Thread: How much do computer programmers really make?

Knowing which country you are asking about would be an important piece of information.

In any case I doubt you'll find many people willing to discuss their salary on a public forum. But as a rule of thumb, what you see is what you get. There's then a whole business policy in place that can add incentives, productivity prizes, career progression plans, etc that tend to increase earnings to levels sometimes quite away from what was initially agreed. Some companies also just pay better than others because they require much higher qualification. They are necessarily less common, so you don't see those higher wages so often in your local newspaper.

130,000 what? Dollars? Euros? Rupies? The worth of your salary depends entirely on your locality. Although it's an absolute number, it's worth is relative.

Example: A programmer in Munich will get 50% more than I do for the very same job. However, his cost of living in Munich is 3 times higher so in the end, we both have the same amount of money left.

It's possible to get that high.

But as was said it depends on where you are located. Just be good at it and you should make good money for your area .

Originally Posted by camel-man

I was wondering how much they really make, on a yearly bases I heard somewhere that they can make up to 130,000 but that doesnt seem very accurate most salaries I have seen in CS is roughly around 64,000. Any people out there with real life experience in the workforce?

A simple word of advice, never do any job just for the money. If you do, regardless of how much you make you will find yourself still quite unhappy. A good career usually entails a combination of finding a job that pays 'X' in a career path where you enjoy doing 'Y' amount. The ratio of X to Y required is usually up to the individual but it needs to be there.

Well, in a way. But speaking for myself, the higher is X the less I care about Y.

... now that you got me thinking about it, I think i'm more of the mercenary type.

@camel-man

Sorry for being a pain, but living in the US, I'd go as far as naming the city. You'd be amazed what a few miles do to your career in that country.

I was pulling his leg. In hindsight I should have put a smiley there. But since you ask; not everywhere, no. There's bound to be slight differences, I'd guess. But countries being smaller and we not having a federalist tradition tend towards equalization of wages and taxes. In practice this does not work very well for poorer and undeveloped regions since they end up paying the same taxes as the rest of the country but fewer companies are interested in mounting their tent there, leaving job opportunities on the hands of smaller companies who necessarily don't pay well. Unitary government models tend to create human desertification. But the general principle is that wherever you go inside your typical European country your wage is going to be the same, or almost the same. If I recall correctly the average wage difference in Portugal, for instance, between Lisbon, Oporto and Faro (the three main metropolitan areas and that cover the country from North to South) was just recently divulged to be somewhere around 5%.

We just learned in Germany things work differently. Which doesn't surprise me given the form of state government. But other countries like Spain, France, Italy, UK, etc may show their wage divisions just not in such a significant way.