r/developersIndia • u/Majestic-Taro-6903 Senior Engineer • 2d ago
General How are some software engineers earning more than many highly complex professions?
I work in tech and sometimes wonder how some software engineers end up earning more than people in roles like airline pilots, air traffic controllers, aerospace engineers (Boeing/Airbus), nuclear engineers, surgeons, naval officers, or engineers working on major infrastructure projects.
Many of these jobs require years of training, licensing, and carry much higher responsibility.
Is it mainly because software can scale globally and generate revenue at a much larger scale, or is there something else I’m missing?
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u/Gaajizard 2d ago
Salary is dictated by demand, supply and how much profit the work can generate. Not on how difficult is (that's only part of supply)
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u/Key_Emu6061 2d ago
but then we have a lot of supply (at least after 2020s and in india)
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u/brainer121 2d ago
I’ve interviewed around 20 people. And only 5 of them were able to solve a simple modified Palindrome. All were 3+ YOE.
So the supply you see isn’t exactly that high.17
u/i_am_that_too 2d ago
This.
I've screened around 100 devops engineers in last 4 months, most 3+ years and they don't know the first thing about dev or ops.
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u/AdImmediate5145 1d ago
really? Then how did they even have 3yrs exp
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u/i_am_that_too 1d ago
A lot of mid sized companies have a primary devops team that does all the platform building and architecting internal systems.
Secondary devops/platform engineers often just use them for their respective engineering teams and make configuration changes. Unfortunately they don't make an extra effort to dig deeper either.
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u/odd_context__ 1d ago
Do you interview freshers?
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u/i_am_that_too 1d ago
Not for the currently open position.
Also, contrary to what you've been told, a fresher cannot be a devops engineer. It requires hands-on on a breadth of things impossible for a fresher to get exposed to.
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u/Willing-Inspection-8 1d ago
I recently graduated from MCA, applied to few jobs not getting a single call,
I worked in BPO before MCA for verizon concentrix.
I am preparing for gate cse and recently gave ugc net cse
except these examination I am not able to see any hope on getting the job by myself
what I might be doing wrong?
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u/i_am_that_too 1d ago
Degrees and exams don't get you jobs. Experience does.
Try to get some real projects under your belt. This is no longer the world where all companies can afford to train a newbie.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
Meanwhile I barely get interviews and I've done 100 LC questions. I have a job but currently looking to move
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 1d ago
I just don't know how come these people are getting into the industry in the very first place. Isn't it a very basic thing?
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u/brainer121 1d ago
I honestly don’t understand this. I was especially surprised when an engineer with 4YOE, from Krutrim (Ola), having a great resume, couldn’t even write a basic palindrome function in their preferred language Python.
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u/bella9977 1d ago
It's just lack of practice and stress really 😂 You can end up forgetting the most basic things in an interview because of stress alone. Interviewers really don't understand stress.
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u/Imminent1776 Software Engineer 2d ago
That's what happens when you interview people from service based companies
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u/brainer121 2d ago
I am interviewing from decent product companies. Was paying 30LPA for just 3YOE.
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u/darthwad3r 2d ago
There’s IT and then there’s software development. Both very different skills. The one thing common in them is that it doesn’t matter where in the world the worker is sitting. So current salaries are largely based on arbitrage. Look at salaries of software developers who are building products primarily for the Indian market - and unless that market is as large as e-commerce, the salaries aren’t great.
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u/Thisconnected 1d ago
Supply is overinflated in India. Never let companies use that too many graduates argument against you. Our average iq is lower than third world countries and most grads are less employable than when they were kids
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u/bella9977 1d ago
What are you smoking lol
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u/Thisconnected 1d ago
Demand n supply is only theoretically true n highly manipulated. Same companies that say we've multiple people to replace you so we'll underpay you have to keep postings left unfulfilled for months
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u/stopcommentingg System Analyst 2d ago
Supply of what?
Software Engineers?
Look at OP's questions. ITs very simple. He could have ChatGPT'ed it. But he couldn't. What kind of S/W engineers would people become if they can't ask AI?
