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My Salary Progression in Tech

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Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#461

Post by gortok »

danielg5 wrote: post #52
core-questions wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article starts out with a fairly standard condemnation of white people for daring to keep our salary information to ourselves, and/or for daring to believe that we make the money we make fairly (you know, by delivering value to our employers).

No, it doesn’t. It starts out with a tweet saying that people in general (not just white people) have issues with discussing salaries. The tweet then says that white people in particular should openly discuss their salaries because we all know that some companies try their best to swindle employees, and that in general white people have a better sense about what it means to be fairly compensated. Is that not what you…

Agreed (author here).

It's a really taboo subject to talk about to begin with; and there are really two extremes that you'll hear:

1. It's a meritocracy and anyone can do this! (It isn't, and they can't)

2. Yea, this will work for you but not in general. (You're probably right on this one, as my salary and my progression are very personal things).

To thread the needle, I'm trying to point out that I acknowledge #2, and explicitly reject #1 as empirically false; and I hope that by sharing my salary, I bring light to the fact that #1 is false, and that if more people who are similarly advantaged as I am talk about it, we can make #2 no longer be the case.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#462

Post by vonmoltke »

My abbreviated progression (by company):

2002 - 2012: $55,770 + ~3% => $85,000 + ~3% (EE to SysE, Dallas)

2012 - 2016: $78,000 => $95,000 (Senior SWE, Dallas)

2016 - 2018: $160,000 + $20,000 => $166,000 + $26,000 (Senior SWE, NYC)

2018: $180,000 + 20% + $15,000 (Team lead, aborted after five months, NYC)

2019: $180,000 + 20% + $112,500 (Senior SWE, working towards Staff soon, NYC)

I used to have a more detailed history, but I seem to have lost it.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#463

Post by aristophenes »

biztos wrote: post #202
aristophenes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this thinking. I think everyone is making the comparison to Silicon Valley, which is ridiculously expensive because their are too many people making too much money that all want to be in the same place. In most of the USA, not only do you make more than you would in France, but things are actually cheaper, not more expensive. Imagine you make $150,000/year, a really nice house cost $300,000 (think $2,000…

> too many people making too much money The people making "too much money" are doing the indispensable work that generates the profit (or chance-at-profit) for their employers, and the employers are by definition OK with paying them that share, which even in very profitable industries is highly unlikely to be as big a share as "management" gets. If people in France get a much smaller cut (I assume they do, people in…

I should clarify, I don't think there is anything wrong with being paid a lot to do valuable work. I didn't mean it that way when I wrote it, I'm not used to this concept that people that make a lot of money are doing something wrong. Seems like they are doing something that people value a lot.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#464

Post by elbear »

mettamage wrote: post #447
iSpiderman wrote: post #353

> It's always been my intention to retire early, > I'm interested in making huge money and retiring early, > I don't begrudge people with their crazy salaries but I do get frustrated that I can't find success myself. I am shocked and surprised at the same time (knowing that I only selected quotes of a few commentators). Shocked to see the same mindset as many managing consultants and investment bankers I have met and…

> Choose life, not career. Find something you love doing and do it for the 'work' itself, not for some postponed happiness. Insightful story about the investment banker. Your policy about choosing life feels like good advice in light of that story. The implementation details, that’s where it always gets difficult. My story: I want to make music. I think of music all the time. Whenever I made music I was passionate ab…

Look for the middle ground. I realized that I want to work on things I like, but I still need to eat, so I've decided to split my time. I want to work at least an hour to something I'm passionate about. That way, even if I spend more of my time working for someone else, I know I still spend some of my time doing something I love.

So follow your passion, but also your survival instinct.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#465

Post by throwawayosiu1 »

So I had posted this earlier but I'll post again with another update. I'm based out of Toronto.

    2012 - small business owner                             - 60k AED / yr (no taxes) - built Wordpress websites in my spare time
    2013 - technical cloud marketing intern                 - 60k / yr CAD            - FAANGish company
    2013 - contractor                                       - 30k / yr CAD            - Engineering consultancy
    2014 - Software Dev Fullstack                           - 22k / yr CAD            - early stage startup
    2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 55k / yr CAD            - very early stage startup
    2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 60k / yr CAD            - very early stage startup
    2016 - Software Dev                                     - 60k / yr CAD            - medium stage startup
    2016 - Techincal Consultant                             - 90k / yr CAD            - small public company
    2017 - Software Engineer + DevOps                       - 99k / yr CAD            - medium public company
    2018 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE          - 120k / yr CAD           - medium public company
    2019 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE          - 135k / yr CAD           - medium public company
I was in the process of getting promoted and getting a higher raise, but stuff (some in my control and some out of) didn't work out. I've been focusing on my life for a bit.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#466

Post by arandr0x »

aj_g wrote: post #449
iSpiderman wrote: post #353

> It's always been my intention to retire early, > I'm interested in making huge money and retiring early, > I don't begrudge people with their crazy salaries but I do get frustrated that I can't find success myself. I am shocked and surprised at the same time (knowing that I only selected quotes of a few commentators). Shocked to see the same mindset as many managing consultants and investment bankers I have met and…

