Coding Salary – Average computer programmer starts with around $52,000/year and the median coding salary is $ 100,690. The average salary for senior computer programmers is about $96,000/year
Computer coder/programmer is a term used to write code and test code related to computer applications and programs. They analyze the software design and make programs according to it. A computer coder’s job may also be to expand the code of an existing program, test for errors, and find efficient ways to code a difficult program. Computer code encompasses a wide variety of roles and works. Maybe a person is a web developer; maybe someone is a desktop application developer, maybe someone writes codes for android, for iOS, for Linux. So any programming comes into the category of computer coder. Computers coders can work in a company as an employee, build their own startup, or work freelance. They have all the options. The computer programmer’s salary as an employee will depend on the company they are in. In the case of a startup, the coding salary directly depends on the profit they are earning. In the case of freelance, it depends on how much the person hosting the program is willing to give and the market’s bid rate. Earning in all the fields is dependent on various factors, but one thing is common everywhere. Skill. Skill is needed for a computer coder/programmer whether he/she is in a company as an employee, starting up a startup, or doing freelance work. Earning will be directly proportional to skill. The more skilled the person is, the more will be its earning, and less skilled means less earning. Better skills will result in coding salary hikes, promotions in companies, increased clients and better projects in startups, and better freelancing clients.
Still, skill is the thing most of the people trying to enter the field of computer programming lack. There is a huge gap between the number of coders required in the industry and the number of coders skilled enough to accomplish the job. Technology is evolving every day. Every day newer and newer technologies are coming. New programming languages are getting developed, and new tools are on the internet, new platforms for coding are being generated. A person who wants to get into this field should be well prepared with all the basics of programming, and that is not enough. With the basics, the person has to know a tool, language, and coding style that is in trend. Most companies have moved on to new technologies, and startups are only starting up with the current trend. To survive in the industry, a person also has to know about the things in need and prepare themselves accordingly.
Programming results in creating a real thing somehow, maybe a website, desktop application, mobile application, etc. It requires a combination of creativity with technical and analytical skills. This makes coding no less than an art. There are many skills that a computer coder should definitely have to excel in the field. Some of the skills are termed hard skills, and some are termed soft skills. Hard skills can be measured and can be developed over time through practice and study. Soft skills are those, which make a person suitable for working in an environment with other members and team.
Salary for Computer Programmers
Coding is a high paying job if one knows all the correct things that are required. Coding is also a field where pay increases with time, as time brings experience. According to the records gathered, by payscale, the average salary for a developer with less than a year of coding experience is a little over $55,000/year in the United States of America. This salary is not very high but is definitely more than an entry-level job in almost any other field. With experience many years in the coding field, developers are expected as high as $85,000/year, which is good for living comfortably. It is really not possible to say about the salary of computer coder, because it is an inclusive term and there are lots of different kinds of jobs, where the pay scale differ greatly.
- An entry-level data scientist is expected to earn about $85,000/year
- Cybersecurity engineers can earn a bit more than $95,000/year
- Machine learning Engineer can do about $90,000/yea
- A network engineer is expected to earn around $72,000/year
- DevOps engineer will be having an annual salary of $111,683
- Shell scripting writing jobs will have an average salary of approx. $109,518
Despite these, the programmer working on new technologies like Cloud computing, big data, data science, IoT will have the highest paying jobs in the line. Despite being an old language, Perl still holds its stand among other high paying languages due to its demand in web server scripting, sysadmin jobs, and network programming.
- The highest paying programming and scripting languages included Golang, Perl, Shell scripting, Node.js/Javascript, Java, Typescript, Python, Ruby, Swift, C#. These are in serial orders ranked in descending order based on average coding salary ranging from $132,867 to $101,566.
- 2020 report suggests the highest paying programming languages in decreasing order are Scala, Go, Objective-C, Kotlin, Perl, Ruby, Rust, C, Swift, Haskell, Assembly, Bash/Shell, C++, Java, Python, Typescript, C#, Dart, HTML/CSS, SQL, R, PHP, VBA. The salary ranges from $150k to $97k. Now, on talking about the trends of salary depending upon the job roles, the list in decreasing order is as follows: DevOps specialist, Data scientist, Back-end developer, Mobile developer, Game/graphics developer, Full stack developer, Embedded developer, Desktop developer, System administrator, Front end developer, Database administrator, Designer, Test developer.
