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Ask HN: Changing jobs with excellent prior salary

18 points by anon_programmer ↗ HN
I'm in a pretty good programming job that pays very well. Salary + bonus is around $200k.

However I wish to do something different technically. I'm started applying to the usual companies. My question is whether this kind of salary range is sustainable for a programmer.

I guess I'll know for sure when I get the offers but I thought I'd ask anyway to set my expectations accordingly.

11 comments

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Skywing
Well, I've been in the field, professionally, for about 3 years and have yet to see anything above $70k, so from my perspective you're doing just fine. :)
redthrowaway
Where are you located? In many markets, your best chance for a significant raise is a lateral move to a new company where your compensation is determined by what you bring to the table, and how ably you can demonstrate that, versus your current company where you can never fully escape the rubrik of past compensation.
patio11
The salary you get will depend much, much less on what is "sustainable for a programmer" and more on how skilled you are at demonstrating value to prospective employers and then aggressively negotiating to capture a fraction of that value.

The first step: stop describing yourself as a programmer. You can buy programmers for cheap in India. Can you buy you for cheap in India? No. So don't sell yourself as if you are a close substitute for other code monkeys except you cost ten times as much.

Instead, you offer a virtually unique and impossible to hire for combination of skills which has previously and will continue to make firms lucky enough to employ you huge stacks of money. Exactly what skills you emphasize are up to you, but "I know technology X and Y" is a lot less important than "Knowing X will let me make you several million dollars; here's why. Knowing Y will... You will find it virtually impossible to find X and Y in the same guy because..."

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gimpf
AFAIK you do not hire programmers in India, you hire a CMMI level 5 certified "team" having at least 50% Senior Software Architects on board.

More to the point: I doubt that any company paying a salary in the above mentioned range which is also an interesting place to work (the OP obviously doesn't do it for the money) is giving a dime on how you title yourself.

Osiris
If you're looking for something more challenging and a change a scenery, perhaps what you should do is bank a significant portion of your income for the next year or so and start the process of creating your own startup or finding partners to build a new startup. That's certainly a challenge.

Note: I'm currently looking for a technical co-founder, it's not easy to find someone with great skills willing to work for equity

known
You're building stuff as a programmer and your company is doing good at selling it for $200K+expenses+profit+taxes.
zmmmmm
I'm hardly an expert but from my experience if all you are coming to the table with are standard programming skills then I think the positions in that salary range are few and far between. You will need to be bringing something special to the table, I would think.

But what do you want out of life? I'm currently looking at halving my salary (which wasn't as high as yours) to enter a field that I just think is fascinating and important to humanity (genetics / biotech). In the end it's more important to me that I can look back on life and think that I did something useful / important than just made a crap load of money.

lscharen
My most recent job transition was from a programming position in a large metropolitan area to one in a very rural area. I moved for lifestyle reasons and took an ~60% pay cut -- so the best answer I have to you is "it depends".

If you want to maintain something close to your existing salary, you must at least look for companies or locations that actually pay that kind of salary to begin with.

This is probably quite obvious advice, but I think we (as developers) sometimes lose sight of the fact that there is not "one true salary range" for any particular set of skills.

staunch
Generally: No.

If you're willing to work in finance or similar soul-sucking industry that's definitely doable.

If you want to work in most other fields then no. Certainly no (good) startup is paying $200k cash compensation to their programmers.

I'd say $150k is around the ceiling if you value the quality of work/company.

Much more common is $120k-$140k for a good and experienced programmer at a good company.

This all assumes you're in a major US city.

gte910h
You likely need to go (or stay) in finance to get that.

Atlanta (BofA needs C++ guys), NY or Raleigh are good bets.