Austin Coding Academy
February 15, 2019
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As a prospective developer, you may have a lot of questions about your salary. What will your first year’s salary be? How will your salary change throughout your career? What factors will contribute the most to your compensation?

Let’s look at how much money you can expect to earn working as a web developer and how experience, education, location, and coding specialty can all impact your salary. Knowing what your skill is worth will help you negotiate better pay as you advance through your career.

The Impact of Experience on Your Salary

As in any other job, more experience as a developer will often lead to higher pay. Perfecting your craft means you can work on more meaningful projects and require less supervision from managers. Here’s how your salary will change as you move throughout your career:

First Job (little to no experience)

Coding students are often very interested in their first job’s salary because they’ve worked so hard to earn it. In an entry-level job title like junior programmer or software developer, a first-year developer will earn a $64k average salary (ranging from $58k to $77k). This is consistent withACA’s average graduate salary.

Experienced (5 years)

With five years of experience, you will have mastered many of your day-to-day tasks. Increased efficiency means you can advance to positions such as a senior developer or lead software engineer. At this point, you can expect to earn an average of $80k per year, ranging from $69k to $100k.

Mid-Career (6-14 years)

Mid-career, many developers will move to managerial roles and away from technical ones. These roles will require you to know how to manage people, sell clients, oversee projects, analyze results, and plan for future initiatives. Average salaries for these positions are usually over $100k.

Late Career (15+ years)

At this point in a developer’s career, they may have climbed the corporate ladder into positions like software development manager, vice president of information technology, or even chief information officer (CIO). Salaries for these positions range between $120k to $170k. You can increase your salary even more by starting your own company or working for a tech giant like Google.

Other factors affecting salary


Does education have a big impact on your salary? It can. It will depend on how useful your new skills are and how much time you’re required to invest before you start work.

The most common options for coding education are either a coding bootcamp or a computer science degree. Bootcamp graduates tend to learn more in-demand skills and can, therefore, earn $6,000 more than degree holding developers on average. Most companies are just as likely to hire bootcamp graduates as they are college graduates. Hiring manager Ammon Bartram writes, “All in all, we’ve had roughly equivalent success working with the two groups.”

One major difference between bootcamps and bachelor’s degrees is the time they take to complete. ACA’s bootcamp, for example, takes only nine months, compared to four years for the typical bachelor’s degree. With three additional years of working experience, you’ll learn a lot of skills on the job, giving you a strong competitive advantage over people who got a four-year degree.


Where you work will have a large impact on your salary. For example, coders in California can earn 83% more than coders in North Dakota, but that high salary won’t go as far in California as it would in a less-expensive state. Be careful to consider cost of living into your decision-making process when choosing where you want to live and work.

On average, developers in Austin will earn a $79k salary. This occupation wage chart can help you compare the average Texan developer’s salary and cost of living to those of their counterparts working in other states.

Coding Specialty

The coding languages you learn could affect your job title and income. Use a tool like the TIOBE index to research the market demand for different coding languages.

ACA teaches its students JavaScript and C# because these languages will give graduates a large salary and in-demand skills.

If you’re unsure which skills would be the best fit for your goals, here’s an article we’ve written to help you decide which coding track is the right choice for you.

Start Your Software Developer Career Track Today

To get these high salaries as a software engineer, you’ll need to learn the skills first. Austin Coding Academy’s bootcamp is the fastest and most effective way to start your career as a full-time developer.

You will learn the most marketable skills at ACA, because all our teachers are also full-time working developers. After graduation, we’ll make sure you have a smooth transition into your first job by connecting you to our exclusive company job network. With our flexible night classes, you can study while keeping your day job. Best of all, ACA offers some of the most affordable tuition rates in the industry.

What are you waiting for? If you’re ready to make a positive change in your life by becoming a software developer apply today. Our staff will work with you to help you turn your dreams into a reality.