This is pretty spot on based on my experience.
How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
>1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects A string of one year stints would be a huge red flag to me. I would have a hard time selling this person up as we don't hire FTE's to come and go in a span of 12 months. Too much churn kills you, I'd likely pass unless circumstances where extraordinary.
I'd say 1 year minimum (if you're unhappy), 3 years max if it's a company you enjoy. If you're "meh", start looking at 1.5 years, but only switch if you find something exciting, take your time.
Yeah I wouldn't expect someone to stay when they're unhappy, but I also wouldn't expect to see e.g. eight of those in a row. A couple of short stints here and there, but a pattern would scare me off or at least place them well below similarly qualified candidates.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#13Can someone fill me in, do most jurisdictions allow employers to report to each other how much you made in the previous job? Or is this considered protected data that employers cannot ask for? Which jurisdictions have which rules? Obviously if you don't have to disclose your previous salary you get an advantage. The same advantage as the employer has in not disclosing the salary they paid to the person you'll be repl…
In the US most allow but not always. For instance, NYC recently passed a law forbidding it. Many companies will not report anything other than whether or not you were an employee and the dates of your employment, but that is by their choice to limit lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#14How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years…
How realistic (better question - how likely) is it to set the start point at $100k?
I think I was earning (the equivalent of) $8k/year in my first job hah
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#15In my experience this approach doesn't really scale any higher than junior to senior steps. I was repeatedly told "we just don't hire on levels higher than X". I guess once you reach the famous rockstar level this again becomes a thing, but probably the best bet at moving from 150k to 500k jobs is to stick in one place for ten or so years.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked for many 1 year stints (everywhere I've worked besides my old startup), and have never had a problem finding jobs. Of course I probably wouldn't know if a place passed on me because of that. I wonder what the probability distribution for how much hirers weight "loyalty" or "stick-around-ness" looks like.
Yeah, no idea. I'm not concerned with loyalty so much as I am with dealing with the fallout of churn. I've only ever worked at small companies on small teams, so a single engineer leaving tends to hurt. The company isn't loyal to them, so I expect an engineer to look out for their own self interest in the same way. That said, one year is a pretty short time, and if they're _only_ concerned with that next pay bump the…
What EpicEng said. When I went to Sun it was more than a year before I was really worth anything as a kernel engineer. Took that long for the kernel to "come into focus" for me and the feedback I got from peers and management was that I was fast (I did POSIX conformance in the kernel that first year).
There is a huge difference between being able to fix bugs and being able to fix architecture problems. I needed at least a year before I was capable of the latter in SunOS, probably more than a year.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#17How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years…
IMO, you see diminishing returns once you reach somewhere between ~125k (if you're in a low-demand area) and ~250k (if you're in a high-demand area such as the Bay Area). To get above that, you generally need to both switch jobs and be good at what you do.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#18Can someone fill me in, do most jurisdictions allow employers to report to each other how much you made in the previous job? Or is this considered protected data that employers cannot ask for? Which jurisdictions have which rules? Obviously if you don't have to disclose your previous salary you get an advantage. The same advantage as the employer has in not disclosing the salary they paid to the person you'll be repl…
As far as I know, in my state, a previous employer is only allowed to say weather or not I worked there and for how long. Nothing else should be discussed, legally. IANAL
I've only changed jobs twice in my career but I included my salary requirements in a cover letter and did not disclose my previous salary.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#19How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years…
How realistic (better question - how likely) is it to set the start point at $100k? I think I was earning (the equivalent of) $8k/year in my first job hah
For the big tech employers, specifically as a software developer, a reasonable start point now is probably 140-150k. If that's the premise from GP.
Re: How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer
#20Step 1 - Take a low paying job as your first software job.
Step 2 - Switch jobs for pay increases every couple of years.
Step 3 - When you get to market rate for senior devs, say, "Look! I doubled my salary!"