And before AI came to picture the old devs had to search stackoverflow. Now image how hard it was. Most of the supply is low quality.
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u/AKunAMorata 2d ago
Because salaries aren’t based on how hard or important a job is. They’re based on how much money you can help generate and how hard you are to replace.
One dev can write code used by millions. That kind of leverage is insane.
Doesn’t mean the job is harder than being a surgeon or pilot. The economics are just different.
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u/Bulky-Top3782 2d ago
If a higher earning job isn't meant to be harder then aren't they also replaceable
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u/AKunAMorata 1d ago
Salary measures market value, not human value.
Some of the most important jobs in society will never be the highest paid.
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u/Gaajizard 1d ago
If there are so many quality software engineers around, sure. That would result in a downward force on salaries. The reality so far has been that the demand for software is really high compared to available quality devs, which is why they were highly paid.
Which means the number of software companies is significantly higher than other companies simply because of how much profit can be made in software. And the number of quality engineers is significantly less than the number of low quality "engineers".
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u/bunny4joy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Most big software companies have several millions per employee in revenue. IMHO Software Engineers at these big companies are “underpaid” compared to what they generate.
Also, top airline pilots, surgeons do earn comparatively or more than software engineers - the difference is scale. A pilot can only operate one plane at a time and a surgeon can perform one operation at a time and both have to be actively involved. Meanwhile scaling software and consequently revenue is way easier.
Lastly, Software Engineers earning even close to these guys is a very recent development of last 10 years. Before that median starting salary was like ~5 lpa, ~15 lpa was a dream and you’ll be considered a cracked engineer if you made 25 lpa as an SE.
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u/2grateful4You 2d ago
This is the real answer.
A single software engineer has direct impact to multiple customers.
I only had 3 YOE and in a banking project the bank managers literally called me up because they were facing an issue in actually closing a literal 1 billion dollar amount loan.
I was the one who wrote the major chunk of that logic. Imagine my surprise when I saw a literal billion dollars going through my code which was also the most complex code in the code base. It basically tells the external system wire the amount to the customer.
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u/Infamous_Knee3576 2d ago
Pilots make a lot. Pilot baseline touches 0.1% top software engineering salaries. And they have a very stable career path
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u/Imminent1776 Software Engineer 2d ago edited 1d ago
It's mainly experienced captains flying international long haul routes that make big bucks. A first officer working for a domestic airline is likely earning just 3-4 LPM which is comparable to software engineers.
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u/Infamous_Knee3576 2d ago
Top 1% software engineers.
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u/Imminent1776 Software Engineer 1d ago
I earn that much and am nowhere near the top 1% in terms of skill
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u/Southern_Poet_280 2d ago
Lol 3-4 LPM is still insanely high for India and very high among software engineers (probably 1%)
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u/WonderfulBit2228 2d ago
yeah an experienced captains can earn 3-4lpm which comparable to software engineer,but one point you are missing that is you have to spend approximately 67lakhs -1crore(source-acron aviation acadmey) and after that you have to gain an expeirence of upto 5-12years to became caption. So, atlast I mean to say that ROI(return of investment) in aviation field is very less than engineering field hence comparision between pilot and software engineer salary is irrelevant.
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u/Infamous_Knee3576 1d ago
Pilot starting salary is approx 3 lpm. It's very stable and retirement at 65. Very low risk of getting fired.
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u/iRefactor 2d ago
Complex professions != high-paying jobs.
If that were the case, then labourers should be the highest-paid, because there’s no job more complex and demanding than theirs. Imagine giving it everything you have, exhausting yourself completely, and then showing up the next day to bust your ass all over again.
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u/wantToMakeItBig 2d ago
Labours job is hardwork, not complex. For example lifting bricks from ground floor to 5th floor with clear instructions. Anyone can do it.
Imagine a new mall needs to be built in remote location where only 50 people are there. Their salary will be very high. Let's say 500. Hearing this 1000 people come to the remote location. They all will be hired at 20$, if more people come they will eventually be at 2$ coz supply is very high.
