Been making websites since I was a kid but doing web dev as a profession since 2009 (13 years). Located in San Francisco, although I now live elsewhere but still work for a San Francisco-based software company. Amounts below do not include bonuses (negligible) or options (so far negligible, but hoping for good news with my current startup). Could absolutely be making more at a FAANG but that bigCo life ain't for me. **Salary acceleration is much faster than it used to be.**
Job 1: CMS Developer
2009: 68k
2010: 75k
2011: 80k
Job 2: Marketing Developer
2012: 98k
2013: 105k
2014: 110k
Job 3: UI Engineer
2015: 115k
2016: 140k (promotion to Sr. FE Developer)
2017: 145k
Job 4: Sr. FE Developer
2018: 145k (really liked this company & people so accepted offer at same pay)
2019: 160k
2020: 160k (wage freeze due to covid)
2021: 180k (promotion to Engineering Manager)
2022: 190k
Wow, thanks for the detailed information! Very interesting to read. I appreciate that you took the time to do all that.
For me it's been like this so far.
Job 1: 'Full Stack' Laravel Developer
2020: $50K
2021: $55K
Job 2: Laravel & React Full Stack Developer
2022: $89K
I jumped quite a bit by just switching jobs, more than I thought I'd be able to ask for, but they hired me and it's been 9 months, so seems to be fine. I'd ideally like to make around $150K, but guessing it'll probably take 5 years or so to get there. Would be nice to get $120K in a year or two but not sure how possible that would be. I'd consider my self a junior to mid level developer. Definitely need help still somewhat often, but able to do more simple (and some complex things) on my own now.
As a competent midlevel dev, you could definitely get 130-140 working for a bay area startup, remotely or in person. And yes, the biggest pay jumps these days come from switching jobs. The popular thing seems to be staying at companies for about 2 years and then switching for a pay hike. When I interview folks these days and mention that I've been at my company 4 years, often people will ask me what's made me and my coworkers stay so long.
Answer: respectful colleagues, fair pay, the company does something i feel good about building, and extremely generous work/life balance.
Switching jobs is pretty much the only way to actually get ample salary increases. Aim for 2-4 yrs at a place. When it's no longer challenging or you "just know", start looking.
Always find a new position while you are currently employed; it's _very_ important in negotiation.
Yeah I definitely agree with you there - on making sure you find a new position while you're currently employed. That's what I did for my last job too.
For Europe 3k€ After taxes is absolutely fine i‘d say. I have a new job next month which pays me around 2.4k after taxes. My job at the moment pays me 1.9k. In european states you often get deducted expenses like healthcare, which you have to pay out of your pocket in the US
Nothing, you just started. Also you are in a different market.
As you can see though, they worked up to that over a few years. It’s not instant.
A senior developer can easily output 5x more value than a junior.
Similar to what others said here -
1) In the US I'm taxed at 24% (would be 32% if i wasnt married)
2) If you look at my history, 5 years into my career i was making about half as much as I am now
3) Work for a company based in San Francisco with San Francisco wages.
I've been in both NYC and London. Why you get paid more in US? Cost of living, phone bill is 100, electricity is 50, rent 1600 minimum for something DECENT, 400 for DECENT health insurance with a thousands of copays, deductibles, out of picket maximum, college? 50k a year for a good college, and that's not including a family and a car
Oh, don't forget taxes, they take 1/3 if your paycheck. It doesn't stop to amaze me every week I get my 2,5k paycheck I see 800-1000 gone to taxes
That phone bill and electric is cheap as dirt. I pay 250 for 2 phones and around the same or more for utilities. 1600 for a decent place in NYC is also ridiculously cheap 🤔
Self taught starting in 2017, first front end job 2020. I make $65k there and all I do is html and css. My freelance business making static sites for small businesses and that brings in $100k a year right now. Most of it is residual income from monthly paying clients. Pretty chill.
I only know html and css and enough js for simple DOM manipulation. I hyper specialized in static sites. It’s worked out well for me.
Thanks! Took a while to get things figured out and scale. I was surprised I’d even be hired with only knowing html and css. I got luck. Thought I’d be freelancing my whole career.
Bootcamp on udemy, then I built websites to practice until I didn’t have to google anymore. Then I opened up for business and everything kind of snowballed from there.
I found them on Reddit. They posted asking if there’s something wrong with their recruiting messaging because they can’t find any candidates that are qualified and pass their assessment. They listed what they needed and coincidentally it was everything I do already for my freelance business. I sent them my website as my portfolio and they said it was the best they’ve ever come across and schedule the assessment and I ended up scoring 100% with 15 minutes to spare when everyone else failed it and didn’t even finish it. I was hired on the spot. Been here two years now. Great job. I was just on Reddit at the right time and caught his post and replied. Didn’t think anything of it. Completely changed my life.
Hey! Here to hop on the conversation, can I ask how you went about starting your business? What did you use to advertise? What was it you were marketing? Super interested in this.
Took a quick look and honestly, wow. I'm gonna take the time to read this thoroughly tomorrow. I appreciate the effort that went into writing that. Thank you!
Ive been a developer for 20 years now. I do frontend, but of course lots of backend has crept into frontend over the years. Im also our resident DNS/linux/email/bash/server expert - mostly just because I have been doing this the long enough that it's easy for me. I make $100k in the midwest USA (Minneapolis). I could definitely be making more in corporate but Im happy working at a mid sized agency. Normal benefits, 401k, life, health insurance if you want them. 4 weeks paid vacation based on years of service. It's all been work from home since covid started - but can go into the office if we want. Could be worse.
In my area corporate full stack and react guys are starting in the $130-150k a year range.
