I'm a Comp. Engineer in early 30, who used to draw approx. 130K (105 + 25K RSUs) from a major company in the south east USA. Moved to Europe(Denmark) for personal reasons, and have been essentially working for less than half that money I used to make. ($96K after taxes in US vs $48K after taxes in Denmark) - 10 years of experience.

Before you ask, that 130K job was not hell, it was a great experience. Nice people, great working hours/culture/balance. I keep telling myself that the quality of life after I moved here has improved in everything else except money. But, it's not completely true. Yes, I don't need to worry about * healthcare, * gun violence, * fear of being kicked out due to the 10+ year wait for Green card (Indian on H1B), * Childcare when I need for kids in future.

But, I question whether I'm wasting my prime earning years (comp.Engineer) at a place that does not pay well when compared to the US for superficial benefits. I'm not comparing Silicon valley standards..

Any HNers reading my rant from outside USA, care to share your thoughts?

I'm a software developer in South Africa.

We work for usually around half of what our UK/US counterparts earn, despite being an exceptionally capable team out here, arguably more so than any other team worldwide. The same can be said for many other tech companies with teams out here (e.g. ask your friends who work at Amazon about their CPT office).

We have one of the highest income tax rates in the world for 'high income earners' (>42% for me, above the highest international average income, and receive absolutely no benefits (schooling, healthcare etc.) as a result, thanks to our government being rife with corruption.

We have one of the highest crime rates in the world. The cost of living of the city I live in is rapidly increasing, it's becoming unaffordable for all who are not in finance or software, or are willing to be senior in their jobs and live like college grads. We have a tumultuous economy and therefore an unstable currency, consequentially your purchasing power is virtually 0.

The highest salary I have ever seen in the field of software development/engineering in SA is USD80k p/a. I know that I will likely never make +USD100k p/a living in SA working as a software developer, and yet, getting a visa to move away is intensely difficult without a company willing to sponsor you.

And yet, for all this financial despair when compared to my peers worldwide, I climb a mountain every weekend. I feel the sunshine on my face almost every day of the year. I surf before work regularly.

I have it pretty darn good. Don't let this superficial financial insecurity govern your happiness :)

In the end, money is mostly relative. It doesn't matter if you don't earn $100k if hardly anyone makes that kind of money. In SV you will have trouble buying a house if you're on a $100k salary, in most parts of Europe that won't be an issue.

Indian. Working from Bangalore. In hindsight, I would say it was a bad move to leave the USA. But apart from all other reasons you have given for the move, only one thing matters- The green card wait.

But I would be interested in knowing your long term plans, if you wish to never return to India, then your savings outside India could take care of you in those economies. Life is easy outside, you get 401K and social security etc and things like that.

If your plan is to save up and retire in India, then my friend, start buying a home or real estate right now. With a 9% inflation here(Actually its higher, but won't go into that tangential debate now) anything you earn will all be dust by the time you arrive here. I have known people who show up from US with 2 - 3 crore rupees in savings hoping they will retire here and it barely covers their need for a home.

Also one thing I've learned is, if you are working in a first world country, then, you and a billionaire both get same standard of living. The same freeways, the same infrastructure etc. But if you retiring in India, money and savings matter a lot. Good money could mean good life, so early savings and investments matter in India. Optimize for salary all the time. Save and invest relentlessly.

EDIT: as 0xB31B1B points out it’s worth clarifying that the scenarios are the same only when we are talking about post-tax numbers. Generally when you receive RSUs, the taxes have already been withheld.

At Amazon's stock appreciation, that dev would be earning $150K + (20% * 400 * $995 + 20% * 400 * 1427) = $344K this year assuming no change in salary over that time.

How realistic is this? See the H1B data[1] for base salary numbers or an Anatomy of an SDE2 offer[2] from 2013 showing similar calculations.

So, to answer the question. One route would be to join Amazon 4 years ago as an experienced SDE2+.

[1]: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Amazon+Corporate+Llc&job=&c... [2]: http://www.nailyourjobinterview.com/the-anatomy-of-an-amazon...

You can earn more in the US for doing the same job with the same hours and good benefits. Life in the US is better.

I am speaking from experience. I have worked in London, Philadelphia and Boston.