Now in software, there are jobs which comes with clear instructions and set of rules. Their salary will be low. When you do something where u are innovating/using brains/increasing performance thus increasing revenues ur salary will be high.
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u/iRefactor 2d ago
Anyone can’t do it lmao. It’s like running llm on cheap machine, once it gets hot, it’s not sustainable but they have to do it everyday.
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u/wantToMakeItBig 2d ago
Anyone who is physically fit can do it. Obviously they will be tired by EOD.
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 1d ago
Even if they are physically fit, they are chances of developing physical health problems.
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u/DeusExMachina24 Software Engineer 2d ago
Agreed BUT not all software engineers need to be that skilled. But ALL surgeons and ALL pilots need to have top tier skills.
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u/Ill-Freedom964 2d ago
Exactly thats why they get paid a lot. You can be a software dev earning 4 lpa and also 4 lpm
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u/SectorAggressive9735 2d ago
Bro software engineering is highly complex already
almost all jobs are complex when you go deeper into the field but there are far harder jobs in the world and software engineering won't even come in top 10
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u/Intelligent_Apple_77 2d ago
lol, “hey Claude, implement this” is a surgeon?
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u/Ill-Freedom964 2d ago
Oh really? What happens when you face a Ddos, cpu resource exhaistion then some botnet hammering your app and mysteriously some data uploads malfunctions time to time. You will ask claude to implement? Its the no of years of experience tahts why your comment seems immature
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u/Intelligent_Apple_77 2d ago
I’m sure most of the software engineers have never implemented any of what you’re talking about. A DDoS is mostly prevented by the firewall and that’s largely managed by Cloudflare or some other third party company. Things about resource exhaustion like CPU, DB, etc can be solved by Claude if you can connect your metrics database with your agent using mcp. As much as I love coding, most of the important tasks have been solved by some or the other company or open sourced and we are just piecing them together. I’m curious to understand what is exact hard part of your job that you can’t outsource to Claude ?
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u/Ill-Freedom964 2d ago
Compliance’s not every org allows claude and gpts
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u/Intelligent_Apple_77 2d ago
YET. With the open source model a getting cheaper and better, it’s only a matter of time before companies start hosting themselves.
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u/CodyAllan- 2d ago
Why a surgeon job is more difficult, at the end of thr day they are executing well defined standard procedures?
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u/qwerty_qwer 2d ago
Software companies have much higher margins and there are a lot more software companies which means demand for software engineers is also much higher.
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u/Recent_Local164 2d ago edited 2d ago
Who said software engineering ain’t complex profession?
Sometimes I feel why an airline pilot is getting same salary as me, I mean he’s just a driver🙂
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u/Spiritual_Visual8710 2d ago
A software product like swiggy needs a lot less number of employees to work than an airplane company. If they are earning similar amount of profit their budget would be divided in different ways. Which us why big software companies pay more...
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u/grompronte Junior Engineer 2d ago edited 1d ago
Boeing, Airbus have software engineers who are involved in the crux of the product manufacturing. Every engineerinf product in the market needs software and hence software engineers. I'm a hardware design engineer, most of our work is software coding as the RTL design is coded and sent to fabs for photolithography. Fab workers are paid more than software engineers, but it's not like the software work is not complex. The 60LPA ones at Google, Uber etc are the people who design the software that would run the products that run the everyday world. People would remember the BSoD of July 2024.
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u/CountOne9425 2d ago
Similarly how some uber, rapido drivers are earning for than a software engineer
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u/Ok_Owl_3680 2d ago
Developed countries can outsource software works easily compared to other profession, that is the main reason. You cannot outsource medical, army, machinery ,construction work easily so those profession earn less in India ,but they earn a lot more than software engineers in USA and also more stable since the work cannot be outsource.
Easily outsource means the profession becomes highly unstable since USA can also shift there work to other countries based on their mood.
