Obviously a throwaway.
I worked at a Series C startup in the Bay Area as an architect. I made about 450K in total cash comp + lots of options.
Some of the executives were clearing over 500K a year in cash.
Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
11–20 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#12First off, are you talking base salary or full package? There is no such thing as $200k base salary for 10 years exp in java. You'd have to specialize. $170k/y base salary for an eng manager is right where you want to be. If your talking about base salary + bonus + annual sotcks/RSU's then you're way below market.
Not to sound like an asshole, but there probably is. There probably are roles paying $500k a year doing exactly that. Not many, but they will be out there for certain people.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#13I'm at $95k Canadian. These threads make me feel bad.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#14Currently making ~$300k/year in total comp.
31 years old. 5 years of experience as a hardware engineer, and 2 years as a software engineer (back-end).
Master's degree from Stanford.
Practice hackerrank, cracking-the-coding-interview, read a programming/architecture book every few months, till you can ace programming interviews and understand your field really well.
Living in NYC, where the financial companies have driven comp levels really high for software-engineers.
Working at a big-4 software company.
Currently at my 4th company. Interview and negotiate aggressively at many different places every time you switch, so you can get 20-40% increases.
Don't know how much this helped me, but do a side-project and blog about your experiences.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#15graduated in 2009, found a sales job on craigslist at a startup, startup was invested in by Google, worked in another startup, got recruited by facebook, gg
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#16making 220k base salary, as an architect in bay area - about 20 yrs in the industry, 5 here in bay area - java/hadoop etc etc
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#17First off, are you talking base salary or full package? There is no such thing as $200k base salary for 10 years exp in java. You'd have to specialize. $170k/y base salary for an eng manager is right where you want to be. If your talking about base salary + bonus + annual sotcks/RSU's then you're way below market.
Not to sound like an asshole, but there probably is. There probably are roles paying $500k a year doing exactly that. Not many, but they will be out there for certain people.
Yeah I've seen positions offering 200k base salary for less then 10 years experience with java.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#18I make $190k base:
$190k base + $10k signing bonus + RSUs = ~$300k total comp
> what your role/salary/experience is.
Senior full-stack engineer. Located in SF.
> How did you get your high salary?
Interviewed at many companies and received multiple offers. Kept every door open, made sure the company/team knew I was excited to join, and moved the negotiations and base salary forward. It helped a lot to have an existing open offer when companies asked what I was making previously. This anchored their starting offer.
> How have you been raising it?
Switched jobs my salary increased by $10k, $40k, $10k, and $60k. Contracting for 4 years increased my yearly income to $330k. The biggest raise was interviewing at 10+ companies and choosing the best offer. Got a lot of rejection emails too.
> Do you plan for it, or does the company reward you automatically?
I never received a substantial raise without switching companies. Larger companies with lucrative bonus programs might be different.
> Do you switch jobs a lot?
First company I stayed 5 years, second 3 years, third 1.5 years, fourth 6 months, fifth just started a few months ago.
Out of my friend circle I'm not the highest paid engineer. A friend just accepted a senior engineer position a recent IPO company making $210k base. Another friend is an eng. manager at a finance company making $1m but not sure if that's base or total comp.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#19Obviously a throwaway. I worked at a Series C startup in the Bay Area as an architect. I made about 450K in total cash comp + lots of options. Some of the executives were clearing over 500K a year in cash.
How did that turn out?
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#20First thing first. I am FANATIC about people calling me 'programmer' or 'Java Programmer' or even 'coder'.
Even though I DO code and I DO write programs, I never define myself as such and promptly call people out when they call me that.
I focus on the value I bring. It can be Java with Hadoop and it can be deploying a Kubernetes cluster or writing a React application. I solve problems in a creative way.
I am making more than 200K. I don't work for the big 4 (or 5 or 50 or 100 or even 1000)
Recently switched jobs. Making 200K base and around 280K total comp.
Recently, to be honest, I am really less focused on the numbers. I live in SV and those numbers make no sense. I would be more than happy making 150K and saving and investing more money than I am able to right now.