You can check your odds by looking at statistics. I did it. I wanted to go for PhD but PhD salaries were lower than for Masters (on average). I wanted to live in France, but working from USA gives 3-4x more salary (on average). I wanted to switch to blockchain during the hype, but my odds of becoming a good employee were higher if I stayed in Speech Tech, so I did.
Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#42Learn Java or C++, get good at leetcode, and work in finance. You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms run by people who care more about money than the engineering. You'll make a ton of money and feel poor because the quants will make far more than you ever will. In my opinion this is a truly terrible path to choose, but you will earn more than anyone in tech w…
For people actually working in FinTech today, what does a day-to-day workday look like? What types of problems does your code solve?
You solve a lot of the same problems that other tech companies solve, just with different constraints. An example I like to use is: "Facebook can afford to lose a 'like' on a post -- whether that is through data loss or just eventual consistency -- while we cannot afford to lose a penny (exaggerating a bit here) since there are people making live decisions on that penny"
Those sort of problems are more on the product side, along with the regular slew of product development tech problems. On the infrastructure/platform side (where I work) it is remarkably close to "regular tech". Same types of distributed systems problems, database issues, CI/CD pipelines, engineering efficiency, etc. The "new" part here is working with the finance specific areas such as physical data centers and networking to clients, or domain specific items such as data retention for compliance.
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#43I know this question is situated around the tech, but the real answer is to leave every couple of years. There is always more money to be made, and the more experience you have the easier it is to get it. I'm not saying this is what somebody should do, but if you're only indexing for income, then it's the only answer IMO.
I spent my 20s following this advice, but now in my 30s I am starting to question it.
When I look up the org chart, the people higher up have been at the company 5+ years. Moving into the higher roles requires the right opportunity, which often takes time to find. Those "right opportunities" are rarely given to people new to the company and are often used to retain existing high performers.
Certainly if you're stuck in your career and are not on a growth path, jump ship. But if your job is promoting you consistently every 2–3 years, then I'd stay.
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#44I know this question is situated around the tech, but the real answer is to leave every couple of years. There is always more money to be made, and the more experience you have the easier it is to get it. I'm not saying this is what somebody should do, but if you're only indexing for income, then it's the only answer IMO.
To a point. People who move around too much will not get the job if there's a comparable candidate that has stayed around longer at previous jobs.
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Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#45Learn Java or C++, get good at leetcode, and work in finance. You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms run by people who care more about money than the engineering. You'll make a ton of money and feel poor because the quants will make far more than you ever will. In my opinion this is a truly terrible path to choose, but you will earn more than anyone in tech w…
I am a junior that does C++ currently for HFT. Lots of legacy code, although I don’t think the code is that terrible (although I am a junior so maybe I can’t tell). Any reason why it’s a terrible path to choose? Am I stunting my growth? I was hoping HFT would help leverage me into a big tech company for systems level stuff since (at least I was told this as a selling point to get me to join) its tougher here so FAANG…
> Any reason why it’s a terrible path to choose?
These reasons are not universally applicable, so see what fits your experience, but... code quality is often poor, internal practices often seem to leave a lot to be desired, company culture does not seem to be a focus, assholes seem to get rewarded.
You can probably get into big tech from it, but perhaps not at the seniority you might expect, or if you do you may find it a struggle to get onboard with industry norms around engineering process and company culture that are missing from a lot of finance companies.
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#46Learn Java or C++, get good at leetcode, and work in finance. You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms run by people who care more about money than the engineering. You'll make a ton of money and feel poor because the quants will make far more than you ever will. In my opinion this is a truly terrible path to choose, but you will earn more than anyone in tech w…
> You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms ...
For juniors coming in, "messes of legacy code" probably isn't the best learning environment from a tech skills standpoint.
For more sr folks coming in to "message of legacy code", you do need to be a good engineer, because you may have to be working around a lot of stuff that can't be changed. You may not have version control. You likely won't have any sort of fancy CI/CD/pipeline process. You may not have tests (as the code is likely untestable in its current state).
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#47whatever you do, use whatever money you earn to become an OWNER of something
this is an economy of owners and renters, you will be one or the other
so buy an income property to rent out, etc
otherwise, you are always just someone who works for someone else
people who try to succeed just based on their salary will be disappointed unless it is a mammoth salary (becoming more rare in sw)
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
To a point. People who move around too much will not get the job if there's a comparable candidate that has stayed around longer at previous jobs.
Not necessarily, not when I hire. On-boarding, and ramping up in a new environment is a skill and to some extent, I see that as a value add. A person who has gotten comfortable in a role for 10 years is often slower to ramp vs. a person that has seen a lot of environments and projects.
Optimizing for “ramping” seems incredibly shortsighted.
Does seeing things through, pushing through the hard bits, the bits that only come up after a few years when your pet project starts spouting fire or some major restructuring happens and not to mention loyalty doesn’t mean anything anymore?
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#49There are more dimensions to this that just the tech stack.
- Industry: focusing on big tech or quant finance would be a good choice. That's where the money is IMHO.
- Expertise: if you invest on being the best, that will pay off.
- Network: you will get you best offers from friends and colleagues, not head hunters.
- Role: being an above average support engineer can very well earn you more than an above average data scientist, just because there are much fewer bright people willing to work in support positions.
- Jumps: at the beginning of your career, move often, say every 1-3 years. Calm down the frequency after that.
Re: Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?
#50Learn Java or C++, get good at leetcode, and work in finance. You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms run by people who care more about money than the engineering. You'll make a ton of money and feel poor because the quants will make far more than you ever will. In my opinion this is a truly terrible path to choose, but you will earn more than anyone in tech w…
For people actually working in FinTech today, what does a day-to-day workday look like? What types of problems does your code solve?
I generally think of "FinTech" as startups/scale-ups working on finance related products, and they're not too different.
There's quite a difference with what I think of as pure-finance, companies that aren't producing a tech product, but are using tech to make money with financial services, or betting on the markets in various ways.
As for the problems, I was once in an interview given a coding task of moving money around a network of companies based on tax rules. Fun.