Software Developers Survey!: How is your average work week & compensation

[rain2k4]

Im a Seattle SDE with a little under 5 years experience. Im moving into a new team that apparently has a 10-12 hour worday(in office) and puts in an extra 2-3 hours a day at home and I know a lot of them work a day on the weekend also. How does this compare with other development jobs? The last place I worked at I worked about a 9 hour shift, and Im wondering which is the norm... 9 hour work day or 12-14 hour work day.

Also, I consider myself to be a "good" developer c++ background, but recently shifted to java. What do you think would be decent compensation? Im happy just to have a job in this economy but I would be lying if I said I wasnt concerned about what I am getting into(working a 70 hour work week). Could some of you post the following stats.

Years Experience, Salary(range if you have to), Self Rating, Avg work hours/day

i.e.

10 years, 80K, Good, 9 hours

Please Post!!!!

 

[Argo]

3 years experience after graduating from college, 1 year during. I'm a lead developer on a J2EE project.

My average work day is from 9am to 6pm, but often I end up staying until 6:30 or 7. Once in a while I end up working a day during the weekend, but that's usually when I need to oversee a rollout of a new version. I'm not really confortable posting my salary here, but I'll say that it's less than 80k.

 

[rain2k4]

I take it you are from NY. I wonder if the salary ranges there are similar to here in Seattle(I would think cost of living might be more in NY). Anyways, 9 hour work day huh... Im not sure what im getting myself into!

For those who dont want to post exact salary, just give a range similar to what Argo has done.

 

[Descartes]

My average work used used to be about 60 hours per week, and on projects it would fluctuate around 80. The past year has taught me that working that much is not at all worth it. I'm a consultant, so my salary fluctuates as well, so I'll just say it averages about 80k. The money isn't worth as much as my time, so I'm quite literally going to buy myself more free time to do what I enjoy.

So... unless you are going to be working on exciting projects, I'd go for less hours. Countless all nighters, deadlines, and unfathomable stress has someone diminished my passion for development.

 

[Codewiz]

I work for the government so I work 40 hours a week unless there is an absolute need for overtime. I just started working in May so that hasn't happened yet.

 

[StageLeft]

I bill 8 hours/day, and I work 8 hours day. I'm currently on contract at a company with a group of developers (about 5 of them) and none of them work more than the 8/day. You'd have to pay me SERIOUS money to put in 12 hours/day, although I did put in a couple of 10 hours days this week which were OK...

Experience I have about 3 years. As descartes can vouch for I have a lot to learn I'd say I'm about average for my years though, because I always do end up getting the work done even if I have to cram in some knowledge quickly. I know a little about a lot, though I don't know a lot about a little :Q

Currently my pay is mid 50's, but really that is no indication of what it will be in the future or what it was - it's just a snapshot. Earlier this year I was making let's just say "much less" than that, due to a funky pay scheme so that my company wouldn't have to lay me off, because they were not able to bill me out much. So, I'd sit at home making little money, but when they did bill me I'd average mid 60's. We got that sorted out though, so here I am now. I was offered a job two months ago at my request of $50k (decided to stay with my current company). I wonder could I have asked for more? Who knows, but with mrsskoorb's income I'm extremely happy with our situation at the moment, especially considering how far it goes in birmingham.

 

[Zombie]

I make way less than 80k(little over 50K) but I work nowhere near 60 hours/week (45 atmost). 2years post-graduate experience. Skill 6 on scale of 10.

 

[rain2k4]

Looks like a 12-14 hour work day isnt the norm, but isnt unheard of either... Anyone work at Microsoft or Amazon? I heard they put in a good amount of hours also. Anyone know how long the average work day is at those companies?

 

[Zombie]

Most of the time its not how much time you put in, its how much work you get done. For us as long as you get your stuff done in time nobody cares when you come and when you go.

 

[DT4K]

Title: Software Application Developer
2.5 years experience (started 3 months before I got my BSCS)
Around 50k
Southern Oregon
Most of my time has been spent doing VB6 and SQL Server dev.
Along with some ASP, ASP.Net, and recently VB.Net.

EDIT: As far as how good of a developer I am, I'd say I'm a 4/10 on knowledge and a 8/10 on my ability to solve difficult problems. So call me a 6 overall. I hope to get to the 8 or 9 level with more experience.

