At least in the United States, ruby on rails job holders should expect to make as much as software developers in any other programming language, on average. If working in the Bay Area, your typical junior developers will be making $60K-$80K/year on salary, but really good ones can progress really quickly up. Junior developer typically would still need some prior programming experience, but coursework could be considered, or other languages.Mid-level/career engineers have 4–5 years of ruby development, and frequently other languages are also required, such as java or C.
I have never seen software engineers with “just” ruby experience. It’s usually java + ruby, or ruby/javascript/angular/rails, or node/ruby/C++, or any combination you can think of. Mid level engineers in Bay Area make around $90-$130K on salary.Senior engineers (5+ years of industry experience), which can take a complex project that’s not super well defined, break it down, and deliver it on time, or can lead other engineers, or can champion a better process, or facilitate a complex multi-departmental projects – those unicorns are very hard to find, and for this class of engineers I’ve seen salaries between $130K and $180K. However the actual number exceedingly depends on whether the company hiring is large (ie, Google, Amazon) and has deep pockets, how much do they want an individual engineer, or whether it’s a smaller startup and they simply can’t afford to compete with Google.
In startups hopefully Ruby on Rails job seekers join not just to make top $$ but to share in the success of the product. Startups can not compete with Google on salary, period, so expect some drop off.Then, there are amazingly great ruby engineers, those regularly speaking at conferences, serially working on popular open source projects, or just known in the community, those often freelance and ask for $150-$200/hr or more. I think top level consultancies charge $250/hr, but there are not that many companies willing or able to pay this much as far as I know.Hope this helps your quest for the green ruby :)Having said all that – if you are choosing to program in ruby because of how much it pays, you will have a very hard time competing against people who genuinely LOVE to program in ruby, and are really enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic engineers are 10x more productive than the ones that are bored out of their mind, and counting hours while at work. Pick something you love, and you’ll be great at it. It’s a lot more important, and a much more long term investment, than how much $$ your ruby career will generate in salary terms.