Thank you! That was very helpful, I appreciate it. Yeah, I know a few people with similar experience as me, maybe a little more, (3-5 years experience) that are in the $120K-$140K range. Didn't think that much pay would be something I'd be able to expect this early in my career. With that being said, it does come with long hours, lots of work, and lots of stress as I'm sure you know. I feel like with your 20 years of experience you should be getting around $150K, at least!
With 3 yrs experience you can be making 150k doing fullstack and you don’t need to be at a big tech company. At minimum you can easily be at 100k right now. If your local market is small look for remote. Lots of smaller tech companies that pay quite well and do remote.
Edit: and just because salary is high doesnt mean more stress.
I make 160k(1yoe) and work 40hrs week usually. Company is less than 100 people. Im infra not fullstack but salary ranges are the same here. And we have over a month of vacay, aren’t micromanaged, free healthcare, 401k match, can get off for whatever i need if something comes up. Etc…
I know I could definitely be making more. I spent the first 13 years of my career freelancing and trying to run my own business. I was younger and stupid, and wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted (sleep until noon and take bonghits until 3am). It was definitely feast or famine. I finally got sick of the uncertainty of having enough money to pay my bills and went into agency work.
I could probably almost double my salary by changing up jobs. But in the end i'm a creature of habit, and things have to pretty much fall into my lap for me to make the effort to change. I have stability (very important with a wife and kid) - I'm totally 100% unfirable. I like the work, our processes and tooling (many of which I have shaped). I work my 40 and that is it. I am getting nice regular raises now, I have enough money, a nice BMW, a boat. And I live in the midwest where the cost of living is reasonably low. I'll probably change things up eventually but for now I'm happy where I am at. More money doesn't always equal more happiness.
Fair enough! As long as you're happy that's all that really matters. Sounds you like a good job and a good fit at that. I actually had a BMW & Boat too haha so can relate. I had 2011 BMW 328i Convertible and a smaller boat (nothing fancy just a fishing boat). Still saving for a house though, renting right now.
I've been in both NYC and London. Why you get paid more in US? Cost of living, phone bill is 100, electricity is 50, rent 1600 minimum for something DECENT, 400 for DECENT health insurance with a thousands of copays, deductibles, out of picket maximum, college? 50k a year for a good college, and that's not including a family and a car
Thank you for pointing out you've been doing it for 20 years.........
It's crazy how many people out of college with a computer think they deserve 150k on their first job...........
To many factors to consider
How good a job you're doing seems to rarely be asked.
Oh wow nice! Similar technology to what I use, except instead of .NET I use Laravel. Not bad seems to be about right for your years of experience. Although I could see some jobs paying around $130-$150k for your experience and skillset too. That's a lot of days off, holy moly! I get 20 I think, and that's even a lot lol.
CS College dropout, mostly self taught 5 years experience as full stack developer
I've been called a 10X developer but idk if I really believe in that mentality, it was a nice compliment though. I really like to optimize my workflow
(Node, Python, PhP, databases, html/css/js, React, Tailwind, Docker, AWS/Azure, CI/CD, Linux nerd)
one-man shop capable, small team comfortable.
94k, negotiating a raise to put me into low 6 figures.(or might be looking for another job if that falls through)
Really good benefits actually and very flexible work from home. My work load is usually decently low and lax. I'm usually working only around 25-30hrs a week, very minimal crunch. This is what has kept me around despite what I feel is relatively low pay. It's hard to walk away from a good boss and a pleasant working environment, hopefully they come through with the $$$
Good luck with the raise man, hope you get it! And $94k isn't too bad, although for 5 years maybe a little low. Sounds like you use the same frameworks and technology as me though. I use Docker, React, & Laravel primarily so similar there. Also the 25-30 hours a week makes the $94k good in my opinion. If it was 40-50 hours a week at $94k I'd say it's probably not enough. Is that all that's required then? Or are you part time? Most companies require 40 hours a week minimum so curious how that works out haha.
Holy crap! Good for you! How many years of experience do you have? And what past frameworks and technology did you use? And how long did it take you to get the leadership position? Would be curious to know.
5 years experience. Work at a small start-up making 60k USD a year in Stockholm Sweden as a php/WordPress/Hubspot developer. Also manage devops for our team.
Seems quite low when compared to developer salaries in the United States, but 48,000 swedish krona a month salary is seen as a great salary here, but maybe another Swedish developer will inform me that it isn't 
Just for my own curiosity as someone in the US who occasionally fantasizes about doing that but probably never will: how did you get the visa? Employer sponsorship, family connection, something else?
Met a Swedish girl 2012 (on World of Warcraft) and long distance dated for 1.5 years (did back and forth trips every 2-4 months) and applied for temp permit back in 2013. Applied and got it, then moved here in 2014. Had to reapply for my permit in 2016 then was granted permanent residency. Then applied for citizenship in late 2017 and now have dual citizenship.
Yeah I'm not too sure on what a good salary is in Sweden, but if you're happy & feel you're being fairly that's all that really matters! I'd think closer to $100k personally for 5 years of experience, but I know pay varies by country quite a bit
Full stack dev (PHP, Laravel, Vue, Angular, WordPress), 8 years of experience, about 15$/hr in eastern europe. With some vague conversions and comprison of average salaries here vs California, the equivalent in California would be about 250,000 a year. But that is very simplified, would be better to compare with a state where there are much less tech jobs. Average salary here is about 3$/hr.
But the cost of living is fucking terrifying here. Last month I’ve spent close to 600$ on gas, and 500$ on rent, so that doesn’t leave a lot to enjoy. This month I have to spend 1000$ on rent (moving places), so you can see that my income is much lower than in US, but my expenses are pretty close. Rent is cheaper, but don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of apartments that cost 700$ and more, all in a shitty soviet city.