The biggest difference for me is family and friends being in the UK which affects my happiness. For me it's best to be close to loved ones.

I'll qualify what I said. If you are in highly educated, able to work, and are in the right field (i.e. software), life for the majority of individuals who fall into this category is better in the US than many other countries. On the other hand if you're dirt poor, have no education, bad health.... you may be better off in Scandinavia or Western Europe.

When I moved away from London I was moving away from all the really highly paid opportunities but my salary in bedrooms/year went up considerably.

Gonna be brutally honest. I think you are. Fellow Indian here, also came on H1-B to US, survived 5 layoffs in 2 companies over a 10 month period in the .COM boom and bust. Many of my fellow engineers, waay smarter than me, were not so fortunate. Some went back to India, others found jobs in UK and rest of Europe.

Your complains are what I hear from them even now.

Your comps ( #s ) also check out. I run http://www.visaok.in and routinely find that jobs in Denmark, Germany, UK and couple of other countries pay about 40% to 50% less than the same in US for the same job title and similar description.

Most professions have a prime and a software engineer's career, IMO, peaks at around late 30s or early 40s in terms of the base salary and compensation. I've found the range for a Sr. Software Engineer in a non-Silicon Valley / FAANG company to top around 150K to 170K in San Francisco / Bay Area. If you are average in terms of abilities, you can easily get a Software Engineer job at the IT department of a medium to large corp here in San Francisco for about 110K to 140K. Grow from there.

I would say try to come back to US on an H1B or any other Visa. Try to tell yourself you are here temporarily, and that you can always go back to Denmark as a fall back, or after you've peaked here and want to settle down and work towards FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).

This may be a harder sell if you are married to a European and went there for that reason. Most western women, I found from experience, always want to move back to their home town after marriage, even if it's a bone chilling place like Siberia or Wisconsin or Alaska.

As a fellow India, who returned from US.

I'd say decide on a permanent home and stay there. Its very hard to retire in places you don't know much about. Also decide on a house, as early as possible.

People who are thinking they will live like nomads and later retire in India have no clue what they are talking about. India is growing by leaps and bounds, nothing that you save will be sufficient 20 years from now. You won't even be able to afford a home.

- Facebook (SV): ~380k (60% salary, 40% stocks)

- Google (SV): ~310k (60% salary, 40% stocks)

- Netflix (SV): ~410k (100% salary)

- Hedge fund (NYC): ~450k (40% salary, 60% bonus)

Everything is per year, I divided the stock part by the grant period (4 years).

If you're wondering, I did not take any of these offers. My current compensation at a series C startup is ~280k (80% salary, 20% cash performance bonus) and I have ~3M worth of stock options (based on the last preferred valuation, though I am granted common so definitely more at risk to get screwed) of which I currently vested 50%. I hope will be able to get liquid in a couple years or so, though I'm not fully counting on it and I'm taking the risk.

What skills were required at the NYC Hedge Fund?

What do you do?

* What is your job title? CTO

* What is your total comp? $600k salary, $500k cash performance bonus, $750k equity mix (RSUs and options)

* Who do you work for? Post C-round VC backed tech company, <500 employees, 200+ engineering on my team

* Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)? London, UK

* How long did it take you to get here? ~12 years

* How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)? Worked for a couple FANNGs, did consulting, built a brand for myself, got hired to replace a founder CTO who maxed out their skillset.

To be highly paid, get a job at a company run by (former) software engineers who see software as the profit engine of their company. Not a bank that sees software as an IT cost center.

In general, you make the most money at a company where the founder or senior management have the same background as you and are biased to think your job role is the most important one in the company.

Facebook programmer, hospital doctor, Oracle lawyer, etc

zing!

Ouch

Salary and bonus, about $350k. Maybe $400k or slightly higher if I'm counting options.

Report to the CEO.

I live in Brooklyn, office is in Manhattan.

Got here by my current company acquiring mine; I've been here a little under three years and have resisted starting another company because I like my current one so much and frankly, I've got a lot of impact. I have a CS background from a top-end school which made my first few career moves relatively easy. One difference is that I was always more interested in the product side of things so I started after school as a product/front-end engineering/design generalist (ie: get shit done guy) for Google and then a series of startups, which allowed me to collect a lot of things to point to so far as my contributions. Google was too slow and bureaucratic, the other startups were interesting but not mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPO

Could take a guess from several of those.

