This is very American centric. Whites in Europe are lucky to earn half that on architect positions (please don’t come up with „standard of living” and „social services and benefits”).
The article starts out with a fairly standard condemnation of white people for daring to keep our salary information to ourselves, and/or for daring to believe that we make the money we make fairly (you know, by delivering value to our employers).
No, it doesn’t. It starts out with a tweet saying that people in general (not just white people) have issues with discussing salaries. The tweet then says that white people in particular should openly discuss their salaries because we all know that some companies try their best to swindle employees, and that in general white people have a better sense about what it means to be fairly compensated. Is that not what you read? Or did you just not agree with it?
There is a footnote in the first paragraph that mentions white people and privilege. The purpose of the footnote was for the author to explain that even though he’s providing this information, it may not help non-white people.
Either way, neither the tweet nor the footnote say what you’re saying.
It's a really taboo subject to talk about to begin with; and there are really two extremes that you'll hear:
1. It's a meritocracy and anyone can do this! (It isn't, and they can't)
2. Yea, this will work for you but not in general. (You're probably right on this one, as my salary and my progression are very personal things).
To thread the needle, I'm trying to point out that I acknowledge #2, and explicitly reject #1 as empirically false; and I hope that by sharing my salary, I bring light to the fact that #1 is false, and that if more people who are similarly advantaged as I am talk about it, we can make #2 no longer be the case.
By "whites" here, I assume you mean "white-collar workers". Usually, in vernacular, "whites" is taken as a slightly derogatory metonym for "white people", so I was initially slightly taken aback by your comment. Sorry if I was being obtuse, but I have never heard the term "whites" used in this fashion.
Pretty straightforward I think: America is way ahead in terms of its economy, tech industry, and business environment and way behind in terms of government-provided social benefits.
Very interesting question. Most capital is deployed into fixed assets (like land) which generate regular dependable income. Excess capital is then invested in US companies.l (based on historical performance).
Also: a B2C service startup in the US has a bigger potential market than the same one in Europe (assuming they’re targeting what they know—the local market).
End result: no gigantic piles of cash looking for investment opportunities going to VCs to funnel into 100x success maybe startups, no companies minting money like crazy, no salary inflation
I don't see why you shouldnt come up with such "irrelevant minor stuff" like standard of living, mostly free healthcare & social services (depending on the country etc. You might not want to hear it, but for many people the whole not having to worry about healthcare is a massive benefit.
I'm certainly not saying that a comparison is equal, but it feels like for anyone except the highly paid, the gap isn't that wide all things considered.
Don't forget that this is before taxes, retirement savings, healthcare and other deductions.
You can't just hand-wave away "standard of living" and "social services and benefits".
These may be things you take for granted but a large majority of the population has to have a large emergency refund in case they get severed from their company without any notice for any reason (Compare that with job security in France or Germany).
Consider you need to save a ton of money yourself in government sponsored accounts such as HSA or FSAs for future healthcare expenses that you can't possibly estimate when you're 20 years old. (Compare that with the NHS in England).
Consider you need to sock away a ton of money in 401ks and IRAs so that when you're 50 with no job prospects, you don't end up on the street and can actually have a decent retirement. Nobody is paying serious pensions and hardly anyone can survive on social security. (Compare that with the savings pillars in Switzerland).
Now considering all this, you still think his salary is HUGE compared to a Western European one? I highly doubt it, I have already run the numbers myself.
Job prospects for information workers will be far better than those in physically demanding jobs. People’s bodies give out by 50. Not completely, but enough where they can’t do physically laborious work.
The broader point of the new replacing the old is generally true (your marketability will decline by age 50), but I still see many baby boomers holding onto well paying positions for the foreseeable future. I save to hedge the risk, but I’m not too worried, since I believe the risk is over-stated.
> These may be things you take for granted but a large majority of the population has to have a large emergency refund in case they get severed from their company without any notice for any reason
This seems like somewhat of an idealistic view point when over half of Americans have less than 1k in their bank account.
European salaries are also before taxes (which are higher), retirement saving, healthcare, and other deductions. In Germany, e.g., you have to deduct from 60k EUR salary roughly the following: 13k taxes, 4k healthcare (your employer has to pay another 4k), 5.5k retirement, 1.7k social security. And you certainly want to save something extra for your retirement as well.
> Consider you need to save a ton of money yourself in government sponsored accounts such as HSA or FSAs for future healthcare expenses that you can't possibly estimate when you're 20 years old.
HSA’s are good investments, but FSAs don’t roll over I believe, so they’re actually quite terrible for 20 year olds
Your analysis is a little idealistic though. I wouldn’t feel certain about social security nets 50 years out. I would take the cash any day.
The biggest thing I missed when working in the US was 5-6 weeks annual paid leave. 10 days off/year means people are highly incentivised to apply to/present at conferences tho
In the USA, it is common to get more paid leave as you stay with a company. People who switch jobs often will only get a tiny amount, while those who stay in one place get plenty.
The first year might be 5 or 10 days. After 10 or 15 years, you might get 20 to 40 days.
The NHS will probably keep you alive if this is considered to be a cost-effective use of funds that are shared by the entire population. The older you get, the lower your priority. You might spend a long time on a waiting list, then get assigned a low-quality treatment that is cheap.
If you want better, you'll have to pay out of pocket, possibly including travel to some other country.
The problem with universal healthcare is that your case is rarely a priority. Young - what kind of problems you might have? Male - oh stop moaning and complaining already! Foreigner - locals have higher priority. Old - you don't contribute to the society anymore, etc. Unless one is specialist in the healthcare system with lots of spare time, sending appeals and warnings right and left - one falls back into expensive private healthcare services.
If we are to compare US vs EU salaries, we must take into account healthcare cost, retirement, welfare, parental leave, PTO and so on. Otherwise the whole purpose of the exercise is pointless and it may embellish on side of the argument vis-a-vis the other.
How do you call that sort of tactics already? Propaganda, right? The POTUS would respond "Fake News!" (although I'm not fond of him).
Ignorance and complacency run amok on HN these days.
If I never had to worry about healthcare or education costs for me or any member of my family for the rest of my life, I'd be fine making half of what I make now.
But you still have to worry about these things though. The universal healthcare in countries like Poland and Romania is heavily underfunded and dysfunctional, in countries like Italy and Germany is skewed towards the older people who are the major voting demographic. German healthcare insurers had record high surplus recently, yet young people still pay extra for common things like various dentist, or eye doctor services. Bismarck-style pension system will face a turning point in the upcoming 1-2 decades, especially in countries like Italy, Germany, and Poland.
This is great. It would be beneficial to also see other forms of compensation including bonus at a minimum, RSUs, etc. Sometimes a dip in salary might be explained by these other factors, so it might tell a more complete story.
Can we really compare them, though? I live in France, where €90k/y puts you in the top 1% salaries. In the US, you’d need to earn $400k/y to be in the same position. Standard of living and other social benefits come to mind.
Not at all. After health insurance every cost is more or less a one-to-one Match. Being a developer in the US has and does pay better than EU, hands down.
lol I'm sorry but no. 400k a year in US puts you in "I am a millionaire" status after like 5 years. 90k euros and big city purchasing power in France is most likely comparable to 180k in US. Remember, all these jobs we are talking about come with full benefits -- 401k with between 5-8% matching, stock options, healthcare, vision, dental, etc.
And I am assuming you are talking about 90k euro after taxes not before because the French have one of the highest tax burdens in the world.
This was discussed in the sibling thread, but that 90k€ is definitely before taxes. It's exceedingly rare to make that much after taxes, perhaps unless in senior management.
It's worth noting though that it's the US (and Canada to a degree) that is the exception here. It's great that software engineering can be such a boon for talented folks, but everywhere else even the highest SW salaries place people squarely in middle class, alongside teachers and doctors.
It's still a nice life, just not one of abundant riches. Over 4k€ monthly after taxes goes quite far in Europe as you don't need to worry that much about saving for healthcare, pension, and your children's education later in life.
I don't get this thinking. I think everyone is making the comparison to Silicon Valley, which is ridiculously expensive because their are too many people making too much money that all want to be in the same place.
In most of the USA, not only do you make more than you would in France, but things are actually cheaper, not more expensive. Imagine you make $150,000/year, a really nice house cost $300,000 (think $2,000 monthly mortgage/taxes/insurance payment), groceries, electricity, internet, car for a small family is $2,000 month. And that is with a very high quality of life. If you want to live frugally cut all the expenses in half. The company provides health insurance.
I think the biggest difference might be that Americans report their salary before taxes, and I think Europeans tend to do it after taxes. $150,000/year with a small family is probably $110,000-$120,000 after taxes in most states. €90k after taxes is comparable. Just need to consider quality of life differences.
The people making "too much money" are doing the indispensable work that generates the profit (or chance-at-profit) for their employers, and the employers are by definition OK with paying them that share, which even in very profitable industries is highly unlikely to be as big a share as "management" gets.
If people in France get a much smaller cut (I assume they do, people in Germany certainly do) then wouldn't that mean they're getting too little?
(I think this was close to the other half of your point actually.)
I should clarify, I don't think there is anything wrong with being paid a lot to do valuable work. I didn't mean it that way when I wrote it, I'm not used to this concept that people that make a lot of money are doing something wrong. Seems like they are doing something that people value a lot.
European salaries are in my experience usually reported pre-tax, which makes the situation even worse :P Half the pay of our American counterparts, double the taxes and most non-real-estate goods are more expensive.
> I think the biggest difference might be that Americans report their salary before taxes, and I think Europeans tend to do it after taxes. $150,000/year with a small family is probably $110,000-$120,000 after taxes in most states. €90k after taxes is comparable.
Europeans also report before taxes, and that 90k€ is definitely before taxes. I don't know about this person's taxation, but it's probably around 50k€ after taxes. That's still a very good salary in Europe though.
I took the 90k figure from [1]. I don’t know about the average european country, but in France annual salaries are reported before taxes. You can remove ~25% off that to get the after-taxes amount.
I hardly ever comment on HN (I usually lurk) but I felt compelled to due to the sheer amount of false claims in this comment.
First off, can we define "things" in your sentence "things are actually cheaper, not more expensive"? What are the "things" you're talking about?
Education? Eh... not really expensive in the US, is it? the US student loan debt is swelling at about $1.5 trillion... and counting. It speaks volume as to how costly education is in the US. [1]
Healthcare? Hugely expensive for a country as "rich" as the US. Unless, of course, you work for a generous employer and in that case, everything is paid for. Wait a second, I'm told not all employers provide a healthcare plan along with a 401k plan? That's unfortunate. Let's also remind ourselves that the US doesn't provide universal healthcare for all its citizens unlike other advanced industrialized countries. So if you happen to be jobless? You're SOL. Awe-effing-some. Let's move on... [2]
Housing? In SF/SV/NYC/Seattle/Washington/any major US city, housing is extremely expensive as is housing in any major European metropolis such as London/Paris/Munich/Zurich. I bet the $300,000 nice house you mention in your comment must be somewhere in the countryside where nobody lives, right? Let's make this clear: houses located in the middle of nowhere in any European country also cost zilch. Let's take France for instance: 30K euros gets you a 100 sqm house (even bigger sometimes) in the Creuse region. Yeah nobody wants to live there but hey at least I can own a large house for the price of a car. [3]
I could go on and on. I haven't even touched on other topics such as Internet, groceries, rent or insurance. Your comment comes across as plain ignorant and downward complacent. I don't get this tendency of always sugarcoating the US, as though it would make it magically more appealing to the average Joe to move there.
Please back up your claims next time with articles or sources. Just use your favourite search engine.
I just live and work in the USA my whole life, if anything I'm wrong about France. I'm not going to bother to refute most of your claims, as the premise is what are the salaries of tech people, not what are the standards of living of jobless people in San Francisco. Most of the US population, including myself and most of my acquaintances, live outside of those major cities, and that was the point I was making. You listed off literally the most expensive places to live in the USA, where the majority of people do not live. Education expenses are whatever you want to pay, we have plenty of choices including cheap choices, and generous scholarships for those that can't afford it but are smart.
I just caught you out making stuff up and now you resort to making yet again even more stuff up: "Education expenses are whatever you want to pay" (yeah, let's just buy 1/10th of a Bachelor degree, sounds like a plan to cut the costs), "you listed off literally the most expensive places to live in the USA, where the majority of people do not live" (sure, nobody lives in major cities) (why the hell are they called major cities then? God knows).
This conversation is leading nowhere so I'm just gonna stop responding.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Your points appear reasonable, but the personal attacks and nastiness with which you've made them are unacceptable here.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
> Education? Eh... not really expensive in the US, is it? the US student loan debt is swelling at about $1.5 trillion... and counting. It speaks volume as to how costly education is in the US. [1]
Education in the US is not unavoidably expensive. Quoting student loan aggregates does nothing to account for the number of students who took tens or hundreds of thousands worth of loans they didn't really need because they rejected an affordable alternative in order to go to their target school.
In 1998 I rejected my target school because attending would have cost me a minimum of $12,000/year out of pocket. I stayed local and graduated with no loans. 21 years later, if I started in 2019, I would still graduate without loans from that same school.