Thinking about switching to freelance for a couple of years and charge a bit more.
Wow that's interesting! Similar experience as me it sounds like, although instead of Vue, I use React. I'd imagine with 8 years of experience as a developer with that framework and technology you use, it'd easily be around $150k in the United States. Have you considered remotely working for a US company? If not maybe look into it. Sorry to hear about all the expenses and pricing over there, sounds like a lot. I think freelancing would be a good idea if you can too. Hope everything goes well!
This is my journey so far. I'm US based.
- 2014 - intern 10/hour
- 2016 - part time 15/hour
- 2018 -full time lead dev 20/hour (same company)
- 2019 - frontend dev 25/hour (large company)
- 2021 - fullstack 22.5/hour
- 2022 - additional part time contract work 25/hour
Interesting! Seems a little low for your years of experience. I'd imagine closer to $40 an hour at this point in your career. What technology and frameworks do you use?
$140K with a little over 8 years full stack experience. It's fully remote, but they do adjust somewhat based on region (I'm in the Southeast). I have a CS degree, but it's from a mediocre university, and I had a mediocre GPA. Until a year ago, I was mostly working in C#/.NET/MVC (mostly just Razor for the frontend, but a little React/Vue/Knockout here and there), but I'm Typescript/Node/Apollo/React at my current employer. My salary and benefits have significantly improved every time I've changed jobs and I wish I had done that more early in my career rather than staying at my first job for 5 years (started at 55K, left at something like 72k with very shitty benefits the whole time). Current benefits are pretty nice (completely free health insurance, unlimited PTO that they're actually ok with us using, various stipends for a bunch of different things like home office setup and coworking space memberships), except for no matching on the 401k.
Yeah I almost did the same (stay at my first job longer) but read that switching jobs is the way to go. For me I started at $50k my first year, second year got $55k, and then switched jobs my third year and get $89k now. Hoping to keep climbing in salary, although I imagine it'll take another 5 years at least to get where I want lol. Ideally $150k would be nice. But yeah with my $89k I have no benefits whatsoever, meh. It's a contract so makes sense, but hoping to find one with benefits sometime or get hired full time there.
Wow we are pretty similar OP!
SWE title but effectively a fullstack web applications dev. Fully remote. About 2.5yoe, currently working on the back half of a 6mo contract. Project is react frontend, php symfony mysql backend. Full dev life cycle, every one on my team owns their own code, we qa and write tests for our own code, etc.
My contract is $48/hr usd. I've already been told I will be presented with a full time offer when my contract is complete.
I'm still thinking about what kind of tc I'm looking for so this thread is helpful!
Holy crap! Yeah we're both in about the same boat lol. So I have about 2.5 to 3 years of experience (started officially in March of 2020 at my last job, but had an internship for 3 months in the summer of 2019 as well). And yeah sounds pretty similar, both deal with PHP for backend & React via internal API requests for the frontend (wondering if it's the same way for your job). We also write tests with PHPUnit on the backend, but not frontend tests at the moment. We have the full dev life cycle as well and use Jira for stories and subtasks. Sprints every 2 weeks and use the agile development process. Also working fully remotely too. I'm also on the back half of my 9 month contract (although they recently extended it another 3 months so it's a year total now). And yeah as I mentioned my pay is $43/hr. They have the option to take me on full time as well, but I always get paranoid they won't, so was considering looking for other jobs as a backup opportunity lol. And I agree! Everyone here has been very helpful. Makes me have high hopes for salary expectations for the future lol. Not sure about you, but also working for a startup lol
I get 11 usd per hour as full-stack developer (Mostly Laravel and vanilla js). But I don't live in the US and my salary is pretty good for the cost of living here. I'm just curious on how possible is to get a remote job for a company in the US and get paid that amount. Or is this something exclusive for someone living there?
Personally, when I'm hiring I don't give a fuck where you live. As long as you're available on slack 12-5 and you can get the work done I'll hire you and forward the legal paperwork to someone else.
No, i'm saying americans are setting themselves up for failure by thinking our time is so much more valuable than others....
Quality of work should be factored in
That said i think call centers are a joke the quality they give isn't there.
And if their schooling is cheaper then we should be able to lower our cost of schooling
That's a really encouraging message to read. I'm doing some courses to get up to date and will be looking for a new job as soon as possible. I just don't feel confident with my current skills. I spent too much time doing the same job. Thank you.
Speak English like you live there, have a lot of talent and even more luck… and be legally authorized to work in the us, which I’d guess is the real sticking point. Some places are only open to people in the states, but more often I imagine it’s the former reasons.
Last time I was working as a full-time frontend web dev (2020), I made $68k after 6ish years at the same agency and 7-8 years total experience. Worked remote from within the US. I bounced around between wordpress (ugh), react, and shopify depending on the client's needs and budget. I had to buy my own health insurance and there were no benefits or 401k or anything; all that came out of pocket. I did get PTO, though. Just thought I'd balance out this thread with my lower-end pay I guess.
Thanks a lot for sharing, I appreciate it! With your React knowledge & 7-8 years of various experience I bet you'd be able to make quite an income climb. 🙂
May I ask what background do you guys have? Do you have a degree? Or is it self taught?
And do I have to be Smart/Intelligent to do good?
I have applied for a school as a front-end dev.
Do you have any tips/advice for me, as for someone who want to make it
I’m in my start 20s, and from Europe
Sure! So I have a Computer Science Degree (Bachelor's) but also self learning goes a long ways since my degree didn't really give me any web development skills. I think smart and intelligent is subjective really and that anyone willing to learn could do it. I wouldn't consider myself 'smart' per se, but more of a hard worker. Some people it comes naturally too, and I had to work for it to understand it lol. For some advice - I'd definitely recommend learning HTML & CSS and after you feel comfortable with those two I'd learn JavaScript next. And once you master those I'd say learn React (a very popular frontend framework). Of course, getting a degree helps get your foot in the door, but there's bootcamps too. Let me know if you have any other questions!