How come you guys have such high salaries compared to ROW? Is the cost of life that much higher than other countries, or is your income simply taxed less / companies have generally more money to spend on employees?

I am currently working in one of the highest paying (if not the highest) consultancy firms in my country, and my salary is probably lower than your minimum wage. It's actually something that pisses me off more than it should when I think about it.

If you are upper middle class or higher in the US (which a SV software engineer most certainly is), life here is better than most other places in the world.

Please change to: your purchasing power is better than most places in the world.

Do not confuse purchasing power with better life. 13% of Americans are on anti-depressants. I know many "successful" people in my very affluent suburb of a major US city, who have an addiction problem ( prescription drugs, mostly).

Add growing social isolation, caused by constant uprooting (moving from place to place to advance one's career).

As they say, "all that glitters is not gold"

Wading into social indicators is a tricky business without the full context of a place, so I will speak only about SV - great climate, progressive policies like enthusiastic adoption of Obamacare, unemployment benefits, good employers provide health/401k/parental leave benefits, non-racist environment (though certainly classist) etc.

Finally, my point was about "a software engineer in SV working at MAFANG or unicorns", who should not have to constantly uproot. A new job should be across the street for such a person.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

2. The US would move further up the suicide table if you classify deaths from overdosing as suicides.

3. If the US population had not had such an easy access to "happy pills" (mood enhancers), the suicide rate would have been higher.

>A new job should be across the street for such a person

There are a lot of people coming and leaving S.V. on any single day. This has been discussed many times on HN.

If you are happy in S.V., good for you, but don't project the mini-bubble you live onto the whole country.

And yet, bay area population went from 7.15M in 2010 to 7.75M in 2017 [1].

> ... don't project the mini-bubble you live ...

The thread is literally asking for personal anecdotes (Ask HN). Why should one not post about their positive experiences with SV in that case?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demogra...

Take a dozen companies like that, where the income of the company divided by the number of employees is still in the millions, and have them fight for the best talent.

Lately, tech is especially special for this because a good employee is so much more valuable than a bad one. Some developers honestly produce negative value, while a solid team of good people can pay their own salaries many times over.

There are significant barriers to moving (for the employee) and hiring remotely (for employers) which means the salaries don't equalize across regions very well. Employers are mostly competing with other local employers, so there's not much pressure to increase compensation and salaries change slowly.

Considering how much lower the cost for living (compared to eg. SF is) and how much other stuff is covered (insurance, retirement, general infrastructure stuff), the divide is not that big. But it's still there (and pisses me off, too). The company I worked for payed considerably higher salaries for otherwise equal roles located in SF (and constantly complained about the quality they got for their money in SF). That was also often a reason quoted for lower yearly bonuses for the whole company, which again pissed everyone off..

There are many people in China/India who are smarter and harder working and more driven than many people at FANG headquarters. However they're competing with each other in a highly competitive area while in the US there is less competition because of moats dug to create better quality of life. Like how elevators beep when there are too many people to prevent crowding.

So the end reason is very very similar to why any sort of inequality exists at all, just in a more extreme and jarring form because the field in question is supposed to be THE meritocratic field. (Which it is in a way... But most of that disappears in large companies. And in the truly free economic playing ground it's not about smarts but about money and smarts)

When you add a family, child care is super expensive; think $350/week for two kids

Not to say we aren't hyper-consuming gluttons, but I think that's only about one third of the picture

And that's not counting food, clothing, and other necessary child expenses.

That 300k is really only 180k annually. So the govt takes the salary of a lower level upper class person for taxes.

When u make the jump from 50k to a higher tax bracket, taxes will shock u!

70 to 80% of healthcare plans are covered by US employers though. So maybe we should compare total comp plus benefits? Health plans aren't total costs, though, because cost sharing and care is expensive... But that means adding cost of living adjustments. But if you are using a chunk of your salary to plan for retirement in a lower COL area, maybe those aren't even fair.

An apples to apples comparison is incredibly difficult.

https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insur...

Then above £150k, I believe it's taxed at 45%

People making 300k in California will pay between 33% and 39% effective tax rate (depending on marital status), including State, Federal, and FICA.