> Healthcare? Hugely expensive for a country as "rich" as the US. Unless, of course, you work for a generous employer and in that case, everything is paid for. Wait a second, I'm told not all employers provide a healthcare plan along with a 401k plan? That's unfortunate. Let's also remind ourselves that the US doesn't provide universal healthcare for all its citizens unlike other advanced industrialized countries. So if you happen to be jobless? You're SOL. Awe-effing-some. Let's move on... [2]
I don't have rebuttal to this point, but based on your tone I don't think you have any interest in discussing it in good faith anyway.
> Housing? In SF/SV/NYC/Seattle/Washington/any major US city, housing is extremely expensive as is housing in any major European metropolis such as London/Paris/Munich/Zurich. I bet the $300,000 nice house you mention in your comment must be somewhere in the countryside where nobody lives, right? Let's make this clear: houses located in the middle of nowhere in any European country also cost zilch. Let's take France for instance: 30K euros gets you a 100 sqm house (even bigger sometimes) in the Creuse region. Yeah nobody wants to live there but hey at least I can own a large house for the price of a car. [3]
"You bet" very wrong. The house I used to have in Dallas is worth $275,000 at the moment. Many of the houses in suburban New Jersey are less than $400,000, and some are even less than $300,000.[1] . Less stock in Maryland[2], but there are still many options.
> I could go on and on. I haven't even touched on other topics such as Internet, groceries, rent or insurance. Your comment comes across as plain ignorant and downward complacent. I don't get this tendency of always sugarcoating the US, as though it would make it magically more appealing to the average Joe to move there.
I'm sure you could, but it would just serve to further demonstrate your bias, condescension, and ignorance.
> Please back up your claims next time with articles or sources. Just use your favourite search engine.
The irony of this snark is that you have done a rather poor job of this yourself.
> In 1998 I rejected my target school because attending would have cost me a minimum of $12,000/year out of pocket. I stayed local and graduated with no loans. 21 years later, if I started in 2019, I would still graduate without loans from that same school.
In 1998. That's really the crux of your comment. As to the costs of your school in 2019, since you haven't provided a link to back it up, I cannot check your claim.
> I don't have rebuttal to this point, but based on your tone I don't think you have any interest in discussing it in good faith anyway.
I have read countless studies online (studies, not just newspaper articles) and have friends who've moved to and/or lived briefly in the US that have experienced it first hand. Sorry for not showing empathy but when one of the richest country in the world isn't able to provide healthcare for all its citizens, I think something is slightly wrong. Worst yet, the babysteps that have been made during the Obama era are now being rolled back by the Repuplican party. And yet, you're pointing fingers at me like I'm the problem. How about a nice warm cup of reality to start the day?
> "You bet" very wrong. The house I used to have in Dallas is worth $275,000 at the moment. Many of the houses in suburban New Jersey are less than $400,000, and some are even less than $300,000.[1] . Less stock in Maryland[2], but there are still many options.
Fair enough. In that case, I think it's expensive. The same price range gets you a very comfortable flat in Berlin, Germany's capital. [1]
> I'm sure you could, but it would just serve to further demonstrate your bias, condescension, and ignorance.
Still not OK with reality. That's fine, you'll get used to it. We all do after a while. :-)
> In 1998. That's really the crux of your comment. As to the costs of your school in 2019, since you haven't provided a link to back it up, I cannot check your claim.
Look, I agree the US system is inefficient, immoral in the aggregate, and generally a bit of a pain to interact with.
But this idea that highly paid professionals in the US have crappy healthcare experiences is just silly. Anyone earning $100k as an employee in the US will have a good health plan that will provide excellent quality of care for a reasonable out of pocket cost.
In fact, this is kind of the problem with the US system! Rich people have a healthcare system that works well for them, they get lots of choice, very fast access to specialists if they want them, and generally rich people are happy with their health care.
This means there's no electoral coalition strong enough to pursue more egalitarian or more efficient systems, they'd all run the risk of appearing worse to the rich people.
I'll concede that one trip to the ER was a bit hyperbole. That fact is though, that medical emergencies have a way to royally screw you over in a way that is unheard of in most European countries.
Personally, with a background in a European country, a personal bankruptcy is something that only happens to the most financially careless/gambling addicted of people. In the US it seems to have become a sad part of a lot of peoples' coping strategy if a medical emergency arises.
You are paying for a huge welfare system that minimally benefits you. Without taxes, particularly payroll taxes, salaries would be similar in Western Europe to the US.
you've had a wide variety of positions. how did you manage all that? did you educate yourself before interviewing at companies or was the purpose to have a wide breadth of knowledge so you purposefully sought out a variety of positions?
To the author: were any of these cleared positions? Typically those command a premium and require some sacrifice as it applies to personal lifestyle choices. CACI often requires clearances for government clients, for example which is why you might see a drop when moving to Motley Fool (a commercial customer)
It's only a sacrifice if you'd actually want to do things that would raise concern.
On the other hand, it is a huge benefit if you'd rather not be surrounded by people with those kinds of concerns. It's nice to know that none of your coworkers are likely to steal your stuff, commit acts of violence upon you, spill fentanyl on your desk, embezzle the company's assets, offer you food items with unmentioned unconventional ingredients, or do anything other than be calm and level-headed.
Those are pretty extreme. For me and probably 90% of other devs who don't want to get a security clearance, it's because of prior drug use. I don't even do anything like that other than smoke weed these days (which I would easily quit if I needed to for a job, though I still think that's very outdated BS) but the government seems really scared about people who've even previously used drugs.
No, I'm not going to spill fentanyl, weed, or any other drug on your desk and I'm also not going to lie during the clearance process to say that I've smoked weed less than 50 times in my life - but apparently that means I can't get a clearance.
it's not the drug use that is the problem. a lot of the time it is about honesty. If you try to hide anything on clearance paperwork, and they find it (they always find stuff), that's immediate disqualification.
there are people with all kinds of backgrounds, and some with drug use in their background, with active clearances. it's not automatic any more. just be 100% honest.
the adjudicator needs to make a determination of whether they think you could be compromised in some way. just because someone smoked weed in college or got a DUI once doesn't mean they can be compromised.
Maybe I'm just not level-headed enough to have noticed, and/or unusually lucky, but I have to say that none of this resembles any of my experiences of ordinary employment.
A different version of this argument looks like: "I'm not worried about surveillance because I never do anything wrong." but that's a philosophical argument.
Just from a straight "annoying" / pragmatic perspective I can think of the following issues:
Marijuana is legal in a lot of states including DC but not if you hold a clearance, if you're into that kind of thing.
Anything international makes for a paperwork drill, not to mention possible approvals required.
Any normal domestic interaction with the law (law suits, getting pulled over, arrested and not charged, etc) all become a potential job-destroyer.
Not to mention you're reporting all of this stuff to the government 100% of the time.
It may not be a hassle if you live a pretty conventional lifestyle, don't travel much, etc, but it definitely adds a layer of annoyance at a minimum.
Thanks for sharing. My takeaway is that I'm happy to know that east coast co's are willing to go to that $180K+ level. Would be much more interested at that level on the east coast (e.g., VA) as opposed to an AirBnB level ($250K+) in SV.
Companies in NYC and Boston will go well above $200k for senior people. I'd estimate salaries in each of those markets is only ~10-15% below SVBA. Obviously they have much higher cost of living than VA or most other places. Having Google, Facebook, etc. open large offices has brought up salaries a lot.
it depends on what kind of growth you want and what terminal level you are able to sit at. If you want to be an IC (individual contributor), then it many positions in FAANG cap out around $300K unless you do crazy shit. Moving into technical leadership (either manager or principal) is the key to the next level.
In the spirit of this discussion, I’ll share my journey. In 2015, my base was $95k. Today, it is $150k. Including stocks and bonuses, my total compensation went from ~$140k to $220k. In California, but not the Bay Area. I hold a Bachelor’s from a pretty good university, but by no means an elite institution.
White guy from a modest background: grew up lower middle class, single mother who worked in retail, got free lunch, etc.
It feels odd to have moved and basically move up the economic totem poll to what I guess I’d call upper middle class. Life for people who stayed where I grew up is quite different than my life now.
I didn’t totally flush this out, but I don’t feel upper middle class in the conventional sense since I’m used to simple living. The two cars, white picket fence lifestyle isn’t me. But by raw income numbers, it certainly places me there.
It all sort of feels relative. If a “beginner” single family bungalow costs 850k+ in my neighborhood, home ownership still feels like a gamble (well, the accompanying debt burden would make me uncomfortable). A $4k mortgage payment does not sound fun if I were to lose my job, for example.
Every source I can find (2014-2018 data from a variety of places) puts it between 97th and just over 98th; probably hasn't changed more than a couple of points since.
> I do not know what upper middle class is supposed to mean. Does it mean 90-95 percentile?
If by “middle class” one means petit bourgeoisie, then 95th to 99.something percentile for the upper range of that class is fairly reasonable; the haut bourgeoisie are a very narrow slice, and economic classes in that classic sense have overlapping income ranges, because they are more about how one relates to the economy than income level, though the two are correlated.
OTOH, the language of economic class these days is used in many murky and inconsistent ways.
EDIT: Just to be clear, the classic idea of the petit bourgeoisie as the middle economic class of capitalist societies does not mean that they represent the average or some range around the average; the working class makes up the vast majority, the haut bourgeoisie (the class of major capitalists) is a tiny slice that controls most of the wealth, and the petit bourgeoisie are a fairly thin (though much broader than the haut bourgeoisie), largely relatively rich class that is “middle” in the sense of deriving income from a mix including both a substantial contribution from personal labor (the predominant support for the working class) and a substantial contribution from personal capital (the predominant support for the haut bourgeoisie)—the classic example of that mix being the independent small business owner whose labor is applied to their own capital rather than either being rented out to some capitalist, or gaining returns on capital by renting others labor to apply to it.
You could probably draw a quantitative line according to fraction of income paid as tax, since capital gains follow, ahem, different rules. It's good to be king!
It has to be adjusted for the metro area. An income of 250k puts one in the top 1% nation wide but maybe top 6-3% in San Francisco. Just like how a $1M home is expensive in most of the rest of the country but a bargain in SF, NYC, etc.
I don't have an answer for the question but I remember watching a series of recorded interviews with Americans from all walks of life and all described themselves as middle class, from the poorest to the wealthiest.
50mil/year passive income puts u at the billionaire level. Obviously they are not going to describe themselves middle class. I do believe the commenter is referring to people making 200-1000k+ and still calling themselves middle class.
My point is that people making 200k-1000k are closer to middle class than billionaires. So it makes sense to me why they don't group themselves with the billionaires.
Anyways, I think the answer is just based on how you want to define middle and upper class.
I'd guess his idea of upper class is people with mansions and yachts. 220K isn't enough for that in California (but it is in other places in the US). I think in California that gets you a nice house outside of the most expensive areas and whatever kind of car you want to drive, and maybe private schools for your kids if you want that.
I’d say you’re upper class if you have enough accumulated wealth that your kids will never have to work.
Even if you’re making 500k a year, depending on the part of the country, it may take a fair few years before you make that jump.
I think it’s the difference between having _wealth_ and having a lot of disposable income. There’s a fairly big difference. You can convert the latter to the former but not everyone does.
Really depends on your definitionof social stratification. Traditional class values is correlated to wealth, but you could be not wealthy and still be considered upper class. e.g a Duke or Lord.
The economic definition of middle class is very different from how people identify themselves. In the US, unless you have enough wealth to live like a celebrity most high earners identify themselves as Upper Middle Class.
The cost of maintaining your Upper Middle Class status is very high: tuition for elite, private schools, mortgages on giant homes and vacation homes, leases on luxury cars to keep up with the neighbors, and the desire to live in high-cost exclusive communities, etc.
Because of all of the above, people that should be "rich" if you look at where they are on an income distribution graph, actually do not feel "rich." So they identify as Upper Middle Class.
Where you live influences your salary by quite a bit. You insert javascript ad tags? That's ~70k/yr in southern california, and 150k/yr in New York as remote. If you have experience building a system to handle a billion metrics per day, of course you can jump into a Senior Engineer IV position (or whatever) at 180k... It's hard to talk about salaries when the context is opaque because titles and skills are so fungible on both sides (employers and employees)
Some random points of advice after 30 years in tech...
First, decide whether you are more interested in pushing forward on technology or on earning more. Yes, you probably want both, but you should decide which matters more. Also, note that the answer will likely change if your personal situation changes, in particular, if you start a family.
These points are primarily for those who put earning more above pushing technology. I was married early on and that became the priority for me.
- Always work to make your boss successful. There are a variety of advantages to this. First, if you make them successful and they rise in the company, they are more likely to give you a promotion and raise as well. Second, if they change jobs and go to a place you'd like to work, whether it's in one, five, ten years or more, you'll be someone they call when they need to hire. Third, it makes it much easier for them to go to bat for you when you ask for a raise.
Given all of that, it's also important to work for bosses that you want to see succeed. If you really don't like your boss, and you find it distasteful to help them be successful, work towards their success while you look for another boss.
- If you want to earn more, ask for more responsibility. I was married when I was an engineer of 3 years. To earn more, I asked to be made a project lead. I delivered several projects, then asked to be made a manager. I managed several people, then asked for a transfer to start and manage a remote sales and service office. In each case, I was given 30%+ raises.
The point here is that you need to ask. Let your boss and HR know that you want to be considered for promotion. Once you've asked, remind them at more or less regular intervals, perhaps 6 months. You want it to stick in their minds that you are looking to move up and at some point, an opportunity may come up that you'd be on the short list for.
