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Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

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Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#101

Post by sydthrow »

cylinder wrote: post #87
sydthrow wrote: post #66

Male, 43, Sydney, 17 Years experience. No degree. Self taught. 2008 - $125k + 20% bonus - Full-time employee 2009 - $80k - Started my own web development company 2010 - $110k - Built a product 2011 - $132k - Daughter born 2012 - $145k - 2013 - $150k - 2014 - $150k - Son born 2015 - $250k - Hired 1st employee 2016 - $480k - Hired 2nd and 3rd employees

Would you share the general type of client you pursue and sign? Major corporation, SME, digital agency? Just curious which type of clients pay enough to achieve a revenue per employee that high.

Large ASX listed companies, and other medium sized companies. Good to keep them all in similar, if not the same, industry.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#102

Post by this_throwaway »

earcaraxe wrote: post #90
this_throwaway wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full stack web app for some companies with special needs. I have to do everything: biz dev, product management, project management, architect/design, development, DBA, QA, support, dev ops. Also consulting for legal technical due diligence.

When you say consulting do you mean like big consulting companies? KPMG , PWC, etc?

No, just by myself. I do "join" another company which takes care of billing and taxes. For health insurance I just use my wife's company's health plan.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#103

Post by jimmywanger »

totalZero wrote: post #92
jimmywanger wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you ask?

I'm looking for new places to go. My experience with South America has been that some of the best places are the ones that don't readily appear as tourist destinations for North Americans like myself.

I'm more of a central america kinda fellow. I haven't spent any time in South American.

The reason I asked why you asked is it was unclear what information you were interested in. I primarily know about Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

If you want something off the beaten path, try Xela, Guatemala. Your Spanish needs to be adequate, as very few people there speak English (except for expats).

The best places actually are tourist destinations, if you're looking for places to go. If you're looking for a place to settle down for a few months, that's different.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#104

Post by this_throwaway »

jackgolding wrote: post #85
this_throwaway wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Develop yourself. Never stop learning. Have an optimistic outlook. Have a pleasant personality. Work well with others. Don't afraid to do more than necessary. Avoid excessive startup if possible. I was young and naive. After doing 5 or 6 startups, I realized it's a lossy deal. VC spread their risk by investing in 10 companies and assuming 9 would fail. Founders go in with 90% chance of failing but with enough equity…

Thanks for your points, hoping you or someone else can answer a few questions. How did you find the jump from inhouse to doing your own consulting? Is it just a case of getting experience in delivering? i.e. more likely to have success after some junior manager experience inhouse? I had a really good GM in my last job who taught me a fair bit about how the business works - after moving on I've felt that void in other…

You don't need much people management skill to do consulting. You are managing yourself, not running a company. You do need to deal with clients. Product management skill would help tremendously. Basically clients rarely have any clue on what they want. You need to take their vague ideas, map to equivalent feature/functionality, extract the detail from them, and translate those into development functionality. Then fit the change into existing architecture, do the design, and implement them.

On the technical side, try to understand various architecture and how things work together. Do the full stack. Ideally when talking to the clients about a feature, you should be able to figure out what need to be done along the whole pipeline of work.

If you are a software developer and want to go further, I would say get involved in:

- Product management.

- Architecture.

- Go to meetings to talk to clients.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#106

Post by FT_intern »

jeffwass wrote: post #61
ta-20161001 wrote: post #59

Mid-30's. Male. Married. A few kids. SF bay area. > 10 yrs at top tier post-IPO SV company. Backend infra development (C++). One of the top 10-15% engineers in the company. > 400K total comp this year - Going forward, it seems stocks will dominate the total compensation but its okay given the current state of my company. Taxes: effective 35-40% (federal + state + payroll).

When reading these compensation threads, I've been curious about this for awhile. In your valuation, are you counting the stock's price at the time of issuance or time of vesting and delivery? If quoting as of time of delivery, I think it's a bit confusing as it mixes in the capital appreciation or loss of the stock with the employers actual intended total compensation for the year of the award. For example, let's sa…

I thought it was standard to use:

stock comp = (# stocks vesting this year) * (today's price of stock)

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#107

Post by scsilver »

this_throwaway wrote: post #104
jackgolding wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your points, hoping you or someone else can answer a few questions. How did you find the jump from inhouse to doing your own consulting? Is it just a case of getting experience in delivering? i.e. more likely to have success after some junior manager experience inhouse? I had a really good GM in my last job who taught me a fair bit about how the business works - after moving on I've felt that void in other…

You don't need much people management skill to do consulting. You are managing yourself, not running a company. You do need to deal with clients. Product management skill would help tremendously. Basically clients rarely have any clue on what they want. You need to take their vague ideas, map to equivalent feature/functionality, extract the detail from them, and translate those into development functionality. Then fi…

How do you find clients? Clients who aren't misguided about how much software dev costs.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#108

Post by Tech1 »

foobar100 wrote: post #29

33 here, NYC, Finance, major company. 15 years experience. Low-latency trading systems programming, and some management. 380 base, 450 bonus.

Any thoughts on slang / secdb? or are you at a lower level? (i see low latency, don't think they're that close to the metal)

...or not at that firm? email's in my profile. Reach out if you all are looking.

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#109

Post by cylinder »

sydthrow wrote: post #101
cylinder wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you share the general type of client you pursue and sign? Major corporation, SME, digital agency? Just curious which type of clients pay enough to achieve a revenue per employee that high.

Large ASX listed companies, and other medium sized companies. Good to keep them all in similar, if not the same, industry.

What would you say is the reason (advantage) for keeping them in the same industry?

Re: Ask HN: 30+ men and women in software, how much do you make?

#110

Post by dennisgorelik »

throwaway873 wrote: post #76

40 years old, 3 years dev exp., 140k salary (no bonus and not counting options). SF. I have no idea why they offered me so much, but I jumped on it. Wondering what my next move in a couple years should be.

What did you do before you became a software developer?
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