And that’s without simple tax sheltering techniques like pre-tax deduction for health care, contributing to a 401k, and deducting mortgage interest.

https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator

Huh? Are you self employed? I don't understand this.

As a sibling comment points out, health insurance and child care consume quite a bit of a wage in the US (our employer portion is $20k/year alone for a family of four; childcare is easily $1k/per child/per month for 2 days a week of care). My wife is giving birth tomorrow to our second child, and we're prepared for a bill anywhere between $5k-10k all-in, even with a quality insurance plan at my company.

How do you even get to do that ? Most of the time companies that advertise 'remote' mean 'we need a remote worker who resides in the US'

The below resources come to mind as places to start (no affiliation).

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

https://weworkremotely.com/

https://whereverjobs.com

Also, an ongoing salary survey document for your use in ensuring you're not getting undervalued: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l...

Might be something I'll look into if nothing I can find in the EU satisfies me.

I live in the UK and the cost of living in London is roughly the same as NYC but salaries are lower for the same job.

Certain companies and countries (Luxembourg, Switzerland, UAE) have structural advantages which means staff get paid more. It is not always merit based. So you will have some very talented people who are are in the 'wrong' region or industry and get paid materially less than they could be.

Stating the obvious: the world isn't fair. If you're in software, the US is the place to be. Haven't said that it's not always easy.

I almost got an investment job in the UAE with a SWF. They had a change of strategy which I didn't fit into. This was after 7 stages and me flying out there for two and a half days of back to back interviews. Comp included accommodation and a tax-free salary in the $200k range....

The spread of US developer salaries appear to be insanely high though. Median is "only" 70k according to this site: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/...

Retirement funds, I don't know about the rest of EU, but in my country are basically a scam - here you are forced to pay 10% of your gross salary per month into the fund and you can start getting pension after 35yrs of work (provided you are older than 70yo), that means I'm paying money I will NEVER get back, since median age is going up and employement down, no one will be around to pay my pension like I'm paying my parents' with my salary.

Sick days are on the company only for the first 3 days, after that the healthcare system pays you (80% of your rate, iirc)

1. all that glitters is not gold.

2. what life style does your salary afford you?

I live in the greater Seattle Area. Engineering base salaries are ~130-160k range. Total comp, add $60-100k on top of that (bonus, +equity). SOme make more, some make less. All of us at that level live a pretty good lifestyle, but no one is really balling out.

Cost of living has skyrocketed to match the inflated salaries. Businesses and government are working overtime to extract that money out of workers pockets.

Do you at least love what you do (for a living?)

Healthcare for myself alone is going to be about $350 a month, rent for an average condo for a family of 3 is : 1440 here in utah. Healthcare for the rest of the family will be an extra $600...

That's $2500 in costs just for healthcare and rent. Food is expensive and probably costs us about $1k a month as well, Internet is $75 but it's google fiber :) ...

That said IF you work in software -- and you speak damn good english and really sell yourself, there's no reason you can't earn at least 30-40/hour as a dev, I worked on an all remote team and we had a couple employees from mexico/south america and they were paid the same as everyone else.

I'd highly recommend looking for employment outside your country on a remote team. Working from home is also pretty nice, I save a ton on commute time.

I also need to invest for my own retirement, my wife is a homemaker and takes care of the kids, and I need to make sure somehow we can afford to pay up to 200k per kid for college maybe more by the time 2036 comes along... We'd also like to buy a house someday, and I like tech toys...

Cost of living sets a basic expectation, but janitors in silicon valley don't earn the high wages software engineers do there.

The expected value a company can derive from the contributions of an average employee also differ - Google has the market and infrastructure to profiy more per engineer hour than a typical small business.

This doesn't include my stock bonus, free breakfast lunch an dinner which I do take advantage of, and other small perks that add up to thousands a year.

So my living costs each month is around £900 ($1200)

I have a large apartment, living room is about 600sq feet and I have 2 big bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, gated entrace to the complex, a handy man, a concierge, my own private parking space as I'm in a big city...

$3700 a month is ludicrous. I'd want to live in a castle for that.

I'm the person you are responding to and I agree, but this is what I get if I don't want to commute.

The £40k came out of savings, £70k deposit and you end with a really cheap fixed mortgage on £100k that comes to £445 a month, in fact it's low enough that I overpay it some months by double to get the mortgage paid off quicker.

