Standard modern salary for an Erlang programmer?

[G.S.-2]

Hello everyone,

What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer with a few years of experience, based in USA?
Java is 70-90k, and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less known, and essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into the future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.

Can anyone throw a few numbers at me that are currently working in the industry using Erlang?

Thanks,
-Gene

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[Logan, Martin]

I don’t think there is an average salary yet. Erlang usage in my experience here in the US is still limited to first time projects at most companies.  The language has not yet been incorporated on a broad scale as a standard part of operations for most companies.  Therefore it depends largely on the varying business values that individual Erlang projects present to the companies that have decided to use it.  Very senior people that are coming in to architect and provide guidance can pull in over 6 figure equivalent contracts or even salaries, less senior people or those that are just learning, less.  My point is, that don’t count on a salary of this or that range.  Erlang should not be your bread and butter at this point. If you are one of the few of us lucky enough to do a long full time Erlang stint then good for you – but have a backup and base your salary expectations of other factors besides what other Erlang programmers have managed to make.

 

---

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of G.S.
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 9:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [erlang-questions] Standard modern salary for an Erlang programmer?

 

Hello everyone,

What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer with a few years of experience, based in USA?
Java is 70-90k, and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less known, and essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into the future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.

Can anyone throw a few numbers at me that are currently working in the industry using Erlang?

Thanks,
-Gene

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[Richard O'Keefe]

On 25 Mar 2009, at 3:22 am, G.S. wrote:
> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer  
> with a few years of experience, based in USA?
> Java is 70-90k,

Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.

> and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less known, and  
> essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into the  
> future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the  
> salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.

Double wow.  That's _unimaginable_ wealth.
Do we seriously expect pay rates like these to continue in
the global depression?  We're seeing a lot of big companies
telling their consultants and employees to take 10% pay cuts,
and I don't suppose the pay cuts have stopped yet.

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[Michael Ossareh]

2009/3/24 G.S. <[hidden email]>:
> Hello everyone,
>
> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer with a few
> years of experience, based in USA?
> Java is 70-90k, and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less
> known, and essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into
> the future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the
> salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.

As far as I've managed to work out salary is dependent on the industry
first, the tools second, the company third.

In the accounting/banking industry you're likely to get paid more to
code server side java in a well established company than doing the
same in a web site creation industry.

I know a system admin who wrote everything in perl and worked for a
huge mobile content distribution company that got paid far in excess
of me as a java coder. Simply the company he worked for had more money
coming in.

For a lot of industries you'll, unfortunately, find it hard to find
erlang accepted commonly. Smaller companies are more likely, in the
near term, to accept erlang - and as such you'll probably find it
harder to get bigger salaries.

Clearly there are going to be exceptions to this so limit the flames :)

I often find myself wondering if learning dying languages is a better
way to get paid more than learning new languages that gain popularity.
Cobol in banking anyone? =)

>
> Can anyone throw a few numbers at me that are currently working in the
> industry using Erlang?
>
> Thanks,
> -Gene
>
> _______________________________________________
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[Kevin Scaldeferri]

On Mar 25, 2009, at 6:45 PM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:

>
> On 25 Mar 2009, at 3:22 am, G.S. wrote:
>> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer
>> with a few years of experience, based in USA?
>> Java is 70-90k,
>
> Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.

No one has ever claimed that teaching at university was the road to  
riches.  FWIW, I was offered about double that recently for a Java  
position, but in an industry and for a company which made the money  
not worth it for me. (Oh, and, ugh, Java)



>
>
>> and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less known, and
>> essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into the
>> future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the
>> salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.
>


 From what I can tell, salary depends much less on the programming  
language, and much more on the programmer and the company.  Some  
programmers will never be worth that much to any company.  Some  
companies will never be able to afford to pay that much to any  
programmer.  Also, networking and contacts matter a lot.  You are  
likely worth more to people who know you already than to people who  
only have a couple hours of interactions on which to judge you.


