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Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

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Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#51

Post by mastercoms »

soulbadguy wrote: post #47
starmole wrote: post #24

It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…

what do you mean by good, not exceptional...?

He is trying to make his sentence natural. As in, he is talking, and correcting himself by saying "good, hmm, uhh, no!, exceptional!"

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#52

Post by sosuke »

catshirt wrote: post #50
fishcakes wrote: post #19

Here are a few ideas: - Selling enterprise software (you can make 10%-20% of an 8 or 9 figure deal) - Selling securities in some form or another (you make ~5% of deals worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars) - high leverage consulting (solving very hard tech problems for lots of people. for example: I have a friend who helps a whole bunch of computer vision companies and makes a ton. Another friend is an S…

forgive my lack of imagination / education, what kind of enterprise software could a sole developer create that would land 8/9 figure contracts?

I took GP to mean as a technical sales person, sales engineers make a commission.

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#53

Post by catshirt »

sosuke wrote: post #52
catshirt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

forgive my lack of imagination / education, what kind of enterprise software could a sole developer create that would land 8/9 figure contracts?

I took GP to mean as a technical sales person, sales engineers make a commission.

thanks, i must not have read that too carefully. :)

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#54

Post by hamburglar »

I think the best approach is to stop believing the hype that you went into a vocation that'll net you obscene wealth and instead thank your lucky stars at having entered a field that you (hopefully) enjoy and which also happens to pay a damn good salary. From that point: hard work and perseverance will let you save a pretty respectable retirement fund. And the work isn't even that hard.

I'm sorry to be the grumpy old man in this thread, but asking how to turn your developer job into $1MM/year is like a high school kid planning to play pro basketball.

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#55

Post by jerguismi »

starmole wrote: post #24

It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…

Is the $600k salary, bonuses, stock options or? Sounds quite incredible to me. I haven't heard from any dev making this kind of salary, not even in the big companies.

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#56

Post by ryandrake »

starmole wrote: post #24

It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…

If what you say is true about your own situation, you must realize that you are an extreme outlier, and no general advice you give is going to allow someone to repeat your immense luck. "Be valuable and you will be paid" sounds like vague happy-talk, not concrete, repeatable steps that one can put into practice and replicate your success.

Most people who are "exceptional at what they do" are putzing around at a corporation making a competitive, maybe above average salary. They are not on track to retire at 40.

I've also noticed that it's always people with money who say, "don't be motivated only by money". Easy to say. It's called "compensation" because it exists to compensate you for doing something you otherwise wouldn't be doing. Plenty of successful people are motivated by money, and there is nothing shameful about it.

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#57

Post by fmela »

jerguismi wrote: post #55
starmole wrote: post #24

It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…

Is the $600k salary, bonuses, stock options or? Sounds quite incredible to me. I haven't heard from any dev making this kind of salary, not even in the big companies.

It's not unheard of for really exceptional devs at big tech companies to make a million or more.

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#58

Post by [deleted] »

sblom wrote: post #4

I worked with a test engineer at Microsoft who started in 1999, which was after the get-rich-on-stock-options days at the company. He spent 15 years living below his means, and recently retired from the tech world forever. He didn't need any tricks or secrets to pull it off, just living frugally and saving tons of money. I suspect I'm way behind him despite earning more and even having a wife who used to earn a softw…

[deleted]

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#59

Post by ryandrake »

heyalexej wrote: post #32

"Significant wealth" can mean many different things. I've seen Derek Sivers speaking at multiple conferences. He has a very interesting question that I since ask myself and others: "What do you optimize your life for?". When you find the answer to that question, it gets easier to go from there. Robert Kiyosaki and other wealthy people state that wealth is measured in time. Can you not work for x weeks, months, years…

> Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. Would that make you wealthy in your books?

So, 15 years and you'll have almost enough to buy a _starter home_ in Palo Alto...

Re: Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev?

#60

Post by nattaggart »

starmole wrote: post #24

It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…

Well done sir.

I think you are a little dismissive of the value of tech in start-ups though. Start-ups will typically need both better tech and better distribution to displace an incumbent. In my experience, the technology side of this is especially critical. Consumer start-ups, for example, often don't have sales teams at all.

That said, budgetary constraints and optimism towards equity grants keep salaries well below 600k at start-ups :)

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