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Ask HN: Where to look for $180k+ engineering work

15 points by d33lio ↗ HN
I've been chugging along at a few small but exciting startups in NYC. Fortunately, my current post has weathered most of the covid storm and is still picking up momentum. I've been working hard, just now reaching around 4 years of experience.

I'm curious where I should be looking for higher compensation if I'm not quite ready to start my own startup. Would it be better to look for opportunities at growth stage startups? Transition into a sales role? I'm not interested in FAANG as I worked at Amazon early in my career and found the culture / work stress to be a poor fit. That said, startup stress, working weekends etc does not bother me.

Mostly, I feel woefully clueless as to where I can look for higher paying jobs that I can actually acquire. Eventually I'd like to run my own startup, but that will likely be in Austin or Boston where taxes are more reasonable.

14 comments

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Jugurtha
Are you good with people and have a network? A company does not have to be a 'startup' with product market fit, scalability, and what not.

You can start a consultancy and do business through it even if it's only you. Go for B2B. You'll be much more profitable. You can also start it with someone.

I wrote a bit about it here https://mobile.twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/13106682933...

dyeje
Check out Levels.fyi and Blind. If you're in NYC, it's definitely possible to hit above $180k at a Series B-ish startup. It goes much higher as well with FAANG and some of the unicorn level startups as well.
d33lio
My specialty is elixir and golang. I'm largely full stack but have also had a rather strategic focus on a few side projects during covid that are now pretty profitable. (small software tools for very niche areas and one or two dtc's)

What I'm questioning is if focusing on honing my "startup" skill in regards to bringing something from zero to 1 or clamping down on my main gig and going for incremental raises? PG's writing on the subject says to not maintain side projects, but obviously this is what a VC would want to impart. I also generally see starting a number of small but profitable businesses as a more efficient path to wealth instead of chasing ultra high salaries (frankly, I'm not sure I'm smart enough or improve fast enough to reach those salaries).

rshnotsecure
Let's use that example of Austin, Texas. That's a bit near the top range you'll get there, but if you say get a Senior Cloud Engineer position with Deloitte, that is a number you can ask for. A little bit near the top of the range, but if you've got 5-7 years experience and the certs very achievable. Maybe a bit more.

Accenture, which has 3 offices in Austin, would for certain teams come close to that.

Consulting companies for better or worse will be the easiest to hit that number with outside of SF.

Note, you'd have to require no sponsorship.

giantg2
I'd say finance will be a close second.
giantg2
Anywhere that cost of living is high.
d33lio
Any advice for getting the math figured out for how much I need to be making in a HCOL area to make the cost of living / taxes worth while? I've briefly lived in the Bay Area and can day with confidence I have zero interest in working or moving to CA. NYC is a much better balance.
giantg2
NYC and CA both have the high paying jobs and HCOL. CA is probably more expensive in general when considering the taxes and housing, assuming you live in the areas with tech work demand. Comparing the two would really require specific jobs and locations. You can look at salary of job minus the sum of 1/30th average house cost and taxes to get a rough number for use in comparisons. You would also have to consider what "worth it" means to you.

To me, the $180k would not be worth it to live in either place based on my life interests and opinions. If I were single, it could be tempting for me to move there for a few years if I were making that sort of money and had a mortgage instead of rent. The idea would be that while the COL is high, a very large part of it would be housing. If at least a chunk of that was going to equity (and the housing market continued to climb or stayed steady) then I would have a lot of money accumulated when I would leave the area after say 5 years. Not to mention that all the benefits are geared towards staying in the area too. A 6% 401k company contribution is a lot bigger when your salary is that high (double mine). The trick is moving out of the HCOL after you've made a lot of money.

d33lio
I definitely plan to get out if A) by next year I'm not at least making $180k or B) find more interesting work here. Unfortunately, a lot of the work in Austin / other parts of the country seems sort of bland. In NYC you can work for AI companies, urban automated farming companies, fintech and much more. If taxes go up more, I'll get tired of it and do something else.
giantg2
I've pretty much accepted that I will never have interesting work and I will never make that kind of money (except for inflation adjustment).
otras
> I'm not interested in FAANG as I worked at Amazon early in my career and found the culture / work stress to be a poor fit

It may be worth noting that the culture can vary dramatically between companies and between teams in a single company. In particular, Google is generally well-known for having a healthier culture and less stress.

That being said, much like there may be lower-stress teams at Amazon, I'm sure there are higher stress teams at Google with less than healthy team culture. These companies are so large that it's difficult to paint them with a single brush.

decafninja
Many NYC banks can pay around 150-200k for a generic senior level engineer. Goldman and JPM are probably on the higher end of that spectrum.

Hedge funds can go higher.

Can't comment specifically about your experience at Amazon, but FAANG and top tier tech companies (maybe some mid tier as well) will probably pay better though, and give you better work environment. Financial institutions aren't exactly wonderful places to work for SWE.

dave_4_bagels
Yeah, some of my co-workers previously worked at banks and I've interviewed candidates who've done SW dev at banks. Sounds freaking horrible. 1) java based, 2) consistent stories of "provisioning a vm" taking weeks or months, 3) incredibly boring work.