How much do you earn?

We live in different countries, different cities and different IT market, It's meaningless comparison.

@BradHe Thats exactly what I am interested in.

• We need to realize which markets are underpaid and which are decent.
• Can I get any better or what I am getting is enough for my skill level.
• Is it worth it to move to better paying countries

Ok, I know, and i think the USA is the best choice, Chinese IT market become dismal, like our economic, both of us are dismal, supply exceeds demand, but American IT market is better and normal than ours, maybe you can consider it.

Monthly Income: 1700 USD. Experience: Senior Time spent working with Laravel: more than 8 Months. Time spent working with PHP: more than 30 months Country: China, Beijing

@JeffreyWay Isn't there a way to undo if we accidentally selected a right answer? If there isnt I think there should be at least a confirmation..

@BradHe 1700USD is decent. So you've jumped from begginer to senior in just 8 months? that's great progress

I think without also taking into account things like taxes, cost-of-living, average salary in the country etc - you're not going to get a very meaningful set of numbers.

For instance in the UK, an adult working a 40hr week would earn a minimum of roughly US$1500. But after tax, food, rent, travel etc - they're likely to pretty broke at the end of the month.

Your best bet is probably to look at job advert sites in other countries and see ballpark salaries for jobs asking for similar experience/skills as you have - then dig around for numbers comparing the cost of living etc. For instance like this site

@ohffs Can't agree more.

You can't just pay attention to salary, like you can't just be good at Laravel. A senior engineer should know linux, mysql, php and so on.

It does not matter how much you earn, as long as you can cover the living expenses and maybe a little bit extra.

How much money you earn depends on:

• what type of company you are in,
• can the company afford higher salary,
• how much experience you have,
• how much the team and the boss(es) are satisfied

and maybe a few more points.

@ohffs

I just wanted to know what sort of standard of living can I maintain If I be proficient at laravel.

I dont understand why is our field so underpaid. We have such a high learning curve and the need to learn something completely new every year yet I find people in our field our underpaid.

People in other fields graduate and their need to learn and study disappears and they eventually earn 3 times more than a decent developer. I find that very sad and demotivating

If you're saying that a good laravel developer earns USD 1500 per month and still barely makes through the month why is this happening I dont understand..

@Ruffles

I dont understand if i Know I am good at something why wont I switch to a company that can pay me higher?

Ah - the US$1500 is the national minimum wage in the country. At least in theory ;-) A junior dev (probably with a degree) in most of the country would be looking at a ballpark US$2500/month before tax etc. But plenty of places pay less and London in particular can pay a lot more - but the cost of living is much higher than the rest of the country so you might not be any better off.

If you go to that cost of living calculator I linked to you can get a very rough idea of the amount you've have to earn to keep a reasonable life outside of work.

I think dev's in a lot of the world are undervalued because people don't really understand what it is we do, or how much you need to know. I once had someone quite senior say to me 'well, it's just typing!' ;-) People can use things like Facebook to put a 'website' online - I mean, how hard can it be just to do something a bit more than that? ;-)

Some sectors value developers much more than others though - working in finance, oil (in times gone by anyway) and some other niches can make you more valuable. Sometimes it's just luck - you make a contact who puts in a word with someone else and you become the 'go to' for them and they're happy to pay.

@fahaddsheikh I don't think that our profession (web development) is underpaid, it's just that it depends on the company and client you work for, and the complexity of the projects you work on.

If all you do is work on some projects which are simple CMSes / agency or company blogs and websites, you'll probably be paid less, because the responsibility is lower.

If you work on a bigger project, like an ERP / CRM, you would probably be paid higher because the responsibility is higher.

And to answer your question:

I didn't say that you shouldn't look for a better job position / salary, I was trying to say that it won't make much difference if you start comparing your salary with other people's salaries, because it heavily depends on the company they work for, the client they work for, the country they live in and many other things.

You just have to find the right company for you, because everyone has a different idea of what's their ideal job position.

Some people are just interested in the idea of having a job and that they can say that they work for a company and never go up the ladder or advance in their career. On the other hand, some other people care more about the organization, type of projects, how the projects are organized type of thing and can't just work for anyone and anything like me.

Get to a position where you can choose what you want and how you want, and you won't have a problem finding an amazing company.

If you're proficient in Laravel you can earn a decent wage, if you're an expert in Laravel, you will earn even more, and if you're an expert in PHP and software engineering in general, a lot more than that.

Like others have said, just the salary is not a good metric. What you need is:

relative income = salary / cost of living

Here are mine: Salary: $6400 a month (after taxes) Cost of living: About $3500 Experience: Senior (12 years) Laravel experience: 3 years Country: USA

@kenske That's very good. I am glad to see someone is earning handsomely.

@ohffs I totally agree. I just wanted to go full time laravel and wanted to have an idea if it would payoff. Not that a skill will never pay off I believe it always does but I just wanted to know the value of a good laravel/php developer. Thankyou for understanding

@Ruffles That's what I am trying to do. Advance up the ladder. I've been working with wordpress for almost 4 years now and i've realised i'll always be capped to a limited potential. So i decided to move on. But yea I agree with you its more about a person.

I just want to know how much to expect when I am atleast an amateur in laravel. I guess I'll have to ask around in my local community. Thankyou very much all for your time.

If you want to earn the best possible money, then do not become a good Laravel developer, become a good software engineer because then it doesn't matter which framework you are using.

I earn six figures, but it's not because I'm good with Laravel, I can use any framework.

@TheSteed Which skills do you prefer to go for if i want to be a software engineer?

@fahaddsheikh Don't focus on any one framework as it won't matter to a good software engineer, you should be able to use them all.

What you need to know are the basic principles of OOP, or S.O.L.I.D. as they are called, and how to apply them.

If you apply those principle, you should be able to move your core functionality from one framework to another without any changes to it being neccessary.