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Ask HN: Quick and Dirty DevOps/SRE Salary?

18 points by just-juan-post ↗ HN
There is a lot of data when it comes to SWE/software dev but not as much when it comes to DevOps/SRE.

This HN user is getting compensated so well that he doesn't look at jobs that pay under $350k. [1] This Reddit user is currently making $340k with 5 years of experience.[2]

$180k+ DevOps jobs are easy to find. What about things beyond that?

- Annual total TC - Location including work from home or travel

My current comp is $190k in Portland.

Is anyone else breaking $250k without living in NYC or SF? What's your experience with high-end DevOps/SRE jobs?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848770

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/cxiprc/experienced_200k_technical_jobs_nonmanagement_low/ez0hug9/

29 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] thread
dijit
Similar lamentation about EU salaries, since those are not often aggregated.

FWIW I was offered $200k in NYC in 2012 (with 5yrs XP at that point and they offered visa sponsorship) if it helps.

VeryHacker
Cries with €30K in South Italy
highhedgehog
Cries with 35K in North Italy
w0land
In Milan things were bettter.

/me cries with 35k in Center Italy (Rome)

vpEfljFL
Could you guys tell me why you think your salary is low? I don't quite get it how you can compare expensive living areas to no so expensive ones.

In Europe compared to US you have many preferences where you don't have to pay from your own pocket for: medicine, vacation time, retirement, education, social security and so on. Real estate price is also mush higher in expensive areas. Taxes are higher but you have all those nice benefits.

alt_f4
yeah, the EU sucks for tech salaries
kim0
Any ideas why though? I'm not eu based, but always wondered
alt_f4
I don't have a fully formed theory, but I believe it is a combination of things:

* there aren't any real EU tech giants

* the regulatory environment is tough on businesses: it's hard to start one and follow all the rules. The rules can also be different across EU states.

* poorer local market. Europeans generally don't have as much disposable income as Americans. It's harder to get a good amount of people to pay 20 EUR / month for a SaaS.

* different investor culture: if you failed once, you'll always fail thinking

* corporate and personal taxes are high, so there's not a huge difference between making 50k and 80k pre-tax.

* overall tougher social mobility, making it hard for top talent to get to the right people for funding, ideas, mentoring, etc

The lack of large and successful pure tech companies, means there are a bunch of good engineers, but little competition for them, which means lower salaries.

Some people say healthcare and more holiday days are another reason salaries are lower, but I don't believe that. First off, 2 more weeks of holiday doesn't add up to a 100k pay cut, neither does paying for private insurance. Second, it's nice that there's a govt run fallback option, but anyone that has had to deal with the system (in most, but not all EU states) knows that you eventually end up having to pay out of pocket or take private insurance for anything more serious anyway.

msh
I think it's wrong to say that in general for EU. There is a huge difference on salaries depending on where in the EU you are.
akvadrako
There is almost nowhere in the EU that $200K is normal. Maybe Zurich - I don't know.
msh
200k might be normal but 30k would be below a entry level graduate many places.
alt_f4
where exactly?

I did some googling and the results suggest the average IT grad salary in London (which is very expensive and features some of the highest salaries) is around 30k.

msh
scandinavia at least (the markets I have most experience with)

But https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-computer-sci... shows much higher salaries than 30k in london and germany too (https://www.statista.com/statistics/584759/average-gross-sta...)

alt_f4
the first source does not show grad salaries and the average is 57.5k, which is still a lot lower. the second source is paywalled and I can't open it at all.
msh
May comment was not directed at the 200k but the 30 and 35k quoted.
cj
Question: are people really making $200k+ with 5 years experience?

Or is it simply that high-earner outliers are more vocal online about their salary than average earners, creating a false appearance that $200k+ salaries are more common than they actually are in real life?

beisner
At FAANG companies, it's not unheard of for new SWE grads to command $200k+ starting compensation. For someone with 5 years experience at the company it would actually be unusual for them to make less than $200k, in the US at least.

This resource is pretty accurate for the lower levels, in my experience: https://www.levels.fyi/

cj
What percent of SWE grads are going to FAANG?

I wouldn’t be surprised if $200k is the top quartile (or higher), but I’d be really surprised if the median is anywhere near that.

mason55
I wish levels.fyi did a better job with locations. You can filter individual salaries by location but it doesn't seem like you can do anything else by location (e.g. filtering the charts or the ranges or anything else). Even with the big tech companies location has a big impact. Google is not paying SF salaries to people in Pittsburgh.
Zaheer
I'm from Levels.fyi. This is in the works right now. It's been our number 1 request so far. Stay tuned :)

P.S. We announce new features on our Twitter handle fairly often: https://twitter.com/Levelsfyi

mason55
Cool, thanks for being responsive!
Tehchops
My total comp is ~250k, in DevOps.

My HQ is in a tech hub, but I work remotely from the Midwest.

They are out there, you just have to find them. Truly talented DevOps engineers have a niche mix of skills, and are in high enough demand they can ask for(and get) these types of salaries and work arrangements.

peterloron
If you are not in NYC, SF, SEA, etc you will have a much harder time getting those numbers. There are some remote roles at that level, but not too many. As above, the jobs are out there, but you need to be in the right location and have the right mix of skills and experience. Levels.fyi and Blind are useful resources for uncovering information on what companies are paying.
PenguinCoder
I work remotely from the Midwest as well. No company (including FANGs, or SF based startups) have ever offered even HALF that number to me. It was always sub 'market rate' for the midwest, even.
JacKTrocinskI
How do you guys transition into newer technologies and gain enough experience to land a position in that new area?
gremlinsinc
How hard would it be for a fullstack dev to transition to devops? 8+ years experience laravel, 3 years with vue/react, 4 with angular.

I've been using linux since 2012 as my dev machine. I can configure nginx by hand or build bash scripts to do it for me.

I can build cli applications using js, laravel-zero, and/or bash. I also know how to use docker, jenkins, etc...

I haven't really worked much on apps in scale, but I'm feeling a bit burned out in crud-development. Thinking of maybe giving devops a try. That or product manager or something.