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Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

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21–30 of 103 posts

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#22
Last contract was ~100k EUR a year and that was my highest ever payment.

I usually work 35-40 hours a week, fully remotely. Last time I worked in an office was in January 2011.

Senior programmer with 21.5 years of experience, currently working mostly with Rust and Elixir, and some Golang here and there. I know shell scripting and automation quite well, I know many CLI / TUI tools (don't like coding things when I can assemble my own LEGO for a lot of problems with 1-2h of work), and know Linux well-ish. Interested in network administration, true AI (not ML/DL), robotics and algo trading but never had the chance and time to give in to those passions so far, sadly. Also worked with C, C++, Assembly, PHP, Javascript, Ruby and Java.

I'm in Eastern Europe. Will likely settle for 50% less payment because I am extremely tired of the startup culture; the hustle and hurrying never ends. Some people thrive in that but it honestly is killing me in an accelerated manner and I'll just refuse startup offers straight away, I feel. I would hate the pay drop but the time has come in my life to choose between money and health.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#24
Yeah, but how much of that time is actually butt in seat coding vs hardly paying attention in meetings?

I've worked at multiple big firms and startups and I don't believe that even the majority of people are working "40 hours" in the same way that most people work 40 hours.

This is the wonderful thing about technology. I was literally motivated to get into tech by the old "The Website is Down" videos, and in practice, it seems to be how many tech workers operate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#25
150k salary, fully remote with a sweet equity deal as well.

10 years exp.

Was sought out for this startup because I'm active on social media and originally offered $125, but negotiated higher.

Idk how many hours, probably averaging 50/wk, but there will definitely be outlier weeks that I'm cool with.

I also had a really chill job two weeks ago for just under $100k. That was a gov job - strict 40 hr/wk. I don't like "average" lifestyles though, so even though I work more (and harder) now, I love it.

Then I also have side projects and another two companies that I have 50% ownership and 100% ownership of respectively. All together I usually end up working about 100 hours/wk

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#26
tc ~250k. remote, Westcoast city. I work around 50-55 hours a week give or take. I'm a principal engineer at a faang-adjacent company. a lot of my time is spent in meetings and consultations. a bit is spend writing either foundational code, or code that no one else can do in a timely manner. the rest is reviewing the work of others and charting out designs or plans.

i would say that my current position is probably unsustainable long term and that im feeling a bit of burn out creep. I definitely wouldn't call it chill, but the cash is.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#27
160k / full stack / ~16h / 10years . fully remote. (france)

I have a pretty chill job working at a large company where there are no deadlines and the bar for 'hard working' is pretty low. I try and get urgent things done as fast as possible but otherwise I take it pretty easy. I work in the evenings so I have my days free to ski/bike/ be with the kids in the hols, then i take some time off to pic them up from school and put them to bed, and i usually finish early to watch tv with my wife before bed.

I'm in a similar situation as you where I feel like I could work harder, but i wont get any more money for working harder where i am, and i think i'd need to be paid waay more to be persuaded to do 40 full hours a week.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#28

80ish k, Linux/DevOps/(bad)Dev. I work 40ish hours, but tbh available close to 24/7 due to small company size, it only really includes out of hours bothers few times a year, but it still does. EU, full remote. Been working for a decade-ish now, of which last five years specifically devops.

Is that 80k EUR or USD?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#29

1 yoe, ~200k big tech in the bay area. 40-45 hrs a week, more around deadlines

Holy cow, $200k with 1 year? Were you a strong student at a high-ranked academic program? PhD? Particularly gifted individual with proven high-quality amateur/hobby work?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you work, what's your salary and how experienced are you?

#30
It's really all over the map, especially if you're looking to work remote. There are very senior roles for $150k+ and jr-mid for $60-200k. Depends on where the job is. That doesn't even get into culture. Many places want to see Jira tickets closed... others are more laid back, and many in between.

If you can afford it, and aren't living in a high cost of living city, concentrate on job culture first. Alternatively, if you don't have family to worry about, move wherever needed to get the most money and bank it for 5-10 years living as cheaply as you can, then reconsider your direction and priorities. You don't mention how old you are or what kind of area you're living in, so it's hard to give anything resembling advice.

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