One of the big problems with this, in my experience, is the fuzziness of job titles in IT, combined with the flatness of hierarchies. "Senior" developer can mean pretty well anything - you can be a senior developer at 27, because you have 5 years experience in one technology area, or you can be a senior developer at 40 with 5 years experience in a wide range of things - but you still might have a job title of "senior developer" unless you take on labels like "architect*" or roles like "team lead" or "dev lead" or whatever the specific company you work for calls "someone who no longer gets to practice the craft of coding 100% of the time".
Of course, this means the distribution of salaries for senior developers is a very strange curve, with a huge hump around the time when most developers get promoted to "senior" because they are evidently no longer "junior", and a very long tail of people who keep the "senior developer" job title, but also manage to get continual salary increases. I think the "what should I be paid?" question really doesn't relate to job title at all - you should be asking "what would I be paid if I moved elsewhere?" (which is almost always more than you are currently getting) combined with "how much of that am I willing to sacrifice because I like my job / don't like the risk of the new job being crap / don't like the risk of being unemployed". Which is still fuzzy, sorry! (I gave up on being a senior developer a few years ago, as I could see the writing on the wall, so I'm a "Dev Lead" now - but I still desperately cling to my right to write code!) - Korny p.s. I left out the subject of Consultants, who also distort the salary curve considerably, because this rant was getting over-long already. * I was going to link to Martin Fowler's excellent article on software architects, but martinfowler.com seems to be down... On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Sebastian von Conrad < sebastian.von.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello RoRO, > > Been lurking here for a while and thought this might be an ideal place > to ask a question that's been on my mind for some time. > > A couple of weeks from now, I'm getting promoted to a senior developer > position within my company. In the past six months, I've moved from > being an indian in the development team to being its chieftain, and > I'm going to get a title to go with the additional responsibilities. > > With the promotion comes a salary increase as well, and it's here > where my question is. > > I don't know what the going rate for senior developers in Australia > is, salary-wise. > > I have only lived here for a little more than a year, and this is my > first gig. Naturally, I'd like to make sure that my salary is > competitive with the market, so I'd appreciate any feedback from > employers and employees alike with regards to this. > > Locality doesn't really matter. We're a company with offices in > various cities, and our salaries shouldn't really depend on where in > Australia I work. My current salary shouldn't be a factor, either, as > it's a very different position and a lot has changed in the company > and the team since I started. > > The few job opportunities that have salary ranges here *seem* to > indicate that somewhere around 70-100K per year would be normal, but > I'd love to have as much info from as many sources as possible. That > way, I can make sure I have some leverage when I talk to my boss(es) > about it. > > Best, > Sebastian > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to rails-ocea...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > rails-oceania+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<rails-oceania%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- Kornelis Sietsma korny at my surname dot com kornys on twitter/fb/gtalk/gwave www.sietsma.com/korny "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to rails-ocea...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rails-oceania+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