Our IT dept looks like this:
3 Developers
3 App support
1 DBA
1 Network Admin
1 Server Admin
1 IT manager

I typically work 8-5, 5 days a week, and never work at home.
Of course there are times where I have to put in extra time to meet deadlines. We are a 24x7 manufacturing environment, so we sometimes have to squeeze our schedules to meet the needs of production changes.
So occasionally I will work late nights or come in on the weekends. And sometimes the devs get called in to help the app support personnel if they are having a problem and can't solve it. But this isn't too frequent.
So 90% of the time, I'm working 8-5 M-F.

We really don't have a lead dev. All 3 of us have identical job titles and report directly to our IT manager. We've basically assigned each dev to certain departments. So each of us take on lead dev and project manager role for the projects in "our" departments, although we help each other out in different areas depending on priorities. It's actually been really nice to be on a small team like this. Even with no prior experience, immediately after starting here, I was able to be directly involved in the whole development process, including having input into the design process. If I had started somewhere like MS, I'm sure I would have started as a tester, or something like that.

By the way, how is the job market in Seattle? I'm interested in moving north, either Portland or Seattle, but I know the market in Portland has been pretty bad.

 

[Argo]

Originally posted by: Zombie
Most of the time its not how much time you put in, its how much work you get done. For us as long as you get your stuff done in time nobody cares when you come and when you go.

Exactly. Same here. There are weeks when I average 9-10 hours a day. Then there are weeks when I average 8. It all depends current state of the projects I'm working on.

 

[rain2k4]

Originally posted by: Shanti
Title: Software Application Developer
2.5 years experience (started 3 months before I got my BSCS)
Around 50k
Southern Oregon
Most of my time has been spent doing VB6 and SQL Server dev.
Along with some ASP, ASP.Net, and recently VB.Net.

EDIT: As far as how good of a developer I am, I'd say I'm a 4/10 on knowledge and a 8/10 on my ability to solve difficult problems. So call me a 6 overall. I hope to get to the 8 or 9 level with more experience.

Our IT dept looks like this:
3 Developers
3 App support
1 DBA
1 Network Admin
1 Server Admin
1 IT manager

I typically work 8-5, 5 days a week, and never work at home.
Of course there are times where I have to put in extra time to meet deadlines. We are a 24x7 manufacturing environment, so we sometimes have to squeeze our schedules to meet the needs of production changes.
So occasionally I will work late nights or come in on the weekends. And sometimes the devs get called in to help the app support personnel if they are having a problem and can't solve it. But this isn't too frequent.
So 90% of the time, I'm working 8-5 M-F.

We really don't have a lead dev. All 3 of us have identical job titles and report directly to our IT manager. We've basically assigned each dev to certain departments. So each of us take on lead dev and project manager role for the projects in "our" departments, although we help each other out in different areas depending on priorities. It's actually been really nice to be on a small team like this. Even with no prior experience, immediately after starting here, I was able to be directly involved in the whole development process, including having input into the design process. If I had started somewhere like MS, I'm sure I would have started as a tester, or something like that.

By the way, how is the job market in Seattle? I'm interested in moving north, either Portland or Seattle, but I know the market in Portland has been pretty bad.

There are quite a few openings in Seattle but there are a lot of unemployed developers looking for jobs. I would say that you may be able to get an interview at 1 out of 5 places where your skill set matches the requirements. I think its tuff here actually...

 

[funks]

Title: Systems Development
Experience: 7 years experience
Pay: 65K (I don't want to work in OC, or LA, price to pay working close to home - I don't get paid to stay in traffic)
Location: Southern California (Redlands -> Inland Empire)
Type: J2EE <--> Integration with SAP R/3, swiss-army knife
Work Week: 5 days / 8 hours per day (everybody gets paid hourly - no such thing as overtime pay)..

My passion for putting in crazy hour craziness stopped when I had my son.

It's going to be quite bad for a lot of IT/Software Developers when Bush gets his way in removing extra overtime compensation for Professionals. You'll see those 10-12 hour work days drop soon enough - ultimately causing the jobs to migrate over to China and India (It's seems that more than half of the CS students in CSUSB are overseas Chinese Students - China will probably be a good place to farm out SD)..

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: funks
Title: Systems Development
Experience: 7 years experience
Pay: 65K (I don't want to work in OC, or LA, price to pay working close to home - I don't get paid to stay in traffic)
Location: Southern California (Redlands -> Inland Empire)
Type: J2EE <--> Integration with SAP R/3, swiss-army knife
Work Week: 5 days / 8 hours per day (everybody gets paid hourly - no such thing as overtime)..