This thread is depressing me as well, and I'm doing "okay" compared to my other friends in other professional fields.

150k of Facebook stock seems much more desirable vs 150k of Uber stock because at least with Facebook stock you could liquidate it on the public market?

Or am I missing something?

Paysa puts Uber at #1 for compensation, but their stock isn't liquidatable like a public company. Doesn't make sense.

https://www.paysa.com/company-rank

If you're fresh out of school and need to cover the student loan and the rent - sure. If your previous employment includes significant time spent at GOOG, FB, AMZN, NFLX, AAPL, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, NVDA or even YHOO or AMD or TWTR, your everyday cashflow situation is likely taken care of, and what you're looking for is potential growth.

https://sharespost.com/companies/uber/

Before that most I've made is 65k.. as a jr/intermediate web dev.

The rest of my company quit, because of the pay issues, so I'm now the sole dev trying to pull us back up from the void, as a bonus now I'm a partner and President of Software Development... with 10% equity should we succeed.

I'm always 'planning' on groking ai/ml but I never did algebra 2 or calculus, so I've got some math I need to brush up on before I get there.

Before I get there i'll probably have my own tech agency/consulting firm and just go the entrepreneur route, rather than become a level 10 developer working on ai, but I can always dream right?

Hopefully after launch we can afford at least 2-3 more devs, as pres. of software, I'm planning on making us be more 'lean' and spend less money. We got rid of the office/went remote for one thing. We'll focus more on full-stack devs instead of having frontend/backend people who would sometimes sit around and wait for the other team to finish something that was blocking them... working the back/frontend of the stack can alleviate those bottlenecks some.

They're probably tasked with analyzing data and create AI models to assist AI-assisted product features / apis, etc.

SNAP employees who started around IPO time or a few months thereafter are likely having a bad time, longer time employees have received equity at much lower prices than today's $15.

I had to negotiate hard for it, and my expertise spans multiple currently hot tech domains. Also a former founder of my own startup.

I'll also say that despite the common hater mentality against Oracle, it's been a nice place to work in my experience. As long as your boss and team are a good fit, you can have a good life, interesting work and good balance.

I've also learned that a lot of folks at Oracle don't make that much money, but like their teams, projects, and stability. Can't say I completely get it. It's definitely more chill than startup life, though.

Housing in the Bay Area... rent is minimum $2500 for a 1 bedroom. If you want to buy that one bedroom instead, let's make it cheap and let's pretend it's only $800k for a 1 bedroom in San Francisco. You come up with 20% down ($160k) cash and get a mortgage for the remaining $640k. Assuming you've been eating potatoes for a few years to save $160k. We're looking at a monthly payment of about $3500 at today's rate. That's roughly $40k per year to live in a tiny 1 bdr. You are now down to $110k/year from $150k.

Property tax + home owner insurance + bills, etc. We're looking at %1 per year property tax so that's $8k then about $2k for home owner insurance we're now at $10k just to have the right to "own" a place. We're at $100k per year now without food, bills, etc. This is about $8300 net per month. You live in a 1bd apartment, you owe $600k to a bank, you work your butt off everyday and the only way for you to afford something bigger than bicycle is to either save money for a few months or to get a loan.

You're getting paid $300k/year you can't even buy a normal car. You have to get a loan. $8000 net per months is still a lot, but in today's life you ain't rich.

That's not how it works. Anything above $200,000 will be taxed at 35%.

You're taxed in brackets. For the first $9525 you're taxed at 10%, from $9525 to $38,700 you're taxed at 12%, and on we go.

Your actual federal income tax at $300,000 is going to be more like $80,000. California state income tax is the same way, and the 13% doesn't appear to kick in until you're above a million [0], so that's more like $25,000, for a total of $106,000ish[1].

You "simplified" $44,000 away.

[0]: https://www.tax-brackets.org/californiataxtable

[1]: I'm really bad at my taxes, so take that number with a grain of salt, but it sure as hell isn't a flat $150,000.

That said, one _does_ face a marginal tax rate of over 50%. So any _additional_ income opportunity is basically cut in half.

On the other hand, an addition expense (but pre-tax) is retirement savings. People in their early-to-mid careers (especially those making $300k/yr) should not be planning for getting anything out of social security.