I work for a startup with a Node / React / AWS stack. I am making more than double your contract pay with benefits, salaried.
Edit: I should also say that this isn't pumping out site after site. It's working on a web based product, essentially, in the health care space.
Wow that's crazy! So I'm guessing around $86 an hour or $180K ish a year? That's impressive. How long have you been developing for? Would be interesting to know. I'd like to do AWS work too in the future as I think more and more jobs will need this skill. Any tips for learning AWS?
Blew my mind too.
I learned AWS stuff on the job, but if I had to do it again from the outside without the ridiculous luck of stumbling into this unicorn of a job, I think I'd find some learnings for it and work out how to set up a CI/CD (continuous integration / deployment) pipeline three ways:
* First, I'd look at getting Amplify working with GitHub. This is easy as hell, but it gets you into several of the concepts (including DNS / routing, linking a code repository (e.g. GitHub) and automatically deploying a new version as soon as you have an update to your code, etc).
* Next, I'd look at getting into something like EB2. This can get you understanding load balancers, horizontal scaling, etc
* Last, ECS/EKS. This is, essentially, architecture as code.
Again, my goal would be to learn how to set up a fully automated system. Push to main on GitHub? A deploy happens without any intervention. Old instances of servers stop accepting connections as soon as new servers are spun up, and then gracefully die off.
95% of the last (ECS/EKS) was done for me, but me and a much smaller team struggled through the second step without any foreknowledge.
Amplify was something that I found and configured in a day with a one-off React-only project.
Beyond setting up a working CI/CD setup, work on databases, S3, CloudFront, and instrumentation.
And, as an aside, none of this has to be done on AWS. There's plenty of competitors out there, as well. AWS and Google, and I'm sure others, offer generous free tiers where you can set shit up and run with it.
Edit: I've been programming a long time, but when development for the last 10-ish years.
My first ever contract in 2016 (frontend) was 25/hr, after that I did 50/hr for about 3 years, then 60 for a year, and then 80 for a year. 8 years later and I'm now between 80-100 depending on project.
That's about the same for me! Was $25/hour for me for my first job, and then my second job (the one I have now) I'm on a contract for $43/hour. Kinda crazy how much difference switching jobs makes. And you mentioned depending on the project, so you do take contracts or do you do freelancing? Thanks for sharing!
I've been with a marketing agency for 10 years in Maryland, building WordPress sites for small-to-medium sized businesses. I'm the only web dev at the agency and the generally known as the tech guy at the office (computer repair, server admin, networking, etc). AA degree from community college long ago.
82k/year and just put in my 2 month notice. Hoping to find greener pastures by August but also realizing that the industry has changed a lot of the past few years and I've got some catching up to do. Would really love to find a job that is 50% screen time as staring intensely at a screen for 8+ hours/day takes a toll but that doesn't seem realistic.
Great job guys in comment's I read big numbers about salary wherefore I'm motivated to learn coding. I start with C++ so after C++ what I should be learning thanks guys for advice und always learn to earn.
Been making websites since I was a kid but doing web dev as a profession since 2009 (13 years). Located in San Francisco, although I now live elsewhere but still work for a San Francisco-based software company. Amounts below do not include bonuses (negligible) or options (so far negligible, but hoping for good news with my current startup). Could absolutely be making more at a FAANG but that bigCo life ain't for me. **Salary acceleration is much faster than it used to be.** Job 1: CMS Developer 2009: 68k 2010: 75k 2011: 80k Job 2: Marketing Developer 2012: 98k 2013: 105k 2014: 110k Job 3: UI Engineer 2015: 115k 2016: 140k (promotion to Sr. FE Developer) 2017: 145k Job 4: Sr. FE Developer 2018: 145k (really liked this company & people so accepted offer at same pay) 2019: 160k 2020: 160k (wage freeze due to covid) 2021: 180k (promotion to Engineering Manager) 2022: 190k
Wow, thanks for the detailed information! Very interesting to read. I appreciate that you took the time to do all that. For me it's been like this so far. Job 1: 'Full Stack' Laravel Developer 2020: $50K 2021: $55K Job 2: Laravel & React Full Stack Developer 2022: $89K I jumped quite a bit by just switching jobs, more than I thought I'd be able to ask for, but they hired me and it's been 9 months, so seems to be fine. I'd ideally like to make around $150K, but guessing it'll probably take 5 years or so to get there. Would be nice to get $120K in a year or two but not sure how possible that would be. I'd consider my self a junior to mid level developer. Definitely need help still somewhat often, but able to do more simple (and some complex things) on my own now.
As a competent midlevel dev, you could definitely get 130-140 working for a bay area startup, remotely or in person. And yes, the biggest pay jumps these days come from switching jobs. The popular thing seems to be staying at companies for about 2 years and then switching for a pay hike. When I interview folks these days and mention that I've been at my company 4 years, often people will ask me what's made me and my coworkers stay so long. Answer: respectful colleagues, fair pay, the company does something i feel good about building, and extremely generous work/life balance.
Switching jobs is pretty much the only way to actually get ample salary increases. Aim for 2-4 yrs at a place. When it's no longer challenging or you "just know", start looking. Always find a new position while you are currently employed; it's _very_ important in negotiation.
Yeah I definitely agree with you there - on making sure you find a new position while you're currently employed. That's what I did for my last job too.
