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Comment by carc | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I know senior engineers that chose the technical route rather than manager route, who make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money. Like close to 1,000,000/year including equity. I don't know any non VP level people making anywhere close to that.

Obviously this is anecdotal though.

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We know these people exist but it's whether or not they're common enough for your better than average tech to land and whether it requires actual technical knowledge or just good salesmanship.

I imagine it's a mixture of both, but that if I wasn't a contractor, I'd probably feel it's easier to get paid more by going tech -> team leader -> manager.

I've never heard it suggested that these best-of-the-best types of positions should be attainable by "your better than average tech." If your biggest asset is that you are "better than average" I think even hoping for a generic Senior Software Developer type of position is ambitious.

Not everyone can be the best of the best, a lot of us are sadly just a bit better than average and we matter too. The market encompasses more than just the elite.

That said, given cultural differences and our abilities to judge their own skill, it's entirely possible your best of the best is just my above average.

You'd be surprised how mediocre many of people at the top of companies are, technical track or not.

"including equity"

Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is). How much are those people making then?

At a startup this is a good rule of thumb, but the more established a company is, the closer to cash equity becomes. At a publicly traded company, equity can be a periodic (albeit variable) cash bonus if you want it to be.

> Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is)

In a startup or private company yet to IPO sure.

In an established, large, public company, RSUs, ESPP and whatever else you get is definitely going to deliver cash. Sure as the market moves around it'll change in value but you might look at it as +- 20% of the expected value. It's certainly not worth 0.

Equity is almost always worth close to zero? You realize at publicly traded companies, it might as well be a cash bonus because you can instantly cash it out the second it vests, right?

Where? Doing what?

Well known, top tier tech companies. I won't get into more than that they're senior engineers (partially because I don't know that I can answer that with more specificity). They all have 10+ years of experience and are typically tech leads on their teams.

Can you elaborate on the kinds of work they do? I can't see a senior engineer doing iOS/Android development making that kind of coin, but I can see it for someone who has been working in-depth building out datacenter technology or low-level mobile technology stacks, for example.

And I know of plenty of people who play football who make several million dollars a year. The question is, how common is it? In both athletics and engineering, the answer is not all that common.

The difference in football is that if you miss the cutoff for several million dollars a year, you make bupkis. In engineering, if you miss the cutoff for $1M/year (which itself is the low-risk alternative to "make a billion or nothing"), you'll make about $250K/year. And if you miss that, you make $200K/year. And if you miss that, $150K/year.

Engineering - at least at this point in history - is remarkable among professions where the very top of the pay scale is "the richest man in the world", but there's a relatively smooth progression below that where even a 25th percentile engineer makes a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

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