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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

#91

Post by mgaunard »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #72
mgaunard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k USD is 75k GBP. Many junior developer roles in London will pay 50k. Some finance ones will pay 75k or more. 600k USD / 450k GBP is also definitely reachable for a senior developer at team leader level or comparable.

450k as a team lead? I’ve never heard of that. In itjobswatch.co.uk highest median salary for London is around 200k.

The good jobs aren't going to be advertised on whatever website this is, they use headhunters.

Also at this level you enter into a negotiation with the business stakeholders, compensation package is tailored to each profile and opportunity.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#92

Post by Sholmesy »

dogma1138 wrote: post #83
Sholmesy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should reconsider your worth and attempt to re-negotiate pay. I started out 6-7 years ago at £30k and am now at £100k + options (worthless). Have only ever worked at startups. You can 1.5x that easily at a big tech (some FAANG jobs exist in London).

You then end up paying London rent… You won’t be able to afford to rent a luxury London flat on 100K or even 150K but a 2 bed in any decent area is £2-2.5K council tax and utilities would be another £200 p/m easily. You are probably better off making £80K in Manchester as a senior dev than £100-110K in London. Newcastle has also a decent tech ecosystem tho it is very much focused around Sage.

Maybe. We own our flat in Zone 1 (Soho, 48k down payment, 12k closing costs) after 5 years saving, mortgage is 2.29% ~ 1900 a month. Save about 2500 a month. The one thing I will say is that the "single tax" certainly exists in London, and I find my situation affordable because I have no kids, and my partner brings in an other £35k or so. If we wanted a 3 bedroom or something, forget about it. That's when it becomes absurd to live in central and totally prohibitive.

Also, my experience with London companies + recruiters in the last 3 months has been that permanant remote roles have been cropping up. I would say its about 50/50 of whether a job requires any on prem time, and about 90/10 that the job requires 1-2 days a week on prem.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#93

Post by ZephyrBlu »

avindroth wrote: post #87
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little point in discussing money and using yourself as an example when you are extremely well off. Congrats to OP for having a lot of money in the bank, but there is nothing special or unique about their advice. It's the usual invest your money, don't spend too much, try to get into a top company, etc. Even for someone in a similar situation, there is very little here that I haven't seen repeated elsewhere c…

I highly doubt this is just about quality of his advice. Look at all these comments, and the salt. Remove a zero from his salaries, and the response would have been very different.

The comments on this post in general, I completely agree. The top level comment in this thread doesn't seem salty though.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#94

Post by seaman1921 »

astura wrote: post #73
apples_oranges wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is not a bubble, software is transforming everything (/eating the world).

Software companies can both transform the world and simultaneously be an equity bubble.

PE 28 does not seem like an equity bubble.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#95

Post by sneak »

pyrale wrote: post #58

Turns out, earning half a million dollars every year makes it easy to be a millionaire after a few years.

Your flip comment seems to belie the fact that he's only earned at least a half a million dollars for one year. Most of his years he earned substantially less than that.

The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income.

The point of the article is that cutting expenses, saving, investing wisely, and aggressively pursuing pay raises can yield a few million well before retirement age.

These sort of casual dismissals negate the educational value of the post.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#96

Post by calvano915 »

avindroth wrote: post #87
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little point in discussing money and using yourself as an example when you are extremely well off. Congrats to OP for having a lot of money in the bank, but there is nothing special or unique about their advice. It's the usual invest your money, don't spend too much, try to get into a top company, etc. Even for someone in a similar situation, there is very little here that I haven't seen repeated elsewhere c…

I highly doubt this is just about quality of his advice. Look at all these comments, and the salt. Remove a zero from his salaries, and the response would have been very different.

Remove a zero and the story becomes fiction. That's the point of pointing out the luck and privilege of their position.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#97

Post by CodeGlitch »

nickkell wrote: post #43
dogma1138 wrote: post #40

So rough calculation here.. $100K first job which is around £74K in the UK… you aren’t likely to get anywhere near that as a grad masters or not here but after taxes and student loan payments (which are deducted from your income in the UK) and all other deductions you’ll end up with £42,908.26 per year, that’s $56K. And this is where this breaks down for people in tech outside of the US at least. In the UK the path w…

I started out at £21k and in 10 years haven’t reached the author’s starting salary! The real advice should be for everyone to relocate to the US

Came here to say exactly the same thing (although it was more like £19k as it was the games industry).

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#98

Post by yholio »

apples_oranges wrote: post #28
yholio wrote: post #16

TLDR he rode the tech bubble, lived frugally and poured his savings into what happened to be a very favorable stock decade, which together with his tech stock options from employers made him a multimillionaire. Not to disrespect the effort that went into this, but let's make this very clear: this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few, in a particular moment in history. Everything seems to indicat…

Tech is not a bubble, software is transforming everything (/eating the world).

The eating part might be more literal than most expect.

For example, it's hard to argue that software made journalism better. Sure, there is some efficiency in using a phone to record interviews and sending the results of your work on seconds on the other side of the world - as opposed to things like notepads and telexes.

On the other hand, Google and Facebook almost completely eviscerated the revenue streams that fed traditional journalists, without putting anything in it's place.

Instead of a large number of local papers and ad agencies earning local revenue and funding journalists, you have a massive revenue stream going into Google's offshore tax shells, of which a part is used to fund their software mercenary army, and the bulk is reimvested into further tech monopolies.

The corrupt and the despots surely welcome the tech overlords.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#99

Post by CodeGlitch »

unbanned wrote: post #63
nickkell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started out at £21k and in 10 years haven’t reached the author’s starting salary! The real advice should be for everyone to relocate to the US

Quoted post unavailable.

There are some really nice places in the states - although SF or NY are not one of them...

Saying that, I'd rather live in NY than London.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#100

Post by sneak »

bjornsing wrote: post #51

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

One of the biggest tragedies, in my view, is what a lovely place Europe is to live, and what utter lack (seemingly for no great underlying reason) of class mobility exists there.
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