I bet some readers are thinking that the developer that caused this tragedy retired with the millions he earned, maybe sailed his yacht to his Caribbean mansion. But the $300K FAANG salaries and multi-million stock options for senior developers represents the last decade or two. In the 1980's, developers were paid poorly and commanded little respect. The heroes in tech companies that sold expensive devices were the salesmen back then. The commission on the sale of a single Therac-25 probably exceeded the developer's salary.
All of the following would indicate that this developer, no matter how senior or capable, was still a low-paid schlub:
- It's Canada, so automatically 20% lower salaries than in the U.S. (AECL is in Canada, so it's a good bet that the developer was Canadian.)
- It's the 1980s, so pre-web, pre-smartphones, pre-Google/Amazon, and developers had little recognition and low demand.
- It's government, known to pay poorly for developers. (AECL is a government-owned corporation.)
- It's mostly embedded software. Even though embedded software can be incredibly complex and life-critical, it's the least visible, so it's among the lower paid areas of software engineering (even today).
For 1986, I would put his salary at $30-50K Canadian, or converted to U.S. dollars at that time would be $26-43K U.S., and inflation adjusted would be $78-129K U.S. today. And no stock options.