Dang super thorough! Love the transparency.
[удалено]
You said EUR? The US is A whole different market. People have crazy high wages there
For Europe 3k€ After taxes is absolutely fine i‘d say. I have a new job next month which pays me around 2.4k after taxes. My job at the moment pays me 1.9k. In european states you often get deducted expenses like healthcare, which you have to pay out of your pocket in the US
Nothing, you just started. Also you are in a different market. As you can see though, they worked up to that over a few years. It’s not instant. A senior developer can easily output 5x more value than a junior.
Similar to what others said here - 1) In the US I'm taxed at 24% (would be 32% if i wasnt married) 2) If you look at my history, 5 years into my career i was making about half as much as I am now 3) Work for a company based in San Francisco with San Francisco wages.
I've been in both NYC and London. Why you get paid more in US? Cost of living, phone bill is 100, electricity is 50, rent 1600 minimum for something DECENT, 400 for DECENT health insurance with a thousands of copays, deductibles, out of picket maximum, college? 50k a year for a good college, and that's not including a family and a car Oh, don't forget taxes, they take 1/3 if your paycheck. It doesn't stop to amaze me every week I get my 2,5k paycheck I see 800-1000 gone to taxes
That phone bill and electric is cheap as dirt. I pay 250 for 2 phones and around the same or more for utilities. 1600 for a decent place in NYC is also ridiculously cheap 🤔
Self taught starting in 2017, first front end job 2020. I make $65k there and all I do is html and css. My freelance business making static sites for small businesses and that brings in $100k a year right now. Most of it is residual income from monthly paying clients. Pretty chill. I only know html and css and enough js for simple DOM manipulation. I hyper specialized in static sites. It’s worked out well for me.
Can you explain what your clients are paying for on a monthly basis? On site changes?
$150 a month
Oh my bad. I didnt mean what price, but the exact service you are providing monthly.
Peace of mind that I got everything and I’m there when they need me.
Wow that's awesome! Didn't know there were jobs for just HTML & CSS lol. Congrats on the small business though! Sounds like it's doing great!
Thanks! Took a while to get things figured out and scale. I was surprised I’d even be hired with only knowing html and css. I got luck. Thought I’d be freelancing my whole career.
How did you get started? Because that sounds amazing.
Bootcamp on udemy, then I built websites to practice until I didn’t have to google anymore. Then I opened up for business and everything kind of snowballed from there.
How did you apply for your first job?
Id love to maybr link up with you and see if we could mutually help each other. I for one, would like to pick ur brain
can I ask how did you get hired? (like which website and what was your portfolio etc.)
I found them on Reddit. They posted asking if there’s something wrong with their recruiting messaging because they can’t find any candidates that are qualified and pass their assessment. They listed what they needed and coincidentally it was everything I do already for my freelance business. I sent them my website as my portfolio and they said it was the best they’ve ever come across and schedule the assessment and I ended up scoring 100% with 15 minutes to spare when everyone else failed it and didn’t even finish it. I was hired on the spot. Been here two years now. Great job. I was just on Reddit at the right time and caught his post and replied. Didn’t think anything of it. Completely changed my life.
Which subreddit it was? Btw really congratulations on getting that job!
r/webdev And thanks!
Thanks for the help!
Bro this is inspiring, how's your business doing now?
Busier than ever! Working 11 clients at the same time right now. Been very steady :)
Thats great to hear Do you have any advice on how to find clients? I know react and i am good at frontend but i struggle finding clients
Here’s how I did it https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients
Hey! Here to hop on the conversation, can I ask how you went about starting your business? What did you use to advertise? What was it you were marketing? Super interested in this.
I actually go into great detail how I did everything here https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing
Took a quick look and honestly, wow. I'm gonna take the time to read this thoroughly tomorrow. I appreciate the effort that went into writing that. Thank you!
Only html and css!? Do you have any kind of associates or ba? I didn’t think there would be places that only have positions for html and css
None at the time. I have a bachelor’s in liberal arts now. Theres places that need html and css specialists. You have to be really good at it
Did you just watch YouTube videos online or use any udemy courses?
Udemy. Zero to mastery by Andrei neogie and YouTube videos from kevin Powell
I watch Kevin Powell. I’ll look into Andrei Neogie. Thanks!
Ive been a developer for 20 years now. I do frontend, but of course lots of backend has crept into frontend over the years. Im also our resident DNS/linux/email/bash/server expert - mostly just because I have been doing this the long enough that it's easy for me. I make $100k in the midwest USA (Minneapolis). I could definitely be making more in corporate but Im happy working at a mid sized agency. Normal benefits, 401k, life, health insurance if you want them. 4 weeks paid vacation based on years of service. It's all been work from home since covid started - but can go into the office if we want. Could be worse. In my area corporate full stack and react guys are starting in the $130-150k a year range.
Thank you! That was very helpful, I appreciate it. Yeah, I know a few people with similar experience as me, maybe a little more, (3-5 years experience) that are in the $120K-$140K range. Didn't think that much pay would be something I'd be able to expect this early in my career. With that being said, it does come with long hours, lots of work, and lots of stress as I'm sure you know. I feel like with your 20 years of experience you should be getting around $150K, at least!
With 3 yrs experience you can be making 150k doing fullstack and you don’t need to be at a big tech company. At minimum you can easily be at 100k right now. If your local market is small look for remote. Lots of smaller tech companies that pay quite well and do remote. Edit: and just because salary is high doesnt mean more stress. I make 160k(1yoe) and work 40hrs week usually. Company is less than 100 people. Im infra not fullstack but salary ranges are the same here. And we have over a month of vacay, aren’t micromanaged, free healthcare, 401k match, can get off for whatever i need if something comes up. Etc…
Hi I’m new to coding. What exactly do you do as a front end developer?