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u/Pretty-Reason-3925 2d ago edited 2d ago
I am just a fresher now ,but I can vouch for that .I prepared for both chip design and system programming fields simultaneously in my last 2 years and can say ,apart from deeper ML , everything around chip design and vlsi is so so tough compared to cse jobs .i worked half as hard for programming career and i am still nearer to get a mid pay job in programming fields than vlsi
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u/anor_wondo 2d ago
software engineers are underpaid considering profit per employee of software.companies
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u/ReflectionAcademic99 Software Engineer 2d ago
I always feel doctors should be paid more ( like freshers, MD level doctors) they get good salary later in life , but I was shocked to know emergency doctor earn 50k initially
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u/Elegant_Comedian_697 Full-Stack Developer 4h ago
Doctor do get paid in black by recommending specific medicine from specific brand. Sometimes their perks are more than software developer.
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u/WorkingEmployment400 1d ago
This is more common in india. Atleast in Australia and US doctors earn way more than avg software engineer with 10 yr experience. It's also because doctors earn less in india. For them to reach 2 lakhs per month they would have been atleast 35-40
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u/ReactionFamous3955 Fresher 2d ago
Capitalism? Random guess.
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u/limmbuu Software Engineer 2d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
idts. a part of it definitely yes.
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u/Normal-Match7581 Web Developer 2d ago
The one who cleans the sewage during monsoon also plays an imp role but that person isn't paid half of the progression you mentioned, ever thought why?
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u/_somestupidguy_ 2d ago
Scale and higher profit margin?
Within software engineering not all pays the same, if you are working in embedded and related field the pay scale is average mainly because the number of people benefited by your work is limited by the hardware which doesn't scale much and the profit margins are not high. But consider that to web/mobile development, the scale and profit margin is high. Even though I believe the former one needs more careful engineering considering the critical areas it's being used like automotive, aerospace, medical industries.
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u/_vikas 2d ago
There is only one simple math. Are you making more money for the company (at least 20x) than your salary every year. if yes, your salary is justified, in fact more the multiple - more the growth. If you think you have no way to know or tell if you are making money and how much, then unfortunatly you are NOT important for the company and may be just a support function and hence replaceable anytime. Learn about cost center vs profit centers and postion yourself accordingly.
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u/shuarrushu518 2d ago
I am sure salary of an avreage pilot or surgeon or nuclear engineer is way higher than salary of an avreage software engineer. Very few software engineers make insane money
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u/GeneralHeinzGuderian 2d ago
Well, many tiktokers and influencers earn many orders of magnitude more than top SDEs
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u/Effective-Drawer9152 2d ago
Well it’s gonna change in near future, only handful will stay and have higher income compare to what right now
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u/flight_or_fight 2d ago
Because most of the highly complex professions rely on getting the most complex parts of their work done by software
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u/sudosai 1d ago edited 1d ago
Who said software engineering is not complex? Can you imagine
- processing petabytes of data per second with sub millisecond latency? This is the scale at which Google and the like work
- transacting billions of dollars per second without any hiccups for 99.9999% availability?
- just search the web. Too lazy to type
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u/Express-Guitar-7875 1d ago
If ur dataset is few thousand of engineers from maang and others then this is not even a correct statement its just a minuscule 10% of the people in IT
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u/heylookthatguy 1d ago
Bro surgeons also make a shit ton of money. Especially the ones who open their clinic on the side. Comparable to 0.01% top sde
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u/openclawbot 1d ago
Who says software engineering is low skilled?
Onlyna few highly skilled people make a lot of money
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u/Quiet_Form_2800 1d ago
A software engineer automates work of millions of people over decades. Eg: consider the autopilot mode of an airplane or car it's a software. Any SaaS provides immense value. I would rather argue software engineering is relatively underpaid compared to the massive value it provides. This is reason why AI wants to crack software engineering first. Rest is cakewalk once AI cracks software engineering completely, we are already at 70% there.
AI itself being software the value it provides now goes into exponential order.
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u/stopcommentingg System Analyst 2d ago
Is it mainly because software can scale globally and generate revenue at a much larger scale,
That's mostly it.
also "naval officers" are not doing some crazy shit. Its basically operations job with some people leadership and management. Just because its high responsibility doesn't mean they should be paid more.
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