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My Salary Progression in Tech

georgestocker.com

81–90 of 631 posts

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#81
2014: $0 - Dropped out of school

2015: $45k - Freelance

2016: $75k - First big boy job

2017: $90k - Second job

2017: $110k

2017: $125k

2018: $135k - Third job

2019: $155k - Fourth job

2017 was a trainwreck. All positions are generalist (mobile, full stack, devops, design, etc.) because company sizes have been tiny. Figures do not include stock or bonuses because that number is pretty much zero.

I live in a major metro area and feel massively undervalued but I don't want to sell out to BigCo

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#82
24 years as a dev (estimated - can’t remember all these ...)

Mostly SFBayArea...

1995 - 30k (startup)

1996 - 40k

1997 - 60k

1998 - 100k (consulting)

1999 - 120k

2000 - 150k

2001 - 80k (dotcom crash)

2002 - 80k

2003 - 120k (bank)

2004 - 125k

2005 - 90k (startup)

2006 - 125k

2007 - 140k

2008 - 125k

2009 - 140k

2010 - 150k

2011 - 165k

2012 - 150k (contracting)

2013 - 125k

2014 - 1M (startup sold)

2015 - 60k (startup)

2016 - 100k

2017 - 150k

2018 - 500k Eng mgr

2019 - 600k expected

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#83

Some context: PhD in EE, but spend most of my time coding. 2011: $100k, industry R&D lab, VA 2012: $150k, “”, “” 2013: $150k, “”, “” 2014: $0, self-employed and didn’t turn a profit 2015: $100k, academic researcher, Midwest 2016: $160k, industry R&D, SV 2017: $165k, “”, “” 2018: $170k, “”, “” Since 2016, I’ve been working in SV for a company that pays engineers all cash, a modest bonus, and no stock. I like the work…

Honestly, time to leave SV if you want to provide for a family. I'm in Atlanta. 10 years experience, 135k base, 150k total comp (401k and bonus). You can easily provide what you parents provides you here for 100k salary, which can be easily had. No one will judge you if you don't have large scale systems experience.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#84
Didn't feel comfortable sharing on my real account, but thought some might find this interesting.

Gender: male Location: east coast * 2013 - Graduated without a degree in CS. Worked at small start-up for 55k, no equity.

* 2014 - Raise to 75k, 0.5%

* 2015 - Raise to 85k, 1%

* 2016 - Quit for a FAANG. 220k total comp.

* 2017 - After 2 promos at the FAANG, ~330k.

* 2018 - After good previous year, received a special stock grant and made 475k. Same eng level.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An income over 220k is easily > 90% percentile. I do not know what upper middle class is supposed to mean. Does it mean 90-95 percentile?

> An income over 220k is easily > 90% percentile. Every source I can find (2014-2018 data from a variety of places) puts it between 97th and just over 98th; probably hasn't changed more than a couple of points since. > I do not know what upper middle class is supposed to mean. Does it mean 90-95 percentile? If by “middle class” one means petit bourgeoisie , then 95th to 99.something percentile for the upper range of…

You could probably draw a quantitative line according to fraction of income paid as tax, since capital gains follow, ahem, different rules. It's good to be king!

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#86

East coast but not big city: 2018: $49k (first SE job) 2019: $52k (first raise!)

Aside from the year, that is so similar to my first SE job:

East coast but not big city: 1999 $48k, 2000 $52k

I suppose inflation has been mild. Showing up in the height of the Y2K/web frenzy sure helped. I got myself a nice embedded RTOS kernel developer job before even finishing my degree. Meanwhile, everybody else was running off to invent web development or repair COBOL.

People graduating just a couple years later slammed into a dead market.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#87
Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area

2012 - $55k software engineer out of college at a Series B startup

San Francisco Bay Area

2013 - $95k software engineer at same Series B startup

2014 - $120k software software engineer at new Series C startup

2015 - $130k full stack engineer at new Series B startup

2016 - Minor CoLA increase

2017 - Minor CoLA increase

2018 - $140k lead frontend engineer at angel, friends and family round startup

2019 - $150k pay increase at same startup after raising seed round

Edit for formatting.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#88
post #17

This is very American centric. Whites in Europe are lucky to earn half that on architect positions (please don’t come up with „standard of living” and „social services and benefits”).

Don't forget that this is before taxes, retirement savings, healthcare and other deductions. You can't just hand-wave away "standard of living" and "social services and benefits". These may be things you take for granted but a large majority of the population has to have a large emergency refund in case they get severed from their company without any notice for any reason (Compare that with job security in France or…

> Consider you need to save a ton of money yourself in government sponsored accounts such as HSA or FSAs for future healthcare expenses that you can't possibly estimate when you're 20 years old.

HSA’s are good investments, but FSAs don’t roll over I believe, so they’re actually quite terrible for 20 year olds

Your analysis is a little idealistic though. I wouldn’t feel certain about social security nets 50 years out. I would take the cash any day.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a big bump in 2016 because I got a competing offer from Oracle, and Amazon matched it. 2017 and 2018 growth was from stock appreciation. If the stock hadn’t increased so much, the last 2 years would have been at around the 2016 level. AFAIK, people with ~10 years experience commonly get offers at around my 2016 level.

I was wondering about that. I mean when I was at Sun they paid a market wage and had an employee stock purchase plan[1]. When I left Sun in '95 the stock I had left was worth about $1.2M, it had gone from the $20's to over a $100 and split twice (if you do the math that was $60,000 worth of stock to begin with, which had accumulated over about 6 years). I don't think of my wages being $1.2M so much as I happened to g…

But ~$500K is the market rate right now. Several people I know got that amount at Google, Facebook, and Oracle here in Seattle with ~10 years experience in cloud or AI/ML. Amazon’s stock increase has inflated the market rates because other companies had to pay so much in the last 3 years for people to leave Amazon. Obviously there’s no guarantee that this will last forever, but I was pretty confident I would have continued to make $500K/year as long as the market conditions remained the same. I also had enough unvested RSUs until end of 2020 to make that much.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#90

Salary progression, no college degree. Cash only comp, no RSUs or anything like that. 20 - $65k (Office Rural NY, SE) 21 - $65k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE) 22 - $75k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE) 23 - $85k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE) 24 - $85k (Remote, 10 Person Startup, SE) 25 - $225k (Remote, SF Series B Startup, Lead SE) 26 - $225k (Remote, SF Series B Startup, Lead SE) 27 - $393k (Office, SF Series C/D…

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