- Change jobs or companies. This is typically the most effective way to get a raise. The key is to look while you're still working. Many people in tech keep their heads down until the company goes through a rough patch and lays off or shuts down. Then, if they don't have runway, they have to take the first position that comes along. If you think you need to move, keep your job and do your search so you can evaluate each opportunity without being under pressure.
- Treat options or other equity as the icing, not the cake. You can be deliberate about accumulating wealth without windfalls by consistently earning more than you spend and conscientiously investing your savings. If you're able to cash in on options, that is great, invest it, buy a home or whatever. But earn what you're worth in cash.
Fantastic advice! I especially concur with your first bullet point - working to make my boss successful has _always_ paid dividends in the ways you describe.
Totally agree. To add to the point about the boss you do not like. Identify that early and take positive steps to get out of there. One danger in this situation is that this is an incompetent boss (reason you don't like) and you need to get out of the blast radius.
I've found that when a (good) boss realises that you're solving organisational (boss-relevant) problems and getting things done, they start pushing harder problems your way.
When done in a supportive way, this helps propel you up a level of competency; then the raise/promotion is effortless and obvious to everyone involved.
Conversely, in my experience I've never been giving the money / title before I had performed the role.
The only thing I've ever seen work to get significantly more money is changing companies. Companies used to give somewhat decent raises 3-8% but outside of that, it doesn't seem to matter what one does. I have a great boss and have been promised raises multiple times. Instead, our CEO cut our vacation in half. The only reason I haven't gone somewhere else is because I work remotely and can put in the most minimal effort. I regret the first few years putting in a lot of effort, getting RSI, solving many problems ... but for what? For nothing. Actually, less than nothing. Due to inflation and vacation taken away, I make less. So I work less. Then people wonder why something like over 80% of workers in the US are disengaged. This is why. Most companies are too cheap to provide proper compensation, vacation, and benefits. Serves them right.
I think you have to get really lucky, or really go above and beyond.
I've been at my company for almost two years and I've gotten a net 70% raise across this time frame. Although it's only from 60k to 100k CAD so, YMMV especially in more senior roles.
I did the "go above and beyond" at my last employer, to the point where I was doing the job of two people (because they were too cheap to hire a more junior engineer to take some of the load off).
Bonus scheme axed, pay cuts across the board, and constant whining about how we "took longer and did a worse job".
The only thing I regret is that I hung on for three years hoping things would get better (they never did).
Oh trust me, I went above and beyond. Migrating a live app from mysql to pgsql. ALL the devops work for the entire company, then moving all that infrastructure to Docker and reducing costs so that all our apps run on one cluster of servers. Migrating multiple live apps from one provider to another without downtime. Working late and even weekends. Rewriting a server completely to make it much more robust and less buggy. Rewriting the database and serializer parts of our API because the original coders used super slow implementations. Implementing multiple experiments using various databases to deal with another slow codebase. Dealing with teams of contractors that wrote code so shitty, it would make one cry, it was so horrible. Then having to take charge of their shitty mess because they sure as fuck won't. Saving the company over $100k a year by not using ridiculously priced API gateway services. Bringing in another dev to help out when our other main developer left.
I could go on and on. Any one of those things was above and beyond on its own and I never once got a performance based bonus, let alone a raise. Then we got new management and they rewarded us by cutting our vacation. I am completely unappreciated, or at the very least, that appreciation is not shown in any way that matters. I am, however, no longer at a spot in my life, thankfully, that work defines my life. I still make good money and I focus on other things in my life. I let the execs worry about deadlines and bullshit like that. They can panic and get anxiety all they want, it won't magically get the work done or get it done quicker. As I said, my bosses are decent in all other ways other than appreciating their employees with appropriate compensation / vacation. Who knows, that might change. I'm not holding my breath though.
I would like to add a point of caution to this advice, with regards to making your boss succeed, the OP mentioned it already but make sure you WANT your boss to succeed.
In my experience, the harder you work for your boss , the more they will extract out of you. E.g you suddenly have 10x tasks assigned to you.
So make sure you don't get burned by doing this and NOT getting a raise after. Most bosses will simply take more and not give much back.
I guess the essence of it is that you should work smart, figure out what are the most important tasks that your boss needs and complete them really well, but don't naively burn yourself
I’m working for myself. I’m exploring some ideas right now. My target is to have something on the market by around May, and then keep iterating/changing based on market feedback. Going to live off my savings until my work can cover my family’s expenses. I’m hoping that happens before I run out of savings.
How could you possibly run out of savings when you had that kind of income? Were you spending most of it? What is your monthly expense rate now? Perhaps you bought a multimillion dollar house?
I live in Seattle (high cost of living area) and have 2 small kids (2 & 4). Just housing and insurance (health, life, disability, etc) are $84K/year. That’s before food and utilities. My total expenses are about $150K. I start with a round $1M in liquid savings, so it’s about 5.5 years of runway. There’s more detail about my finances in this post for those curious: https://danielvassallo.com/from-employee-to-bootstrapper/
Yes, it’s more expensive with a family. The cheapest health insurance from Obamacare was $15K/year, with a $14K decidable. I live in a 2,500 sqft 3-bed townhouse and all housing costs are $64K/year (mortgage, HOA, and insurance). Then I have another $5K for life, disability, umbrella, and auto insurance.
Only 2016 and 2017. The other years had minor impact from stock appreciation (~$5-15K). In 2016 I got a big bump because I got a competing offer from Oracle at $380K, and Amazon matched it.
5 years experience at one of the leading cloud companies (AWS, Azure, Google) will very likely put you right in that market. Nothing special to join. It’s very hard to enter directly as an SDE-3 (or equivalent) without having experience at one of the big companies. I think in 8 years at Amazon I’ve only seen 1 person doing that. With a phd and some work experience you can likely join as an SDE-2 and get to an SDE-3 level in about 5 years. The exact timing depends a bit on the opportunities you’d find, but I’d say that’s definitely very realistic. I can put you in touch with a recruiter from Amazon if you’re interested. My email is in my profile.
I got a big bump in 2016 because I got a competing offer from Oracle, and Amazon matched it. 2017 and 2018 growth was from stock appreciation. If the stock hadn’t increased so much, the last 2 years would have been at around the 2016 level. AFAIK, people with ~10 years experience commonly get offers at around my 2016 level.
This is less a direct question and more of a discussion: I always thought it was considered a bad move to stick with your old company after receiving a competing offer and negotiating a higher wage at your old company. Conventional wisdom I've read is that your old company will slowly phase you out (thus missing out on promotions/raises).
Have other people been so successful using an offer for a raise at your original employer and staying?
I have never retaliated against employees who gave me competing offers; some times I haven't been able to meet them and they left, but every time I did meet them, people stayed.
The people who stayed basically pulled forward a stock grant that was coming anyway, and increased this year's raise while decreasing it a fair bit for the next two years.
I've always been explicit that this is what's happening; the area under the income curve does end up larger, but not by a large amount. Of course the option value of having a grant vs. hoping for a grant is worth something, too.
DVassallo's $160k bump across one year's W2 is much larger than I've ever seen granted.
At big companies I don't think that happens. Everyone understands that everybody is there for a temporary period. In my case, I think only about 3 people knew about this, and I believe they genuinely wanted me to stay.
I was wondering about that. I mean when I was at Sun they paid a market wage and had an employee stock purchase plan[1]. When I left Sun in '95 the stock I had left was worth about $1.2M, it had gone from the $20's to over a $100 and split twice (if you do the math that was $60,000 worth of stock to begin with, which had accumulated over about 6 years).
I don't think of my wages being $1.2M so much as I happened to get lucky with that equity. (I have also experienced the reverse where > $1M worth (on paper) of stock was worth less than $10K when I could sell it, it isn't all roses.)
But ~$500K is the market rate right now. Several people I know got that amount at Google, Facebook, and Oracle here in Seattle with ~10 years experience in cloud or AI/ML. Amazon’s stock increase has inflated the market rates because other companies had to pay so much in the last 3 years for people to leave Amazon. Obviously there’s no guarantee that this will last forever, but I was pretty confident I would have continued to make $500K/year as long as the market conditions remained the same. I also had enough unvested RSUs until end of 2020 to make that much.
I understand what you are saying, and when you sell stock that vests it is completely reasonable to count it as income as it shows up on your W2.
My point was that just prior to the dot com crash I had over $6M in "RSUs" (well restricted stock which was a better deal since the number can't be fudged but what ever) and when it "vested" it was worth less than $12K. It showed up on my W2 because I used an 83b election to vest it all up front (and get in on a lower tax rate when it unlocked) only to have it generate losses when it unlocked.
Where I was going was that there is 'base pay' which you are going to get if you show up every day and don't get fired, and there is 'variable pay' which can come in the format of annual bonuses and or vesting equity. The annual bonuses tend to be something of a beauty contest and so can be hard to predict, and the market can swing wildly (hopefully nobody with RSUs today has to experience a 99.9% drop in value that I did during the dot com crash but it can happen, you could have had Theranos RSUs for example).
The original author went out of their way to stick with just base pay and I understood their reasons for doing so as I largely agree with them on the lack of predictability of other remuneration options.
At these levels it's all variable since practically all compensation is in stock. If you're not good enough to be given stock, you'll likely get fired. Everyone's base at Amazon is capped at $160K, including the CEO and the execs making $20M/year. When the stock dipped from $400 to $290 in 2014, Amazon topped us up mid-year to make up for the shortfall. Otherwise people would have left. Obviously if another bubble/recession like 2001 or 2008 happened again, the whole market would likely shrink and people would get less RSUs and they would be worth less. But they'd have to settle for that since the opportunities elsewhere would also presumably go away.
Graduated in the late 90s with a degree in CS. I read this and I wonder, where the hell did I go wrong? If this is commonplace, then how did I fail so spectacularly?
I was just in the right place, right time. Ten years ago my target was to make $100K/year by 2020. Never would have I imagined these amounts were even possible. But once I attained a basic level of financial security, additional income stopped mattering for my satisfaction. It’s one of the reasons I left, despite everything was going well by every traditional measure.
A significant portion of his compensation was via recurring Amazon.com stock grants (RSUs). By year 4+ most employees are looking at least 3 separate stock grants vesting every single year.
Had you bought $100,000 of $AMZN in 2010, it'd be worth $1.35M today (and $1.6M in September) which would go a long way toward evening things out in a similar manner.
It’s true that a big part of my comp was in stock, but I only meaningfully gained from stock appreciation in 2017 and 2018. In the other years stock appreciation accounted for only $5-$15K. I sold all my stock as soon as it vested, so I sold a lot at $200, $300, $400... etc. Even in 2017, I got it at all under $1000. Now it’s $1700.
No. But I'm not optimizing my life to make as much money as possible. I'd like to work on my own terms, doing things that intrinsically motivate me. If I can do that while covering my family expenses, I think I would have improved my life.
I can’t speculate on mindset or motivation, but based on purely financials I’d have suggested sticking it out for a few more years to build up a larger nest egg. It’s not just the risk of not succeeding at your next venture; there’s the follow up risk that after failure you can’t get back in the game where you left off.
That said, best of luck to you. Fortune favors the brave!
Assuming DV was able to save a good% of their money and get a reasonable return on it, their nest egg could easily be a couple million today. After taxes etc another 3 years might only grow that 10-15%.
Yes, staying another year wouldn’t have made a big difference. My net worth is around $1.4M with $1M in liquid savings. In the last 2 years I added ~$200K per year in savings. I just didn’t want to keep postponing. Otherwise there’s always a reason to wait another year or two.
Yes. I'm self taught. Plenty of self taught people at Amazon, with non-CS degrees, or no degrees at all. That definitely won't be a blocker.
My advice would be to not try to seek satisfaction from "earning as much as possible"... because "as much as possible" is an unreachable destination. I worked with lots of unhappy people earning $350K/year because they felt they should be doing $500K. How do you think they'll feel once they're making $500K? I bet they'll still be miserable because one person they know is their age and making $600K. And so on. Same with promotions and job titles. Once you clear a certain level of financial security (bills on autopay, some savings), more income stops mattering for satisfaction.
I have this mental hurdle I cant seem to get over, I keep reading about how there are engineers at FAANGs purely self taught but then im also reading about people with degrees, bootcamps, internships under their belts having a hard time getting hired.
What advice do you have for me? If im self taught how do i even get my foot in the door with amazon? How do I have them even consider me for an interview? Anecdotally speaking how did you and your self taught peers do it? Was it projects? Or work experience at less exclusive companies?
To get in all you need is to clear the technical and behavioral interview. I participated in over 300 interviews, and not once was education ever brought up as a factor. Amazon in Seattle hires hundreds of people a week, and there's plenty of openings in other places. Just find a position you think is a good fit and apply. If you know someone working there it'd be good to get a referral, but it's not required. I just applied from their website in 2010, and I started 3 weeks later.
Base salary was $160K since 2014. But why? The stock part ended up as money in my bank. These aren’t stock options like startups give. Public companies like to pay with stock because it didn’t impact their cash flow. The shareholders pay for it via dilution.
If you don’t, you need to ask the question: if I had a pile of cash to invest, would I use it to purchase my company’s stock given that the stock price snd my employment opportunities there are at least loosely correlated?
Yes I did. I was always very exposed on the Amazon stock since I always had 2-3 years worth of granted RSUs that hadn’t vested yet. I didn’t want that much exposure.
Diversification. Even if you want stocks, you don't want them all from the same company. It would be better to just stick that money into some S&P500 index fund.
