How much do programmers make?

Don’t be fooled by quotes from salaries of Google, Facebook etc. The truth is that those jobs are for elite programmers and the vast majority of programmers will get a job at either small startups or established companies, which main business is not IT, but who have a software development department.

And in both those cases both the salary and work conditions are worse, to much worse, than the jobs at Google. Really what you should do is to go to various job sites for the country you are interested in working and then check the average salaries.

In UK, London, for example, the average salary of a senior SW developer is around £55–60k. And this is a pretty good salary but it won’t make you rich. Also keep in mind that you will most likely never get your own office and the only way to advance past SW developer is to become a manager or architect and then you will actually spend less time, sometimes none, writing code.

So again, don’t be fooled by magnificent stories of people working at Google. They are for the top 1% which most likely will mean not you.

Source: QUORA