The precise inflation adjusted return you’ll get on this social insurance scheme will be very low, and the retirement age may go up a bit, but unless we get effective immortality in your life time, the US can just pay for Social Security out of general funds.

My Federal AGI was 260K, California AGI was roughly equivalent.

My Federal Total Tax was 65K

My California Total Tax was 22K

My total rate was therefore 33%.

Source: my 2017 1040 & 540

Here are the tax brackets for this year:

  $0.00+ 	10%
  $9,525.00+ 	12%
  $38,700.00+ 	22%
  $82,500.00+ 	24%
  $157,500.00+ 	32%
  $200,000.00+ 	35%
  $500,000.00+ 	37%

So, I understand GPs question.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=FAANG

Their search results aren't always better, but sometimes you might find some surprising features (e.g. direct StackOverflow results).

* What is your job title? Senior software engineer

* What is your total comp? - 150k base salary - ~30k bonus / year - ~100k stock / year (at current stock price) - [not counted in the above] 60k one-time signing bonus

* Who do you work for? FAANG, don't want to be more specific

* Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)? Live and work in SF

* How long did it take you to get here? - Undergrad BS in 2009 at top-4 CS school, hired directly into top company at 110k total compensation. Worked on maintaining a large distributed system. Was paid "less" than I could have but the work was technically difficult and I learned a ton. Economy was down and getting a job wasn't as easy. - Switched jobs and company in 2011 and started making 140k total compensation. Now working a more standard software engineer role on a user-facing application. - Switched jobs and company again in 2013 and made 150k total compensation at a startup in the AI space (hire #~10). Company did well for the first year, then started to do not so great. I left before it failed to do a one-year MS in AI. - Went back to school for one-year MS 2015-2016. Didn't learn as much as I hoped, and cost me a chunk of change, but networking and the diploma was critical in landing my current job. - Hired as a senior software engineer at 240k in 2016. Have stayed with this company and got a salary bump last year (and the stock is now worth more).

* How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)? All of the above. Well-off parents to help me get to a top undergrad school who could pay for my education so I could focus on classes. Was always top-20% of class, but never top-5%. Went to lots of job fairs, negotiated my first offer. Always look for new hard problems. Switch jobs often for a higher salary. Work in whichever area the company cares about.

According to glass door at Amazon in the UK you can make anywhere from £30k to £50k.

Microsoft goes a bit higher (in London, but everything is higher in London) to around £65k for SE2.

I only know one friend who is a developer on £100k+, most of us are on around £30k to £40k.

I know one Senior Developer doing Web Development on around £25k ($35k)

The fraction of people in the UK pulling in £100k+ in any job is tiny, nevermind tech workers.

I used to be a software engineer but changed to finance (asset management) to get paid more. I went from £23k a year to £50k.

If you're a niche expert (MUMPS, KDB, etc.), you can probably make double that.

As an example, a friend of mine is a Sitecore developer. Sitecore is an enterprise-level CMS on the .NET framework that is used by large companies, and it's feature set boasts some impressive marketing tools. He recently went into contracting after around a decade of experience, and he's pulling in £400 a day in Bristol and Nottingham. This, for him, was a "really low rate" because he was starting out, and for his next contract he'll probably bump it up to £600 a day or more for London. The top Sitecore architects that contract will earn anything from £800-1200 a day, which is insanity to someone earning a fairly standard developer salary.

Then again, I'd argue that dev salaries in the UK are low in general, and contractors only illustrate the huge difference.

I was thinking about going into one day.

I have a diverse background and have been a quantitative analyst, software engineer, and investment analyst. I have a MEng in Mathematical modelling (from a good UK uni) and a CFA Charterholder. My current tech stack (about 1 year experience) is React, JS/Typescript, GraphQL, Apollo Server all on AWS (AWS Lambda, AWS RDS and Docker on an EC2 instance). I used to work with Java, Linux servers and SQL (2 years experience). Would it be possible for me to contract? I could leverage my non-technical skills as well like my CFA and investment experience. :)

If you're ok with employment gaps and the consequent lack of income, go for it. But if you have dependents and/or mortage and/or other constraints, I'd definitely put a whole lot of thought and financial planning into it first.

