Brisbane software engineers/developers. What do you earn?

22 years in industry, initially as a jnr software engineer to senior, then systems architect.
Last 12 years I've been Technical Manager of a medium-sized business and managed a team of ~20 (contractors obviously come and go, 20 core) software engineers.

As has been mentioned, tech stack and experience is 80%, likewise industry certification, etc. It seems to read as though you're a first year dev? If that's the case, all I could personally recommend is keep your head down and focus on gaining as much experience and continual professional development as possible.

I've lost quite a few very talented devs in the last two years due to COVID redundancies and am aware of the marketplace and skill set on offer. There is a lot out there - you would be surprised at the talent and experience as well as the size of the pool you're competing with.

I'm Melbourne CBD based, not sure about Brisbane, but I would not be hiring any developer with any less than 3 years of broad experience and a lot of talent for $85k.
There are just too many candidates with too much experience to consider going with less experience and skill - no offense at all to you!!! It's not a personal thing, it's just numbers.

There's only so much a first year dev can possibly do or know and it takes time for that to develop. A large part of that is dealing with issues and the junior devs are always like a deer in headlights when the shit hits the fan.
If you're going above and beyond, have taken full ownership of medium+ sized projects (in a lead sense) that have impacted your company for the better, then you might have some firepower to negotiate with.

But if we're talking $80-85k for a junior first year dev, I couldn't possibly get that past HR and they would immediately re-examine budget and look toward mid-senior level dev.
When you're getting 300% more return for $10-$20k more salary cost (on paper at least) the numbers tell the story.

If you're working on a client/consumer facing or initiated project - the experience absolutely does matter. I can't tell if someone will be brilliant or average from less than a year, but give it 3 years, and your code and projects speak for themselves. Not sure what you work on, but I couldn't imagine facing a client during/after a serious issue and informing them we had a junior managing that. If you think of even simple secure coding experience, knowledge of and implementation of required standards, etc.

It's really just risk analysis and time tells all - including how many bugs you've experienced and how you've dealt with them, experience with different environments, deployments, etc. which all take time to develop. Talk is very cheap in development, bad code or a little bit of SQL injection dumping your DB out is not cheap.

Having said that, if the money is there and on offer I wish you the absolute best of luck - go for it!
If not, don't worry, focus, learn and the money will come.... that is one good thing about this industry, effort and proven continual development of your skill set and range does translate into $$$ over a few years and always pays off.

/r/brisbane Thread