How much money do you earn? And how do you spend it?

[Jahmon]

Linux Engineer, 32
Gross Salary: R78k
Nett Salary: R50k
Rental Income: R11k
Pension: 7.5% payment + a company contribution to match
Debt: 2x bonds at +-20k combined.

 

[TofuMofu]

Linux Engineer, 32
Gross Salary: R78k
Nett Salary: R50k
Rental Income: R11k
Pension: 7.5% payment + a company contribution to match
Debt: 2x bonds at +-20k combined.

Well freakin done!

 

[Pavan]

Exactly my case, try asking a increase when you're barely 30 and in the top 3 earners of your company (the two others being over 40)...

Sounds like you're in the wrong company then?

 

[maumau]

Sounds like you're in the wrong company then?

Not if he's happy there

 

[f2wohf]

Sounds like you're in the wrong company then?

How so? I'd earn the same or less in other companies/industries.

I've just reached a ceiling extremely fast and young thanks to being one of the first employees. I'll hardly be able to break it before 5 to 10 years as this would be replacing the CEO or COO.

 

[^^vampire^^]

LOL.. what a short sighted poephol.4-5 years ago, I knew guys that earned x2 what "he wouldn't pay"...

I was also on R48k a month and just trying to get out of the current company I was at so it's not like I was even asking for much more. There were bigger red flags to this guy than that though. He was using some weird plugin for visual studio which basically made use of linking logical pieces together instead of coding. He told me at that stage that he had been researching this for 2 years and that "my coding would be obsolete" in a few years because "all the big businesses are going this route now". Dodged a bullet there I guess.

Agreed. I'm pretty stuffed at the moment when it comes to increases. 95th percentile, I'm told. So essentially I'm overpaid. The only way for me to go up is to move into an executive position of some form, for which I don't feel entirely ready yet.

As a designer including UI design I was laughed at in an interview for asking R20k. This was around 2012.

Exactly my case, try asking a increase when you're barely 30 and in the top 3 earners of your company (the two others being over 40)...

This was starting to become a massive concern for me when while I was still in SA. I probably had 3-4 years to go at that stage before I hit possibly R100k a month. After that it's unlikely that you will be getting decent increases and it becomes a scary thing to know that each year there is a possibility that your effective earnings would just start decreasing. Let's get real, even with inflation linked increases your affordability each year is dropping substantially as inflation only really seems to be the true increase cost for those at the very bottom of the socio economic scale in SA with regards to the very basics. Now in Aus I'm still concerned about this but the difference between the glass ceiling and my increases with inflation or higher has bought me a bit more time. If I did want to jump job 2 more times before 35 I could easily be at this ceiling already; I guess the glass ceiling is a problem all over.

 

[maumau]

^
Difference is you don't have our ridiculously high inflation rate in Oz so even a small salary increase improves your standard of living.

 

[krycor]

^
Difference is you don't have our ridiculously high inflation rate in Oz so even a small salary increase improves your standard of living.

Except when it comes to property there.. but if he waits a bit their housing market should crash soon.

 

[cguy]

I hit a salary ceiling in my 20's in SA. The notion that there is a range in which software developer salaries "should" fall as determined by their title rather than value-add to the company is quite prevalent in SA. It does happen everywhere, but in my experience, more so in SA than UK/Europe/USA/AUS/NZ.

Took 20 years experience in the US for me to hit a ceiling. At least it’s not glass though.

 

[hj007]

; I guess the glass ceiling is a problem all over.

I hit a salary ceiling in my 20's in SA. The notion that there is a range in which software developer salaries "should" fall as determined by their title rather than value-add to the company is quite prevalent in SA. It does happen everywhere, but in my experience, more so in SA than UK/Europe/USA/AUS/NZ.

Took 20 years experience in the US for me to hit a ceiling. At least it’s not glass though.

The real wages ceiling is an issue that I've seen in a few countries, depending on market dynamics it can be lower in different countries and so you can geo-arb it somewhat. However, at a certain point, there is definitely a global wealth gap trend establishing and real wages are not growing. Thereby in order to increase income you have to switch job titles to grow further (management, more specialisation), switch industry (finance is popular for this reason), or become equity holders so you're not just looking at wages.

Between small creeping of lifestyle inflation without even noticing it (it gets boring to live the same each year so I think there is an aspect of hedonic adaptation), life changes like moving/kids/etc, or just slight shocks to the system that may be very specific to an individual like petrol going up affecting those that commute from far, versus those that live next door to the office, all of which earn the same wages, I don't know how official CPI is even a remotely useful tool. Hence you'd need to manage your own inflation rates and real earnings.

Anyway, the point was that globally there is a definite trend of the middle classes real wages having been stagnant except for the top skills and that geo-arb for wage growth will only get you so far (but enough for many).
https://www.epi.org/blog/growth-or-not-in-real-wages/

 

[CamiKaze]

The notion that there is a range in which software developer salaries "should" fall as determined by their title rather than value-add to the company is quite prevalent in SA.

Especially when they use the Patterson scale to tell you that you are in the proper range for your salary so you don't need an increase, only to find out that Technical Specialists and Senior Programmers fit within that very wide scale.
The scale is intentionally wide so that you don't really have a foot to stand on when asking for an increase.