-kevin
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[Jeffm-3]

Michael Ossareh wrote:
> I often find myself wondering if learning dying languages is a better
> way to get paid more than learning new languages that gain popularity.
> Cobol in banking anyone? =)
>
>  
I've heard the samething. And it's not just banking there's at least one
organisation in town that has its payroll system on something in written
Cobol of all things.

To get back on topic. It'd be interested in any info on peoples
experiences salary wise even from past jobs. I think that the original
poster in dreaming and what a nice dream a salary like that would be.
Almost enough to make me move to the US...almost.

You right about the industry being the determining factor in salaries,
but the industry will quite often have an excepted list of languages
which you can use. If it's not explicitly stated it's at least implied.
So if you wish to use a cool language you may be limiting yourself in
your industry choice. They have to make you suffer to justify paying
you, it's important to be seen to be busy not to be productive :-).

Jeff.


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[Richard Carlsson-2]

Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> On 25 Mar 2009, at 3:22 am, G.S. wrote:
>> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer  
>> with a few years of experience, based in USA?
>> Java is 70-90k,
>
> Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.

Are you sure about that calculation? That would mean a lecturer
in NZ makes just a little more than a Swedish graduate student,
which seems... weird.

Anyway, it's hard to compare income in different countries,
and doubly so if one of them is the US. About ten years ago,
I (then a graduate student) visited an old friend who had moved
to the US, got a Master's degree, and was living in the Bay
Area. Working with user interface design, she (then) made something
like 60-65k$/year, which was almost twice what I made at home.
But once I had picked up my jaw and looked at her standard of
living, it was apparent that I was not much worse off. The taxes
in the US are low (a mere rounding error, by Swedish standards),
but once she had paid the extortionate housing costs, and 17 kinds
of insurance, there was not much left of that salary.

     /Richard Carlsson
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> >> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer
> >> with a few years of experience, based in USA?
> >> Java is 70-90k,
> >
> > Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.
>
> Are you sure about that calculation? That would mean a lecturer
> in NZ makes just a little more than a Swedish graduate student,
> which seems... weird.
And that means that a Swedish graduate student makes 1.5-2 times more
than a software developer at a big company (like Ericsson) in Hungary,
and 2-4 times more than a Hungarian university lecturer.

Oh, and these numbers are gross, and the net salary you have in Hungary
is ~ 50% of your gross.

Of course, the above ratios are results of very imprecise
approximations. We're talking about the "more than" the "about half"
of "70-90k" USD, but still, the NZ university lecturer's salary is
believable.

There are huge differences between countries, and you can not compare
salaries because the living costs are also way different.

If you also compare the salaries in India or China or other countries in
Asia to Sweden or the US, you can easily find 10x differences or more.

        Georgy
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[Richard Carlsson-2]

Andras Georgy Bekes wrote:
>>>> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer
>>>> with a few years of experience, based in USA? Java is 70-90k,
>>> Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.
>> Are you sure about that calculation? That would mean a lecturer
>> in NZ makes just a little more than a Swedish graduate student,
>> which seems... weird.
> And that means that a Swedish graduate student makes 1.5-2 times more
> than a software developer at a big company (like Ericsson) in Hungary,
> and 2-4 times more than a Hungarian university lecturer.

Sure; it's just that I could expect that for Hungary, given the recent
history of eastern Europe. I thought NZ would be more similar to UK,
Australia, or Sweden, in which case a decent lecturer salary would be
around 35-40k GBP (50-60k USD) per year (and probably more in Oz),
but that was apparently wrong. ...Digging up some statistics, I see that
a top teaching salary in NZ would be 70k NZD, i.e., around 40k USD/year.
Maybe it's a good time to do some travelling...

    /Richard

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[Jon Gretar Borgthorsson]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:43 AM, Michael Ossareh <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I often find myself wondering if learning dying languages is a better
> way to get paid more than learning new languages that gain popularity.
> Cobol in banking anyone? =)

Yup... My feelings excactly. You can either focus on Java and have a
50% chance of having to write at least 4 different CMS's in your
life.....
Or you can focus on ADA and program the Space Shuttle.

Pick.

