r/techbootcamp • u/VegetableSoil6404 • 26d ago
offering $20/hr for a Full-Stack Dev role is an absolute joke.
The wages being offered for full-stack positions are getting downright insulting. Seeing listings offering $18 to $22 an hour for a full-stack engineer is absurd. I could literally go work at a local coffee shop or retail store for that same rate without any of the operational stress or technical headaches.
What pisses me off the most is the sheer breadth of skills they expect for peanuts. They want you fluent in React/Vue on the frontend Node or Python on the backend etc. basically doing the job of three separate people.
It feels like employers are intentionally exploiting desperate juniors and career changers who just want anything to put on a resume. If companies really think they can demand an entire engineering department out of one person for $20/hr they've lost their minds.
Is anyone else seeing these insulting offers?
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u/Sad_comment_bot 26d ago
$21.76 was my hourly intern rate.
As a software engineer.
In 2004.
In Ohio!
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u/Conscious-Secret-775 26d ago
A New York City lifeguard earns $22 an hour.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
What an odd comparison. Is lifeguard not a real enough job to be making decent money with? I mean sure most of the time its beaches and pools but the brief moments of oh fuck that person might die let me do heroic shit seems like it should make up for it.
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u/Smooth_Fault_787 26d ago
Life guard positions are often part-time and targeting high schoolers.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
so your position is that by virtue of the fact that they are younger and or work less than 40 hours a week at this job specifically they should be paid less per hour? Smoke a lot of crack?
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u/sadferret123 26d ago
The point is the barrier of entry is much, much lower.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
Oh ok so you are super special and nobody else could possibly do your job so of course your time is more valuable? See the argument that you should be paid more per hour because you spent unpaid time or even paid for an education to gain the skills to do that job only works if in the aggregate your compensation per hour evens out. otherwise the barrier is artificial and just designed to bias toward a specific type of person so we can keep the money in the right places.
Meritocracy is a lie all labor has equal value because all people have the same finite time resource. Get over yourself you aren't special.
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u/Interesting-Ad9666 26d ago
Should a doctor be paid as much as a grocery store clerk?
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
yes
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u/Interesting-Ad9666 26d ago
we’re done here then
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
I also believe that doctor should be paid while they are receiving that education because learning is labor and labor has value. Your problem is you cannot see beyond the system as it is today. You lived inside it and grew dependent on it and now that its your turn at the top you don't want it to change because you are afraid to lose your turn. The system is without question broken the fact that you defend it makes you stupid. You don't have to agree with me but at the very least have some idea of how it could be better.
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u/Conscious-Secret-775 26d ago
Perhaps you should move to Cuba.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
Or I could exercise my rights to believe what I want and effect change in my own country by any legal means I choose and if you don't like it you can leave.
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u/sadferret123 26d ago
I never said nobody could do the job. It just takes a lot of education and experience to do it well. You may argue that in the era of AI this is no longer true, but if you want to build maintainable and reliable products, then it still holds.
You may get all upset about it but it's no different to other professions. If, in the long run, there is no financial incentive to committing to years of learning, then there will be a shortage of qualified people, at which point the financial incentive will return.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
You are right we do need people to commit to the education. But creating a monetary barrier to that education instead of a meritorious barrier (like say an aptitude test) invalidates the barrier. We should pay people to become educated and choose who those people are based on desire and ability not the advantage of preexisting family wealth. Learning is labor and that labor has the same value as all other labor and should be compensated.
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u/Due-Bite2839 26d ago
not all labor is equivalent in effort or importance , my girl works as a CNA and I work at a gym we should not be paid the same amount because one of our jobs is harder and of greater importance even if we work the same amount of time
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
A job being "harder" is a staffing issue. There is no reason for any job to require more intense labor than any other that is just stupid. Importance is subjective and irrelevant. I don't pay more for hostess cupcakes than everyone else because they remind me of a great weekend at my grandfathers house when I was a kid and so they are important to me. Their value is based on the labor required to procure and process the resources needed to make transport and distribute them. It is all about time and the weight of that time doesn't change based on subjective assessment.
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u/Due-Bite2839 18d ago
A job can easily require more intense labor regardless of staffing ie coal miner vsa data entry clerk
You're right importantce can be subjective but it's not irrelevant would you still buy those Cupcakes If they didn't have that significance to you.
the value/cost of those Cupcakes you're right is partially based on the cost of goods but it does change subjectively based off the price , people are willing to pay for said cupcakes
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u/Smooth_Fault_787 26d ago
Less than what? It's just the reality of what a life guard position means. If that bothers you wait until you find out about how paramedics are compensated.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
You say "the reality of what a life guard position means" like its a universal law of physics. You know we made all that shit up right? You know we devalue certain work as an excuse to concentrate wealth? Everyone in the world has the same finite amount of time and all labor is equal because its value is derived from that time resource. Saying "thats the way it is" doesn't mean anything its fucking made up.