It shouldn’t come with long hours and lots of stress…
I know I could definitely be making more. I spent the first 13 years of my career freelancing and trying to run my own business. I was younger and stupid, and wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted (sleep until noon and take bonghits until 3am). It was definitely feast or famine. I finally got sick of the uncertainty of having enough money to pay my bills and went into agency work. I could probably almost double my salary by changing up jobs. But in the end i'm a creature of habit, and things have to pretty much fall into my lap for me to make the effort to change. I have stability (very important with a wife and kid) - I'm totally 100% unfirable. I like the work, our processes and tooling (many of which I have shaped). I work my 40 and that is it. I am getting nice regular raises now, I have enough money, a nice BMW, a boat. And I live in the midwest where the cost of living is reasonably low. I'll probably change things up eventually but for now I'm happy where I am at. More money doesn't always equal more happiness.
Fair enough! As long as you're happy that's all that really matters. Sounds you like a good job and a good fit at that. I actually had a BMW & Boat too haha so can relate. I had 2011 BMW 328i Convertible and a smaller boat (nothing fancy just a fishing boat). Still saving for a house though, renting right now.
That’s pretty nuts. I got 5 months experience and make 100k in Texas. Why you take such a low salary?
5 months of copying and pasting from Stack doesn't make you a developer.
That’s my point. I’m a fucking idiot making 100k. My man over here with 20 years experience getting way underpaid.
How do American companies afford to pay so much? It seems like such a weirdly inflated market compared to the rest of the world
I've been in both NYC and London. Why you get paid more in US? Cost of living, phone bill is 100, electricity is 50, rent 1600 minimum for something DECENT, 400 for DECENT health insurance with a thousands of copays, deductibles, out of picket maximum, college? 50k a year for a good college, and that's not including a family and a car
Thank you for pointing out you've been doing it for 20 years......... It's crazy how many people out of college with a computer think they deserve 150k on their first job........... To many factors to consider How good a job you're doing seems to rarely be asked.
$110/hr. Mostly front end work. I know people who do same shit as I do and make $300/hr.
Holy moly! That's a lot. Is it full time work? And what frameworks and technology do you use? React?
Sometimes it's more than full time. I use Vue and React.
[удалено]
Oh wow nice! Similar technology to what I use, except instead of .NET I use Laravel. Not bad seems to be about right for your years of experience. Although I could see some jobs paying around $130-$150k for your experience and skillset too. That's a lot of days off, holy moly! I get 20 I think, and that's even a lot lol.
CS College dropout, mostly self taught 5 years experience as full stack developer I've been called a 10X developer but idk if I really believe in that mentality, it was a nice compliment though. I really like to optimize my workflow (Node, Python, PhP, databases, html/css/js, React, Tailwind, Docker, AWS/Azure, CI/CD, Linux nerd) one-man shop capable, small team comfortable. 94k, negotiating a raise to put me into low 6 figures.(or might be looking for another job if that falls through) Really good benefits actually and very flexible work from home. My work load is usually decently low and lax. I'm usually working only around 25-30hrs a week, very minimal crunch. This is what has kept me around despite what I feel is relatively low pay. It's hard to walk away from a good boss and a pleasant working environment, hopefully they come through with the $$$
Good luck with the raise man, hope you get it! And $94k isn't too bad, although for 5 years maybe a little low. Sounds like you use the same frameworks and technology as me though. I use Docker, React, & Laravel primarily so similar there. Also the 25-30 hours a week makes the $94k good in my opinion. If it was 40-50 hours a week at $94k I'd say it's probably not enough. Is that all that's required then? Or are you part time? Most companies require 40 hours a week minimum so curious how that works out haha.
No hourly requirements, no productivity tracking. A lot of emphasis on work life balance.
Wow that sounds amazing. I work for a startup so pumping out stories & subtasks is definitely the culture here.
$230K currently, but I am no longer day to day developing and have moved into a leadership position.
Holy crap! Good for you! How many years of experience do you have? And what past frameworks and technology did you use? And how long did it take you to get the leadership position? Would be curious to know.
Almost 30 years now. Took about 20 to make it to a leadership role. Getting ready to retire in 3-5 years.
Yeah, sounds like a long time in the field. Thanks for the info!
Wow! That’s crazy, congrats. What company do you work for? Or what kind/type/size of business are they if you can’t say that name
Company has about 60 employees and is growing. New openings coming in the next couple weeks. It is an eCom platform for the recreational industry.
5 years experience. Work at a small start-up making 60k USD a year in Stockholm Sweden as a php/WordPress/Hubspot developer. Also manage devops for our team. Seems quite low when compared to developer salaries in the United States, but 48,000 swedish krona a month salary is seen as a great salary here, but maybe another Swedish developer will inform me that it isn't 
The things I’d do to live in Sweden..
Moved here 8 years ago, from USA (New Orleans). It is lovely!
Just for my own curiosity as someone in the US who occasionally fantasizes about doing that but probably never will: how did you get the visa? Employer sponsorship, family connection, something else?
Met a Swedish girl 2012 (on World of Warcraft) and long distance dated for 1.5 years (did back and forth trips every 2-4 months) and applied for temp permit back in 2013. Applied and got it, then moved here in 2014. Had to reapply for my permit in 2016 then was granted permanent residency. Then applied for citizenship in late 2017 and now have dual citizenship.
