make your final decision.  


    100K for a web dev job? I can hear CPound's head exploding from here :)

    -cw



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    100K for a web dev job? I can hear CPound's head exploding from here :)

    3-4 months ago, I would have been furious. Considering a) the location and b) the current job market, this fellow is just breaking even where he's going. I don't envy him at all.

    I currently make well over 100K in my present management position, and after my latest experiences, I don't envy my position either.

    More money helps, but in my experience it tends to bring more headaches. The more you make the more is expected of you. Especially as a manager. I'm thinking of ditching the whole mgmt. thing and going back to being a developer. Pays less, but less stress.


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