The payscale among the computer coders are divided based on the experience and skill set. Let’s see how:
- Entry-level programmers: I just started to get involved with the industry. They generally have yet to decide that they would like to keep programming as a career option for the rest of the lives. The jobs they get include mostly simple maintenance to basic programming. Average computer programmer starts with around $52,000/year, which is significantly more than the average US salary considering all the jobs.
- Junior computer programmers: These are the most people that we encounter as programmers. An entry-level after coding for some time gain experience and comes in the category of a junior programmer. Mostly hired by startup companies, they help the startups grow further with their fundamental knowledge and experience. It can be a person with one year of experience to a person with ten years of experience. Their pay is around $65,000/year, and that’s quite enough to live comfortably.
- Senior computer programmers: They are the professionals of their field with lots of experience gained over the years. They have all the larger and critical responsibilities. Often tasked with managing, curating the less experienced members of the team. They step in to solve the complex tasks left by the junior coders, and their salary gives the view of the higher mark of earning as a programmer. Their average salary is about $96,000/year, and that’s the maximum a programmer can generally expect from his/her job.
Also, there is a record of cities in the US that view the salary of computer programmers there. Sorted in descending order of salary, we have Seattle, Washington, San Francisco, California, San Jose, California, Charlottesville, Virginia, Redding, California. Also, the pay scale in these cities ranges from: $129,290 to $113,690.
Similarly, we have a record of states in the US that offers the best salaries to computer programmers. The list in descending order is: Washington, District of Columbia, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the salary ranges from $164,610 to $96,480.
Even the salaries of computer programmers vary according to the type of industry they are working in. Best paying industries are lessors of nonfinancial intangible assets, software publishers, manufacturing and reproducing magnetic and optical media, natural gas distribution, grant-making, and giving services.
These are the factors that affect the job of a computer programmer/coder. Some of the requirements and skill set that the candidate has to pass and develop respectively to get into the computer programming field. The recent trends show that there is a lot of money and scope in this field, again if someone has the capability required to acquire such a position.
Some skills a computer coder should have are:
- Proficiency with programming languages: It is expected that a programmer can code in every language existing. There are many languages today, and frankly, it is almost impossible for a programmer to code in all the languages. Still, a programmer should be able to understand the code on seeing it. That much skill is expected. The coder also has to be proficient in a few languages that he/she can code in right away. Having proficiency in more than one language can greatly increase the chance of a programmer getting a job. Also, he/she needs to be flexible in learning new languages and getting accustomed to change, as change is a constant part of the IT industry.
- Learning concepts and applying them to other problems: A coder should learn some concepts and then apply them to solve real issues. This is a highly recognized and regarded skillset of coders. Most companies give rigorous tests and take long and multiple interviews to test this particular skill.
- Mathematical skills: Coding often requires mathematical skills in a person. This has become a necessary skill to write efficient codes. Sound knowledge of algebra and arithmetic is a must to show good mathematical knowledge. It has often been found that a programming question to be solved using some difficult algorithms can be solved in minimal code if only the programmer has good knowledge of maths and knows how to apply it.
- Communication skills: A company doesn’t have a single coder but a team of coders assigned to a project. Therefore, a coder also has to interact and discuss with other members of the team. For this, communication skill is a very, very important skill to have. Sharing of ideas, explanation of code, collaboration this all gets more effective with good communication skill.
- Writing skills: A coder not only has to code but also needs to document things. Software is not ready to be given to a client just as a code. There has to be proper documentation to it, and for that, writing skills are a must. Even inside an organization, team coders need to communicate their work among themselves and to their seniors. This requires written documents, and hence again the importance of writing effectively, simple and clean.
- Inquisitiveness: Computer coders best in their field are in general inquisitive. They have a hunger to know about things, how they work, and how they could work efficiently. This inquisitiveness trait helps a coder grow continuously and learn new things, which are a must for the ever-changing industry.