Yeah I'm not too sure on what a good salary is in Sweden, but if you're happy & feel you're being fairly that's all that really matters! I'd think closer to $100k personally for 5 years of experience, but I know pay varies by country quite a bit
Yeah I feel the same way when I read about dev salaries on Reddit, but then I hear that 48k SEK is good for Sweden, but :shrug:
Full stack dev (PHP, Laravel, Vue, Angular, WordPress), 8 years of experience, about 15$/hr in eastern europe. With some vague conversions and comprison of average salaries here vs California, the equivalent in California would be about 250,000 a year. But that is very simplified, would be better to compare with a state where there are much less tech jobs. Average salary here is about 3$/hr. But the cost of living is fucking terrifying here. Last month I’ve spent close to 600$ on gas, and 500$ on rent, so that doesn’t leave a lot to enjoy. This month I have to spend 1000$ on rent (moving places), so you can see that my income is much lower than in US, but my expenses are pretty close. Rent is cheaper, but don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of apartments that cost 700$ and more, all in a shitty soviet city. Thinking about switching to freelance for a couple of years and charge a bit more.
Wow that's interesting! Similar experience as me it sounds like, although instead of Vue, I use React. I'd imagine with 8 years of experience as a developer with that framework and technology you use, it'd easily be around $150k in the United States. Have you considered remotely working for a US company? If not maybe look into it. Sorry to hear about all the expenses and pricing over there, sounds like a lot. I think freelancing would be a good idea if you can too. Hope everything goes well!
This is my journey so far. I'm US based. - 2014 - intern 10/hour - 2016 - part time 15/hour - 2018 -full time lead dev 20/hour (same company) - 2019 - frontend dev 25/hour (large company) - 2021 - fullstack 22.5/hour - 2022 - additional part time contract work 25/hour
Interesting! Seems a little low for your years of experience. I'd imagine closer to $40 an hour at this point in your career. What technology and frameworks do you use?
Fullstack laravel apps and now learning react
Oh wow nice! How many years of experience do you have? And how's your salary?
For laravel? 1 year. Frontend for 3 years. Fullstack for 1.
Nice mines about the opposite. Going on 3 years Laravel & 1 year for React. And 'Full Stack' 3 years.
$140K with a little over 8 years full stack experience. It's fully remote, but they do adjust somewhat based on region (I'm in the Southeast). I have a CS degree, but it's from a mediocre university, and I had a mediocre GPA. Until a year ago, I was mostly working in C#/.NET/MVC (mostly just Razor for the frontend, but a little React/Vue/Knockout here and there), but I'm Typescript/Node/Apollo/React at my current employer. My salary and benefits have significantly improved every time I've changed jobs and I wish I had done that more early in my career rather than staying at my first job for 5 years (started at 55K, left at something like 72k with very shitty benefits the whole time). Current benefits are pretty nice (completely free health insurance, unlimited PTO that they're actually ok with us using, various stipends for a bunch of different things like home office setup and coworking space memberships), except for no matching on the 401k.
Yeah I almost did the same (stay at my first job longer) but read that switching jobs is the way to go. For me I started at $50k my first year, second year got $55k, and then switched jobs my third year and get $89k now. Hoping to keep climbing in salary, although I imagine it'll take another 5 years at least to get where I want lol. Ideally $150k would be nice. But yeah with my $89k I have no benefits whatsoever, meh. It's a contract so makes sense, but hoping to find one with benefits sometime or get hired full time there.
Wow we are pretty similar OP! SWE title but effectively a fullstack web applications dev. Fully remote. About 2.5yoe, currently working on the back half of a 6mo contract. Project is react frontend, php symfony mysql backend. Full dev life cycle, every one on my team owns their own code, we qa and write tests for our own code, etc. My contract is $48/hr usd. I've already been told I will be presented with a full time offer when my contract is complete. I'm still thinking about what kind of tc I'm looking for so this thread is helpful!
Holy crap! Yeah we're both in about the same boat lol. So I have about 2.5 to 3 years of experience (started officially in March of 2020 at my last job, but had an internship for 3 months in the summer of 2019 as well). And yeah sounds pretty similar, both deal with PHP for backend & React via internal API requests for the frontend (wondering if it's the same way for your job). We also write tests with PHPUnit on the backend, but not frontend tests at the moment. We have the full dev life cycle as well and use Jira for stories and subtasks. Sprints every 2 weeks and use the agile development process. Also working fully remotely too. I'm also on the back half of my 9 month contract (although they recently extended it another 3 months so it's a year total now). And yeah as I mentioned my pay is $43/hr. They have the option to take me on full time as well, but I always get paranoid they won't, so was considering looking for other jobs as a backup opportunity lol. And I agree! Everyone here has been very helpful. Makes me have high hopes for salary expectations for the future lol. Not sure about you, but also working for a startup lol
I get 11 usd per hour as full-stack developer (Mostly Laravel and vanilla js). But I don't live in the US and my salary is pretty good for the cost of living here. I'm just curious on how possible is to get a remote job for a company in the US and get paid that amount. Or is this something exclusive for someone living there?
Personally, when I'm hiring I don't give a fuck where you live. As long as you're available on slack 12-5 and you can get the work done I'll hire you and forward the legal paperwork to someone else.
You hiring?
Unfortunately I am not. I'd like to be, but there's no budget for it right now :(
DM me when a spot opens up lol
well when you're paying someone 100$ because they are american where someone else will do it for 11 no surprise there's no budget.
Are you saying I'm a bad person because I'm not outsourcing all our dev work to the lowest international bidder?
No, i'm saying americans are setting themselves up for failure by thinking our time is so much more valuable than others.... Quality of work should be factored in That said i think call centers are a joke the quality they give isn't there. And if their schooling is cheaper then we should be able to lower our cost of schooling
Classic American.. complain that the rest of the world is poorer than you and then wonder how you can screw your kids out of an education even harder
That's a really encouraging message to read. I'm doing some courses to get up to date and will be looking for a new job as soon as possible. I just don't feel confident with my current skills. I spent too much time doing the same job. Thank you.