It's going to be quite bad for a lot of IT/Software Developers when Bush gets his way in removing extra overtime compensation for Professionals. You'll see those 10-12 hour work days drop soon enough - ultimately causing the jobs to migrate over to China and India (It's seems that more than half of the CS students in CSUSB are overseas Chinese Students - China will probably be a good place to farm out SD)..

wtf are you talking about???
I don't know any devs who get paid for OT. All the one's I know are salaried exempt. We can work 100 hours in a week and we don't get OT pay. It's always been that way.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I do odd programming and web jobs for a guy that runs a small company, and I'm getting pretty sick of dealing with him, because he just doesn't understand the stuff, he's too busy, and it just works out really crappy. I don't like what I'm doing either. I also get paid jack sh!t. I have a couple years of experience in tinkering with stuff in my free time. So far the big project with him took well over 6 months (me doing it by myself, 20 hrs a week), building a web app for managing ad contracts and tracking the ads through production, handling contacts (the same email contacts show up in their email client and on the web app, through ldap and php-ldap). PITA! I can definitely say I learned a lot about how to design big apps, though.

I *wish* I could find a job where I could actually *program*, not glue things together with hacky crap in scripting languages. I also wish I could find a job that paid enough for me to not consider myself poor, but I guess I shouldn't really expect that until I'm at least in college, or more likely, out. Right now I haven't even started school.

 

[funks]

wtf are you talking about???
I don't know any devs who get paid for OT. All the one's I know are salaried exempt. We can work 100 hours in a week and we don't get OT pay. It's always been that way.

How many big/small companies have you worked for? Software Development companies for the Aerospace Industry, Financial Industry, Health and etc.. The developers you know are salaried excempt, but it does not mean everyone / every company is - some are non-excempt depending on the situation.

 

[BoberFett]

Minneaplis, $25/hr paid hourly, as opposed to most companies IT who are salary. That's mostly so they can make you work horrible hours and not pay you for it, so I like hourly. I usually work 40hr/wk but sometimes I'll do a 50 or 60 and make some good overtime. It's a small company so the benefits aren't that great, but I do have a flexible schedule.

Edit: Oh yeah, I have 8 years experience writing business apps and multi-tier database stuff.

 

[funks]

I don't know any devs who get paid for OT. All the one's I know are salaried exempt. We can work 100 hours in a week and we don't get OT pay. It's always been that way

Look at the above post - Not everyone is salaried excempt.

 

[alnoa]

I was looking at salary.com, those pay scales are a bit higher than reality I think...

 

[StageLeft]

In regards to overtime my company is a consulting company and almost all of us are salaried. We get a set amount of pay regardless of hours we bill. However, if we bill more, then obviously our company makes more, and they do give us an hourly bonus if we hit 5 or more OT hours in a pay period. Unfortunately most clients don't like their consultants to sit around and suck back OT, so I personally never do it. One guy at our company has been working with a client in tennessee for several years and consistently bills CRAZY overtime with them. They are a government client and they don't seem to care. This guy is just rolling in bank because of it Shanti's setup sounds exactly like the one I'm working in now. I do like it and hopefully the client will keep me a while longer.

 

[nord1899]

Been in the work force for nearly 3 years. Avg work week is about 45-50 hours. Pay is over 50k.

No way would I work more than 50 hours per week.

 

[AmigaMan]

lead software developer for a bank. Hours put in usually vary, lately it's been around 10-12 hours a day. My boss is lenient and allows me to make up the time as vacation I can take whenever I want. I get paid under $70K. I've been a java developer for 3 years and before that I was a VB developer for 3 years. Wow, I just realized I've been out of school for 6 years now.
I like what I do, and don't mind putting in the extra hours, but my wife and I are planning on having kids soon, so the hours will probably be cut back to something a bit more normal.

In this day and age in the US, we pretty much have to be the company's b1tch so we have some semblence of job security. I wish sometimes I lived in Europe for their mandatory 4 week vacations and laid back lifestyle. Stress sucks!

 

[Ameesh]

I was working 60-70 hour weeks every week for stetchesd of 8 and 9 months , i said fvck and i went to another company i am very happy now.

Although I am at work now (7:40 pm on friday) and i will be her for at least 3-4 more hours this is not normal and everyone is here with me.

i get paid well, i like my job and i have 2.5 years experience out of college not including another 3 while in college.

I did the long week thing and i would nt do it again.

 

[Evadman]

I get $13 an hour with OT. 1/2 Year experence. Self taught. first program took me a week to build and saves my company a little over 400k a month. I got a $2 raise because of that, and expect another huge ($10+/hr) raise in a few months.

 

[StormRider]

I've been working for about 3 years at my current job. My official job title is software engineer. I usually work exactly 8/hours per day. I have used VBA, SAS, C/C++ and Perl in my work and I'm probably overpaid at $75K/year.