Maximizing Income as a Software Engineer

I think in many ways tech salaries as still depressed. We forget about the Apple / Google / Adobe / eBay / Intel salary fixing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... ). Since SV 'set the bar' for salaries I think that deal depressed the tech compensation until today. The period when salaries were intentionally depressed (2005 to 2009) was especially important for the growth of the industry with mobile phones and cloud computing starting then.

Also, the iOS app boom is clearly over, so I wouldn't trust anyone that claims learning Swift will lead to a comfortable retirement.

That said, even for projects that you do as a calling, I still believe you should charge a lot, simply to make others and especially business types respect you.

There is a big difference between running a side hustle to make a little money on the side and running a side hustle with the objective to eventually found the next big thing startup.

The former is pretty doable in my experience. I have three friends that run small volume productions of different speciality physical goods in their basements. From what they told me independently most work is packaging and shipping; "Once the CNC runs, it runs...". One of my friends sells art. I rent out property and there is always some work to do but overall it is pretty much doable besides a regular day job, having a family and maintaining work/life balance. I'm sure there are a ton of other examples, the only caveat here is that all that I can think of need at least a little investment.

Until you find a good situation and stick with it. A good situation shouldn't be discarded on a whim.

> Negotiate In The Beginning and Never Take A Companies’ Word As Payment

More people than you would expect need this advice.

In addition, I have to lecture people that you want to have a higher starting title because that gives you a higher top end to your salary band for raises without needing a promotion.

The ONLY point at which you have leverage over a company is before you take the job. You don't have to rake them over the coals for every single penny, but you should know what you are worth and negotiate for it.

I will also say that if you are working with a smaller company, you might want to apply some creativity to your negotiation. Maybe they can't match your salary numbers, but they could give you twice or thrice the paid vacation (that has value). Or, they may not be able to pay you a cash bonus, but maybe they can provide you with something (services, products, reimbursement for domestic help, foreign travel to conferences, etc.) because it comes from a different budgetary bucket.

But, as always, get it in writing.

What HN needs is a downvote button for stories, because flagging is extremely misused.

Your stock may be worth a lot more if/when it is finally liquid, but it is much much more likely that it will be worthless. There are many ways that your shares can end up worthless while the founders (or more likely investors) of the company cash out millions of dollars. Be careful to avoid being dependent on that stock in how you plan your finances.

Do people actually commonly care about that these days? Good papers / leaderboard positions on shared tasks I get in data science but competitions as in Kaggle et al? My brain defaults to interpreting that as "had time to waste working for free, for whoever put up that competition". Seeing that in an application package has about as much influence for me personally as some random certification.

But promotion, even in the very best of places, with quite good taxes, has very diminishing returns. A promotion takes new skills, more work, and let's say a 10% bump in salary (higher percentage increases seem to only happen at the low end. I got a 180% wage increase at one point but now that would be ridiculous). I mean I guess there's the executive promotion but I have no idea how people get that. These executives certainly aren't smarter or more effective than I am, so ... There comes a point, surprisingly low (let's say $200k a year), where chasing promotion is just not worth it, as a 10% before tax raise will only get you 2-3% actual more money. And generally speaking even the $350k or so I'll eventually probably get to will only get me $60k or so more income.

I get the impression the only real way up at this point is starting a company, or at least starting to work for a company I have significant ownership in. Plus I fantasize it comes with more independence (although I lead teams now for more than a decade. Any illusions of control you have as a TL or manager didn't really survive). Truth is that I'd be surprisingly strongly affected if I were to get fired, and while I've always been able to find a new higher paying job rapidly (I left a lot of jobs early in my career because I found something better. "A lot" is about 6 btw, over now 17 years, not counting effective job changes while consulting), and I hate the risk this represents. I also don't think that'll happen, but there are certainly circumstances that would cause just this.

So starting a company. Something. But how to do that?

But yes, remote work can be a great way to maximize happiness and savings (if it works for you, not everyone is happy with it).

Unless your current spending is extremely reckless, cutting expenses typically makes less of an impact than increasing income. If you currently spend 60k, you cannot cut your expenses by more than 60k, but you can definitely increase your income by more than that if you manage your career properly.