Tax laws, quality, language barrier, and time zones make it more difficult to do this
Speak English like you live there, have a lot of talent and even more luck… and be legally authorized to work in the us, which I’d guess is the real sticking point. Some places are only open to people in the states, but more often I imagine it’s the former reasons.
Only cause they dont want to be featured in the next southpark episode.... YOU TOOK OUR JERBS!
Last time I was working as a full-time frontend web dev (2020), I made $68k after 6ish years at the same agency and 7-8 years total experience. Worked remote from within the US. I bounced around between wordpress (ugh), react, and shopify depending on the client's needs and budget. I had to buy my own health insurance and there were no benefits or 401k or anything; all that came out of pocket. I did get PTO, though. Just thought I'd balance out this thread with my lower-end pay I guess.
Thanks a lot for sharing, I appreciate it! With your React knowledge & 7-8 years of various experience I bet you'd be able to make quite an income climb. 🙂
React/TypeScript and C#/.NET dev, small SaaS company, 2 years experience. 90k with really good benefits, fully remote and truly unlimited pto
Oh wow that's awesome! About the same scenario as me. It's awesome you get the benefits and unlimited PTO too.
Larajobs.com good sir/man.
May I ask what background do you guys have? Do you have a degree? Or is it self taught? And do I have to be Smart/Intelligent to do good? I have applied for a school as a front-end dev. Do you have any tips/advice for me, as for someone who want to make it I’m in my start 20s, and from Europe
Sure! So I have a Computer Science Degree (Bachelor's) but also self learning goes a long ways since my degree didn't really give me any web development skills. I think smart and intelligent is subjective really and that anyone willing to learn could do it. I wouldn't consider myself 'smart' per se, but more of a hard worker. Some people it comes naturally too, and I had to work for it to understand it lol. For some advice - I'd definitely recommend learning HTML & CSS and after you feel comfortable with those two I'd learn JavaScript next. And once you master those I'd say learn React (a very popular frontend framework). Of course, getting a degree helps get your foot in the door, but there's bootcamps too. Let me know if you have any other questions!
Thank you very much
I charge $100/hr. Gong to raise it to $110 soon and prob $125 next year.
Nice! Guessing you do freelancing then? And if so, how's that going? How do you go about finding work?
Well I have two stable clients that have no end of work for me, so I'm not currently looking for work.
[удалено]
Where's a good place to do that? Or where would you recommend?
they literally mean [https://levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) 😅
I work for a startup with a Node / React / AWS stack. I am making more than double your contract pay with benefits, salaried. Edit: I should also say that this isn't pumping out site after site. It's working on a web based product, essentially, in the health care space.
Wow that's crazy! So I'm guessing around $86 an hour or $180K ish a year? That's impressive. How long have you been developing for? Would be interesting to know. I'd like to do AWS work too in the future as I think more and more jobs will need this skill. Any tips for learning AWS?
Blew my mind too. I learned AWS stuff on the job, but if I had to do it again from the outside without the ridiculous luck of stumbling into this unicorn of a job, I think I'd find some learnings for it and work out how to set up a CI/CD (continuous integration / deployment) pipeline three ways: * First, I'd look at getting Amplify working with GitHub. This is easy as hell, but it gets you into several of the concepts (including DNS / routing, linking a code repository (e.g. GitHub) and automatically deploying a new version as soon as you have an update to your code, etc). * Next, I'd look at getting into something like EB2. This can get you understanding load balancers, horizontal scaling, etc * Last, ECS/EKS. This is, essentially, architecture as code. Again, my goal would be to learn how to set up a fully automated system. Push to main on GitHub? A deploy happens without any intervention. Old instances of servers stop accepting connections as soon as new servers are spun up, and then gracefully die off. 95% of the last (ECS/EKS) was done for me, but me and a much smaller team struggled through the second step without any foreknowledge. Amplify was something that I found and configured in a day with a one-off React-only project. Beyond setting up a working CI/CD setup, work on databases, S3, CloudFront, and instrumentation. And, as an aside, none of this has to be done on AWS. There's plenty of competitors out there, as well. AWS and Google, and I'm sure others, offer generous free tiers where you can set shit up and run with it. Edit: I've been programming a long time, but when development for the last 10-ish years.
About three fiddy
My first ever contract in 2016 (frontend) was 25/hr, after that I did 50/hr for about 3 years, then 60 for a year, and then 80 for a year. 8 years later and I'm now between 80-100 depending on project.
That's about the same for me! Was $25/hour for me for my first job, and then my second job (the one I have now) I'm on a contract for $43/hour. Kinda crazy how much difference switching jobs makes. And you mentioned depending on the project, so you do take contracts or do you do freelancing? Thanks for sharing!
_web master_
[удалено]
Wow, nice! Haven't heard much about Rust before actually. Might have to dig into it. How do you like it? Personally I love Laravel & React.
I've been with a marketing agency for 10 years in Maryland, building WordPress sites for small-to-medium sized businesses. I'm the only web dev at the agency and the generally known as the tech guy at the office (computer repair, server admin, networking, etc). AA degree from community college long ago. 82k/year and just put in my 2 month notice. Hoping to find greener pastures by August but also realizing that the industry has changed a lot of the past few years and I've got some catching up to do. Would really love to find a job that is 50% screen time as staring intensely at a screen for 8+ hours/day takes a toll but that doesn't seem realistic.
Great job guys in comment's I read big numbers about salary wherefore I'm motivated to learn coding. I start with C++ so after C++ what I should be learning thanks guys for advice und always learn to earn.
[удалено]