Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

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The common approach in Silicon Valley is that everybody starts as a programmer. At some point, the career ladder bifurcates. Those who prefer to work with people issues become people managers, getting trained in related skills. (They often also work as tech leads, which is an in-between role, and for which smart companies also provide training.) Those who prefer technical issues keep rising up a technical ladder.

I think that's much more sensible than taking somebody who doesn't know much of anything, putting them in an MBA program, and then expecting them to have universal management mojo. So we're not talking about somebody who has managed across multiple industries. We're talking about somebody who, often, has managed across none.

I really don't believe managers from other industries can, on average, manage software teams. I thin software is too different from other kinds of labor. So many behaviors that are arguably reasonable in other industries are clearly catastrophic in software.

>Those who prefer technical issues keep rising up a technical ladder.

The issue being that technical ladder is usually much shorter than the related "people ladder".

Let's call it what it is. If you have the look and act like a hyper-politically-conscious MBA, they'll let you in the club of high-level corporate people that make millions of dollars. If you look like some nerd who hasn't had a tan since 1st grade, you're stuck to the top of the technical ladder, where you're lucky to get $135k ($250k for San Francisco/other high COL areas).

False dichotomy, dude. You can also look like Vint Cerf or Peter Norvig and be high-ranking high-paid Chief Scientists and the like.

The rules are different for luminaries in every field. We're talking about the career path for normal people. Even if your work is as high-quality as Cerf or Norvig, you can't command the salary because you don't have the name recognition. Google et al hire these types of people for recruitment/PR purposes as much as anything else.

It's quite plausible to be making 200k-300k (again, adjust as necessary for high CoL areas) + performance bonuses on a management career path. Normal technical workers cap out around $120k outside the Valley and somewhere in the vicinity of $200k in the Valley.

Things are different if you've gained notoriety by writing the book on AI, designing large chunks of the internet, or creating some of the world's most widely-used programming languages (van Rossum, Thompson, etc.).

The rest of us peons don't get an exception.

Are you just talking about salaries? Total compensation has been on the rise lately. Google and Facebook pay between $150-200k to new grads, and a senior programmer at either of these companies can get double that.

>Are you just talking about salaries?

Yes, because outside of AppAmaGooBookSoft and the ecosystem of venture-backed startups in the SV bubble (i.e., this is not applicable to venture-backed startups outside of that bubble), very few programmers get RSUs, signing bonuses, etc.

>Google and Facebook pay between $150-200k to new grads, and a senior programmer at either of these companies can get double that.

This is not representative of the career path, and the high dollar comp package is less impressive when you consider that these companies usually require their employees to be located in very high CoL areas like San Francisco or New York. Rent on an apartment in those cities will easily consume 35-40% of that salary. If you have a family and need a house, forget about it.

These companies are also reluctant to hire those without Ivy League pedigrees, which means most employees will have substantial student debt.

Sure, these salaries are not available at every company. I just wanted to outline a path for a competent (but not amazing) programmer to make >$200k outside the Valley without moving to a management role.

I'd love it if you could outline such a path that was reasonably repeatable.

I don't think "Become Vint Cerf" or "Become Peter Norvig" is practicable advice for your typical competent programmer to make > $200k outside of SV (or its satellites in Seattle, NY, and Cambridge). The success of Cerf, Norvig, et al has to do with timing, which is not replicable, as much as anything else (and both of these guys work for Google anyway, so they're not even examples of your point).

I've known a small handful of employed programmers who've had >$200k/yr success, normally working in uber-specialized niches for consulting firms that had large contracts with large companies (again, this is mostly the result of good timing more than anything else).

Barring that, in the real world outside the SV bubble, I've never heard of it. Orindary programmers who want to break out of wage slavery must either manage their money and save their salaries very carefully or become successful entrepreneurs (or both).

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