Attendance vs Output means nothing in the financial sector just so btw.

 

[NotThatGuy]

Using a throwaway account for the obvious reasons...

Software Developer: (29)
Gross Salary: R72k
Nett Salary: R44k
Expenses: R21k
Pension: 15% with company contribution
Disposable income is around 23k

A large part of the disposable in moved offshore.

 

[TofuMofu]

Using a throwaway account for the obvious reasons...

Software Developer: (29)
Gross Salary: R72k
Nett Salary: R44k
Expenses: R21k
Pension: 15% with company contribution
Disposable income is around 23k

A large part of the disposable in moved offshore.

How do you move it offshore? Investments or bank account or crypto?

 

[Peon]

Well these salaries make me feel like a plebb lol.

Anyone want their shoes shined?

 

[NotThatGuy]

How do you move it offshore? Investments or bank account or crypto?

I have a foreign bank account that the money gets transferred to via my SA bank account. I probably need to look at other investments, but I'm a complete newbie to that.

 

[^^vampire^^]

^
Difference is you don't have our ridiculously high inflation rate in Oz so even a small salary increase improves your standard of living.

Yeah but it also brings very low increases. I worked my butt off at the place I'm at now and got a $5000k raise only (many people don't get raises in Aus unless they kick up a fuss so to get a raise without intervention is usually a big thing). Now I know what you are thinking wow extra R50k a year except that only adds an extra $250 to my salary each month and the fact that a steak dinner for 2 with one soft drink (no wine, spirits, beer, cocktails) each comes to about $100 then you're not getting much for your hard work. On the flip side of this is by playing the jumping game I managed to increase my salary by $35k in 6 months, unfortunately I'm getting too old for that now so I'm stuck where I am.

Except when it comes to property there.. but if he waits a bit their housing market should crash soon.

Getting in on the wrong side of this but yeah they currently building me a house... $600k for a cardboard house. Could by a mansion in SA for that with a garden. This is still 1 - 1.5 hour drive from work and office isn't even in the city. Houses around where I work are about $3 million. 500 m^2 of land alone will cost in the region of $2 million.

Well these salaries make me feel like a plebb lol.
Anyone want their shoes shined?

A peon maybe?

 

[Ancalagon]

The SA economy is turning down which means my $ to R ration pushes me over R1.5 mill.; too bad that means vokol for me here except that when I sell my house in SA I get 1 peanut instead of 2.

I think the hardest thing about a job in SA is that you have to keep pushing for high increases each year just to keep up with inflation. This very quickly makes you hit a glass ceiling as at a certain point companies just feel like the numbers going out are quite high. I went for an interview about 4-5 years ago and the guy interviewing me said he would never pay a dev R50k a month, and now many senior devs earn more than that.

I get the feeling that SA dev salaries are kept down quite a bit by people like that.

What gets me is the idiocy of it. Many companies will tell you how difficult it is to find good devs in SA. They will tell you how they interview day in and day out and don't find anyone.

So, for a lot of companies, lack of developers is the limiting factor in how quickly they can grow and react to changes to market. Or, how quickly they can launch that new product and beat the competition. But, despite having access to highly skilled developers being a HUGE market advantage, they are not willing to pay for the privilege.

 

[cguy]

I get the feeling that SA dev salaries are kept down quite a bit by people like that.

What gets me is the idiocy of it. Many companies will tell you how difficult it is to find good devs in SA. They will tell you how they interview day in and day out and don't find anyone.

So, for a lot of companies, lack of developers is the limiting factor in how quickly they can grow and react to changes to market. Or, how quickly they can launch that new product and beat the competition. But, despite having access to highly skilled developers being a HUGE market advantage, they are not willing to pay for the privilege.

What gets me is the companies that won't pay R3m/y for a single "specialist" or "ace" or "lead" developer type to solve their hard problems, and bleed 10's or 100's of millions by producing a sub-par product, or product that ships months or years late (or never).

 

[TelkomUseless]

I was also on R48k a month and just trying to get out of the current company I was at so it's not like I was even asking for much more. There were bigger red flags to this guy than that though. He was using some weird plugin for visual studio which basically made use of linking logical pieces together instead of coding. He told me at that stage that he had been researching this for 2 years and that "my coding would be obsolete" in a few years because "all the big businesses are going this route now". Dodged a bullet there I guess.

r.

You did dodge a bullet. I have been with interviews that made me go WTF. But those or small and usually crap people/companies you don't want to work with.

 

[f2wohf]

What gets me is the companies that won't pay R3m/y for a single "specialist" or "ace" or "lead" developer type to solve their hard problems, and bleed 10's or 100's of millions by producing a sub-par product, or product that ships months or years late (or never).

Same exact thing for lawyers.

A lot of small to medium size companies won’t hire somebody for their legal stuff and then come crying wanting to pay you peanuts to solve the mess that would have never happened if they had even the most junior crappiest lawyer in-house.

Usually they end up blaming it on the system being against entrepreneurs.

Even in my past and present companies, it happened several times that amendments or POs deemed as harmless (and actually with terrible consequences) were signed without me seeing it. Had to lobby the CEO to put in the rules that every single commitment must go through me and now it works much better.