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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?

#201

Post by Daniel3 »

friedman23 wrote: post #118
devilmoon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really pisses me off about FAANG branches in EU is that they will pay you way less than what they're paying for the same role in the US, which feels like an insult. London I believe is the best market in the EU for cost of living/salary tech-wise - luxembourg, switzerland, UAE have a cost of living which is off the charts, i.e. yes in switzerland you can get 5k€/mo for an entry level job but having breakfast out…

It's definitely not fair to you that you get paid less because you were born in a different country but that's just how it works. The rest of the world simply doesn't have the demand for tech talent that the US does.

Imagining a world where all the candidates from everywhere could move to SF, etc for their ideal job, do you think wages would rise or fall? Hint: They'd fall. A free market economy is left no other choice than to treat the job "environment" as a "job market", complete with the dynamics of supply and demand.

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

#202

Post by inmyunix »

devy wrote: post #12
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely not standard. Esp at say amazon.

It depends on position. Total compensations for AI positions in top tier technology firms are well beyond $1M mark, some go as high as $3M annually.

talk about an edge case. top of the top of the top.

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

#203

Post by gravlaks »

machinemob wrote: post #191
tcrow wrote: post #182

From my experience, one of the best (and relatively easiest) ways to reach higher salary levels over a relatively small time frame is to, at some point, go to work as a short term consultant through a consulting agency for a little while. If you have any decent skills, getting in will be no problem. The benefits of this approach is 2 fold; 1) you will obtain a broad and diverse set of skills due to traversing many di…

tcrow what are some real-world examples of "consulting agencies?" I'm a technologist but examples in any industry would give me a feeling for what kind of company you're referring to. Thanks in advance.

Capgemini, Accenture.

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

#204

Post by softawre »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #188
bsvalley wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not how tax brackets work. You only pay the higher rate on the income over the bracket. For instance, (assuming you're filing single) you pay 10% tax on the first $9,525 of income. You pay 12% on the next $21,175, and so on. 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% Only 1/3 of your income would be subje…

People not understanding progressive taxation on a thread about making 300k+ is a bit funny.

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

#205

Post by inmyunix »

prostoalex wrote: post #170
aantix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 TWT…

right. stock compensation is your independence fund and I don't think about it like I do salary or cash bonus.

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

#207

Post by EnderMB »

zimpenfish wrote: post #175
Blackstone4 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you including contractors? My understanding is that tech contracting in London is where the money is at. You can make £400 a day or ~£84,000 a year. This is with a lower all-in tax rate so your take-home pay is higher if you take it as a dividend. 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.

You can easily make £400+ a day with tech contracting in London, yep. I've been doing it for years and I'm defiantly middle of the road. If you're a niche expert (MUMPS, KDB, etc.), you can probably make double that.

If you work with undesirable technology then it's entirely possible to double it.

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.

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

#208

Post by lgregg »

pjc50 wrote: post #199
reacharavindh wrote: post #109

Reading such a post on HN is only fanning my financial insecurity. 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, tha…

This kind of thing really needs to be normalised by house prices. Even a dumb metric like "salary * (number of bedrooms+1) / (house value)" would give decent results; I'm paid about one bedroom per year. 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.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "Geographic Pay Differentials" in HR terms.

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

#209

Post by inmyunix »

throwaway713 wrote: post #77
0xB31B1B wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but some Algo and AI researchers earn way way more.

What would an example of one of these people’s background be? And what job title? Individual contributor or director? “Research Scientist” perhaps, with a PhD from Stanford in NLP would be my best guess, but I have no clue.

you're exactly right. they're top phd's from the very top schools. hand-picked and referred out by professors who have relationships in the pvt sector. that's not to say there aren't guys who don't fit this description, but this is who gets recruited.

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

#210

Post by deanmoriarty »

Pretty normal in coastal areas. I recently interviewed at FAANG and these are the offers I received. I have 6 years of experience as a standard software engineer, I consider myself a solid contributor but nothing special:

- 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.

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