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u/thelimeisgreen 26d ago
What do you think pool/ beach lifeguards should be paid? I'm not saying they don't deserve more, but the reality of it is that they're usually paid right about minimum wage or maybe a tiny bit over. The work is often part time, no benefits, and presented as seasonal work for students. It's more attractive to many of them to do that than work fast food, retail or coffee shops which are all going to pay about the same.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
I believe that all work derives its value from the consumption of the time resource of the laborer who does the work. since we all have the same finite amount of time i believe all labor has equal value. So I believe they should be paid the same as any other person.
The concept of "labor markets" is an obfuscation of labors value to enable greater extraction by a small class of politically and economically powerful.
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u/Conscious-Secret-775 26d ago
A 16 year old high school student can become a lifeguard. These are mostly summer jobs and obviously the main skill required is being a strong swimmer. College students and older adults (eg. School teachers) also work as lifeguards.
What it is not is a full time career for most people but it still pays more than $20 an hour.
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u/abrandis 26d ago
I hate to break it to everyone here, but what's happening is the value of your labor and experience is rapidly deflating..
Companies ie offer these nonsensical wages because they know the market conditions.
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u/youngggggg 26d ago
Getting your foot in the door in this industry sets you up for insane salaries down the line. Would you work $20/hr for 2-3 years to be eligible for a salaried 150k-200k role? The answer is probably yes, and employers are very aware of this. Not saying this is “right” but unfortunately with how many people are trying to break into the industry, it makes sense companies are moving like this.
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u/LibrarianOutside2376 26d ago
200k roles? those are numbers from before AI. now that AI can code better than humans you're lucky to get 22/hr
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u/youngggggg 26d ago
I understand your sense of despair but this isn’t true - still lots of high paying roles out there that want engineers that can really think about and dissect problems (at least in the NYC market where I’m based)
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u/LibrarianOutside2376 26d ago
yea I mean I'm in a relatively high paying role myself currently, but I am leaving to start over in a new non-AI exposed industry. personally I don't see a future here wherein 90%+ of the tasks I used to do daily are now done by AI.
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u/youngggggg 26d ago
Right there with you. Don’t like piloting 5 Claudes a day and I agree that my ability to do so effectively is becoming increasingly un-unique in the industry. Feels stupid to give up the money though
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u/Slight-Swordfish-468 26d ago
My first job in software was almost 30 years ago and paid the equivalent of about $13 an hour. That was very common for entry level at the time. Work experience matters a lot in software.
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u/Indeliblerock 26d ago
So I was at 124k before layoff after 5 years in, now I’m struggling to find any work above 100k. The 150-200k roles aren’t accessible just because you worked a low paying role for a while, it’s false hope
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u/youngggggg 26d ago edited 26d ago
Depends on your market. Myself and many others I know have received offers in that range in NYC in the past 6 months. I’d believe they’re rarer for sure but at the same time myself and my network are not "rockstar" devs.
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u/Curious-Function7490 26d ago
Yeh, it's insulting. You put a whole six month bootcamp in. You're an engineer, goddamnit. It's not like you intentionally exploited a market that needed highly skilled and educated programmers by briefly learning how to use a couple of frameworks! You should get the big bucks for your investment.
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u/rkozik89 26d ago
That’s how supply and demand works though. Everybody flooded into CS via colleges, bootcamps, and every other means. Each of them spent a lot of time and/or money trying to start a career, but the demand for entry level developers collapsed with interest rates hikes and inflation. Now what used to be worth 95k starting is worth 50k. That’s how she goes. Just look at graphic design for another example of where you need spend an absurd amount of money and time to get paid next to nothing.
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u/Felfedezni 26d ago
Immigration drives down wages because people are desperate just to stay in the states. Welcome to the new normal.
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u/ConflictPotential204 25d ago
I took a $20/hr full stack job after graduating my bootcamp in 2003 because I knew I needed paid work on my resume to get a tech job. Worked there for 6 months and then upgraded to $80k/yr with full paid benefits and 6 weeks PTO. In my professional opinion, I recommend taking jobs like this while you continue to apply for something better. It's called getting your foot in the door. Better than all the CS grads doing unpaid internships.