 - Jon Gretar
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[Adam Lindberg-2]

----- "Jon Gretar Borgthorsson" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Or you can focus on ADA and program the Space Shuttle.
>
> Pick.

I'd love to get bug reports from space.

Cheers,
Adam
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[Mihai Balea]

On Mar 26, 2009, at 11:04 AM, Jon Gretar Borgthorsson wrote:

>
> Yup... My feelings excactly. You can either focus on Java and have a
> 50% chance of having to write at least 4 different CMS's in your
> life.....
> Or you can focus on ADA and program the Space Shuttle.
>
> Pick.

Actually the Space Shuttle code is written in a specialized language  
called HAL/S (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S)

I'm sure you could write some nuclear ICBM control code in ADA...

But we diverge :)

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[Michael Ossareh]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Kevin Scaldeferri
<[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> On Mar 25, 2009, at 6:45 PM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
>
>>
>> On 25 Mar 2009, at 3:22 am, G.S. wrote:
>>> What's a standard, good average salary for the Erlang programmer
>>> with a few years of experience, based in USA?
>>> Java is 70-90k,
>>
>> Wow.  That's about double what I make as a university lecturer.
>
> No one has ever claimed that teaching at university was the road to
> riches.  FWIW, I was offered about double that recently for a Java
> position, but in an industry and for a company which made the money
> not worth it for me. (Oh, and, ugh, Java)
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> and I read online that since us Erlangers, being a less known, and
>>> essential for writing software that scales, and will scale into the
>>> future, is much higher. I seem to find various blogs that state the
>>> salary in 2008 was anywhere from 99k to 180k.
>>
>
>
>  From what I can tell, salary depends much less on the programming
> language, and much more on the programmer and the company.  Some
> programmers will never be worth that much to any company.  Some
> companies will never be able to afford to pay that much to any
> programmer.

I've found the opposite to be true in my experience. I have certainly
earned 50% more than a *much* better programmer in my past simply
because I had the balls to ask for a lot more. This is an example of
the third variable in my OP. The company was a fairly large startup
that had raised too much VC and needed to spend it - I did my company
due diligence before starting the interview process and knew how much
I could ask for.

In another case I was pretty much running every single campaign from a
tech impl POV and reporting angle for a small SMS-marketing firm, and
I was one of the lowest paid. The company 100% depended on me for
every day operations and I was on the
slightly-better-than-intern-salary I'd joined on 12 months previous.

> Also, networking and contacts matter a lot.  You are
> likely worth more to people who know you already than to people who
> only have a couple hours of interactions on which to judge you.

This is so very true!

>
>
> -kevin
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[Richard O'Keefe]

What this really means, of course, is that if you want
well-educated English-speaking programmers for less
money, get your programming done in New Zealand!

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[Yves S. Garret]

This seems like a silly suggestion, but why not roll your own
business? Facebook with Yaws? A proprietary middle-ware library for
IPC?
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[Jeffm-3]

I've been thinking for the we should keep a public list of project that
we would be interested in seeing done in Erlang.

Some examples I've been thinking of,

* wiki
* CMS
* ticketing system similar to request tracker (aka rt)
* anti spam tools. Can never have enough good anti-spam tools these days.
* a module for handling configuration files and reloading them. I was
going to ask about this in a seperate email as I keep stumbling at this
point was wondering how others handle this.
* Tool for intergration with sysv init.d script, debian and redhat
package building and management, in short tools to integrate with the OS
more fully
* continuing the last point: interface to sytem calls. eg, my own
erlang_inotify, or a port/module for iptables. just imagine being about
to point to a home gateways/routers and  being able to say you wrote
some of the code that runs on that.
* protocol implementations
* secure messaging for Erlang messages
* hardened Erlang (wonder what this would look like).
* anything mentioned about 5 times that no-one ever seem to get around
to doing :-)

There are many others. Now most of these aren't something to build a
start-up around, but these will develope your erlang skills and build
your reputation as a reliable and serious Erlang developer which in turn
will help you land the next erlang job you see and command a higher
salary. It will also help Erlangs wider adoption.

