Google report shows junior software developer salaries are decreasing

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Why junior software developer salaries are decreasing

Google released its Africa Developer Ecosystem Report for 2021, and it revealed that while the average salary for software developers increased, junior developers saw their pay drop.

According to the report, the average annual income for junior developers dropped from $13,000 (R197,000) in 2020 to $11,800 (R179,000) in 2021 — a decrease of around 9%.
 
"Perceived lower competence levels" is an understatement. Actual developers still earn great salaries and are in insane demand. The problem is the number of people calling themselves software (and web) developers, and also the standard of education at our universities.

Before I ditched the agency life and joined a US company full-time, I could find literally no local web developers to work with despite looking pretty hard. The standards are abysmal amongst devs who are available for hire. In the end I found some international devs who were great, and they're carrying the torch in my absence.
 
But are these "full stack" junior developers?

Ah scratch that, junior just came to ask me to show him how to setup project and that I should document it. The project has a git landing page with all the documentation...
 
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Bryn said:
"Perceived lower competence levels" is an understatement. Actual developers still earn great salaries and are in insane demand. The problem is the number of people calling themselves software (and web) developers, and also the standard of education at our universities.

Before I ditched the agency life and joined a US company full-time, I could find literally no local web developers to work with despite looking pretty hard. The standards are abysmal amongst devs who are available for hire. In the end I found some international devs who were great, and they're carrying the torch in my absence.
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Of course a junior is a lower competence level, that's why they are a junior and quite frankly its up to a number of us old farts to help them overcome that. Old joke, junior dev but must be able to do x,y,z and have ten years experience.
 
Kosmik said:
Of course a junior is a lower competence level, that's why they are a junior and quite frankly its up to a number of us old farts to help them overcome that. Old joke, junior dev but must be able to do x,y,z and have ten years experience.
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I've seen tons of just abhorrent job postings lately where you'd need to really love what you're doing to actually make it worth it when you're a junior, 'cause salary-wise these big corporates will f***ing ream you for every cent you're worth, and then some.

Also, k@k junior devs have always been there as far as I'm concerned, what hasn't always been there was the insanity going on in many companies in regards to how top-heavy they are compared to years gone by. There's no wonder there's no money left to pay juniors...

Just came off a project where 4-5 of the people doing the work were us devs, the other 45 were all management, PM, Product owners, scrum masters etc. etc. I've never seen something like that in my life.

It's gotten so bad that I sometimes play a game with my colleague, we look at job titles on MS Teams and see who can find the most ridiculous titles in the company. I sweartogod some of those titles were created by online word generators.
 
RaptorSA said:
I've seen tons of just abhorrent job postings lately where you'd need to really love what you're doing to actually make it worth it when you're a junior, 'cause salary-wise these big corporates will f***ing ream you for every cent you're worth, and then some.

Also, k@k junior devs have always been there as far as I'm concerned, what hasn't always been there was the insanity going on in many companies in regards to how top-heavy they are compared to years gone by. There's no wonder there's no money left to pay juniors...

Just came off a project where 4-5 of the people doing the work were us devs, the other 45 were all management, PM, Product owners, scrum masters etc. etc. I've never seen something like that in my life.

It's gotten so bad that I sometimes play a game with my colleague, we look at job titles on MS Teams and see who can find the most ridiculous titles in the company. I sweartogod some of those titles were created by online word generators.
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government ?
 
Also, people need to understand that this isn't the 90's or early 2000's anymore.

The amount of technologies out there is completely insane and it's impossible to keep up.
As a Junior dev. you're basically a leaf in the wind, working and learning to use whatever comes your way and hoping that those skills will at least translates to experience that can help you in future. It's almost impossible to plan and decide exactly what you want to do and what skills you want to hone.

Happened to me back in the day.
 
Kosmik said:
To be fair, there are a LOT more junior/intern developers than before so this sounds like market fluctuation to me.
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I think so.

Basically COVID causes a bit of a shuffle and so there are plenty of open positions and even more people entering the market. Many are happy to take what they get (both employee and employer) so expectations have dropped.
 
*cries in junior*

I view myself as a massive expense to my company. I'm basically being paid to watch tutorials at the moment. At least for the first 6 months. It nice but I'm sad I can't touch big boy code that might bring down production.:)
 
oversupply of Devs causing this?
as every Tom, Dick and Harry and their dog is going to do Programming in Uni and trying to get a job.

and this is the net result, more devs who cant even Print "hello world", and yet need a job.
 
Yes, this is in part due to a lot of publications (including MBB) constantly publishing lists of best paid positions in IT. This is SA, and such articles only serve to drive the majority of morons into a specific area, which is then flooded with these morons, having the qualifications but not the intelligence. The very same thing happened years ago with the A+ and then a few years later with Safety officers. A safety office could at one point demand up to R60k per month, then everyone found out, it's a short course, million ran to do it and the entry level salary dropped to R4k as companies realised it was all smoke and mirrors bullshit. Unfortunately due to the nature of morons in SA, there is a constant chase for positions that offer maximum salary with the potential of doing as little as possible for as long as possible, and ride out your years on the knowledge of others. This is why we have doctors, lawyers and engineers who got their degrees by obtaining at least 33% pass marks.
 
emperornemesis said:
Yes, this is in part due to a lot of publications (including MBB) constantly publishing lists of best paid positions in IT. This is SA, and such articles only serve to drive the majority of morons into a specific area, which is then flooded with these morons, having the qualifications but not the intelligence. The very same thing happened years ago with the A+ and then a few years later with Safety officers. A safety office could at one point demand up to R60k per month, then everyone found out, it's a short course, million ran to do it and the entry level salary dropped to R4k as companies realised it was all smoke and mirrors bullshit. Unfortunately due to the nature of morons in SA, there is a constant chase for positions that offer maximum salary with the potential of doing as little as possible for as long as possible, and ride out your years on the knowledge of others. This is why we have doctors, lawyers and engineers who got their degrees by obtaining at least 33% pass marks.
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You are a safety officer?
 
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