I work in Canada government on Java ee for 3 years, worked on other legacy application on cobol etc earlier for 10 years. I have undergrad in CS. What technology can I learn to level up my salary with current market standards? I will appreciate any other advice to get up to those level.
I have an associates degree in an unrelated field.
For work, I implemented and maintain part of the CI/CD pipeline (AWS Code Pipeline configuration, pretty simple), spin up and maintain AWS infrastructure, hack on the cloud formation templates and our internal build scripts, and do a portion of the helpdesk admin work for some of our large clients. Troubleshoot individual nodes. I work remotely in a small town in the US with a relatively mid-low cost of living.
I make 67k/year. I feel like my needs are met. My work/life balance is great as no one gives me any crap for sticking to a regular work day. I'm not supporting a family or anything. I'm able to contribute 15% to 401k. Otherwise, I'm not quite paycheck to paycheck, but close.
Looking at some of your salaries, I feel envious. I'm not sure my skill set demands more but maybe it does? I don't know if I should feel underpaid. I also don't want big heavy golden handcuffs.
keep your resume up-to-date every month (seriously, was great advice I got early on, even though I sometimes lapse myself).
and I know most people advising on salary negotiations say never give your number first... but if you are happy where you are, then it's going to take 30-50% over what you're making to make you move. So give that number. It weeds most recruiters out.
The ones that bite, you know they're serious. Then it's up to the role, company, commute, etc, the things that make a difference for you.
Golden handcuffs are a good problem to have. Wherever you go, just make sure you can make a difference and have some autonomy to make the work interesting.
I am Asian but was born and raised in Australia. I have a Bachelor of Science and I work as a web developer, e.g. Spring, ASP.NET, React, WordPress, Drupal, etc.
2013 - 23yo - $45K - First job - Magento developer building eCommerce websites for clients.
2014 - 24yo - $54K
2015 - 25yo - $70K - Second job - Magento / Shopify / WordPress developer, building eCommerce websites for clients.
2016 - 26yo - $75K
2017 - 27yo - $80K - Third job - Full stack web developer - Predominantly using Spring and React to build bespoke solutions for clients.
2018 - 28yo - $85K
I don't begrudge people with their crazy salaries but I do get frustrated that I can't find success myself. I'm really struggling with savings and building up a nest egg for retirement.
Do you work in Australia as well? If so, Ignoring US even, you've got 5 years exp and you're making $85k AUD. That's not high for Australia. Is that including Super?
The larger tech companies in Melbourne and Sydney are giving $120k+ AUD total comp to grads.
> The larger tech companies in Melbourne and Sydney are giving $120k+ AUD total comp to grads
Which larger tech companies?
I'm self employed and have worked 100% remote for around 5 years, so am a bit out of touch. However, I have close friends in senior positions at major tech companies in Melbourne (REA, Xero etc.) and $120k for grads sadly does not align with what I've heard from them, closer to $70k (AUD) for a grad seems to be the norm.
It's absolutely nothing to sneeze at when comparing yourself to the rest of Australian society. Certainly got to be thankful to be in the industry.
However, it's a surprisingly weak effort by Australian tech companies to attract high quality talent. My first full-time software development job, almost 10 years ago and without a degree, was $70k. That was at your run-of-the-mill medium sized enterprise consulting firm.
> The larger tech companies in Melbourne and Sydney are giving $120k+ AUD total comp to grads.
That's some nonsense. Could you drop some names for 'Graduate X' which has that kind of pay scale?
With that being said, it's quite possible to earn 150k+ within 4-5 years in Melbourne. Just be smart about it, listen out for what technologies are trending because inevitably they will be the most numerous and with the highest chance to score a well paying role -- especially if you have your ahead of the influx of developers in X language.
By all accounts I'm not especially talented and I have done so.
PS. If you want $$ learn Salesforce, the money which comes along with knowing that system is freakin craziness.
Not nonsense at all. I answered with a list of companies.
I got offered $150k+ at Zendesk Melbourne out of uni, but that was a special situation. But also I literally did get that offer so no, 120k is not "nonsense".
You just stated that it was an exceptional circumstance and now we're saying that it's normal. You played your cards right and got out on top, that's great - congrats.
I can tell you however, that is not a normal run-of-the-mill pay-scale for a Uni graduate.
Yeah it's not run of the mill, but great graduate candidates can absolutely get $120K+, so it puts into perspective the salary of the thread's OP, who had like 5 years experience.
Atlassian (Sydney) is always hiring for Java and/or JavaScript. Great company, good compensation, plenty of room for growth. If you’re interested, or want to know more, hit me up - marcins at gmail
Web development and other easy domains like iOS / Android are quickly going the way of other craft jobs of the past: Blue collar.
If you want to make above average salaries you're going to have to specialize. Find something that is both challenging (to reduce barrier to entry) and niche (to demand a higher salary). In other words - specialize. Staying as a generic web/ios/android dev is only going to guarantee that your salary becomes more and more diluted by the avalanche of developers entering the field. The barrier to entry is just too low.
In my department, mobile is the bottleneck for every PM's ambitions and the only speciality where recruiting never even approaches headcount/budget. It's possible that the low end contract labor market is flooded or something, but iOS and Android devs who can pass a whiteboard are worth their weight in gold.
What are some examples of challenging and niche fields? How can one do research to find fields like this that they also enjoy? As well as realize whether they have any marketable potential?
I really don't agree with this. I'm a 27 year old JS-focused web dev @150k base.
I understand that the bootcamps and proliferation of web-teaching schools have made web dev seem like the easy thing, and I agree that what I do is less complex than these $800k-earning data engineers, but web development in 2019 is no joke. The same goes for iOS/Android.
The types of things these companies are trying to build are not just "slap it together in a week and done" type projects and it takes experience to architect and engineer them effectively. Your average bootcamp grad is not able to do it yet.
iOS/Android/Web development forms the 3 primary portals to a company's clients, and as long as that's true, the value of such skillsets will remain high.
I'm sorry, but anyone who says any domain is easy either hasn't written real code in it, or is making gross generalizations about entry level code monkey positions that doesn't reflect the entirety of the space.
I don't care if it's games, web front end, back end, databases, machine learning, mobile, embedded
literally doesn't matter, if you think you can brush off any of them like that, you haven't built something substantial with them.
Are there varying levels of difficulty across niches? Sure, but one person can slap a few python libraries together in an afternoon and call it AI/machine learning, and a 3-5 person team can also spend 6 months building a monster, fined tuned native iOS application.
There's challenges everywhere, it's a matter of finding them.
I get your point, but it's objectively false. If your same argument cannot be made for any domain, than you can't simply make it for domains of your choosing.
Certain careers DO have levels of challenge, as well as other barriers to entry, that increase the value of workers. You could not argue to me that flipping burgers at McDonalds is hard. Within the domain of computer science, you simply cannot argue to me that generic CRUD web/ios/android is hard.
And you can't argue that the extent of web/ios/android development is generic CRUD. I'm not attempting to make it for domains of my choosing, I'm making it for the entirety of computer science related domains.
Of course not. I think it goes without saying that within any technical domain is the capacity for a top ~5% performer, who understand such a depth of that domain that it becomes a specialization in itself.
I'm merely stating that the domain itself, is not by default, a high enough barrier to entry to merit any kind of above average salary. Of course if you're a much higher performer, with a much deeper knowledge base within that domain, then your pay will likely reflect that.
Just my 2 cents...If you want to make significantly more, focus on the business problems you can solve, not the technology you know/use. I’m not an “X” developer. I’m a business person that happens to use code to add value.
If this is outside your comfort zone, look for some basic books on business and internalize the fact that until you can tie your knowledge to dollars coming through the door, you likely won’t make significant jumps in pay.
There are numerous posts that have been shared on HN on how to make more money as a consultant/contractor/freelance developer. They are almost 100% relevant to company employees.
I’m not saying this is something you can change tomorrow. It could be months, could be years. Really depends on how quickly you can learn the business you are involved in and where you are starting from. I don’t know you or your situation so this advice is extremely general. Focus on what the problems are your business/clients have which cost them money or find a way to answer a question like “if we do this it costs X and we make Y.” Make sure you drive those types of initiatives and get your name attached to them but that doesn’t always mean doing it alone.
The posts are pretty easily searchable and even if you don’t find the ones I’m thinking of, the process of searching and filtering on its own is important. One thing I had to learn the hard way is that, with a few rare exceptions, no one is going to be your teacher/mentor. Everyone is too busy with their own shit.
Ultimately, if you want to know more or make more, it comes down to finding ways to justify that to the people that can make that decision. Given you make around $85k/year you need to look at the people several years ahead of you in the career track, if one exists, at your company.
If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
My last piece of advice is more of a warning. A lot of how much you make comes down to luck. Did the interviewer like you for the highly paid job? Did the team you are a part of get the credit for a major win for the company? Or other things that aren’t always within your control. The important thing is that you keep moving forward. Looking for opportunities and driving things to completion. Hard for me to not phrase this in terms of finance...you want to constantly be buying call options on yourself. So that new thing you learn/project you complete that gets your name out there? It is a call option on yourself. Most of those options expire worthless, but hopefully a few pay off big time.
Wow this is great advice, thank you I appreciate the time and effort you took in writing that.
I have a few follow up questions if you dont mind.
>If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
Its so easy to learn in isolation, but how can you actually turn it into profit? How can you quantify your skills? How does one get good at tha?
Also, why the call option analogy, do you work in finance (just curious)?
In case you happen to see this: The commenter replying to you here is right, but that approach also seems really overwhelming. Something actionable but I think a bit easier along the same lines: take projects or seek opportunities to work closely with your product managers, or whatever your company calls the people whose job is to figure out what the customer / market wants from your product. Basically the people they make the most fun of in Office Space - "I talk to the customer so the developers don't have to" - are really important and great people to learn from.
You get paid 3 times as much working in the US. You also get treated well rather than as a cost centre which was my experience back in Aus.
I'm an Australian developer earning triple that+stocks on top at one of the FAANG. Trump, guns and shitty healthcare don't affect you day to day in the states. The E3 visa for Australians to work in the US is trivial.
The funny thing is that Sydney real estate is comparable to silicon valley despite no one earning anynear as much.
+1 I'm not doing much more different than I was when I left Australia, but went from 130K-ish AUD (inc super+bonus) to 260K-ish USD (inc bonus+stocks) = 370AUD in the last few years. The taxes are significantly lower on these amounts in the US as well (at least in Seattle where there's no income tax).
I am in Australia as well, I started on a similar base as you. I told employers that I was willing to learn and do anything. Most the stuff I have worked on is back-end services.
2010 - 25yo - 41k - First job - .net dev (internal services / sql).
2011 - 26yo - 41.1k
2012 - 27yo - 65k - Second job - job advertised as .net became pseudo COBOL dev.
2013 - 28yo - 80k - moved more in to tech lead / manager role.
2014 - 29yo - 86k - Third job - .net web dev (webforms / mvc).
2015 - 30yo - 86k
2016 - 31yo - 163k - COBOL / .net + odds and ends
2017 - 32yo - 163k
2018 - 33yo - 170k
As others have said, technology really isn't the thing that will drive your increase in remuneration. It is understanding client requirements, creating business solutions, being able to communicate said solutions.
Was it hard to get into a COBOL role? I am interested in moving that way, was driven to Coldfusion under the excitement of working on challenging code. Naturally the next progression is COBOL.
I assume these are AUD. You don't say where in Aus you're based, but it's not terrible at that age, you're still some way off peak, it's slightly above average.
Average Full Time Ordinary Time Earnings Q2 2018
State Average Annual Wage
Tasmania $71,718
South Australia $75,369
Queensland $80,304
Victoria $80,610
New South Wales $83,517
Northern Territory $86,762
Western Australia $90,496
Capital Territory $94,224
I have worked in Spain and Sweden. My salary as developer has been in the range of €32K-€45K in the past 15 years in Spain. It has been around €65K in Sweden (similar to what now friends make in Spain). And it is below €100K as an architect.
The cost of living in Sweden is higher than in Spain. And Spanish salaries in IT has soared. So, economically, it was not worth moving. But, the experience of living abroad is worth the money.
It is difficult to compare with USA salaries as here there is more taxes but you get better services. For me the deal breaker is the equality. I know that people around me makes a living wage. But, I will not discard to move to any other country in the future for the experience as every country has its own charm.
It is difficult to compare, but the reality is that especially at FAANG companies the company has good services. They provide transport to/from the office, healthcare, retirement stuff, etc. However, the taxes in Europe are higher.
It seems absolutely insane to me that salaries can be so different across countries even though people themselves can acquire visas or contract across borders.
I made a decision somewhere in my career after working at some big and small companies is that I really like the small company vibe, you get involved with many aspects of the business and have a lot more freedom to set technical direction. I also noticed a weird effect in a number of bigger businesses where money wasn't as much as a problem and as a result people tended to innovate less.
But I always feel, given my broad old school / new school skillset built up over decades, I could do better elsewhere moneywise.
Theoretically it would be better for me to start my own business, but where I am I get to concentrate on product creation and solving a broad range of technical problems which is super fun!
Salary progression, no college degree. Cash only comp, no RSUs or anything like that.
