I've been thinking about moving to Australia for many personal reasons but haven't given much thought about how my career/job will change simply because I don't know anything about the tech scene in Australia. I am mid level soft. engineer from the east coast.
Ever since I started my career in software engineering, I have always wondered what exactly I should be paid, or in other words what is my worth? I know the answer depends on a lot of factors such as location, experience/knowledge, day-to-day responsibilities, supply and demand, company size, company profit, etc… But I wanted to give a brief background information about myself and wanted to get honest opinion from my peers at hacker news so I get a better sense of what I’m worth and hopefully this post will also help someone else who may be wondering the same thing.
My title is Mid-Level software engineer with 2 years of experience. I have a CS and Fine Art degree. I work for a small private company (government contractor) in the Washington Metropolitan Area (Northern Virginia to be specific). I am currently the only and lead Software Engineer for two Java enterprise applications. I ship code about 5 to 7 times a year with about 200-320 development/test hours for each release. I lead and take part in every phase of software development lifecycle including customer support. I have managed to clear two Oracle Certifications in one year, and preparing to clear another in the near future. According to my yearly review I was told I was doing an excellent job and will be promoted to Sr. Software Engineer within a year at the pace I’m going. My company size is in the range of 20-30 people and yearly profit is about somewhere in the range of 5-10 million. I have lot of experience in Java and J2EE technologies, but I am also very familiar with PHP, ROR and somewhat familiar with C, but I can learn anything in a short period of time. Right now I make about 75K a year.
Hope that is enough info to give you an idea of how much I should be paid? So the big question is ‘Should I get paid more?’
Thank you all!