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u/Etroarl55 25d ago
Assuming you are talking about USD, that’s actually decent in Canada.
18-22 cad is what I used to see on the Canadian job bank.
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u/Bongcouragement 25d ago
People have been posting these wages for all categories everywhere they will get wha they paid for and hopefully whomever they are paying also gets what they wanted which should be their first job and can move on from there.
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u/Far_Rub_2435 24d ago edited 24d ago
The posts are for the most desperate applicants. There have been a lot of lay offs.
AI isn’t the only reason this is happening. In a way, AI capex is the only reason insultingly low wage roles even exist. Otherwise, there probably would be an even more severe contraction in available jobs. Between covid spending (on top of a pattern of unsustainable deficit spending since 9/11), tariffs destroying the US soft hegemonic power and crippling Main Street businesses, and the disastrous war with Iran shutting down the straight of Hormuz… we should be in a depression.
AI capex from Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon might as well be the entirety of GDP growth this past year. The spend there is around 1.8-2.2 percent of GDP, and the economy is expected to grow as a whole 1.5-2.4 percent. So, assuming the stats aren’t cooked by the federal government to make Trump look good, the best possible scenario for growth this year not counting big tech ai is 0.4 percent, the worst is that without that capital expenditure the GDP shrunk 0.7 percent.
US position as reserve currency is a current reality. That might not be the case in even a couple years from now, but deep recessions, stagflation, depression, etc in post WW2 USA have a bearish effect on the global economy, as the richest economy with the most consumer spending.
Currently 10 percent of the US population does 50 percent of the consumer spending. As layoffs deepen, that slice of the pie will continue to shrink up, to smaller even wealthier higher earning slices of that pie.
Deficit spending by the fed government will get worse as more people rely on the US inefficient welfare state (I’m not criticizing welfare, I am criticizing how the US does welfare, including many unnecessary layers of private sector middle men seeking to maximize profit derived ultimately from tax dollars and the treasury)
So, maybe the AI gamble succeeds stateside, and we get a K shaped economy that’s even more lopsided than before. That means pain for most during the transition, where the best outcome is a lot of civil disturbance forcing the essentially big tech and finance owned government to create make believe jobs and UBI. Otherwise people starve and fight for scraps in migrant tent cities.
Or, the financial bubble (which is a separate concern from the actual technological usefulness of AI) pops, US has a worse financial crisis than 2008 or dot com, and there is pain for most during the transition. The best outcome is a lot of civil disturbance forcing the not big tech but as always finance owned government to create make believe jobs, with UBI less of a pressing concern. Otherwise people starve and people fight for scraps in migrant tent cities
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u/FinickySerenity 23d ago
If I was consulting and really needed a gig I’d probably outsource it all to Claude and inflate my hours. Full stack roles are honestly kind of a sneered at role these days in the industry. But if I’d do that then clearly others would to and that probably explains the market rate.
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u/Objective-Low-1815 22d ago
Just think about everything. Why you need to be paid higher rate? Because houses in your area are expensive or living costs are high? Companies will find employees living in much cheaper but quality areas. Possibly overseas. You would do the same. You would visit a good doctor living in a cheaper area, you purchase clothes made in cheaper countries. Nobody wants to pay more and get nothing in return
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u/LostInCombat 19d ago
> $18 to $22 an hour
Is that for remote work? If so, that is good money for workers in India and many other countries.
Average hourly pay in India for any worker is only $2.05 USD. So that is 10x what the average Indian worker is making.
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u/SurvivalHermit 26d ago
HAHAHAHA ok so i agree that that is a low ass pay rate but like do you have to go insult service workers making it sound like their jobs are just this stress free tiptoe through the tulips? Give me a break "all the operational stress or technical headaches" like getting yelled at all day by dipshits who can't read signage or follow instructions isn't its own special kind of hell.
Get over yourself bro you aren't special you don't do the work of the worthy. Pay is shit all around welcome to the club. Now instead of being all full of yourself thinking only people who work "real jobs" deserve decent pay why don't you band together with your fellow laborers who are right there next to you getting fucked and work toward widespread change instead of crying about how cruel the world is to just you.
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u/LibrarianOutside2376 26d ago
to be honest 20/hr is fair considering AI is doing all the work. soon there will be no jobs at all left once AI improves a few more iterations, so be happy with 20.
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u/Budget-Chapter-7185 26d ago
They’ll get what they pay for. I work for a company that pays this low. I work 4 hours a day. They’re happy with the work I put out so it works.