With that list of skills, I reckon you should be able to find some interest in London, yeah. Might have to lowball the daily rate to start with just to get going but people are definitely hiring those skills.

I not far off affording a small 1 bedroom flat with cash so fairly relaxed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS

KDB is another bonkers database language popular with banks and high-frequency traders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B

(There is a common theme here!)

- Specialist consulting? I help large organisations migrate systems, develop API's in-house, train existing staff to use good tools and frameworks.. I wear a lot of hats, but it's mostly API development. I think most developers could manage it with a good foundation and knowledge of how things "should be done".

* What is your job title?

- Often something with "API", "Integration" or "Engineer" in the role. Varies by client, I let them decide.

* What is your total comp?

$350K/yr

* Who do you work for?

Varies; usually banks, education, government, insurance - not traditionally IT places.

* Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)?

Australia

* How long did it take you to get here?

5 years from doing an internship where I was made to write VB6. In 2013.

* How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)?

Mix of luck, soft skills, good mentors and really hard fucking work. First job was a fluke - found a great team who I learned a lot from. Got the right title bumps at the right times. Was happy to tell people no and give ultimatums on pay and titles. Didn't put up with bad managers, shit code and toxic culture during downturns. My resignation is always the same, "right now I don't think this is the right environment for me at this point in my career, I've found another opportunity I wish to pursue. It's been great blah blah blah". Eventually just started selling my time by the hour, now I put up my rate every 3 months (or at the end of a contract which is usually 6+ months) until I can't find a job, then I take a holiday and usually land something within a few months at the new rate.

Honestly, I think most average developers at large organisations are just that - average. The kind of people who've been writing code for 20 years but still not using source control properly or in some cases at all. Ask them something obscure about anything in their code-base and they'll tell you what you need in under 20 seconds. I think this is usually because they've had a manager in the past who said no and questioned everything, so they stopped improving and just maintained.

* What do you do?

-Product management

* What is your job title?

-Senior Product Manager

* What is your total comp?

-To be super clear:

  -Total is ~$250k
    -150K base salary
    -50K in RSU (basically equivalent to cash for public company)
    -7-10k from ESPP
    -40k in bonus

-N/A

* Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)?

-Bay Area

* How long did it take you to get here?

-Hired after internship. Its been 3.5 years at current company.

* How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)?

-Started as an engineer and quickly took the lead on a high visibility project. Lots of politics in between.

Total comp in the 3.5 years: year 1: 145k year 2: 195k year 3: 225k year 4: expected to be 250k+

I've worked for a fair number of high profile startups in Chicago and I've seen a number of people reach the 300k+ realm.

Generally these people have been highly skilled directors, executives, or principle engineers and they have an exceptional track record of delivering results. In general I would estimate most of the ones I have worked with as having 10-20 years experience and I believe they got to where they are by having a great combination of raw talent, a great personality, drive, and the ability to coach and mentor others.

Note that I have also come across at least two or three people at this level that had gotten there simply by being friends with a founder or early investor. Usually these types of people don't last more than a year or two though. Once the company starts gaining traction and brings in real leaders that expect real returns these types of individuals are usually the first to go.

Also in Chicago the principle engineers that I have seen hit this level tend to have a strong understanding of stream processing, real time analytics, the smack stack, systems engineering, and data science. From my own interviewing and hiring experiences in Chicago I can also say that if you can demonstrate skills in these areas as en engineer and have some greenfield experience it's pretty easy to hit 150k-200k total comp with no more than 5 years of total experience. I haven't seen anyone under principle hit 200k+ with a reasonable work life balance, I know a few fintech engineers that approach 250k+ but they work 80 hour weeks and hate their life.

The most egregious example is college.

JUST the 529 has something like $38k when the kid turns 18.

The house will eventually be paid off, and 15 year mortgages are still possible in many expensive coastal cities on $300k/yr. So you have an additional $3,900/mo = $46,800/yr, some of which you can burn on college expenses. Let's say half.

