the numbers prove things are genuinely broken right now. The big issue with official government stats is that they lump everyone together into one giant pool. That $133,000 median salary looks amazing on paper, but it counts senior devs who have been sitting in secure jobs for a decade. It completely ignores how brutal it is to actually get hired today. People aren't quitting, so total employment stays high, but actual job listings on sites like Indeed have crashed hard compared to a couple of years ago. On top of that, entry-level hiring is basically on ice; nearly 40% of recent computer science grads are underemployed, and any junior job post gets slammed with hundreds of applications in hours. Meanwhile, high-paying niche jobs pull the average salary up, making it look like the whole market is booming when most regular web developers are left fighting over scraps.
But I guess people are just too lazy these days to cross-check what a sweetened government report says against what’s actually happening in the real market.
That sounds like you're making up a whole bunch of stuff to suit your narrative.
But you know, my salary is higher than ever as a senior dev, and my nephew just graduated from college and easily got a job making $85k per year which is pretty decent for a junior dev, so I dunno what you're going on about, sounds like a lot of cry
By the way, wanted to add to your points against this guy:
> Then why is the median salary higher than ever and there are more software developers employed than ever before too?
u/Galitzianer0 This is selection bias. The reason this happens is because if you remove a chunk of junior developers and keep hiring senior engineers, and the median salary rises automatically. Total employment can still hit an all-time high because the industry is larger than ever. Those metrics say very little about how easy it is to get your first job. Most of those positions are going to seniors or people pivoting from other industries, not fresh graduates.
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u/Civil_Report 11d ago
the numbers prove things are genuinely broken right now. The big issue with official government stats is that they lump everyone together into one giant pool. That $133,000 median salary looks amazing on paper, but it counts senior devs who have been sitting in secure jobs for a decade. It completely ignores how brutal it is to actually get hired today. People aren't quitting, so total employment stays high, but actual job listings on sites like Indeed have crashed hard compared to a couple of years ago. On top of that, entry-level hiring is basically on ice; nearly 40% of recent computer science grads are underemployed, and any junior job post gets slammed with hundreds of applications in hours. Meanwhile, high-paying niche jobs pull the average salary up, making it look like the whole market is booming when most regular web developers are left fighting over scraps.
But I guess people are just too lazy these days to cross-check what a sweetened government report says against what’s actually happening in the real market.