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

What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#41

Post by kottbullar »

pmorais wrote: post #31
0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more exciting if I'm making $300k google salaries at the end of the track. A track with 6-7 difficult rungs and +10% pay increase? nah, I'm good.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

In the US maybe, but definitely not in most of Europe. Software engineers are not as valued here as they are in some parts of the US (SF bay area, Seattle, etc.). As a result, salaries here are pretty miserable.

I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k USD.

Sure, health care is free, education is free (no college fund for my kids) and employer-paid-for pension plans are quite decent, but housing is not cheap (450k USD for a simple 4 bed room family home, luckily I don't live in Stockholm where that costs an additional 200-300k USD) and we also pay 25% VAT on almost everything.

30 days paid vacation (not PTO) per year is pretty sweet and so is the lack of overtime (40 hours is 40 hours) and the parental leave (at home with your kids for a year as a father? no problem!). But man, these salaries that I see quoted here on HN regularly (200-300k) do sting a bit...

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#42

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

barrkel wrote: post #37
pmorais wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

This has not been my experience. I can easily see ways to substantially increase my quality of life at $1 million per year, and at $10 million per year, neither of which I'm close to (unless my lottery tickets, I mean options, pay off).

Ignoring early retirement, consider that those salaries come with less free time, less brain cells to do what you like, and more stress.

A lot of the value you can gain from money (e.g. hiring a maid to clean & cook, buying better quality food) is about clawing back what you lost to get the extra money.

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#43

Post by fizx »

draw_down wrote: post #25
codingdave wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with knowing what you like to do, and doing it. And having folk like you on a team is important - teams struggle whenever everyone is jockeying for a better position. So while "unambitious" can get a negative connotation, it deserves more respect - it gets the job done, and that is valuable.

Mmm, being the only non-striver on a team full of them also sounds like a bad time, a recipe for becoming under-valued. There is a condescension to this thing where people say “hey, that’s ok too” when it’s actually not ok for themselves. I can accept that, it is what it is, but it’s definitely there.

I have a non-striver on my team of strivers. He is quite valued, because he's:

- always fun to be around (a consequence of not being overloaded)

- the guy to say "the emperor has no clothes" (having time to look around does that)

- always accurate with his estimates (because he really doesn't want to work overtime)

- always high-quality with his output (because he's not rushed)

Done right, working at 80% speed means that you have 20% of your time to pick up the super-high-value tasks that might otherwise fall by the wayside.

Now, maybe he'll get promoted more slowly than his potential as a striver, but I don't actually think that's going to happen.

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#44

Post by scarface74 »

blub wrote: post #36
scarface74 wrote: post #16

Working for mostly smaller companies, titles haven’t really meant anything. My influence came mostly from using the other two levers in the organization - building relationships and building a reputation. I have a lot more influence over the technical/infrastructure direction of the company I work for now as “just” a senior developer than I ever had at my last company where I was officially the Dev lead with dotted l…

The compliance seems to rely on you not making mistakes or taking malicious actions, which doesn't really qualify as compliance IMO.

Compliance involves encryption at rest and in transit and with cloud providers making sure you only use HIPAA compliant services, getting BSA’s with external contractors, minimizing who is allowed access to data, etc.

It’s more complicated than this but this is a good overview.

https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-compliance-checklist/

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#46

Post by streblo »

kottbullar wrote: post #41
pmorais wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

In the US maybe, but definitely not in most of Europe. Software engineers are not as valued here as they are in some parts of the US (SF bay area, Seattle, etc.). As a result, salaries here are pretty miserable. I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k…

The grass is always greener. Earning those salaries usually means you're in the bay area, where the median home price is 1.5m USD and you most definitely won't get that 4th bedroom.

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#47

Post by [deleted] »

kottbullar wrote: post #41
pmorais wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

In the US maybe, but definitely not in most of Europe. Software engineers are not as valued here as they are in some parts of the US (SF bay area, Seattle, etc.). As a result, salaries here are pretty miserable. I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k…

[deleted]

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#48

Post by dbcurtis »

draw_down wrote: post #4

Call me unambitious but I think I’d rather just write some code every day.

Yes, well, at some point you get tired of seeing people make the same mistakes over and over. Those people might be senior engineers tasked with architectural design for the first time. Those people might be management with their heads up their....um, with misguided ideas.

So the Senior Staff position may involve less day-to-day coding/design, but a lot more heading off disaster, which I would argue adds huge value to the company, and personally I find satisfying. In fact, there is nothing less satisfying than failing to head off a disaster that you could see coming from miles away.

I remember a very senior IC at one company I worked at, named Gary. Gary basically wandered from meeting-to-meeting, only attending a few minutes because his calendar was routinely triple-booked. He would listen to a few minutes of argumentation, ask the one question that would slice the problem open like a sharp machete to a coconut, and then move on to the next meeting. Didn't design much any more, but his contributions had huge leverage.

Don't write off that some day you may want to be a Gary. It may come naturally at some point, when you frequently start thinking: "I've seen this movie before and it has a baaaad ending."

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#49

Post by mac01021 »

SerialOwl wrote: post #38
generated wrote: post #14

Are the tracks actually parallel? Had she gone into management after 5 years, how would the compensation, promotion opportunities, or job opportunities have differed? I see many people go into management because they think it's the only way to continue to grow a career.

They're parallel in theory and get paid the same, but if you look at the ratio of high-level managers to high level ICs, climbing the management ladder is clearly easier.

I'm not sure it would be easier for me.

Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does

#50

Post by novok »

pmorais wrote: post #31
0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more exciting if I'm making $300k google salaries at the end of the track. A track with 6-7 difficult rungs and +10% pay increase? nah, I'm good.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

You can save the money and retire early with the body of a middle aged vs old person.
Post reply on HN