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Comment by vonseel | Hacker News Reader

> I was able to average 18% raises for over a decade by switching jobs nearly every year.

Hmm. For those curious, assuming I still understand how to do basic math like this and a few relatively low starting salaries for year one:

  40k*(1.18^10) = 209k
  60k*(1.18^10) = 314k
  80k*(1.18^10) = 418k

Are you one of these software engineers I hear about making 400k? I suppose I would find 150k-200k as more believable since your bio states you are a "remote software engineer". Or maybe you over-estimated the annual raises?

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I'm also a remote software engineer, and my guess is that you're starting too high. My first job (on-site in Ohio) paid something like $7.50/hr (so ~$15k annually), and I'm now at $165k base 14 years later. That puts me in the same ballpark of 18% annually.

I started at $30k in 2004 and by 2017 I made $200k. It is about 18% on average. The biggest jumps in a single year was 2009 going from $55k to $80k in a 3 month period, 2011 going from $80k to $110k, and 2013 going from $117k to $140k by using a counteroffer.

My friend asked the guy that made that 400k post on twitter. Apparently that is total compensation for people at Uber and Lyft.

As another data-point: My day-rates as a long-term contractor which have some decent year-on-year increases from switching clients

2012 £200 (first time programming for money)

2013 £300 (new client)

2014 £425 (new client)

2015 - took a year off -

2016 £500 (new client)

2017 £650 (same client)

2018 £800 (new client)

Do you do contracting for backend or frontend?

devops

What kind of work within devops realm do you usually contract for if you don't mind sharing

The math is correct but this doesn't factor in inflation, so you probably need to change the original salaries down to whatever $40k in todays money was worth in 2009. That leads to 34k*(1.18)^10 = 178k, which seems much more reasonable

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