Agreed. I'm at a stage in my life where my median friend probably is between 'just entering the workforce' and maybe 2 years of experience (from uni). One reoccurring idea in my mind right now is the notion of 'selling out'--what does the transition look like from "I'm happy living frugally like a college student" to prioritizing your career in your waking hours of your life? What does it look like to slowly convince…

In my experience, even if you stay frugal, and I did, the main change comes from the job requiring full-time hours (and some weird culture stuff). I worked part-time in college and programming hasn't changed, but then I had daylight hours to walk outside, the freedom to stay home if I felt sick, etc. I started working F/T and almost immediately, the hour+ commute and not seeing daylight in winter rewired my brain. Suddenly, my mornings were spent preparing my lunch so I could go to work, my evenings cooking dinner and recovering from work, and on the weekends, I did everything except talk about work. (In those days my partner was still a student, and it made the contrast greater).

After the first year, my work had become my only source of pride; after the second, I was constantly wondering how to be better at work; three years after that, I engaged in a hobby for the first time in my adult life. It snuck up. I don't like money that much and I never made the conscious decision to prioritize my career; but it ate my life and I doubled down because it was all I had left.

The fact is, for most young adults, jobs pop into their life right on cue to replace the family they're no longer seeing and the dreams that have disappointed them (around 25 where that first crisis hits). If you're 25 and lonely do not go to work happy hours. If you're bored don't take work home. When your boss tells you you're very promising and he can see you grow in this company, tell yourself you're an interesting person who's had a life full of stories that people would love to get to know. The best promises are the ones you make yourself.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#467

Post by Retra »

elbear wrote: post #464
mettamage wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Choose life, not career. Find something you love doing and do it for the 'work' itself, not for some postponed happiness. Insightful story about the investment banker. Your policy about choosing life feels like good advice in light of that story. The implementation details, that’s where it always gets difficult. My story: I want to make music. I think of music all the time. Whenever I made music I was passionate ab…

Look for the middle ground. I realized that I want to work on things I like, but I still need to eat, so I've decided to split my time. I want to work at least an hour to something I'm passionate about. That way, even if I spend more of my time working for someone else, I know I still spend some of my time doing something I love. So follow your passion, but also your survival instinct.

Then get cancer and die young.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#468

Post by Double_a_92 »

person_of_color wrote: post #162
DVassallo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base salary was $160K since 2014. But why? The stock part ended up as money in my bank. These aren’t stock options like startups give. Public companies like to pay with stock because it didn’t impact their cash flow. The shareholders pay for it via dilution.

Did you sell stock as soon as it vests? Why?

Diversification. Even if you want stocks, you don't want them all from the same company. It would be better to just stick that money into some S&P500 index fund.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#469

Post by sopooneo »

mettamage wrote: post #447
iSpiderman wrote: post #353

> It's always been my intention to retire early, > I'm interested in making huge money and retiring early, > I don't begrudge people with their crazy salaries but I do get frustrated that I can't find success myself. I am shocked and surprised at the same time (knowing that I only selected quotes of a few commentators). Shocked to see the same mindset as many managing consultants and investment bankers I have met and…

> Choose life, not career. Find something you love doing and do it for the 'work' itself, not for some postponed happiness. Insightful story about the investment banker. Your policy about choosing life feels like good advice in light of that story. The implementation details, that’s where it always gets difficult. My story: I want to make music. I think of music all the time. Whenever I made music I was passionate ab…

To build on what you said: in my twenties I fell in briefly with a group of pretty elite level, classically trained, working musicians. Though I am not a music person at all myself. I would go to their (very fun) parties and just got to know them and their scene a bit. Do you know what they talked about more than anything else? More than theory or favorite artists or their instruments?

Money.

They had to be obsessed with it, about where to get it, what gigs were paying how much, about when to sell out for it. Because none of them had any, but they all still needed to pay the rent.

Amazing people, astonishing talent, wild life. Constant worry.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#470

Post by rpiguy »

philipp-H wrote: post #284

These are unbelievably high salaries. In Germany such salaries are possible only at management positions (not talking about IB) of large companies only. I visited US 3 years back and I found everything better - clothing cheaper, food more delicious, people friendlier and houses bigger. Yes you don't have social security and have poverty issues but I would still be in US than in Europe considering the amount of money…

There is very little concept of thrift left in the United States, so if you make a huge salary the entire economy is designed for you to spend it all and more.

What do I mean by that? The more you make, the more banks aggressively offer you credit. You have no idea how many people I know that make several hundred thousand a year, but are crippled by debt.

Not just mortgages on big houses, if you make a lot of money banks literally mail you forms saying "Sign this and mail it back and we will deposit $100,000 into your bank account, Pre-Approved."

I agree with the other person who commented and said it would be better to live in the US for 10 or 20 years and then return to Germany to retire.

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