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Comment by ldjkfkdsjnv | Hacker News Reader

I really think people who leave software engineering altogether mostly failed to find a company that respects engineers/pays well. If you are good at the algorithms interviews, you can make ~400k with 5 to 8 years of experience. Do that for a decade, and with some saving and basic investing, you are basically done working.

On the other hand, fail to pass the algorithms interview, you are essentially stuck at 140-170k, not growing, not seeing a path forward. Every job feels the same, pays the same, and really doesnt need you, you are a cog.

It all comes down to a test.

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> It all comes down to a test.

And willingness to relocate, possibly across the world.

And feasibility of getting an US visa.

Or facing much, much stiffer odds if you want to be paid that well as a remote worker, since the number of remote spots with that kind of pay is incredibly small compared to the amount of people fighting over them.

And timing.

Sometimes good opportunities are at times when you're not ready for them. We all get some sort of a "shot" but it's very difficult to see sometimes, or to make the risky move of accepting it.

> > It all comes down to a test.

> And feasibility of getting an US visa.

Or Switzerland, which is relatively easy for most Europeans, and easier than US for virtually everyone, I think.

Swiss total compensation at companies which pay 400-500k in the US is much lower than that. Unless you are super fortunate to join at the start of a boom cycle when shares are about to double in value or something.

You basically need to be in the US, and in the US in the Silicon Valley, Seattle or NYC, I think, to somewhat reasonably hit 400-500k with just an algorithms interview :-)

Google Switzerland pays the same as the main campus in California.

Oh, interesting. That's news to me, but then again, my source is quite old.

Target total compensation? Not total compensation after stocks went up a ton?

Stock component is slightly lower in CH so if anything it would bias the result in the opposite way.

I wish I was stuck programming for 140k

Indeed... I'm beginning to believe that I exist in an alternate universe (colloquially known as "Europe") where insane software engineering salaries aren't normalised.

Many fang companies have offices all over Europe. The pay is not quite as high as the US but it is much higher than average dev European salaries.

Eh, this is not always and everywhere true. I have friends at Google here in London and some of the salary figures I've heard are shockingly low. As in, sub-or-around-100k low. Though admittedly these are people who I'd guess are below, say, L5.

That 'low' salary may put them in the top few percent of the whole country for their age bracket which means they can live quite nice lives. Everything is relative.

That's true, and I'm aware how lucky we are in this profession. But I'm talking relative to the software engineering job market at large.

Right. It's not always true. Which is why I said on average...

No, you said FAANG pay is higher than average European dev pay, not that average FAANG pay is higher than [average] European dev pay

It took me 7 years to get to 101,000 GBP (140,000 USD) in London. After 10 years I am now on 125,000 GBP + bonuses (172,000 USD).

Wages in the US are higher but for some reason I don't see a higher standard of living; there must be other factors at play.

History:

Java dev - large consultancy

Java dev - small consultancy

Tech lead - contractor

Senior Architect - Massive software vendor (not FAANG)

Principal Architect - Massive software vendor (not FAANG)

Principal Architect - (current) medium sized consulting firm

What qualifies as a "higher standard of living" to you, that isn't culture specific?

It's not just cultural, it's personal too.

I've worked with (and still work with) many Americans, let me give you an idea.

I get paid 174,000 USD per year

I take 6 weeks off (vacation) per year to sail in the Mediterranean and to SKI in the French and Swiss alps. This is fully paid and it would be highly abnormal if I did not take this time off.

My wife was paid her full salary for 6 months to have a baby. The government would have mandated a minimum payment term if that did not happen.

I never have to worry about healthcare, it's just there and it's available all the time regardless of employment

I never worry about being fired without strong cause, I am protected by strong laws

None of my children have ever participated in an 'active shooter drill'

I went to a top tier University and only paid 3000 GBP per year. The government gave me thousands of pounds without expecting repayment. The government gave me thousands of pounds and said they will write it off if I can't pay it back before 25 years and they won't ask for a single penny if I earn below a certain amount. When they did start taking repayments, it was a small amount extra on top of my income tax. The interest rate is also very low to the point of it not really mattering.

Also European (IS), and all of those points (though on 90k US) apply on this end as well.

Quality of life is good and the wages as well.

Methinks you watch too much news about the US. Those problems you're alluding to don't affect the vast majority of Americans making $174k+/year, and that's kind of one of the problems we're having right now.

Take my salary down to 50k and everything remains true on that list except my holidays will be at cheap family resorts on the Mediterranean rather than in 5* hotels.