One final point: if you publish a clean API to some of these project, eg
the CMS and ticketing system, it would then be a trival matter for the
person or team deploying to seemlessly integrate two or more project as
subsystems to a larger system even if these subsystem run on different
nodes. To continue the CMS/ticketing integration example, if your
company had a policy policy to review any wiki edits you could trigger
the creation of a ticket fro the task with out going via some other
system which is not well suited to the task, eg email.

Jeff.


Yves S. Garret wrote:
> This seems like a silly suggestion, but why not roll your own
> business? Facebook with Yaws? A proprietary middle-ware library for
> IPC?
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[mats cronqvist-5]

Jon Gretar Borgthorsson <[hidden email]> writes:

> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:43 AM, Michael Ossareh <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I often find myself wondering if learning dying languages is a better
>> way to get paid more than learning new languages that gain popularity.
>> Cobol in banking anyone? =)
>
> Yup... My feelings excactly. You can either focus on Java and have a
> 50% chance of having to write at least 4 different CMS's in your
> life.....
> Or you can focus on ADA and program the Space Shuttle.

  Although I agree with the sentiment here, it seems you're calling
  Java "a new language that's gaining popularity." Surely Java is
  the Cobol of the '00s?
 
  Maybe it's time to put FORTRAN77 back on the CV.

  mats
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[Jeffm-3]

Knowing dead languages seems to pay well. At least in computing.

Here's a recent ad for a Cobol job in ACT, Australia.

Telon Coolgen Cobol Specialist
Salary:  $180,000
12 month contract

http://www.seek.com.au/users/apply/index.ascx?Sequence=94&PageNumber=1&JobID=15166601


Jeff.


mats cronqvist wrote:

>
>   Although I agree with the sentiment here, it seems you're calling
>   Java "a new language that's gaining popularity." Surely Java is
>   the Cobol of the '00s?
>  
>   Maybe it's time to put FORTRAN77 back on the CV.
>
>   mats
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[David Mitchell-5-2]

You need to understand that this is a role that (a) not many people will be qualified to fill, (b) most who could fill it will have been coding for 20+ years, (c) it's a contract rate, so no holiday pay, paid sick leave, health insurance, etc. - you have to foot these out of your own pocket, (d) it probably involves relocating to Canberra, which is not something to take lightly, (e) a lot of those who would be qualified technically would not be interested in it, and (f) it's almost certainly going to primarily maintaining code written many years ago, by people who either left or retired years ago.

I'm sure the last horse-and-buggy manufacturer enjoyed a long lucrative career maintaining stuff made by his former competitors.  He would've been the last one left with a skill that hadn't quite died, and therefore had a monopoly position servicing demand from the remaining few who hadn't yet switched to cars.  Hopefully he had enough pride in his work and the near-complete lack of ambition that would've been required to make it enjoyable; I know I couldn't have done it.

I'm so old that I have not-particularly-fond memories of doing support coding in COBOL back in the early 80s.  It would take considerably more than this rate to have me interested in reliving those times, in Canberra of all places.

Dave M.

2009/3/28 jm <[hidden email]>

Knowing dead languages seems to pay well. At least in computing.

Here's a recent ad for a Cobol job in ACT, Australia.

Telon Coolgen Cobol Specialist
Salary:  $180,000
12 month contract

http://www.seek.com.au/users/apply/index.ascx?Sequence=94&PageNumber=1&JobID=15166601


Jeff.

mats cronqvist wrote:
>
>   Although I agree with the sentiment here, it seems you're calling
>   Java "a new language that's gaining popularity." Surely Java is
>   the Cobol of the '00s?
>
>   Maybe it's time to put FORTRAN77 back on the CV.
>
>   mats
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[Jouni Rynö]

On Thu, 2009-03-26 at 15:30 +0000, Adam Lindberg wrote:
> ----- "Jon Gretar Borgthorsson" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Or you can focus on ADA and program the Space Shuttle.
> >
> > Pick.
>
> I'd love to get bug reports from space.
>
No, you don't ... And Shuttle is human! space flight ... I would not
like to do medical software either ...

But programming for space is indeed fun :)
Jouni


> Cheers,
> Adam
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