The only reasonable conclusion from this data is that career programmers may expect about a $70k/yr salary on average. The data is much too vague and biased to draw any other meaningful conclusions.
I notice a couple of internal inconsistencies... Objective-C 30k more than Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows 30k off from Win32. And it compares incomparable averages. This thing is totally GIGO.
I am skeptical of this data. Also is the average a median or a mean? Perhaps we also need some standard deviation or span numbers for a better perspective.
It's keyword based, and there are lots of uses of Tcl. For example, it's the scripting language of Cisco routers, so that number may include the salaries of CCIEs.
I myself am quietly delivering Tcl/Tk apps in my organization, people are liking what they see and not questioning the language :-)
This should be geographically equalized, but I can see there are still going to be outliers. Erlang, Ruby, Perl and Python are more desired in Silicon Valley than in Mid-West (and yes, this is a pure speculation on my behalf) while C and C++ are in demand everywhere. Java is highly demanded in the financial industry (just talk to somebody working for a bank).
Still that leaves some powerful observations (with C++ drawing a much higher salary than C and Erlang drawing a very high salary). Interesting.
Post my MSCS, developing for a defense contractor in C++/Unix/Qt in a median COLA area, I started at 70k. So I don't think I'd say that career programmers are going to end up in that salary range. If you can't beat that over the course of several years in this business, you're doing something wrong.
This is super misleading. For any big company the "Salary" is different than the "Total Comp" compensation: You may only make $70k base but make another $30k in stock. Also companies like Microsoft have crazy benefits that make this sort of survey garbage.
The amounts must be for programmers instead of real engineers, because the Embedded Software Engineers in USA that I know are making $90K to $120K direct, and some contractors are making upwards of $140K to $180K a year, which is around $70 to $90 per hour. Heck I know some very specialized Embedded Software Engineers charging over $100 per hour.
How about benefits...
How much is health insurance worth per year? I've worked at 2 companies where I didn't have to pay a dime for my health insurance.
How about matching 401K, some places are matching dollar for dollar or even up to $2 per dollar.
Haven't touched COBOL for decades but it's hard to believe that anyone is even hiring COBOL programmers these days nevermind the stated average salary of $70k.
