Software Engineer: $7,000 a year in China, $8,400 in India... $90,000 in U.S.

[Sig]

Off shoring will work if and only if you are doing something standard. Anything complex requires significant hand holding and people who don't need hand holding but can complete a project with a known and expected level of quality are worth quite a bit in the market because it's a rare skill that cannot be taught. Assume engineers have average intelligence, training, and you'll understand why the cream of the crop are worth quite a bit.

You hit the nail on the head with this, couldn't have said it better myself with my experience on the management side of this exactly matching your experience.

 

[Zzzz1]

Haha, well that does not exist I am afraid unless one is born with a golden spoon

Making money isn't the primary driver. That would have me just want to kill myself after the 8th time one of my team did something stupid.

Making money easily... That's my driver ;-)

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

Haha, well that does not exist I am afraid unless one is born with a golden spoon

I didn't say how much should be easy. I have a software business that pays me approximately $3-400/hour invested. That's pretty much the definition of easy!

 

[kmiklas]

You hit the nail on the head with this, couldn't have said it better myself with my experience on the management side of this exactly matching your experience.

You may need to hire one crackerjack Sr. SE in the U.S. for USD200k+, but then hire ten offshore guys as USD20k to follow that person's instruction.

Cost analysis:

OPTION 1: Offshore with U.S.-based lead SE:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$90,000: 6 @ 15k: Six offshore mid-level programmers
------------
$290,000 Total

OPTION 2: All U.S. based onshore talent:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$540,000: 6 @ 90k: 6 US-based mid-level programmers
-----------
$740,000 Total

Cost savings: $450,000

Option 1 is almost 1/3rd the cost, with comparable results. No-brainer.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

You may need to hire one crackerjack Sr. SE in the U.S. for USD200k+, but then hire ten offshore guys as USD20k to follow that person's instruction.

Cost analysis:

OPTION 1: Offshore with U.S.-based lead SE:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$90,000: 6 @ 15k: Six offshore mid-level programmers
------------
$290,000 Total

OPTION 2: All U.S. based onshore talent:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$540,000: 6 @ 90k: 6 US-based mid-level programmers
-----------
$740,000 Total

Cost savings: $450,000

Option 1 is almost 1/3rd the cost, with comparable results. No-brainer.

I think you should sell this proposal to Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. You can return more to shareholders that way.

 

[southall]

You may need to hire one crackerjack Sr. SE in the U.S. for USD200k+, but then hire ten offshore guys as USD20k to follow that person's instruction.

Cost analysis:

OPTION 1: Offshore with U.S.-based lead SE:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$90,000: 6 @ 15k: Six offshore mid-level programmers
------------
$290,000 Total

OPTION 2: All U.S. based onshore talent:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$540,000: 6 @ 90k: 6 US-based mid-level programmers
-----------
$740,000 Total

Cost savings: $450,000

Option 1 is almost 1/3rd the cost, with comparable results. No-brainer.

If you are on a budget then:

Option 3:
I senior guy @ 200K and 2 mid onshore guys at 80K. (Total 360K).

This Option will do just as good job (probably much better) than that option 1.

Even better would be Option 4:

2 senior guys on 200K each.


Ofshore guys look cheap but are a false economy.

 

[southall]

The old classic book from the 70s, the Mythical man month had a good analogy:

You can do software engineering as a Surgical team, or you can organize it as Hog butchering.

Ofshoring to a large team == Hog Butchering most of the time.

 

[Sig]

You may need to hire one crackerjack Sr. SE in the U.S. for USD200k+, but then hire ten offshore guys as USD20k to follow that person's instruction.

Cost analysis:

OPTION 1: Offshore with U.S.-based lead SE:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$90,000: 6 @ 15k: Six offshore mid-level programmers
------------
$290,000 Total

OPTION 2: All U.S. based onshore talent:

$200,000: 1 @ 200k: 1 US-based Sr. Software Engineer (tech lead)
$540,000: 6 @ 90k: 6 US-based mid-level programmers
-----------
$740,000 Total

Cost savings: $450,000

Option 1 is almost 1/3rd the cost, with comparable results. No-brainer.

Well then all of us who work in this industry must have no brain!

You make a huge assumption here, that a good programmer is an equally good manager and hand holder. That alone is very rare. Even if you do find that unicorn in a leprechaun forest, you're paying them to spend almost none of their time programming and most of it hand holding. And again I'm not sure how to get this across but it's not a linear thing...good programmer is 2X better than a crappy offshore one. It's logarithmic, good developers are 10-20X better and a crappy offshore dev can actually destroy value so a good developer is mathematically infinitely better.

 

[JSOP]

Yes, pretty much. You did hit on part of it, a big chunk of the software jobs are in the places where startups are, which is predominantly the Bay Area, NYC, Boston, and Austin, so location alone is a big driver. Keep in mind a decent nanny in the Bay Area makes $75K.
Regardless of anecdotal anti H-1b stories, there's undoubtedly a shortage of actual software engineers (as opposed to "IT professionals") who can write good code and the growth rate of industries requiring them exceeds the rate of people going into the field. And as one poster I think correctly stated, your brain has to be wired a certain way to be a good developer so it's not like we can just increase the size of the CS class at Cal by 10X and 4 years later, problem solved. So given that a big chunk of jobs are in expensive areas and there is a supply and demand imbalance with a very inelastic curve and few good replacement options, econ 101 gives you a high marginal price which every employer pays regardless of where they are in the U.S.

Well looks like the salary gap between the Asian nations and US for software engineering is partly due to barriers to trade via the restricted quota for H1B visas. Not saying that the coders from outside of USA would necessarily code better but it does widen the possibility of obtaining someone like you say whose brain is "wired in a certain way to be a good developer" and would help even out the salary gap of software engineers between the US and the other countries which is probably not what the US software engineers want.

To your later admittedly joking point that you studied the wrong degree, if you have any engineering or hard science degree your brain is probably wired to allow you to pick up coding pretty quickly. Not suggesting a career change, but I can tell you as an electrical engineer I was able to learn enough to safely work on my own company's code base without danger of blowing anything up, and some of my "real" developers don't have CS degrees either. So nothing says you can't at least start programming algos on Quantopian or something similar for fun and end up pretty good at it in a few months.

My degree is in finance but I do do some light coding to the point that large part of my trading is automated. You are right as long as you have certain mindset you would be able to code and a specific degree in CS is not a requirement. Basically the skill that's required is essentially problem-solving skill, being able to looking at a problem, see where is the fundamental cause of the problem and then design the solution to resolve it. Both of my parents are engineers so I dunno if that helps me in being able to code even though I don't get paid for doing it. LOL

 

[JSOP]

Keep in mind a decent nanny in the Bay Area makes $75K.

A NANNY (I assume is a legal US resident/citizen) makes $75K??!!! 83% of the salary of a SE who's just incurred a six-figure student loan after spending FOUR years in a CS program??!! That's ridiculous!! What's the point of working if you are going to just give 83% of your salary to somebody who looks after your kids? That's almost like working for free!!! No wonder the Californians hate Trump so much for wanting to build that wall forbidding illegal aliens from entering USA. LOL

On the other hand those software companies REALLY should allow their workers to work from home. That way they will be able to get more value out of their super-expensive house/apartment and at the same time save on nanny cost.