How much does a software engineer make

How much does a software engineer make an hour?

Software engineers are almost never paid by the hour unless they are doing some kind of contract work. Generally, they are salaried with a 40-hour working week and variable amounts of vacation, sick days and holidays depending on the employer. Being salaried means that overtime is generally NOT paid. Benefits are always paid, and a 401k match can be expected. This is not universally the case - but you’d want to be careful about signing up for anything less.

Many companies add stock options and/or an annual bonus that can range from a few hundred bucks as a Xmas bonus up to 25% of salary or perhaps some percentage of profits on something that they specifically worked on. In the video games and movie industries, it’s not uncommon to get a royalty payment that continues to be paid even after you’ve left the company. Other companies offer a “sabbatical” - a LONG paid vacation (sometimes months-long) after some number of years with the company. Some companies will pay a “signing bonus” - a cash payment when you first start working for them. Some offer guaranteed redundancy pay for longer than the traditional 2 weeks.

So - given the wide range of possible benefits…what is the salary spread?

As always, there is a bell-curve here - with a long tail of people who are drastically underpaid - and a long tail of people who are being paid inexplicably large amounts.

For how much does an engineer make Generally, an entry-level engineer, fresh out of a halfway decent college can expect to get $65,000/year…and a senior engineer with a ton of experience and both wide and deep knowledge can pick up $150,000/year. The median pay is around $100,000/year.

People who get less than $65,000 are generally people who don’t have a degree and don’t have much experience…people working at the fringes of programming (such as web design/programming)…people who are working for companies who don’t hire good programmers because they don’t need them.

People who get over $150,000 are generally working as team leaders with managerial responsibilities - or they are extreme specialists in fields that not many people follow - or they might be the founder of some successful startup but decided they wanted to remain as programmers as the company took off…or maybe they just know where the skeletons are buried!

It’s quite easy for a very good programmer to be ten times more productive than a junior - so paying three times higher salaries to good people is a no-brainer for most businesses.