That means you have at most 38+8.5+46/2 = 69 PER YEAR of college. AND that's with additional 46k/2 retirement savings! Even for a huge family of 4, after discount rates [1], that's enough to pay for tuition at an expensive private college with zero scholarship over the discount rate. Especially if you forego constantly making car payments on an expensive car (drive that 5 year old car for 5 more years while the kid(s) are in college). That level of saving isn't necessary! If you're spending more than that on college, the loans to cover the difference will more than pay for themselves. (Oh, and you're in a coastal city, so there are top-tier universities within driving distance, so no ned for room&board.)

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/discount-rate...

edit: I can't read columns correctly. need coffee.

Strange article. It's a creative way to connect a teacher's salary with a $300,000 income but in the end, this kind of salary remains the exception and is only normal in small pockets of the US.

That is ridiculous, but $5000/yr is also pretty low. Remember that this is a budget for 2 people working full-time and also raising (perhaps multiple) children. That means purchasing time wherever you can. Food prep is labor intensive.

Unless you have a stay-at-home or part-time parent, the first child is NOT a linear progression in life costs!

"Internal Tools & Automation". String together data pipelines (source and sink), write system tools, rapid app development for small and time limited tasks, review and optimize code for the team at large, public API reviews for usability / sanity.

* What is your job title?

Whatever I want :^). But my card currently says Lead Automation Engineer

* What is your total comp?

Amortizing my RSUs, it's about 300K/Y, with about 50% stock in a public company.

* Who do you work for?

FAANG

* Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)?

Moved around the Bay Area a bit

* How long did it take you to get here?

2 years at a low volume / high value / esoteric material semiconductor foundry 4 years here.

* How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)?

Cold call from recruiter after passively posting my resume on a job board (never asked which one). Once here, just through performing well and getting exposure to other teams and how the OS works through experience.

In short, I would say it has felt like a straight forward progression after performing well yet being aggressive with pay negotiations. The latter becomes easier when you realize it’s not money out of your managers pocket, just a spigot guarded by HR.

Hah, I like this characterization. I've often walked away from lowball offers only to be contacted by hiring managers with much better offers. I can't say I agree with a company's policy of trying to bring in engineers at the lowest rate possible. I'm still somewhat Mid-Level though, when I do get to play a more important part in hiring decisions, I will most certainly try to change these shitty policies.

At first I kinda felt that I deserved the higher comp. because of how firm I would be in asking for what I wanted, but lately I've come to realize that most engineers don't really want to negotiate hard but they do need a good compensation to be happy (lets not fool ourselves here).

I wonder outside of FAANG how easy it is to get 300k salaries.

You have to do it for many many years to build the amount of wealth you'd need to live a life of idle luxury

It's also very likely that people pulling $300k/year really like the work.

If you've never experienced burnout: it's not pretty, and can easily destroy your mental and physical health. At the first hints of burnout, you should get the fuck out!

1. The smaller group: People who do retire quietly. You don't hear about them.

2. The larger group: People who are capable of earning that salary are the type who can't just sit at the beach. Much as youth is wasted on the young, wealth is often wasted on the wealthy.

This might sound nice to many, but for it might be preferable to work on something meaningful as well.

You from a 3rd world country?

Quantitative strategy research and trading. I own all aspects of my strategies' research and development, and also fill in as architect for some components that are owned by other teams.

> What is your job title?

Analyst.

> What is your total comp?

$1.5mm ($200k base) cash. Last three years have ranged from $1.25-2.5mm.

> Who do you work for?

A hedge fund.

> Where do you live?

NYC tri-state area. I go to the office two days a week.

> How long did it take you to get here?

Similar roles with less upside after college (4-5 years). Current role since 2015

> How did you get here

Superior technical skills, having developed 10 or so "unique" ideas that have been profitable over several years and zealously guarding the IP. Being intimately familiar with another 100+ (from academic/practitioner literature, information leakage) that I can layer on and tweak. And in this industry, luck always helps.

10-15 years experience coding, ~3 years experience in leadership/management. Currently in webdev, spend 50/50 time coding vs management work.

$165k base, ~$190-210 total comp depending on year. Work 35-40 hours a week.

Mostly feel that I got here by being in the right place at the right time (luck), and being able to evaluate opportunities and accept a little risk chasing promising, but uncertain companies/positions when they become available. Also learned the importance of self-marketing and how to make yourself valuable.

Edit: so many responses at once!

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp

From a salary perspective, I'd suspect they have to be competitive with the other companies for tech talent, so it's reasonable to include them here.