20 - $65k (Office Rural NY, SE)
21 - $65k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE)
22 - $75k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE)
23 - $85k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE)
24 - $85k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE)
25 - $225k (Remote, SF Series B Startup, Lead SE)
26 - $225k (Remote, SF Series B Startup, Lead SE)
27 - $393k (Office, SF Series C/D Startup, Principal SE)
28 - $393k (Office, SF Series C/D Startup, Principal SE)
29 - $0 (Took a year off)
30 - $0 (Took a year off)
31 - $150k (Founded a startup)
New job, good negotiation skills. $225K was base. IIRC, I negotiated a bonus (not included in the 225) that was like ~30K when then next funding round closed.
What industry were you working in when at the Series B and Series C/D companies? Do you feel like your salaries at those companies represent the going-rate your colleagues also received?
Yeah, weird situation, good business opportunity + good funding. The barnacles that come with a high income means that it's hard to cut back. I would have trouble living on less than this.
Some context: PhD in EE, but spend most of my time coding.
2011: $100k, industry R&D lab, VA
2012: $150k, “”, “”
2013: $150k, “”, “”
2014: $0, self-employed and didn’t turn a profit
2015: $100k, academic researcher, Midwest
2016: $160k, industry R&D, SV
2017: $165k, “”, “”
2018: $170k, “”, “”
Since 2016, I’ve been working in SV for a company that pays engineers all cash, a modest bonus, and no stock. I like the work and people, but I feel like I’m leaving a lot of money on the table.
Almost anywhere else in the country, I’d be making a considerable amount of money. In SV, it doesn’t feel that way. Myself and most of my (unmarried) coworkers are in our 30s-40s and living in studio apartments. I couldn’t provide a family with the same lifestyle my parents gave me (a house, two cars, safe neighborhood, good school district, mother could stop working for several years to raise me), and they managed without college educations.
I’ve recently tried making the jump into a FAANG company or unicorn, but so far no luck. One company was willing to give feedback: I don’t have enough experience with large scale systems. It’s tough, because I’ve aged out of junior positions, but I guess I lack the right experience for experienced positions. Still have a couple irons in the fire though.
Honestly, time to leave SV if you want to provide for a family. I'm in Atlanta. 10 years experience, 135k base, 150k total comp (401k and bonus). You can easily provide what you parents provides you here for 100k salary, which can be easily had. No one will judge you if you don't have large scale systems experience.
As a potentially helpful data point, I've occasionally been approached for senior technical roles in Atlanta, at large non-tech companies, where they've opened with $600-700k total comp. While I've never seriously pursued a job in Atlanta, that market apparently has at least some willingness to pay well for high-end technical talent that I would not have expected.
Are you open to sharing which companies? I've looked extensively in Atlanta and haven't found anything near SV comp. Square was the highest that I found.
Ignoring the actual numbers because of cost of living, an EE with coding experience would be doing far better here on Florida's eastern coast. That "studio apartments" bit is horrifying.
My coworkers and I seem to do lots better. I've seen my coworkers use a single income to buy: a condo on the beach, a new McMansion, 11 acres with farm animals and shooting, waterfront property with access to the ocean, waterfront property for an airboat into marshlands, and lots of toys. I went for a simple house, 3500 square feet on 0.38 acres and now fully paid off, within walking distance of work. I also had 11 children and bought 3 cars.
I'll take a hopeful guess that an EE with coding experience might enjoy assembly language. If so, maybe I can help get you into a more family-friendly situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153
> I don’t have enough experience with large scale systems.
I'm frustrated for you. This is a dumb reason to say no to someone. "Large systems" are a solved problem and i dont think anyone is working on some system that cant be handled. I work at one of this scale companies, there's nothing special about, people jerking them selves off.
> I couldn’t provide a family with the same lifestyle my parents gave me (a house, two cars, safe neighborhood, good school district, mother could stop working for several years to raise me), and they managed without college educations.
It depends where you live. That's probably possible on £30k in the UK including various benefits, certainly on £50k, as long as you live somewhere sensible.
What are the non-housing costs you need?
In 2008 a couple with 2 kids spent, per week:
Food and drink £103.53
Clothing and footwear £29.26
Household goods and services £27.11
Personal goods and services (inc health) £27.39
Transport £35.02
Social and cultural activities £90.08
£320 a week, or £1400 a month. That's £1800 a month after inflation [0]
Housing costs say £650 a month for a mortgage [1]
£2.5k a month, or a net of £30k, that's a single income of £42k a year [2]
You'll also get £1800 in child benfit.
If you have larger outgoings, say 30% more to £2400 a month plus housing, you're looking at a net of £36k, or gross of £52k [3]
(Marginal tax £50k-£60k is 69% though so there's not much point earning more than that, until you're past 60k and it drops back to 51%)
> I couldn’t provide a family with the same lifestyle my parents gave me (a house, two cars, safe neighborhood, good school district, mother could stop working for several years to raise me)
That's true, probably. But you don't need 2 cars and a house for your family to have the same quality of life.
If you live in the right neighborhood 1 or zero cars is fine. And a family of 4 can live just as happily and comfortably in a 2 bedroom apartment.
You've managed to live in different cities for work, e.g. Madison, London, DC! That means you've gained invaluable life experience. I'm pretty jealous of that TBH.
Well I switched to consulting in 2015, but I'm now a pre sales analytics architect serving the Southwest.
So my promotion is more technical scope (BI/DW, ML/AI, IoT, Big Data, "DataOps"), more customers, more leadership, and more commercial responsibility (i.e. I have a quota.)
I guess my pithy answer is I've never got tired of learning. Four straightforward steps that you've no doubt heard before, but I can confirm they do the trick:
Establish internal credibility. That is, the confidence to speak credibly on a given subject, be it a platform or tool, a technique, a concept, a prediction. Roll your sleeves up and get dirty coding. Even on-rails tutorials force your brain to make the connection between the concepts and the technical reality. Especially for Big Data and ML/DL workloads. Put this all on a public repo. Search GH for relevant repos, fork them, and code walk them - especially Python/R/Scala scripts. Compete on Kaggle, that's obvious. Answer questions on SO, and attempt to replicate problems you find on SO yourself - this yields a lot of benefits, as most SO questions are edge cases. Join the user communities and help forums for popular platforms and read the newest entries - again, you learn the most from others actually practicing in the space. And still an extremely effective technique is to just directly search for e.g. "Spark shuffle joins" on Google and look for real people with real opinions - that you can then test yourself in an environment. When you've already read the blog post or watched the YouTube video or taken the Udacity course the guy across the table is talking about - you really establish credibility.
Teach others what you know. True trial by fire; share what you've learned. You'll learn how to overprepare, communicate and speak plainly, connect with those different than you in personality, behavior and skill, read rooms, provide feedback, take criticism, and most importantly - you'll really, really learn the ins and outs of the material.
Read voraciously. I skim-consume about 25 books a month using my company's Safari subscription; have built up a pretty good "reading recommender" system of Twitter users, subreddits, aggregators, blogs, etc; And not just technical books - books on business strategy, behavioral economics and psych, industry-specific blogs and journals - if you can't explain what you're doing in terms of risk, dollars, or time, you're doing it wrong. (Also a good life pro tip: download every interesting thing you read into a single repo and put a crawler on top of them. Even if you don't know the answer, you know you've read it somewhere and can retrieve it.)
Learn from others. Reading is great, in-person is better, mentoring is the best. Reach out to everyone in the field. Ask them (like you just did to me) what they're reading, what they did, ask follow up questions, share what you're doing with them. I find keeping a list of "questions you'd like to ask" while you're working through material (especially on industry/business) to be invaluable when you meet someone who can potentially answer them.
These days I spent probably 15-20 hours a week just reading, learning, doing, in prep for the 20-30 hours a week I spend educating, communicating, and (hopefully) selling.
One thing to add: I usually am focusing on 2 things at a time, no more, no less. If you can combine them, even better - learn Kafka for streaming and Grafana to visualize it; learn Azure SQL DW or Redshift for distributed DW and Spark for processing; etc.
My real evolution came when I realized I was happy being the dumbest person in the room, and that curiosity is a superpower.
Wow, thank you for all that. I really appreciate the advice. I appreciate the time you took into typing all that out.
I have some follow up questions if you don't mind:
>have built up a pretty good "reading recommender" system of Twitter users, subreddits, aggregators, blogs, etc;
How can I do this? I follow a bunch of influential people in tech and VC last I logged into Twitter, is this what you're talking about? One of my favorite Twitter users is @patrickc, he always has book recommendations.
Any other tips or advice to better optimize my twitter feed?
>And not just technical books - books on business strategy, behavioral economics and psych, industry-specific blogs and journals - if you can't explain what you're doing in terms of risk, dollars, or time, you're doing it wrong.
Any suggestions? Book suggestions for business strategy, behavioral economics, and psych? I'm into these books too but sometimes it's hard to see the concrete connection it might have to my day to day dealings.
>(Also a good life pro tip: download every interesting thing you read into a single repo and put a crawler on top of them. Even if you don't know the answer, you know you've read it somewhere and can retrieve it.)
Sorry, I'm not THAT technically savvy, is there a tutorial or video i can gleam to learn this? It sounds super helpful because I do have a habit of referring back to something I learned online because its in one of many bookmark folders in my browser.
>These days I spent probably 15-20 hours a week just reading, learning, doing, in prep for the 20-30 hours a week I spend educating, communicating, and (hopefully) selling.
What are you selling exactly?
>One thing to add: I usually am focusing on 2 things at a time, no more, no less. If you can combine them, even better - learn Kafka for streaming and Grafana to visualize it; learn Azure SQL DW or Redshift for distributed DW and Spark for processing; etc.
This is good advice, I think. I'm attempting it right now. By focusing on learning java and selenium. Do you ever feel FOMO about what you're not learning or reading though? Any way to combat that?
Aside from the year, that is so similar to my first SE job:
East coast but not big city: 1999 $48k, 2000 $52k
I suppose inflation has been mild. Showing up in the height of the Y2K/web frenzy sure helped. I got myself a nice embedded RTOS kernel developer job before even finishing my degree. Meanwhile, everybody else was running off to invent web development or repair COBOL.
People graduating just a couple years later slammed into a dead market.
Created new account to share since my other could easily trace back to me...
Maybe this isn’t super relevant since this is mostly about tech but I’ve found my technology skills are what contribute to give me a huge advantage, even in finance.
All figures in USD. All finance jobs are in research.
23: 50k - tech consulting business
23: 90k - same. Relocate to NYC
24: 110k - negotiated at consulting company
24: 160k = 110k + 50k bonus - move to financial company
25: 200k = 110k + 90k bonus
26: 210k = 120k + 90k bonus
27: 150k - joined small team starting new business in finance
These salaries sound astronomical compared to earning potential in UK companies. As an Architect, average salaries are around £64,000. Does anyone know how like for like roles pay in the UK for US companies? I can't see Amazon paying £200k for a software developer?
Banking pays poorly compared to tech roles at private equity and hedge funds. Even losing out to Silicon Roundabout and even sleepy Whitehall at the moment, though it is all fairly volatile.
I suppose trying to work at any of the smaller FAANG offices in London might be the best you can do in the UK?
630 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 336 ms ] threadThere is a footnote in the first paragraph that mentions white people and privilege. The purpose of the footnote was for the author to explain that even though he’s providing this information, it may not help non-white people.
Either way, neither the tweet nor the footnote say what you’re saying.
It's a really taboo subject to talk about to begin with; and there are really two extremes that you'll hear:
1. It's a meritocracy and anyone can do this! (It isn't, and they can't)
2. Yea, this will work for you but not in general. (You're probably right on this one, as my salary and my progression are very personal things).
To thread the needle, I'm trying to point out that I acknowledge #2, and explicitly reject #1 as empirically false; and I hope that by sharing my salary, I bring light to the fact that #1 is false, and that if more people who are similarly advantaged as I am talk about it, we can make #2 no longer be the case.
Also: a B2C service startup in the US has a bigger potential market than the same one in Europe (assuming they’re targeting what they know—the local market).
End result: no gigantic piles of cash looking for investment opportunities going to VCs to funnel into 100x success maybe startups, no companies minting money like crazy, no salary inflation
I'm certainly not saying that a comparison is equal, but it feels like for anyone except the highly paid, the gap isn't that wide all things considered.
You can't just hand-wave away "standard of living" and "social services and benefits".
These may be things you take for granted but a large majority of the population has to have a large emergency refund in case they get severed from their company without any notice for any reason (Compare that with job security in France or Germany).
Consider you need to save a ton of money yourself in government sponsored accounts such as HSA or FSAs for future healthcare expenses that you can't possibly estimate when you're 20 years old. (Compare that with the NHS in England).
Consider you need to sock away a ton of money in 401ks and IRAs so that when you're 50 with no job prospects, you don't end up on the street and can actually have a decent retirement. Nobody is paying serious pensions and hardly anyone can survive on social security. (Compare that with the savings pillars in Switzerland).
Now considering all this, you still think his salary is HUGE compared to a Western European one? I highly doubt it, I have already run the numbers myself.
The broader point of the new replacing the old is generally true (your marketability will decline by age 50), but I still see many baby boomers holding onto well paying positions for the foreseeable future. I save to hedge the risk, but I’m not too worried, since I believe the risk is over-stated.
This seems like somewhat of an idealistic view point when over half of Americans have less than 1k in their bank account.
Compared to the EU, one would have to fund a larger emergency fund to avoid surprises.
HSA’s are good investments, but FSAs don’t roll over I believe, so they’re actually quite terrible for 20 year olds
Your analysis is a little idealistic though. I wouldn’t feel certain about social security nets 50 years out. I would take the cash any day.
