How Much $$ Do Excel / VBA Programmers Make??

[Norie]

Cbrine

I'm not saying all BAs are bad but this guy was a joke.

He honestly did what I said.

He would come in in the morning, start the code/macro and for the rest of the day
would wander around talking to people and drinking coffee.

 

[Joe4]

I guess I have the best possible answer I can receive here, so thank you. Can't help wondering if I asked any of you the average cost of a gallon of milk in the US, if any of you could offer an answer! "Indiana will be different from California... Depends on the current market... I once knew a guy who bought a gallon of milk for $40 up in a mountain village..." I'm just teasing you guys, but this warrants teasing in my opinion. I know we sit in small rooms and stare intently at computer screens all day, but loosen up a bit!

I disagree, and I think my experience proves that it does vary greatly based on these conditions.

You are trying to oversimplify something that does not have a single answer (kind of reminds me of the joke about the engineer who assumes a horse is a sphere to make the math easier).

Let's look at a real world example. How much does a starting NFL quarterback make? In 2005, Brett Favre made 10 million, while J.P. Losman made 1.4 million. So if I asked you how much a starting NFL quarterback makes, what answer would you give?

 

[SydneyGeek]

As all the guys have already said, it depends. Big city, big company, right skill set, enough experience... all come into play.

To give a very rough indication, when I started out I charged about $60 per hour. Now it's about double that, give or take.
Bottom line, if you do the job and don't waste the client's time, they will pay. And if they like what you do you'll get referred on to other clients.

Throttle those numbers back for a permanent position with superannuation, holidays and other on costs.

Denis

 

[Err]

Sit back Childrens for I have a story of Woe and Misery to tell you.

Yours truly used to have a job making $120,000 a year working for a major telcom carrier. I was happy in my job which really wasn't VB, but rather untangling cables and monitoring bugs written in C. Sometimes, I would write bug reports which would make programmers gasp. I liked my job -which is why it is a tale of woe and misery.

There were a bunch of executives that worked in the same company who would do executivy things -like buy a company with a product that we already made. They thought they were pretty smart -and they were because they kept parachutes made out of solid gold in their offices by the door.

They also looked down on people like me because they found out that there are starving people in India and China -who they could get to do my job for much, much less money. This would in turn -free up more money for them to do Executivy things -and they like that.

This was back east (for those who don't know -back east refers to the new england area of the United States). The winter set in and I found myself without any cables to untangle or bugs to report. In fact, I found myself with a bunch of other people also out of work. I worked on creating a resume but all the Human Resource type people were too busy drinking coffee to read it.

Time passed and my stomach started growling. What would I do for work? Used car type people offered me a job and I jumped at it -only to realize that used car type people really don't like me at all.

My father told me to move to Arizona and that he could help me get a job. Since all the people in the cold, cold northeast seemed to rely on this "Nepotism" -I thought I'd give it a try.

I've never programmed in VBA before in my life -in fact nobody at my work does either. However it was the only language available -so I thought I'd give it a try as well.

I am happy to report that this pays exactly 22.50 an hour which is much better than selling cars but not quite as good as working in Telcom.

-Err

 

[Trances]

We have a few VBA programmers here in Greater London
They work on extracting data from legacy systems to generated automated reports. As well as integrate in to Databases and create standard format as well as looking at ways of creating efficacy for departments that use MS Office applications. The pays is between 19,000 pounds a year up to 46,000 ( I expect for the head developer) With almost no experience in VBA but much in writing manuals for accounting packages (2 years ) general Lotus Notes support I have one of the lower positions.
Hope that’s a clear enough answer
Technical Writing of course would pay better at least the jobs I have looked at and I am qualified for but I prefer my current role for now.

 

[CSTUBBS]

Its not necessarily how much you make, but how happy you are doing what you are doing. I too, have been busted from an (underpaid)plant managers position in furnitrure manufacturing(which our politicians sold out to China) to a underpaid supervisory position in lumber production. But the point is I'm 5 miles from where i've always lived, and I dont have to go to china and train unskilled labor how to do US jobs for which they get paid $2.00/day.
I hope this makes sense to someone out there.

 

[b1n0ry]

I don't think you understand. The US is a huge country. If I were to become a data analyst for a small company in rural Ohio with little experience, I might make $45k USD per year. If I were to become a data analyst for a large legal firm in New York with 10+ years of experience and an MBA, I'd probably be pulling a quarter mil. The "average" in the US is a skewed number and completely irrelevant.

You might as well ask "How much does it cost to buy a house in the US?" In Houston, TX you get a 2,000 sq. ft. 4-BR 2.5 bath for $150k. In Beverly Hills, CA you'll pay $3 million for a 900 sq. ft. 1-BR condo.