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Comment by nightski | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this just suits some people's fancy but the idea of being in a "track" is so off putting and mind numbing to me. Ooh here is where I'll be exactly in 5, 10, 15 years. So exciting /s. So glad I went self employed almost a decade ago.

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Ok, person because of whom Sr Staff at Box was created :). There was a need for promo and I did not meet the bar for Principle ( have to be recognized in industry: books, conferences). So Sr Staff was born. I never did what is written in the article, just worked on systems (spending 80% of my time on coding related activities: design, code reviews but mostly emitting code). Pretty the same I did in most companies. Even being manager in one company I spent 50% of time coding (it is complicated as I built team around such principles , so very small “management “ activities were required). I am really bad on interview so join each company (probably 7 now) with low level. Also, never asked about promo. Also, self taught and not a hardcore developer (it is not like i love and breath in code outside of work, it takes sometimes long hours to make it work). But almost always get to nearly top levels (top is impossible, English is super crappy and as I said, not a coding prodigy). Being “senior staff” in many companies I found that two traits are important for “senior” developers : 1.sense of problem: where the most important problem is now. There is no real most important problem, all problems are not that important unless you are doctor/military/rescue and save lives. So it is a special skill to find one that will be foundation for changes, spark eyes of people around and will be accepted. 2. “lead by example “ , be hands dirty in all your decisions. A lot of things are good on paper but reality shows that changes are needed. The reality forces to have enough knowledge (chat with experts, books, reading others code) before making decisions and later finding that no two situations are the same. Being inside makes it is easy to fix.

(No longer with Box btw)

It's more exciting if I'm making $300k google salaries at the end of the track.

A track with 6-7 difficult rungs and +10% pay increase? nah, I'm good.

I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are already close to that asymptote

Have you looked at house prices in the Bay Area recently?

>I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably increase your quality of life

Not for my definitions of quality of life!

This has not been my experience. I can easily see ways to substantially increase my quality of life at $1 million per year, and at $10 million per year, neither of which I'm close to (unless my lottery tickets, I mean options, pay off).

Ignoring early retirement, consider that those salaries come with less free time, less brain cells to do what you like, and more stress.

A lot of the value you can gain from money (e.g. hiring a maid to clean & cook, buying better quality food) is about clawing back what you lost to get the extra money.

In the US maybe, but definitely not in most of Europe. Software engineers are not as valued here as they are in some parts of the US (SF bay area, Seattle, etc.). As a result, salaries here are pretty miserable.

I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k USD.

Sure, health care is free, education is free (no college fund for my kids) and employer-paid-for pension plans are quite decent, but housing is not cheap (450k USD for a simple 4 bed room family home, luckily I don't live in Stockholm where that costs an additional 200-300k USD) and we also pay 25% VAT on almost everything.

30 days paid vacation (not PTO) per year is pretty sweet and so is the lack of overtime (40 hours is 40 hours) and the parental leave (at home with your kids for a year as a father? no problem!). But man, these salaries that I see quoted here on HN regularly (200-300k) do sting a bit...

The grass is always greener. Earning those salaries usually means you're in the bay area, where the median home price is 1.5m USD and you most definitely won't get that 4th bedroom.

Anything under 700k USD for a 4 bedroom sounds super cheap to me :/

Not true of all of Europe. Irish salaries go as high as twice that for similar seniority.

Cost of living isn't lower, especially in Dublin, our healthcare system is a slightly worse, college isn't totally free (3k/year or so), and pensions less generous.

On balance though, you'd still be better off working here.

You can save the money and retire early with the body of a middle aged vs old person.

If you live in a major city in the US outside of the west coast or NYC where both the salary and the cost of living are lower, software developer salaries from my experience range from $60-$90 on the low end to $140-$155K on the high end. That for team leads, architects, principal developers or even low level managers.

You’re going to top out as a developer after about a decade if you’re semi aggressive. The only way I found to make the next jump is true consultancy (not staff augmentation).

I've definitely seen individual contributor salaries in the 170-190 range in Austin.

I was more putting scale into perspective comparing the rest of the country to Silicon Valley. A 10-20% variance is believable. But still nowhere near SV/ west coast total comp.

Yeah. I’m the same. Im sure it’s to my detriment that I hate the hoop jumping rat race nature of the modern workplace, but I think opting out has led to greater happiness.

I just know I would absolutely hate competing over positions and titles. The real beneficiaries of this are the owners of the businesses who make up these meaningless distinctions in order to get everyone grinding their lives away for shiny baubles.

This is what a union does. Lots of folks like these structures.

These mid-size and larger companies offer defined pay, bonus, perks, expectations, and many other predictable attributes. This structure is of a high value to folks who prize stability, to take care of things like their family.

It really does suck. In some ways they say that you just have to be doing x, y and z but it ends up being so vague and fuzzy that it's frustrating. They end up just saying "well you have done that, but not enough times or for long enough (with no specific details about those criteria)."

I think it works out fine for people with a good manager who for whatever reason thinks your style is good. But if they aren't good or don't quite care about you then you'll eat shit forever.

They end up just saying "well you have done that, but not enough times or for long enough (with no specific details about those criteria)."

Is they the internal decision makers or the HR/recruiters gatekeepers who kvetch about the 'talent shortage' in software engineering? Am I out of line here for feeling like that line could easily come from either group?

Asking as a guy who was rejected by a recruiting agency for my current job, and only got hired later on after discovering by complete and utter coincidence a friend (well, more of an acquaintance, a regular at my neighborhood pub) worked on the team, referred me to his boss who was absolutely delighted with my experience and qualifications, was a near instant-hire.

Sometimes I wonder (quite negatively and cynically) about the agency hiring model.

Typically, a developer only stays at a job for around 1.5 - 3 years. In the non SV world, the best way to get a promotion or raise is to job hop.

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