The first year might be 5 or 10 days. After 10 or 15 years, you might get 20 to 40 days.
If you want better, you'll have to pay out of pocket, possibly including travel to some other country.
If we are to compare US vs EU salaries, we must take into account healthcare cost, retirement, welfare, parental leave, PTO and so on. Otherwise the whole purpose of the exercise is pointless and it may embellish on side of the argument vis-a-vis the other.
How do you call that sort of tactics already? Propaganda, right? The POTUS would respond "Fake News!" (although I'm not fond of him).
Ignorance and complacency run amok on HN these days.
And I am assuming you are talking about 90k euro after taxes not before because the French have one of the highest tax burdens in the world.
It's still a nice life, just not one of abundant riches. Over 4k€ monthly after taxes goes quite far in Europe as you don't need to worry that much about saving for healthcare, pension, and your children's education later in life.
Source?
In most of the USA, not only do you make more than you would in France, but things are actually cheaper, not more expensive. Imagine you make $150,000/year, a really nice house cost $300,000 (think $2,000 monthly mortgage/taxes/insurance payment), groceries, electricity, internet, car for a small family is $2,000 month. And that is with a very high quality of life. If you want to live frugally cut all the expenses in half. The company provides health insurance.
I think the biggest difference might be that Americans report their salary before taxes, and I think Europeans tend to do it after taxes. $150,000/year with a small family is probably $110,000-$120,000 after taxes in most states. €90k after taxes is comparable. Just need to consider quality of life differences.
The people making "too much money" are doing the indispensable work that generates the profit (or chance-at-profit) for their employers, and the employers are by definition OK with paying them that share, which even in very profitable industries is highly unlikely to be as big a share as "management" gets.
If people in France get a much smaller cut (I assume they do, people in Germany certainly do) then wouldn't that mean they're getting too little?
(I think this was close to the other half of your point actually.)
Europeans also report before taxes, and that 90k€ is definitely before taxes. I don't know about this person's taxation, but it's probably around 50k€ after taxes. That's still a very good salary in Europe though.
First off, can we define "things" in your sentence "things are actually cheaper, not more expensive"? What are the "things" you're talking about?
Education? Eh... not really expensive in the US, is it? the US student loan debt is swelling at about $1.5 trillion... and counting. It speaks volume as to how costly education is in the US. [1]
Healthcare? Hugely expensive for a country as "rich" as the US. Unless, of course, you work for a generous employer and in that case, everything is paid for. Wait a second, I'm told not all employers provide a healthcare plan along with a 401k plan? That's unfortunate. Let's also remind ourselves that the US doesn't provide universal healthcare for all its citizens unlike other advanced industrialized countries. So if you happen to be jobless? You're SOL. Awe-effing-some. Let's move on... [2]
Housing? In SF/SV/NYC/Seattle/Washington/any major US city, housing is extremely expensive as is housing in any major European metropolis such as London/Paris/Munich/Zurich. I bet the $300,000 nice house you mention in your comment must be somewhere in the countryside where nobody lives, right? Let's make this clear: houses located in the middle of nowhere in any European country also cost zilch. Let's take France for instance: 30K euros gets you a 100 sqm house (even bigger sometimes) in the Creuse region. Yeah nobody wants to live there but hey at least I can own a large house for the price of a car. [3]
I could go on and on. I haven't even touched on other topics such as Internet, groceries, rent or insurance. Your comment comes across as plain ignorant and downward complacent. I don't get this tendency of always sugarcoating the US, as though it would make it magically more appealing to the average Joe to move there.
Please back up your claims next time with articles or sources. Just use your favourite search engine.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#/media/File:Stude...
[2]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26746...
[3]: https://www.seloger.com/list.htm?enterprise=0&natures=1,2,4&...
I just caught you out making stuff up and now you resort to making yet again even more stuff up: "Education expenses are whatever you want to pay" (yeah, let's just buy 1/10th of a Bachelor degree, sounds like a plan to cut the costs), "you listed off literally the most expensive places to live in the USA, where the majority of people do not live" (sure, nobody lives in major cities) (why the hell are they called major cities then? God knows).
This conversation is leading nowhere so I'm just gonna stop responding.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Education in the US is not unavoidably expensive. Quoting student loan aggregates does nothing to account for the number of students who took tens or hundreds of thousands worth of loans they didn't really need because they rejected an affordable alternative in order to go to their target school.
In 1998 I rejected my target school because attending would have cost me a minimum of $12,000/year out of pocket. I stayed local and graduated with no loans. 21 years later, if I started in 2019, I would still graduate without loans from that same school.
> Healthcare? Hugely expensive for a country as "rich" as the US. Unless, of course, you work for a generous employer and in that case, everything is paid for. Wait a second, I'm told not all employers provide a healthcare plan along with a 401k plan? That's unfortunate. Let's also remind ourselves that the US doesn't provide universal healthcare for all its citizens unlike other advanced industrialized countries. So if you happen to be jobless? You're SOL. Awe-effing-some. Let's move on... [2]
I don't have rebuttal to this point, but based on your tone I don't think you have any interest in discussing it in good faith anyway.
> Housing? In SF/SV/NYC/Seattle/Washington/any major US city, housing is extremely expensive as is housing in any major European metropolis such as London/Paris/Munich/Zurich. I bet the $300,000 nice house you mention in your comment must be somewhere in the countryside where nobody lives, right? Let's make this clear: houses located in the middle of nowhere in any European country also cost zilch. Let's take France for instance: 30K euros gets you a 100 sqm house (even bigger sometimes) in the Creuse region. Yeah nobody wants to live there but hey at least I can own a large house for the price of a car. [3]
"You bet" very wrong. The house I used to have in Dallas is worth $275,000 at the moment. Many of the houses in suburban New Jersey are less than $400,000, and some are even less than $300,000.[1] . Less stock in Maryland[2], but there are still many options.
> I could go on and on. I haven't even touched on other topics such as Internet, groceries, rent or insurance. Your comment comes across as plain ignorant and downward complacent. I don't get this tendency of always sugarcoating the US, as though it would make it magically more appealing to the average Joe to move there.
I'm sure you could, but it would just serve to further demonstrate your bias, condescension, and ignorance.
> Please back up your claims next time with articles or sources. Just use your favourite search engine.
The irony of this snark is that you have done a rather poor job of this yourself.
[1] https://www.redfin.com/minorcivildivision/70/NJ/Lyndhurst-To...
[2] https://www.redfin.com/city/31343/MD/Wheaton/filter/property...
In 1998. That's really the crux of your comment. As to the costs of your school in 2019, since you haven't provided a link to back it up, I cannot check your claim.
> I don't have rebuttal to this point, but based on your tone I don't think you have any interest in discussing it in good faith anyway.
I have read countless studies online (studies, not just newspaper articles) and have friends who've moved to and/or lived briefly in the US that have experienced it first hand. Sorry for not showing empathy but when one of the richest country in the world isn't able to provide healthcare for all its citizens, I think something is slightly wrong. Worst yet, the babysteps that have been made during the Obama era are now being rolled back by the Repuplican party. And yet, you're pointing fingers at me like I'm the problem. How about a nice warm cup of reality to start the day?
> "You bet" very wrong. The house I used to have in Dallas is worth $275,000 at the moment. Many of the houses in suburban New Jersey are less than $400,000, and some are even less than $300,000.[1] . Less stock in Maryland[2], but there are still many options.
Fair enough. In that case, I think it's expensive. The same price range gets you a very comfortable flat in Berlin, Germany's capital. [1]
> I'm sure you could, but it would just serve to further demonstrate your bias, condescension, and ignorance.
Still not OK with reality. That's fine, you'll get used to it. We all do after a while. :-)
[1] https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/S-T/Wohnung-Kauf/Berl...
Fair enough. http://www.fau.edu/finaid/other/cost-of-attendance.php
> Fair enough. In that case, I think it's expensive. The same price range gets you a very comfortable flat in Berlin, Germany's capital. [1]
I was filtering apartments out, but there are quite a few in Brooklyn and Queens as well.[1]
> And yet, you're pointing fingers at me like I'm the problem. How about a nice warm cup of reality to start the day?
> Still not OK with reality. That's fine, you'll get used to it. We all do after a while. :-)
I'm complaining about your tone and general attitude, which have apparently not improved. Being a condescending jerk has nothing to do with reality.
[1] https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/219258/NY/New-York/Brook...
But this idea that highly paid professionals in the US have crappy healthcare experiences is just silly. Anyone earning $100k as an employee in the US will have a good health plan that will provide excellent quality of care for a reasonable out of pocket cost.
In fact, this is kind of the problem with the US system! Rich people have a healthcare system that works well for them, they get lots of choice, very fast access to specialists if they want them, and generally rich people are happy with their health care.
This means there's no electoral coalition strong enough to pursue more egalitarian or more efficient systems, they'd all run the risk of appearing worse to the rich people.
A trip to the ER might cost your health insurer $50,000, it costs you a $1,000 deductible, and almost nothing for any follow up visits.
Personally, with a background in a European country, a personal bankruptcy is something that only happens to the most financially careless/gambling addicted of people. In the US it seems to have become a sad part of a lot of peoples' coping strategy if a medical emergency arises.
Got cancer? No retirement for you I guess.
1998-2002 High school, Barista, Subways, $7/hr 2003-2007 USMC, $25k/yr 2007-2008 Apple, knowledge manager, $50k/yr 2008-2009 Gawker, BusinessInsider, writer, $30k/yr 2010-2011 SF startup, marketer, $55k/yr 2012-2013 Google, HR admin, $60k/yr 2013-2015 Berkeley startup, tech lead, $80k/yr 2015-2017 Started own consultanty agency, $50k/yr 2018-2019 Digital agency, PM, $100k/yr
On the other hand, it is a huge benefit if you'd rather not be surrounded by people with those kinds of concerns. It's nice to know that none of your coworkers are likely to steal your stuff, commit acts of violence upon you, spill fentanyl on your desk, embezzle the company's assets, offer you food items with unmentioned unconventional ingredients, or do anything other than be calm and level-headed.
No, I'm not going to spill fentanyl, weed, or any other drug on your desk and I'm also not going to lie during the clearance process to say that I've smoked weed less than 50 times in my life - but apparently that means I can't get a clearance.
there are people with all kinds of backgrounds, and some with drug use in their background, with active clearances. it's not automatic any more. just be 100% honest.
the adjudicator needs to make a determination of whether they think you could be compromised in some way. just because someone smoked weed in college or got a DUI once doesn't mean they can be compromised.
A different version of this argument looks like: "I'm not worried about surveillance because I never do anything wrong." but that's a philosophical argument.
Just from a straight "annoying" / pragmatic perspective I can think of the following issues:
Marijuana is legal in a lot of states including DC but not if you hold a clearance, if you're into that kind of thing.
Anything international makes for a paperwork drill, not to mention possible approvals required.
Any normal domestic interaction with the law (law suits, getting pulled over, arrested and not charged, etc) all become a potential job-destroyer.
Not to mention you're reporting all of this stuff to the government 100% of the time.
It may not be a hassle if you live a pretty conventional lifestyle, don't travel much, etc, but it definitely adds a layer of annoyance at a minimum.
How does one move into technical leadership?
White guy from a modest background: grew up lower middle class, single mother who worked in retail, got free lunch, etc.
It feels odd to have moved and basically move up the economic totem poll to what I guess I’d call upper middle class. Life for people who stayed where I grew up is quite different than my life now.
It all sort of feels relative. If a “beginner” single family bungalow costs 850k+ in my neighborhood, home ownership still feels like a gamble (well, the accompanying debt burden would make me uncomfortable). A $4k mortgage payment does not sound fun if I were to lose my job, for example.
Every source I can find (2014-2018 data from a variety of places) puts it between 97th and just over 98th; probably hasn't changed more than a couple of points since.
> I do not know what upper middle class is supposed to mean. Does it mean 90-95 percentile?
If by “middle class” one means petit bourgeoisie, then 95th to 99.something percentile for the upper range of that class is fairly reasonable; the haut bourgeoisie are a very narrow slice, and economic classes in that classic sense have overlapping income ranges, because they are more about how one relates to the economy than income level, though the two are correlated.
OTOH, the language of economic class these days is used in many murky and inconsistent ways.
EDIT: Just to be clear, the classic idea of the petit bourgeoisie as the middle economic class of capitalist societies does not mean that they represent the average or some range around the average; the working class makes up the vast majority, the haut bourgeoisie (the class of major capitalists) is a tiny slice that controls most of the wealth, and the petit bourgeoisie are a fairly thin (though much broader than the haut bourgeoisie), largely relatively rich class that is “middle” in the sense of deriving income from a mix including both a substantial contribution from personal labor (the predominant support for the working class) and a substantial contribution from personal capital (the predominant support for the haut bourgeoisie)—the classic example of that mix being the independent small business owner whose labor is applied to their own capital rather than either being rented out to some capitalist, or gaining returns on capital by renting others labor to apply to it.
Anyways, I think the answer is just based on how you want to define middle and upper class.
Even if you’re making 500k a year, depending on the part of the country, it may take a fair few years before you make that jump.
I think it’s the difference between having _wealth_ and having a lot of disposable income. There’s a fairly big difference. You can convert the latter to the former but not everyone does.