That cannot be said for the average American:

that may struggle with massive medical bills,

lack of strong worker protection,

kids doing active shooter drills, (three people from my clients have had their kids do this in the past few weeks)

maybe 1 week of vacation per year,

Crazy student loans where some people end up paying back thousands but still owing more than when they started - you could argue this is their own fault but the ability to dig yourself into that sort of hole doesn't even exist here.

no law to mandate maternity pay etc etc...

Can you elaborate on some of the news I've watched? I don't understand that reference and I don't often read news out of the US unless its global headline grabbing.

Yep, totally fair about making less money being a problem in the US, and it's a big problem right now in the US where the upper class has a totally different experience than the middle/lower class, but taking your salary down isn't what we were talking about. The point is that, at this income level, the quality of life in the US shoots up substantially, to the point where it matches what you describe, but also isn't on an island in the Atlantic with terrible weather and a lot less geographic diversity. :)

And no, I don't believe for one second that you don't understand "that reference" w/r/t watching too much US news! How else would you know what's going on in the US and misapply it to the upper class?

No, you know exactly what you were referencing, you just didn't know how stratified the social structure is here in the US, so you thought you could apply issues you know affect the middle class to the upper class, when that wasn't actually the case.

It's fine! This is a learning moment, all good. The US has a complex society, partially because we're so big (both geographically and population -- it's a lot easier to run a country when everyone is nearby and there are a lot fewer of you), and now is a good time for you to learn that our problems aren't shared across social levels.

I still don't get the reference. Why don't you just be clear and unambiguous?

I know that access to healthcare isn't a necessarily a given in the US. I know that kids prepare for shooters to enter their schools. I know my friends husband doesn't have the correct level of healthcare(don't know the terminology) for his bowel cancer so now the family is broke, I know what I know because I have worked with Americans for years.

I think I was clear; I simply don't believe you.

Are the issues I listed even in the news? I just looked on CNN and FOX homepage and didn't see any of those issues?

The average American in the midwest can still live a pretty decent life on the 50k. An American making 50k in a major city such as San Francisco or New York City is forced to endure long commutes, but can still make it work, somewhat similar to people who commute to London.

Most of my comments stem from personal experience; the assumption is that you are comparing someone who makes a similar amount of money here.

> I take 6 weeks off (vacation) per year to sail in the Mediterranean and to SKI in the French and Swiss alps. This is fully paid and it would be highly abnormal if I did not take this time off.

Americans differ from you in this aspect, but it's a cultural difference. It is very common for people to take 2-week vacations, and somewhat common for people to take two such vacations per year.

> My wife was paid her full salary for 6 months to have a baby. The government would have mandated a minimum payment term if that did not happen.

Again, America has a cultural aversion to paying such generous benefits. I've seen people take 3 months off after having children. I have also seen new mothers come back to work part-time while transitioning to working full-time over the course of an additional couple months. Overall, it's comparable.

> I never have to worry about healthcare, it's just there and it's available all the time regardless of employment

If you are employed and making 174k in the USA, you are in the same boat: you do not have to worry about healthcare costs as you are covered.

> None of my children have ever participated in an 'active shooter drill'

Elected representatives who are meeting constituents do not get stabbed to death here. Stabbings in general are somewhat uncommon compared to shootings. America is more violent, but it doesn't generally affect people in the wage bracket that we're talking about here. A lot of violence is perpetrated by poor people on other poor people, usually in connection with narcotics.

> I went to a top tier University and only paid 3000 GBP per year. The government gave me thousands of pounds without expecting repayment. The government gave me thousands of pounds and said they will write it off if I can't pay it back before 25 years and they won't ask for a single penny if I earn below a certain amount. When they did start taking repayments, it was a small amount extra on top of my income tax. The interest rate is also very low to the point of it not really mattering.

America has fallen behind the other rich countries in this regard. But America also offers a much larger menu of choices in what kind of school you attend, and what type of experience you have. All that choice comes at a cost, and the high wages for computer science grads makes the increased college costs moot: you can earn it all back without superhuman effort, and student loan burdens rarely cripple the lives of people who get lucrative employment.

The amount of choice available to the American consumer beats anything the UK can offer, hands-down. This is true irrespective of how much you make: this type of variety and plentifulness for everyone is unprecedented outside of the US.

> Elected representatives who are meeting constituents do not get stabbed to death here.

Except Gabby Giffords who got shot in the head. The would be assassin then shot 19 other people at a constituency meeting...... our MP getting killed didn't affect the average person, your MP getting shot lead to 19 other people being shot.