In a company, the computer coders have to work along with different persons holding different roles, and their functions change along with it. Most of the time, the coders also work alongside software developers, and there are some skills the programmer needs to have, such as:
- Planning software: computer programmers use diagrams, models, flowcharts to explain and detail the code is to be written and what are the requirements of the software
- Designing and creating applications: designing of application is important, as, based on the design, the code will be written. The design will be based on the planning and client requirement. Designing simple software may be done in few days or even years for really complex software.
- Writing programs: the main part of actually writing the code. Codes could be written in many languages. Programming languages are decided based on the type of application to be made, the company policy, and the developer’s expertise. Different platforms also require different programming languages.
- Update and expand existing programs: programs often require updating. Updating and reusing the existing code is an essential feature of software development and coding in general.
- Writing and debugging code: debugging the code, finding errors, rewriting that part, then again debugging, until the code is totally correct is an essential part of computer programming
- Simplify programming: programmers also use some tools to help them write the codes by automating some of the obvious and repeated processes in many codes. This increases the efficiency of the programmers
Without the technical skills that a programmer will require while coding, the skill would be incomplete. So, here are some important technical skills a computer coder should have to get success in their career:
- Data structures and algorithms: This is always considered the top priority in computer coders’ skills required. Most companies check students’ hold on data structures and algorithms to check problem-solving and coding skills. Knowing this topic is very important for writing efficient code that can be used in real software and delivered. Data structures generally give the programmer the idea of using data storage and how efficiently it can be made, with the amount of time needed for the retrieval and storage. Simultaneously, the algorithm knowledge is used to reduce the time taken for the program’s execution.
- Programming languages: Knowledge of different programming languages is really required for the programmer. They should know the languages in-depth, the advantages of the languages, useful to use, and the functions they provide. Still, there should be some languages over which the coder has complete confidence to write programs, which could be used for fast coding.
- Source control: A programmer should also be familiar with source control tools and be fairly experienced working with them. Source control helps programmers to manage and store their code. Organizing the code is really important for programmers and even more for a group of programmers. When a project and teamwork on it, every coder works on different parts of the project. There is a need to have a platform where all the codes could be uploaded and maintained together. Source control provides a great place to keep the codes for individual programmers, check other coder’s code, update, delete, merge as needed.
- Text Editors: These are a part of the life of programmers. A programmer’s journey starts with text editors. These are small application software where the programmers write their code and compile it. Though these use a separate compiler for compilation, the writing of code takes place on text editors, and most of the time spent by a programmer is on text editors. There are many keyboard shortcuts in the text editors especially focused on programming, which comes in handy to the programmers.
- Integrated Development Environment: IDEs allow you to do several things on a single software. Almost all of the steps involved in programming and developing software can be done in an IDE. It provides writing, modifying, compiling, running, and debugging features. These all processes were done separately using terminal or command prompt in older times, and even today. But, to develop complex programs, the use of IDE is a better idea. IDE provides recommendations to program in coding writing for different programming languages. This helps the developer to write code faster and deploy faster. Also, it provides a faster debugging mechanism, another advantage.
- Databases: The use of databases is widespread. Almost every program/software that is made needs to use a database. Using a database requires connecting to the database, inserting, deleting, retrieving, and updating the stored tables. Working on large applications needs special attention to the security and management of data in the database. Therefore proper knowledge of databases is a must. SQL (structured query language) is the most popular language for working with databases that store data in tables. With advancements and security issues, many NoSQL languages have come used for operating on databases without tables. Database of an organization is a very precious asset to them, and they need good people who could work with them.
- Operating System: Coding may be related to different types of applications. If the coding is for the application to be directly run on any operating system, on a computer, or mobile, then a sound knowledge of OS will also be necessary. The fundamentals of how an operating system works, communicate with another machine, how it loads programs, who does it work with hardware, the issues in OS’s working, and how it resolves issues. All such information is critical to writing a program that will work efficiently on that specific platform. Software is a program, which is at a lower level a process, and the study of the process comes under the operating system, so again the knowledge is needed.
- Networking Basics: When writing code related to networking, it is important to know about its different fundamentals. How does the data travel in the network between client and server, how is a request processed, how is the session made and maintained, how is the response generated and sent? All this information is needed when programming in the network. Routers also need programming to support the routing tables, get the fastest and shortest route from source to destination.
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