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Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

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Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#161

Post by ptero »

mabbo wrote: post #35

I've been reached out to before by recruiters for High Freq trading companies and other financial groups, offering 300-500k starting. A friend of mine worked at one of them and basically said that yeah you do make that kind of money but you work 70-80hrs/week and if anything is ever determined to be a crime, you'll be the one who gets thrown under the bus.

I am curious what "thrown under the bus" is: getting fired (which some/many may consider an acceptable risk for a high salary position) or being blamed / framed by a company for a jail time; or something else?

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#162

Post by devilmoon »

peschkaj wrote: post #141
paul7986 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget the govt takes over 40 percent when your making upper class to higher level salaries especially if your single. 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!

Wat? My highest overall tax percentage was 32% when I made 300k as a single person.

This seems to be a common misconception, but taxes in the EU are way higher than in the US

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#163

Post by dx034 »

LandR wrote: post #142
paul7986 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget the govt takes over 40 percent when your making upper class to higher level salaries especially if your single. 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!

In the UK we are taxed at 40% for incomes above, I think, £45k. Then above £150k, I believe it's taxed at 45%

Plus National Insurance which adds another 2%. But the average salary in the UK is around £30-35k so it's a problem mostly tech and financial workers have.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#165

Post by overeater »

bsvalley wrote: post #149

For the most part you'd live in a place like NYC or the Bay Area to come up with these kind of salaries. So let's assume you live in the Bay Area (California). New Federal income tax is 35% for that salary range then add 13% coming from beautiful and sunny California. We're at a 48 % tax rate. Let's round that up to 50% to simplify our maths. Congratulations - you are now making $150k/year! From 300 down to 150 just…

Why are you including state tax of 13% but not social security and medicare which is 7%? Also note that state tax is deductible so it feels more like 9%.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#166

Post by throwaway77296 »

* What do you do? Software engineer working on the machine learning side of the company. I help research scientists build working large-scale systems that can actually be used in production. Working on production, user-facing applications makes it easy to justify why your salary should be high: if I can show a 20% improvement in performance, I can save the company $X00,000/year in costs. It's also important to work in the area of the company they care about. Your managers (and their managers) will have more power and influence. Working on plumbing doesn't get you paid as much as user-facing.

* 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.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#167

Post by Daniel3 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #116
devilmoon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still the question of FAANG branches in other parts of the world not paying nearly as much as they do in the US, which is bullshit to me - if an employee generates value while working in the US, it does so outside of it as well. Companies this big shouldn't lower their compensation to match the country they operate in, I feel like it's an insult to employees who simply were born/decided to live in a different…

But 'value contributed' is only a part of the equation that goes into how salaries are calculated.

It's a very small component actually. "Value contributed over nominal employee" might be a better way to think about it. Compensation is set almost exclusively on "What must we pay you to keep you from leaving and doing the same thing for the company that is the same distance from where you chose to live. If there ISN'T another company, its vastly less. If the thing you do is something that everyone can do, it's vastly less.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#168

Post by flak48 »

vostok wrote: post #159
bsvalley wrote: post #149

For the most part you'd live in a place like NYC or the Bay Area to come up with these kind of salaries. So let's assume you live in the Bay Area (California). New Federal income tax is 35% for that salary range then add 13% coming from beautiful and sunny California. We're at a 48 % tax rate. Let's round that up to 50% to simplify our maths. Congratulations - you are now making $150k/year! From 300 down to 150 just…

I think the math of going from $300k to $150k went by too quickly for me. Can you go over it in a little more detail?

Tax (federal + state) in California is close to 50%

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#169

Post by bsvalley »

vostok wrote: post #159
bsvalley wrote: post #149

For the most part you'd live in a place like NYC or the Bay Area to come up with these kind of salaries. So let's assume you live in the Bay Area (California). New Federal income tax is 35% for that salary range then add 13% coming from beautiful and sunny California. We're at a 48 % tax rate. Let's round that up to 50% to simplify our maths. Congratulations - you are now making $150k/year! From 300 down to 150 just…

I think the math of going from $300k to $150k went by too quickly for me. Can you go over it in a little more detail?

300k gross income at 50% income tax is $150k net.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $300k/year, how did you achieve it?

#170

Post by prostoalex »

aantix wrote: post #6
0xB31B1B wrote: post #2

300 tc is pretty standard for FAANG and the big unicorns. I pull down 330k w 5 years experience at a Uber. 180 cash, 150k equity. I’m incredibly average, 5 years exp.

Shouldn’t there be a distinction made between public and private company equity? 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

> 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?

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.

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