The cost of maintaining your Upper Middle Class status is very high: tuition for elite, private schools, mortgages on giant homes and vacation homes, leases on luxury cars to keep up with the neighbors, and the desire to live in high-cost exclusive communities, etc.
Because of all of the above, people that should be "rich" if you look at where they are on an income distribution graph, actually do not feel "rich." So they identify as Upper Middle Class.
First, decide whether you are more interested in pushing forward on technology or on earning more. Yes, you probably want both, but you should decide which matters more. Also, note that the answer will likely change if your personal situation changes, in particular, if you start a family.
These points are primarily for those who put earning more above pushing technology. I was married early on and that became the priority for me.
- Always work to make your boss successful. There are a variety of advantages to this. First, if you make them successful and they rise in the company, they are more likely to give you a promotion and raise as well. Second, if they change jobs and go to a place you'd like to work, whether it's in one, five, ten years or more, you'll be someone they call when they need to hire. Third, it makes it much easier for them to go to bat for you when you ask for a raise.
Given all of that, it's also important to work for bosses that you want to see succeed. If you really don't like your boss, and you find it distasteful to help them be successful, work towards their success while you look for another boss.
- If you want to earn more, ask for more responsibility. I was married when I was an engineer of 3 years. To earn more, I asked to be made a project lead. I delivered several projects, then asked to be made a manager. I managed several people, then asked for a transfer to start and manage a remote sales and service office. In each case, I was given 30%+ raises.
The point here is that you need to ask. Let your boss and HR know that you want to be considered for promotion. Once you've asked, remind them at more or less regular intervals, perhaps 6 months. You want it to stick in their minds that you are looking to move up and at some point, an opportunity may come up that you'd be on the short list for.
- Change jobs or companies. This is typically the most effective way to get a raise. The key is to look while you're still working. Many people in tech keep their heads down until the company goes through a rough patch and lays off or shuts down. Then, if they don't have runway, they have to take the first position that comes along. If you think you need to move, keep your job and do your search so you can evaluate each opportunity without being under pressure.
- Treat options or other equity as the icing, not the cake. You can be deliberate about accumulating wealth without windfalls by consistently earning more than you spend and conscientiously investing your savings. If you're able to cash in on options, that is great, invest it, buy a home or whatever. But earn what you're worth in cash.
When done in a supportive way, this helps propel you up a level of competency; then the raise/promotion is effortless and obvious to everyone involved.
Conversely, in my experience I've never been giving the money / title before I had performed the role.
I've been at my company for almost two years and I've gotten a net 70% raise across this time frame. Although it's only from 60k to 100k CAD so, YMMV especially in more senior roles.
Bonus scheme axed, pay cuts across the board, and constant whining about how we "took longer and did a worse job".
The only thing I regret is that I hung on for three years hoping things would get better (they never did).
I could go on and on. Any one of those things was above and beyond on its own and I never once got a performance based bonus, let alone a raise. Then we got new management and they rewarded us by cutting our vacation. I am completely unappreciated, or at the very least, that appreciation is not shown in any way that matters. I am, however, no longer at a spot in my life, thankfully, that work defines my life. I still make good money and I focus on other things in my life. I let the execs worry about deadlines and bullshit like that. They can panic and get anxiety all they want, it won't magically get the work done or get it done quicker. As I said, my bosses are decent in all other ways other than appreciating their employees with appropriate compensation / vacation. Who knows, that might change. I'm not holding my breath though.
In my experience, the harder you work for your boss , the more they will extract out of you. E.g you suddenly have 10x tasks assigned to you.
So make sure you don't get burned by doing this and NOT getting a raise after. Most bosses will simply take more and not give much back.
I guess the essence of it is that you should work smart, figure out what are the most important tasks that your boss needs and complete them really well, but don't naively burn yourself
2008: Graduated with a BS in CS from University of London. I grew up in Europe.
2008: €30K - Joined a small company in Europe as their only programmer doing vehicle GPS tracking.
2009: €30K - Still there.
2010: €50K - Joined Amazon in Dublin, Ireland as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team.
2011: €75K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promoted to SDE-2.
2013: $150K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2014: $185K - Promoted to SDE-3 (senior level), same team.
2015: $230K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2016: $390K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2017: $470K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2018: $511K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2019: Left Amazon last month. You can read more about why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399
All figures are gross income as shown in my W2. My last 3 year-end (Dec) paystubs: http://imgur.com/a/EgIVQln
Ask me anything.
Edit: Put another way - day to day, what are people in such roles working on exactly?
Have other people been so successful using an offer for a raise at your original employer and staying?
The people who stayed basically pulled forward a stock grant that was coming anyway, and increased this year's raise while decreasing it a fair bit for the next two years.
I've always been explicit that this is what's happening; the area under the income curve does end up larger, but not by a large amount. Of course the option value of having a grant vs. hoping for a grant is worth something, too.
DVassallo's $160k bump across one year's W2 is much larger than I've ever seen granted.
I don't think of my wages being $1.2M so much as I happened to get lucky with that equity. (I have also experienced the reverse where > $1M worth (on paper) of stock was worth less than $10K when I could sell it, it isn't all roses.)
My point was that just prior to the dot com crash I had over $6M in "RSUs" (well restricted stock which was a better deal since the number can't be fudged but what ever) and when it "vested" it was worth less than $12K. It showed up on my W2 because I used an 83b election to vest it all up front (and get in on a lower tax rate when it unlocked) only to have it generate losses when it unlocked.
Where I was going was that there is 'base pay' which you are going to get if you show up every day and don't get fired, and there is 'variable pay' which can come in the format of annual bonuses and or vesting equity. The annual bonuses tend to be something of a beauty contest and so can be hard to predict, and the market can swing wildly (hopefully nobody with RSUs today has to experience a 99.9% drop in value that I did during the dot com crash but it can happen, you could have had Theranos RSUs for example).
The original author went out of their way to stick with just base pay and I understood their reasons for doing so as I largely agree with them on the lack of predictability of other remuneration options.
Had you bought $100,000 of $AMZN in 2010, it'd be worth $1.35M today (and $1.6M in September) which would go a long way toward evening things out in a similar manner.
That said, best of luck to you. Fortune favors the brave!
Being self taught, will I ever get to be as fortunate as you working at FAANG and seeing salaries and stocks like that?
My advice would be to not try to seek satisfaction from "earning as much as possible"... because "as much as possible" is an unreachable destination. I worked with lots of unhappy people earning $350K/year because they felt they should be doing $500K. How do you think they'll feel once they're making $500K? I bet they'll still be miserable because one person they know is their age and making $600K. And so on. Same with promotions and job titles. Once you clear a certain level of financial security (bills on autopay, some savings), more income stops mattering for satisfaction.
I have this mental hurdle I cant seem to get over, I keep reading about how there are engineers at FAANGs purely self taught but then im also reading about people with degrees, bootcamps, internships under their belts having a hard time getting hired.
What advice do you have for me? If im self taught how do i even get my foot in the door with amazon? How do I have them even consider me for an interview? Anecdotally speaking how did you and your self taught peers do it? Was it projects? Or work experience at less exclusive companies?
How much is required on a resume to get past a screener and land an interview?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399
I must have gone seriously, seriously wrong...
For work, I implemented and maintain part of the CI/CD pipeline (AWS Code Pipeline configuration, pretty simple), spin up and maintain AWS infrastructure, hack on the cloud formation templates and our internal build scripts, and do a portion of the helpdesk admin work for some of our large clients. Troubleshoot individual nodes. I work remotely in a small town in the US with a relatively mid-low cost of living.
I make 67k/year. I feel like my needs are met. My work/life balance is great as no one gives me any crap for sticking to a regular work day. I'm not supporting a family or anything. I'm able to contribute 15% to 401k. Otherwise, I'm not quite paycheck to paycheck, but close.
Looking at some of your salaries, I feel envious. I'm not sure my skill set demands more but maybe it does? I don't know if I should feel underpaid. I also don't want big heavy golden handcuffs.
and I know most people advising on salary negotiations say never give your number first... but if you are happy where you are, then it's going to take 30-50% over what you're making to make you move. So give that number. It weeds most recruiters out.
The ones that bite, you know they're serious. Then it's up to the role, company, commute, etc, the things that make a difference for you.
Golden handcuffs are a good problem to have. Wherever you go, just make sure you can make a difference and have some autonomy to make the work interesting.
My journey All USD $ are gross annualized and approximate. No bonuses/stock. Doesn't include employer-paid health or retirement.
2006, Tenured professor at a community college, $43K to $65K
2011, Developer at a state agency, $84K
2013, Development Team Lead, $90K
2017, IT Manager, $100K
2013 - 23yo - $45K - First job - Magento developer building eCommerce websites for clients.
2014 - 24yo - $54K
2015 - 25yo - $70K - Second job - Magento / Shopify / WordPress developer, building eCommerce websites for clients.
2016 - 26yo - $75K
2017 - 27yo - $80K - Third job - Full stack web developer - Predominantly using Spring and React to build bespoke solutions for clients.
2018 - 28yo - $85K
I don't begrudge people with their crazy salaries but I do get frustrated that I can't find success myself. I'm really struggling with savings and building up a nest egg for retirement.
The larger tech companies in Melbourne and Sydney are giving $120k+ AUD total comp to grads.
Which larger tech companies?
I'm self employed and have worked 100% remote for around 5 years, so am a bit out of touch. However, I have close friends in senior positions at major tech companies in Melbourne (REA, Xero etc.) and $120k for grads sadly does not align with what I've heard from them, closer to $70k (AUD) for a grad seems to be the norm.
Which by all accounts is a fantastic wage for someone fresh out of Uni -- nothing to sneeze at. Don't get discouraged keep at it, you'll get there.
However, it's a surprisingly weak effort by Australian tech companies to attract high quality talent. My first full-time software development job, almost 10 years ago and without a degree, was $70k. That was at your run-of-the-mill medium sized enterprise consulting firm.
I'm talking about Atlassian, Canva, Google, AWS, IMC, Optiver.
That's some nonsense. Could you drop some names for 'Graduate X' which has that kind of pay scale?
With that being said, it's quite possible to earn 150k+ within 4-5 years in Melbourne. Just be smart about it, listen out for what technologies are trending because inevitably they will be the most numerous and with the highest chance to score a well paying role -- especially if you have your ahead of the influx of developers in X language.
By all accounts I'm not especially talented and I have done so.
PS. If you want $$ learn Salesforce, the money which comes along with knowing that system is freakin craziness.
I got offered $150k+ at Zendesk Melbourne out of uni, but that was a special situation. But also I literally did get that offer so no, 120k is not "nonsense".
I can tell you however, that is not a normal run-of-the-mill pay-scale for a Uni graduate.
Disclaimer: am a hiring manager at Atlassian, so obviously I am biased (though currently hiring in the US market).
If you want to make above average salaries you're going to have to specialize. Find something that is both challenging (to reduce barrier to entry) and niche (to demand a higher salary). In other words - specialize. Staying as a generic web/ios/android dev is only going to guarantee that your salary becomes more and more diluted by the avalanche of developers entering the field. The barrier to entry is just too low.
In my department, mobile is the bottleneck for every PM's ambitions and the only speciality where recruiting never even approaches headcount/budget. It's possible that the low end contract labor market is flooded or something, but iOS and Android devs who can pass a whiteboard are worth their weight in gold.
I understand that the bootcamps and proliferation of web-teaching schools have made web dev seem like the easy thing, and I agree that what I do is less complex than these $800k-earning data engineers, but web development in 2019 is no joke. The same goes for iOS/Android.
The types of things these companies are trying to build are not just "slap it together in a week and done" type projects and it takes experience to architect and engineer them effectively. Your average bootcamp grad is not able to do it yet.
iOS/Android/Web development forms the 3 primary portals to a company's clients, and as long as that's true, the value of such skillsets will remain high.
I don't care if it's games, web front end, back end, databases, machine learning, mobile, embedded literally doesn't matter, if you think you can brush off any of them like that, you haven't built something substantial with them.
Are there varying levels of difficulty across niches? Sure, but one person can slap a few python libraries together in an afternoon and call it AI/machine learning, and a 3-5 person team can also spend 6 months building a monster, fined tuned native iOS application.
There's challenges everywhere, it's a matter of finding them.
Certain careers DO have levels of challenge, as well as other barriers to entry, that increase the value of workers. You could not argue to me that flipping burgers at McDonalds is hard. Within the domain of computer science, you simply cannot argue to me that generic CRUD web/ios/android is hard.
I'm merely stating that the domain itself, is not by default, a high enough barrier to entry to merit any kind of above average salary. Of course if you're a much higher performer, with a much deeper knowledge base within that domain, then your pay will likely reflect that.
2014/2015 - 23 - $50K - $70K | Fraud Analyst using C#/Python/SQL
2016/2017 - 25 - $90K | Teradata/SQL Developer
2018 - 26 - $70K | SQL Developer and Coldfusion/Java
I switched companies in 2018 to be a little closer to home which resulted in a substantial paycut.
I feel your struggle with savings, buying a house in Melbourne is definitely not easy.
I couldn't care less about salary if I could work remote.
If this is outside your comfort zone, look for some basic books on business and internalize the fact that until you can tie your knowledge to dollars coming through the door, you likely won’t make significant jumps in pay.
There are numerous posts that have been shared on HN on how to make more money as a consultant/contractor/freelance developer. They are almost 100% relevant to company employees.
It's hard to realize what problems a business faces without being involved intimately in the industry.
