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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

software.rajivprab.com

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Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#441

Post by deagle50 »

onos wrote: post #169
CodeGlitch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern "progressive" thought-process is to feel guilty about having a good education. I went to private school in the UK and the only thing I feel is infinite gratitude to my parents for forking-out the money to send me there (they were not rich, they were both teachers).

There is a lot of encouragement of guilt in the USA today. In general, shouldn’t we embrace a value system that encourages good behavior? Eg honor those who do relatively well in life, given the circumstances they are born into? The immediate leap to discredit the success of others through assertion of privilege seems like it would discourage doing well. A better solution imho would be to celebrate success but to als…

Completely agree. This guilt culture is little more than an attempt to retain the benefits of the "privilege" vs sharing the spoils with the less fortunate.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#442

Post by anxrn »

foldr wrote: post #303
Aeolun wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People from Sweden should have a fairly easy time emigrating to the US right?

It's a bit of a myth that it's easy for people from European countries to emigrate to the US. Generally speaking there are no special visas available. You would either have to look into getting an H1B or one of the O1 visas. The O1 route is difficult, and the H1B route, while attainable, is a big PITA, and leaves you in a rather insecure position (especially if you have a spouse).

While I completely agree the H1B is a PITA, it has been and continues to be the primary vehicle for the huge % of tech-employed immigrants to attain the sort of independence referred to in the OP.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#444

Post by foldr »

anxrn wrote: post #440
foldr wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't have explicitly racist immigration laws. Being white might give you some kind of an advantage (even though it obviously shouldn't), but you'll still have to go through the same process as anyone else.

Not directly racist, but there's a huge difference in effective waiting times for employment based green cards by country, mainly due to the per-country cap. Roughly speaking, for similarly qualified folks applying in the EB2 category in 2021, Indian immigrants (worst case), approval can take 15+ years, while immigrants from Sweden will take 2-3 years at most (was less than a year pre-COVID).

That's true. However, even getting to the point where you can apply for a green card is not a straightforward process. And if you are on an H1B it is still the case that your spouse cannot work in the US until you are (at least) in the process of getting your green card. So I would say that few people in Sweden would have a "fairly easy" time of immigrating to the US (though it is certainly possible).

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#445

Post by comprev »

uejfiweun wrote: post #422
luxurytent wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My friend and I are both self taught engineers (as are several others in our social circle — all coming from similar roots and places) We are continuously flabbergasted how much we are paid, and it’s not even FAANG levels; still, it’s more than many other skilled and important roles in the workforce. Part of me understands that there’s still a lot of money to be made and thus, salaries should continue to be high…

Salaries won't decrease until the demand of people to work in tech eclipses the demand of society for new tech. This works both ways. If a ton of people suddenly become interested in coding, this could pop the bubble. And if society suddenly stops demanding new technology (perhaps due to some catastrophic hack), then the bubble pops as well. The scary thing is that the latter is probably more likely to happen than th…

The high demand is for experienced developers and not juniors. In recent years there has been an uptick in coding interest and the pool of newcomers is bigger than ever before. However, the _quality_ of this torrent of new developers is seen to be lower than previous years.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#446

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

onos wrote: post #169
CodeGlitch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern "progressive" thought-process is to feel guilty about having a good education. I went to private school in the UK and the only thing I feel is infinite gratitude to my parents for forking-out the money to send me there (they were not rich, they were both teachers).

There is a lot of encouragement of guilt in the USA today. In general, shouldn’t we embrace a value system that encourages good behavior? Eg honor those who do relatively well in life, given the circumstances they are born into? The immediate leap to discredit the success of others through assertion of privilege seems like it would discourage doing well. A better solution imho would be to celebrate success but to als…

> but to also encourage the successful to share their insights with others

laughing my ass off ... I expect the successful first and formost to share their success through actually paying taxes - then we can talk about their advice which won't be useful for the majority anyway b/c success in monetary terms is always defined by being focused on a minority.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#448

Post by mirker »

rexreed wrote: post #274
deanmoriarty wrote: post #193

I do not understand why articles like these consistently score poorly on HN? Of course it’s all based on luck, but that doesn’t make it an uninteresting read. I admire the diligence of the author, and how well they played the lucky cards they were given. I am frequently in awe when reading technical articles on HN, with people advancing the state of the art in some technology. Those people also are incredibly lucky,…

The reason why I think these articles score poorly is because I think my reaction is like most reactions (not all, but most). I read the article, saw the salary table, did an eyeroll, and then skimmed the rest. The article can be summed up as "get a high paying job in a career that requires technical skills, save more than you spend, and invest what you save". Did I miss anything in that summarization?

The part where their salary wasn’t very good in the salary table; you have to play the market, which is currently favorable toward software engineering.

I’m not sure what people are expecting. Eating rice and beans on $100k is still less than $100k savings.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#449

Post by supernova87a »

stocknoob wrote: post #413
supernova87a wrote: post #109

Here's 2 questions for the "FIRE" crowd. 1) To stop working when you hit a certain number seems to me to be falling into the faulty logic illustrated in Freakonomics -- when a taxi driver works every day towards a certain $ figure, he suffers on crappy days (keeps on driving to little benefit) when fares are just not coming, and cuts off his earnings on great days where business is pouring in like crazy. Instead, you…

You’re floating on a boat in the ocean. Do you want to be in a boat that is sinking, and requires you to bail water every day, or one that is naturally buoyant? “Oh, if you don’t have to bail water to keep from drowning you’ll just sit there in the ocean not doing anything.” No. You can go where you want, without worry. “But I like bailing water, it gives me purpose, I want to do this forever!” That’s nice, I like fi…

Interesting, but that's a particular interpretation of work, isn't it? That's it's toiling at bailing out a sinking ship?

What if work is like growing a garden and the more you do the more you get?

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#450

Post by gxespino »

giantg2 wrote: post #356
dan-robertson wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication of the article, that such compensation is reasonably possible to a moderately competent software developer working for big companies in the United States, seems pretty reasonable to me. Another thing one could note is the bump in compensation in recent years, which could be a combination of stock going up, more experience making the author a more valuable employee, or market rates for software enginee…

"I learnt that even an average engineer with a five-figure salary can become a millionaire by her late 30s, through financial discipline and investment planning." Then why doe the article mention average as part of the target audience? "The implication of the article, that such compensation is reasonably possible to a moderately competent software developer working for big companies in the United States, seems pretty…

"It's simply not possible for an average person like me to make that kind of money."

Putting these sort of limitations on yourself, from my experience, will dampen the effort that you put in to achieve new levels, if you even try at all. That reduced effort will result in exactly what you predicted for yourself.

So, begs the question, what sort of effort have you put in to increase your pay past the median dev salary.

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