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Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

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Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#11

Post by codegeek »

yolesaber wrote: post #9

Perhaps I'm an outlier but this was my progression. Got 90k job out of college in NYC. Worked on a legacy PHP app with some Python, Java, Hadoop occasionally in there. Negotiated salary to 100k + 10k bonus after one year and good performance reviews. Next year asked for a bonus increase. 120k total now. Started getting bored at the job. Asked around, got a 135k offer from another company. Went to my current employer…

Good comment. I totally agree that after a certain point in career, it comes down to how well you can negotiate. When you start, you don't have a lot of say in terms of salary (well may be you do if you are the cream) but after you have about 5+ years of good experience, you need to learn how to negotiate.

Sometimes when you are in a strong position, you gotta bluff. If they call it, then no worries as you have nothing to lose. If they don't call your bluff, you may just have got a $15K raise :)

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#14

Post by canterburry »

From my experience language and years of experience have very little to do with salary IF you stay at the same employer. To get frequent salary and title bumps you HAVE to move employers. It's the single fastest path to more money. Move every 3 years at a minimum and never accept a lateral move or for equal pay with new title. Your future salaries will depend on your previous comp, not by title.

Also, independent contracting is often a better option than employment in most parts of the country, but you have to be independent (1099-MISC, never W2). Being a W2 at a consulting company is just as bad as anywhere else. Independent consulting will get you a 2x bump instantly assuming you can find a full time gig but that's usually not that difficult. Furthermore, as a 1099, you'll be able to put away far more in retirement savings. I recommend an LLC with a 401K (not SAP), max out your personal contributions and then kick in another 6% from your 'company'. You'll be socking away ~50K in retirement alone this way while lowering your taxable income. Compare that to your 16K/year max as W2.

Another trick: if a company ever offers you a larger than usual bonus for some reason (i.e. retention, goal met etc) leave the next year when it shows up on your W2 and ask the next employer to merely 'match' your current W2 without breaking out base salary and bonus. I've scored 50% pay increases this way.

Following the above methods, I was making $180K+ at my 8 year mark and $230K+ at my 12 year mark. Most of this happened in the midwest although I currently live in the bay area.

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#15

Post by servlate »

ascotan wrote: post #7

Salary is a function of perceived importance it has nothing to do with the language. There just appear to be a lot of high paying Java jobs, because there are a lot of companies still using Java as their lingua franca. Most programers will tell you that the pay scale in software is like a hockey stick curve. Up really fast then flat line. Therefore, you move to the top of the S curve and then stick around long enough…

Thanks. The existence of more Java jobs suggests more opportunities to jump around, which is a promising feeling.

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#16

Post by servlate »

canterburry wrote: post #14

From my experience language and years of experience have very little to do with salary IF you stay at the same employer. To get frequent salary and title bumps you HAVE to move employers. It's the single fastest path to more money. Move every 3 years at a minimum and never accept a lateral move or for equal pay with new title. Your future salaries will depend on your previous comp, not by title. Also, independent con…

Thanks for that.

Unfortunately, I have failed to see such jumps in compensation for offers that I received, but I'll admit, I haven't worked with most buzzword technologies (eg: big data).

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#17

Post by servlate »

yolesaber wrote: post #9

Perhaps I'm an outlier but this was my progression. Got 90k job out of college in NYC. Worked on a legacy PHP app with some Python, Java, Hadoop occasionally in there. Negotiated salary to 100k + 10k bonus after one year and good performance reviews. Next year asked for a bonus increase. 120k total now. Started getting bored at the job. Asked around, got a 135k offer from another company. Went to my current employer…

Thanks, that is good advice.

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#18

Post by servlate »

rgovind wrote: post #13

Please include your location. In SF Bay area, outside GOOGFBAMZNMSFT, if you put in 10 yrs of work and jump companies once in a while you should get there. (I am from semiconductor background)

I was aiming for any of the major cities (except SF for which I would hope for a little more).

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#19

Post by servlate »

baccheion wrote: post #6

Learn Java, Javascript, and Python, then move to San Francisco. You can pull in a base salary of $150K within 4 years of graduating if you get jobs at hot/popular companies. That said, due to its high cost of living, $150K isn't that outrageous in San Francisco. You can use online cost of living adjusters to see what the equivalent salary would be in areas you're familiar with.

SF was one place I was not counting in that number. :)

Re: Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path?

#20

Post by servlate »

rt2016 wrote: post #4
pinewurst wrote: post #2

It's the role, not the languages that provides that kind of career path. If it was purely that, becoming a mainframe systems programmer would probably provide you a good sinecure these days. Instead it's using your Python to become, for example, a cloud orchestration expert or something in sufficiently hot demand. I'm not convinced that becoming another Java zombie would be any more lucrative that what you could do w…

I was just about to say the same thing but you beat me to it. :) I think the choice of language is much less important than what you're doing. Even a "non-sexy" (but incredibly important) job like build/deployment engineer writing mostly shell scripts and Python automation could net you a 200k+ income

From all the replies here, it seems all the high paying jobs revolve around web development, be it Python or Java.
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