Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 303 posts

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

#211

Post by jeffrey_t_b »

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…

While I agree on your main point, I think that you are confusing marginal tax rate with average tax rate. E.g. the 2017 federal income tax for a single making $300k is in the "$46.6k + 33% in excess of $191k" bracket. This means an average tax of 27.5%. Same for state income tax. So you aren't quite down to $150k/year.

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.

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

#212

Post by lochlan »

adamnemecek wrote: post #3
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.

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

Ignoring stock appreciation Sr. SDEs at Amazon have a total comp target of ~$250k-$350k. Same for L6 SDMs. It’s definitely “standard” for some levels/job families.

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

#213

Post by dreaminvm »

Not FAANG, but in SV.

* 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
* Who do you work for?

-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+

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

#215

Post by taxmancometh »

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…

> 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.

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

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

#216

Post by default-kramer »

enothereska wrote: post #14

https://www.financialsamurai.com/living-a-middle-class-lifes...

Food for three is $2100 per month? That's ridiculous. I spend less than $5000 per year on myself. Probably right around $10/day, and that's with at least 80% of my meals coming from restaurants. I'm working on doing more home cooking for various reasons.

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

#217

Post by 0xB31B1B »

ryandrake wrote: post #192
Redoubts wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's because I'm making multiples of what my father ever did, but this is why I'm diversifying my stock immediately on receipt and saving +50% of my income. Anything else seems like insanity, or at least profligacy.

The way I’ve always explained it: if you suddenly got $50k, would you put it all into one stock? No. So if you suddenly got $50k of one stock, why would you not turn it into cash right away? The scenarios are identical. 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 withhel…

No, there is a taxable event in the case of a stock sale

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

#218

Post by shakestheclown »

eugeniub wrote: post #42
devy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Apple, Aamzon, Netflix, Google https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp

Why is Netflix in there? Seems like an unusual addition to the other four?

The acronym without Netflix is less than desirable

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

#219

Post by justboxing »

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…

> I question whether I'm wasting my prime earning years (comp.Engineer)

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.

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

#220

Post by throwawyfrcmnt »

devilmoon wrote: post #85
mabbo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition, and value. At the height of Microsoft's days, the average employee generated something like $2m in value. 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…

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…

Maybe not for the 300-500k/year region, but for the 80-200k/year region: At least for software/engineering roles in big (non banking) companies a salary in the 90 - 120k region is quite possible, for product/sales people with all bonuses probably more. I got around 82k (plus variable bonus and retirement stuff) after 2.5years. 3rd job after my graduation. 6th or 7th (relevant) job all in all.

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..

Post reply on HN