How can one seek out these problems and begin to work on solutions?
Would you mind sharing those posts?
The posts are pretty easily searchable and even if you don’t find the ones I’m thinking of, the process of searching and filtering on its own is important. One thing I had to learn the hard way is that, with a few rare exceptions, no one is going to be your teacher/mentor. Everyone is too busy with their own shit.
Ultimately, if you want to know more or make more, it comes down to finding ways to justify that to the people that can make that decision. Given you make around $85k/year you need to look at the people several years ahead of you in the career track, if one exists, at your company.
If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
My last piece of advice is more of a warning. A lot of how much you make comes down to luck. Did the interviewer like you for the highly paid job? Did the team you are a part of get the credit for a major win for the company? Or other things that aren’t always within your control. The important thing is that you keep moving forward. Looking for opportunities and driving things to completion. Hard for me to not phrase this in terms of finance...you want to constantly be buying call options on yourself. So that new thing you learn/project you complete that gets your name out there? It is a call option on yourself. Most of those options expire worthless, but hopefully a few pay off big time.
I have a few follow up questions if you dont mind.
>If your goal is to make more, you need to be aggressive. Invest in yourself in as many ways as you can. Learn more about software. Start by expanding beyond “web developer”. learn back-end programming, databases, etc. Talk to the people in your company that do sales, marketing, operations, HR. Learn as much as you can about your business or one you want to move into. Experience trumps everything. If you aren’t getting experience that makes you more valuable, you need to move on.
Its so easy to learn in isolation, but how can you actually turn it into profit? How can you quantify your skills? How does one get good at tha?
Also, why the call option analogy, do you work in finance (just curious)?
2016 60k First Job
2016 65k
2017 70k Second Job
2017 80k
2018 90k
2019 110k
I'm an Australian developer earning triple that+stocks on top at one of the FAANG. Trump, guns and shitty healthcare don't affect you day to day in the states. The E3 visa for Australians to work in the US is trivial.
The funny thing is that Sydney real estate is comparable to silicon valley despite no one earning anynear as much.
2010 - 25yo - 41k - First job - .net dev (internal services / sql).
2011 - 26yo - 41.1k
2012 - 27yo - 65k - Second job - job advertised as .net became pseudo COBOL dev.
2013 - 28yo - 80k - moved more in to tech lead / manager role.
2014 - 29yo - 86k - Third job - .net web dev (webforms / mvc).
2015 - 30yo - 86k
2016 - 31yo - 163k - COBOL / .net + odds and ends
2017 - 32yo - 163k
2018 - 33yo - 170k
As others have said, technology really isn't the thing that will drive your increase in remuneration. It is understanding client requirements, creating business solutions, being able to communicate said solutions.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-banks-cobol/banks-scra...
I assume these are AUD. You don't say where in Aus you're based, but it's not terrible at that age, you're still some way off peak, it's slightly above average.
Based on https://www.livingin-australia.com/salaries-australia/
The cost of living in Sweden is higher than in Spain. And Spanish salaries in IT has soared. So, economically, it was not worth moving. But, the experience of living abroad is worth the money.
It is difficult to compare with USA salaries as here there is more taxes but you get better services. For me the deal breaker is the equality. I know that people around me makes a living wage. But, I will not discard to move to any other country in the future for the experience as every country has its own charm.
But I always feel, given my broad old school / new school skillset built up over decades, I could do better elsewhere moneywise.
Theoretically it would be better for me to start my own business, but where I am I get to concentrate on product creation and solving a broad range of technical problems which is super fun!
Almost anywhere else in the country, I’d be making a considerable amount of money. In SV, it doesn’t feel that way. Myself and most of my (unmarried) coworkers are in our 30s-40s and living in studio apartments. I couldn’t provide a family with the same lifestyle my parents gave me (a house, two cars, safe neighborhood, good school district, mother could stop working for several years to raise me), and they managed without college educations.
I’ve recently tried making the jump into a FAANG company or unicorn, but so far no luck. One company was willing to give feedback: I don’t have enough experience with large scale systems. It’s tough, because I’ve aged out of junior positions, but I guess I lack the right experience for experienced positions. Still have a couple irons in the fire though.
This is more than some tenured research faculty. How the heck did you make so much in academia?
My coworkers and I seem to do lots better. I've seen my coworkers use a single income to buy: a condo on the beach, a new McMansion, 11 acres with farm animals and shooting, waterfront property with access to the ocean, waterfront property for an airboat into marshlands, and lots of toys. I went for a simple house, 3500 square feet on 0.38 acres and now fully paid off, within walking distance of work. I also had 11 children and bought 3 cars.
I'll take a hopeful guess that an EE with coding experience might enjoy assembly language. If so, maybe I can help get you into a more family-friendly situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153
I'm frustrated for you. This is a dumb reason to say no to someone. "Large systems" are a solved problem and i dont think anyone is working on some system that cant be handled. I work at one of this scale companies, there's nothing special about, people jerking them selves off.
It depends where you live. That's probably possible on £30k in the UK including various benefits, certainly on £50k, as long as you live somewhere sensible.
What are the non-housing costs you need?
In 2008 a couple with 2 kids spent, per week:
£320 a week, or £1400 a month. That's £1800 a month after inflation [0]Housing costs say £650 a month for a mortgage [1]
£2.5k a month, or a net of £30k, that's a single income of £42k a year [2]
You'll also get £1800 in child benfit.
If you have larger outgoings, say 30% more to £2400 a month plus housing, you're looking at a net of £36k, or gross of £52k [3]
(Marginal tax £50k-£60k is 69% though so there's not much point earning more than that, until you're past 60k and it drops back to 51%)
[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/2008?amount=1400 [1] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-70111... [2] https://listentotaxman.com/42000?plan=2 [3] https://listentotaxman.com/52000?plan=2
That's true, probably. But you don't need 2 cars and a house for your family to have the same quality of life.
If you live in the right neighborhood 1 or zero cars is fine. And a family of 4 can live just as happily and comfortably in a 2 bedroom apartment.
2012-13 unemployed
2013-15 grad school position ~1200/mo 20hr a week python developer
15-16 unemployed
2016-2018 29k GBP in London, python dev
First half of 2018 65k usd in DC
Second half unemployed
2019 50k IT staff
I’M SUCH A FUCKUP
2005: Graduated with a BA in Political Science and a fairly strong background in SQL. I've stayed in Texas my whole career.
2005: first job, web dev, $34k, govt pension
2006: salary bump to $40k
2007: new role as data analyst, $55k
2008: cola bump, $58k
2009: data warehouse lead at school district, $72k
2010: cola bump plus a raise, $78k
2011: first contracting role, equivalent of $100k
2012: lead BI architect, $125k, company pension
2013: same role, bonus, $130k
2014: same role, bonus, $130k
2015: consultant with a firm, $135k
2016 and 2017: cola bumps to $140k
2018: promotion, $152k
And I've turned down offers of $180k because I like my work life balance.
So my promotion is more technical scope (BI/DW, ML/AI, IoT, Big Data, "DataOps"), more customers, more leadership, and more commercial responsibility (i.e. I have a quota.)
Establish internal credibility. That is, the confidence to speak credibly on a given subject, be it a platform or tool, a technique, a concept, a prediction. Roll your sleeves up and get dirty coding. Even on-rails tutorials force your brain to make the connection between the concepts and the technical reality. Especially for Big Data and ML/DL workloads. Put this all on a public repo. Search GH for relevant repos, fork them, and code walk them - especially Python/R/Scala scripts. Compete on Kaggle, that's obvious. Answer questions on SO, and attempt to replicate problems you find on SO yourself - this yields a lot of benefits, as most SO questions are edge cases. Join the user communities and help forums for popular platforms and read the newest entries - again, you learn the most from others actually practicing in the space. And still an extremely effective technique is to just directly search for e.g. "Spark shuffle joins" on Google and look for real people with real opinions - that you can then test yourself in an environment. When you've already read the blog post or watched the YouTube video or taken the Udacity course the guy across the table is talking about - you really establish credibility.
Teach others what you know. True trial by fire; share what you've learned. You'll learn how to overprepare, communicate and speak plainly, connect with those different than you in personality, behavior and skill, read rooms, provide feedback, take criticism, and most importantly - you'll really, really learn the ins and outs of the material.
Read voraciously. I skim-consume about 25 books a month using my company's Safari subscription; have built up a pretty good "reading recommender" system of Twitter users, subreddits, aggregators, blogs, etc; And not just technical books - books on business strategy, behavioral economics and psych, industry-specific blogs and journals - if you can't explain what you're doing in terms of risk, dollars, or time, you're doing it wrong. (Also a good life pro tip: download every interesting thing you read into a single repo and put a crawler on top of them. Even if you don't know the answer, you know you've read it somewhere and can retrieve it.)
Learn from others. Reading is great, in-person is better, mentoring is the best. Reach out to everyone in the field. Ask them (like you just did to me) what they're reading, what they did, ask follow up questions, share what you're doing with them. I find keeping a list of "questions you'd like to ask" while you're working through material (especially on industry/business) to be invaluable when you meet someone who can potentially answer them.
These days I spent probably 15-20 hours a week just reading, learning, doing, in prep for the 20-30 hours a week I spend educating, communicating, and (hopefully) selling.
One thing to add: I usually am focusing on 2 things at a time, no more, no less. If you can combine them, even better - learn Kafka for streaming and Grafana to visualize it; learn Azure SQL DW or Redshift for distributed DW and Spark for processing; etc.
My real evolution came when I realized I was happy being the dumbest person in the room, and that curiosity is a superpower.
I have some follow up questions if you don't mind:
>have built up a pretty good "reading recommender" system of Twitter users, subreddits, aggregators, blogs, etc;
How can I do this? I follow a bunch of influential people in tech and VC last I logged into Twitter, is this what you're talking about? One of my favorite Twitter users is @patrickc, he always has book recommendations.
Any other tips or advice to better optimize my twitter feed?
>And not just technical books - books on business strategy, behavioral economics and psych, industry-specific blogs and journals - if you can't explain what you're doing in terms of risk, dollars, or time, you're doing it wrong.
Any suggestions? Book suggestions for business strategy, behavioral economics, and psych? I'm into these books too but sometimes it's hard to see the concrete connection it might have to my day to day dealings.
>(Also a good life pro tip: download every interesting thing you read into a single repo and put a crawler on top of them. Even if you don't know the answer, you know you've read it somewhere and can retrieve it.)
Sorry, I'm not THAT technically savvy, is there a tutorial or video i can gleam to learn this? It sounds super helpful because I do have a habit of referring back to something I learned online because its in one of many bookmark folders in my browser.
>These days I spent probably 15-20 hours a week just reading, learning, doing, in prep for the 20-30 hours a week I spend educating, communicating, and (hopefully) selling.
What are you selling exactly?
>One thing to add: I usually am focusing on 2 things at a time, no more, no less. If you can combine them, even better - learn Kafka for streaming and Grafana to visualize it; learn Azure SQL DW or Redshift for distributed DW and Spark for processing; etc.
This is good advice, I think. I'm attempting it right now. By focusing on learning java and selenium. Do you ever feel FOMO about what you're not learning or reading though? Any way to combat that?
2018: $49k (first SE job) 2019: $52k (first raise!)
East coast but not big city: 1999 $48k, 2000 $52k
I suppose inflation has been mild. Showing up in the height of the Y2K/web frenzy sure helped. I got myself a nice embedded RTOS kernel developer job before even finishing my degree. Meanwhile, everybody else was running off to invent web development or repair COBOL.
People graduating just a couple years later slammed into a dead market.
True, but 20 years is 20 years. 50k in 1999 corresponds to 75k in 2019.
http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1999?amount=50000
Maybe this isn’t super relevant since this is mostly about tech but I’ve found my technology skills are what contribute to give me a huge advantage, even in finance. All figures in USD. All finance jobs are in research.
23: 50k - tech consulting business
23: 90k - same. Relocate to NYC
24: 110k - negotiated at consulting company
24: 160k = 110k + 50k bonus - move to financial company
25: 200k = 110k + 90k bonus
26: 210k = 120k + 90k bonus
27: 150k - joined small team starting new business in finance
28: 150k
29: 150k
30: 500k - business is making money
This is your business or you're just someone that got in at the beginning? Like a startup or a division of the company, you were originally at?
2011 - Graduated B.S. Info Assurance, 55k, Security engineer
2012 - New company, 65K + 5k bonus, SOC analyst
2013 - Same company, 75k +10k bonus, SOC lead
2014 - Same company, 100k + 10k bonus, same position (sabbatical for 1 yr)
2015 - Same company, 125k + 12k bonus, SOC manager
2016 - Same company, 135k +12k bonus, same position
2017 - Same company, 145k +15k bonus, same position
2018 - Same company, 172k +20k bonus, promoted
1998 - 2006 Uni CSO work AUD$20k - $50k
2007 - 2009 £24k in London
2010 - 2014 £20 - £30k not in London
2014 - 2016 USD$135k + $30k stock (averaged)
2017 - 2018 £65k + $50k stock
2019 £58k
- 2006-2009 45-60k Employee, US investment bank, Analyst
- 2010-2012 300/day Freelance, full stack web dev
- 2013-2017 105k Employee, tech lead at a startup
- 2018-2019 700/day Contractor, Senior Python Developer
I suppose trying to work at any of the smaller FAANG offices in London might be the best you can do in the UK?