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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?

#31

Post by JSeymourATL »

> the realization of having no visible career path despite being good and working hard ...

Scott Adams talks about how one can dramatically increase their odds of success by learning multiple skills. You might imagine adding languages to your skill set is a smart play. Learning the Art of Negotiation on top of those skills is a force multiplier.

Incidentally, Adams book is a brilliant read, full of solid, unconventional career advice > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-a...

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

#32

Post by stuxnet79 »

scalesolved wrote: post #29
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…

Let's not throw around the term Java zombie, there are lots of high paying and interesting roles within the Java world, every language has boring jobs. To the OP the hot and well paid areas of Java development at the moment seem to be around: Spring Boot/Hystrix/Feign Play Framework Java 8 Hadoop Spark ML From what I've seen of the hiring market Android looks to be one of the hottest areas, there is a real dearth of…

What kind of places would be looking for native Android developers? I was learning Android a year ago but decided to switch to web because I figured there would be more opportunities.

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

#33

Post by stuxnet79 »

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…

Is there any particular reason you picked 3 years as your lower bound? I haven't been as fortunate as most in that I graduated and got a job as a Java dev but the pay isn't at all appealing. I'm planning on jumping ship after a year in order to get a modest salary boost (we already discussed raises with my boss and I will be getting a pittance at the end of this year).

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

#34

Post by canterburry »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #33
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…

Is there any particular reason you picked 3 years as your lower bound? I haven't been as fortunate as most in that I graduated and got a job as a Java dev but the pay isn't at all appealing. I'm planning on jumping ship after a year in order to get a modest salary boost (we already discussed raises with my boss and I will be getting a pittance at the end of this year).

I'd say early in your career 1 year is fine but no more than 3. In fact, I think moving is essential to learning as I have met many people who had 10 years of experience but since they stayed with the same company, they really just had 10 x 1 year of experience.

As you grow in seniority, frequent jumps start hurting you.

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

#35

Post by thrwawy20160421 »

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…

Could you elaborate more on what you actually do?

I am really trying to understand how someone is worth $230k+

I am a server-side guy with a CS degree, proficient with C, C++, Java, bash scripting, and some .NET, PHP, Node.js, and I have never gotten close to even $180k in salary, and I have been working for almost 20 years, and I am in the Bay Area.

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

#36

Post by canterburry »

servlate wrote: post #16
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).

Hot tech may help you but only for a short time until it becomes commodity. I think niche is far more stable in the long term. I.e. I specialized in rule engines for 7 years (Drools, JRules, FICO Blaze etc). Not many experts in this field. Not hot, not growing but a constantly in demand niche from companies who can't exist without it.

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

#37

Post by canterburry »

thrwawy20160421 wrote: post #35
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…

Could you elaborate more on what you actually do? I am really trying to understand how someone is worth $230k+ I am a server-side guy with a CS degree, proficient with C, C++, Java, bash scripting, and some .NET, PHP, Node.js, and I have never gotten close to even $180k in salary, and I have been working for almost 20 years, and I am in the Bay Area.

First time I made 230K+ was as a contractor at $120/hour. For several years my fees ranged $105-120/hour. My niche were rule engines (Drools, JRules, FICO Blaze) but I came out of the plain vanilla backend Java world and fortune 500s. In fact, that's where I discovered this need. These days I have moved into management and lead 3 dev teams in the Big Data space.

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

#38

Post by jtfairbank »

canterburry wrote: post #37
thrwawy20160421 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate more on what you actually do? I am really trying to understand how someone is worth $230k+ I am a server-side guy with a CS degree, proficient with C, C++, Java, bash scripting, and some .NET, PHP, Node.js, and I have never gotten close to even $180k in salary, and I have been working for almost 20 years, and I am in the Bay Area.

First time I made 230K+ was as a contractor at $120/hour. For several years my fees ranged $105-120/hour. My niche were rule engines (Drools, JRules, FICO Blaze) but I came out of the plain vanilla backend Java world and fortune 500s. In fact, that's where I discovered this need. These days I have moved into management and lead 3 dev teams in the Big Data space.

I'm looking for a contractor who knows rules based linear integer programming systems like Gurobi or CPLEX (or open source variants). Can you shoot me an email with recommendations? It's in my profile.

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

#39

Post by insamniac »

servlate wrote: post #24
insamniac wrote: post #23

I joined the army and got trained to be an Arabic linguist. That was getting old and frustrating, so I taught myself javascript/ksh/Tcl and made some dumb applications at work, which was enough to get noticed by some neighboring IT shops (I was out of the army, working as a contractor by this time). I ended up doing Groovy, then Java, and now I'm in the government version of "Enterprisy Java" and I feel stuck myself.…

True, but do you think it would be different if you had chosen a different stack? Honest question. Doesn't that 150k lets you afford other fun stuff?

It would if I didn't have mouths to feed, taxes and rent. I'm starting to prefer time over money at this point.

I think my stuckness has more to do with working at a place that's always a few steps behind the private sector, so nothing I'm doing really translates well into finding new work. It doesn't help my confidence, that's for sure.

Besides, if anyone is looking for an experienced Java 7, Spring 3.2, Oracle dev, I probably don't want to work there either!

I know the way out is side projects, building a portfolio, contributing, etc.. and being able to prove (to myself too) that I can do more than what I'm doing currently..

It's the odd coupling of frustration and complacency that I need to figure my way out of.

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

#40

Post by canterburry »

jtfairbank wrote: post #38
canterburry wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I made 230K+ was as a contractor at $120/hour. For several years my fees ranged $105-120/hour. My niche were rule engines (Drools, JRules, FICO Blaze) but I came out of the plain vanilla backend Java world and fortune 500s. In fact, that's where I discovered this need. These days I have moved into management and lead 3 dev teams in the Big Data space.

I'm looking for a contractor who knows rules based linear integer programming systems like Gurobi or CPLEX (or open source variants). Can you shoot me an email with recommendations? It's in my profile.

Sorry to say the only constraints based programmers I know are all PhDs in Operations Research and they run Target's logistics.
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