$350k total with $160k base as CTO of medium sized company (350 employees)
I got a masters degree, started as a junior at a small company and stuck with it for 15 years.
Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
31–40 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#32Senior eng manager at one of the big tech companies, been there about 10 years, 20 years total experience, high performer, work in a non bay area office.
~$300k base, ~100k bonus, ~$500k stock, per year.
Individual contributor engineers at the same job level / experience at our company generally make a little more, compared with people on the manager track.
If those numbers seem shocking, keep in mind that the most reliable way to get wealthy is not to gamble on a startup, but to get your way into a Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc., and stay there for a decade or two.
Which makes sense, since those are the companies making all the profits, and give generously back to retain top employees.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#33I have the opposite question for people here: what drives you to more money?
A very expensive house costs a few million dollars, which you should afford quite easily, especially if you have a partner making a decent amount of money. Children and their education cost quite a bit in the US, but even that shouldn't cost a lot. A few expensive holidays per year plus retirement money should be easily doable.
So, basically, why do you want/need more money?
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#34I live in Montreal and make 95K CAD. 10 years java. Not a startup.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#35I'm at $95k Canadian. These threads make me feel bad.
Makes me feel bad also, until I think of the living costs in US big cities. I would really like to see an European version of this thread. Probably the bar would be set somewhere around EUR 100k?
Well, except for London or Switzerland then definitely 100k should be the benchmark.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#36Currently 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 dr…
>financial companies
>do a side-project
I'm trying to make a unique programming side-project that would get me in the door with financial companies.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#37First 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.
There's definitely 200k base for <10 years in Java. I'm happy to assure you of that because I've seen it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#38200k US$? I am from Germany, currently working in a company and studying at a university (both in the fields of computer science). To be honest, I never thought about how much I wanna earn in 5 or 10 years, but 200k US$ is super high.. Or am I missing something? I don't know how the US tax system works, but is this, what you can spend? Or is it 200k US$ minus taxes? I am kinda confused right know, can somebody help m…
Yes, I assume we are talking about gross earnings before taxes.
Thank God, already thought about moving to the USA
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#39I run a company that collects compensation data. We do have a lot of people making well over $200K, though its much rarer in pure salary form. Most of the people in our database with masters degrees and a few years of top-tier experience make in the $120K-$160K salary range, but including stock options and bonuses, a lot of people are easily passing $300K at top companies in mid-level engineering and product roles.
I'd be happy to do some custom data pulls for anyone if anyone has any specific questions. If you want to explore more of the data yourself, check out https://www.transparentcareer.com
Re: Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?
#40I have the opposite question for people here: what drives you to more money? A very expensive house costs a few million dollars, which you should afford quite easily, especially if you have a partner making a decent amount of money. Children and their education cost quite a bit in the US, but even that shouldn't cost a lot. A few expensive holidays per year plus retirement money should be easily doable. So, basically…
Wife (no job), kids (2), high rent (or living in a rural area, which is not nice for various convenience reasons).
I would love to earn more money. Then again, I look at the post, shake my head and have a salary at about 30% of the GP's target (numbers, not currency. Not in the US).
With 100k+? I'd be comfortable forever. Maybe the US is that much more expensive.