Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Salary Progression in Tech

georgestocker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 631 posts

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#501

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#502

Post by aristophenes »

throwaway011010 wrote: post #487
aristophenes wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just live and work in the USA my whole life, if anything I'm wrong about France. I'm not going to bother to refute most of your claims, as the premise is what are the salaries of tech people, not what are the standards of living of jobless people in San Francisco. Most of the US population, including myself and most of my acquaintances, live outside of those major cities, and that was the point I was making. You li…

Amazing. I just caught you out making stuff up and now you resort to making yet again even more stuff up: "Education expenses are whatever you want to pay" (yeah, let's just buy 1/10th of a Bachelor degree, sounds like a plan to cut the costs), "you listed off literally the most expensive places to live in the USA, where the majority of people do not live" (sure, nobody lives in major cities) (why the hell are they c…

https://www.bestvalueschools.com/most-affordable-universitie...

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#504

Post by salaryowmew343 »

cpursley wrote: post #495
salaryowmew343 wrote: post #433

2008-2010: Waiter: 6£/h 2010: Intern 4$/h 2011: Intern about 6400£ after taxes for 2 months 2013: 28k/year 2014: 40k/year 2015: 55k/year (£) 2016: Contractor with full employee benefits, remote, python, startup - $75k/year. Small bonus after the startup was bought. 2018: two remote contracts. Working 6 days a week for 12h. After taxes and all my expenses - I live very comfortable lifestyle - I was saving for retireme…

> Not sure how to invest money Low fee index funds

My friends were recommending Vanguard. Sadly, it's not available at my location.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#505

Post by ed_balls »

mettamage wrote: post #138

Didn’t read the article, I did read the thread. How do I get into the USA? The difference is too big, even when I give 20% to charity. Or any ideas how to become well off in Europe? Tech feels so much more difficult than manager or other business roles (cognitively). I feel like I should switch if I can’t get into the USA.

> Or any ideas how to become well off in Europe?

Start your own company. Work remotely for a US company. Or do both - the company doesn't have to be a startup.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#506

Post by DVassallo »

yomly wrote: post #438
DVassallo wrote: post #27

My progression: 2008: Graduated with a BS in CS from University of London. I grew up in Europe. 2008: €30K - Joined a small company in Europe as their only programmer doing vehicle GPS tracking. 2009: €30K - Still there. 2010: €50K - Joined Amazon in Dublin, Ireland as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team. 2011: €75K - Still at Amazon, same team. 2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promote…

what do L5s and L6s SDEs earn in London - do you have any insight into location based differences?

I don’t know unfortunately. But if I were to guess, I think in the same ballpark as Seattle, maybe a bit lower.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#507

Post by throwaway011010 »

vecinu wrote: post #17
expertentipp wrote: post #2

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…

I wholeheartedly agree with this comment.

If we are to compare US vs EU salaries, we must take into account healthcare cost, retirement, welfare, parental leave, PTO and so on. Otherwise the whole purpose of the exercise is pointless and it may embellish on side of the argument vis-a-vis the other.

How do you call that sort of tactics already? Propaganda, right? The POTUS would respond "Fake News!" (although I'm not fond of him).

Ignorance and complacency run amok on HN these days.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#508

Post by DVassallo »

gok wrote: post #494
koolba wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speculate on mindset or motivation, but based on purely financials I’d have suggested sticking it out for a few more years to build up a larger nest egg. It’s not just the risk of not succeeding at your next venture; there’s the follow up risk that after failure you can’t get back in the game where you left off. That said, best of luck to you. Fortune favors the brave!

Assuming DV was able to save a good% of their money and get a reasonable return on it, their nest egg could easily be a couple million today. After taxes etc another 3 years might only grow that 10-15%.

Yes, staying another year wouldn’t have made a big difference. My net worth is around $1.4M with $1M in liquid savings. In the last 2 years I added ~$200K per year in savings. I just didn’t want to keep postponing. Otherwise there’s always a reason to wait another year or two.

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#509

Post by web007 »

I've traded $ for time twice so far, and overall I'm okay with that.

  1999 23k first full-time job, hourly, Maryland
  2000 25k
  2001 28k
  2002 30k
  2003 34k
  2004 36k
  2005 39k promoted to salaried position
  2006 76k moved to Silicon Valley as SWE, Mountain View
  2007 88k
  2008 106k company bought
  2009 158k residual stock
  2010 153k new gig in RWC
  2011 133k
  2012 149k new gig in Mountain View
  2013 146k
  2014 137k
  2015 168k company bought, new gig in SF
  2016 181k
  2017 165k new gig in Santa Clara
  2018 161k

Re: My Salary Progression in Tech

#510

Post by mythrowaway232 »

From https://secure.ssa.gov/mySSA/start

Total income. Never received stock/RSUs/etc. All positions were more-or-less individual contributor. Never worked in a large city.

  2000 $ 37,663 First real job (software developer)  
  2001 $ 42,164  
  2002 $ 42,561  
  2003 $ 50,567  
  2004 $ 50,001  
  2005 $ 89,541  
  2006 $100,541  
  2007 $108,299  
  2008 $114,333  
  2009 $122,458 Team lead  
  2010 $133,764  
  2011 $135,101 Went 100% remote  
  2012 $145,651  
  2013 $151,963  
  2014 $152,985  
  2015 $156,734  
  2016 $172,678 ~$50k bonus pre-tax  
  2017 $176,794 ~$60k bonus pre-tax  
  2018 $225,846 ~$80k bonus pre-tax
Post reply on HN