"Giffords was shot in the head during the 2011 Tucson shooting, which occurred at a constituency meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona."

"A man ran up to the crowd and began firing a 9mm pistol with a 33-round magazine,[36][37] hitting 19 people,[38] and killing six"

You're making a lot of excuses for your country by taking a very narrow view of everything I said. I was always told Americans sing the national anthem in the morning at school to brainwash the kids, this clearly worked on you.

> You're making a lot of excuses for your country by taking a very narrow view of everything I said. I was always told Americans sing the national anthem in the morning at school to brainwash the kids, this clearly worked on you.

Way to go ad-hominem here. You have shown that you are not here for any sort of reasonable discussion. Citing shooter drills, national anthems at school and silly comments about me being brainwashed are further proof of your inability to have a reasonable discussion.

I clearly showed one of your points to be nothing but alarmism and now you've chosen to run away.

You think teaching your children how to deal with school shooters isn't part of general standards of living... damn...

If you live in the UK and have been in your job for less than two years, you don't have the protection from being fired you think you do. Our laws protect you from being fired for discriminatory reasons but not much else

Wages in US have higher ceiling. Averages aren't that much different.

This contributes to brain drain - if you are pretty good developer, you aren't really incentived to move to US. If you are one of the best, in US you can earn many times more.

Don't feel bad. In the alternate, alternate universe (colloquially known as "the USA outside of Silicon Valley, Seattle & NYC") they aren't normalized either.

Agreed. $150k is a commanding salary in most parts of the U.S. outside the bay area.

They exist, but only at the players who compete in the global hiring pool (Google, Fb, Amazon, Spotify etc).

A local company which predominantly only competes in the European hiring pool will never give a wage higher than locally required.

I see a lot of flak for this comment but I will say first hand it is true that you can study to pass FAANG interviews and double your salary (in the US). I spent 7 months studying during covid and finally made the leap. Obviously not everyone has the time to commit to studying (I almost burned out doing just 10 hours a week on top of my 9-5) but it is in the realm of possibility.

And the big tech cos have been constantly hiring and are mostly accepting full remote. Even during covid I readily had interviews lined up with FB/Google/Amazon.

I think you have it backwards. If you can nail the CS interview, you can be one of Google's 80,000 cogs making 400K/year. Or if you can settle for 150K, you can work for a 20 person startup where you actually have input and are valued as more than just another ad enabler.

That's not entirely true. I work for big corporations, and the reality is that they're paying big money not for the ability to code, but for the ability to manage projects (even when there is a separate PM). If you're good at making several people work towards a goal and make management happy with your projects, you'll make the money you mention. If you're just interested in coding, they will show you the door sooner rather than later.

That kind of thinking is what drives experienced people out of software. So 400k salaries (not equity) was available in the bay area before everything went full time remote, which is great if you are forever childless and 20 years old sharing an apartment with 6 other people. Then reality sets in. I have seen people do it though, contractors living in Afghanistan for a decade earing more than $300k with no living expenses.

> It all comes down to a test.

Well, that's more informed than a lottery ticket, but it still sounds like a gamble compared to nearly every other professional industry.

> Every job feels the same, pays the same, and really doesnt need you, you are a cog.

I find this provides me with a certain freedom. If I’m tired, I can just not do something. I am freed from pressure and high expectations as the worst possible outcome is I get fired and end up in the exact same type of place.

> stuck at 140-170k

Is this amount of pay considered being "stuck" now?

RCG with 5 years as an intern. Now that I'm out of college, most of my projects have been minor features that take more time fighting an ancient windows GUI library than actually improving my programming skills. Any suggestions for finding work that will actually improve applications of the various algorithms(outside of grinding leetcode)

I'd argue that you can make 140-170k and _be happy at a good workplace_. All I'm saying, the money plays a role only up to a certain point. I'm very hapoy with my job and it would be a nightmare for me to work at a FAANG

> If you are good at the algorithms interviews, you can make ~400k

And are willing/able to move anywhere in the country.

Is this based on experience? This post reads a bit like a student studying algorithms for the coding interview thinking that is the pathway to success.

I've worked in the valley for ~9 years, have ~20 YOE if you include self-taught web dev and game dev work with a commercial game engine in online teams during high school, and this has absolutely been my experience.

The first thing I tell anybody starting out who asks me for advice is to study algorithms. Not because I think it will be inherently useful to programming, but because I think it will do more to help them interview for high-paying jobs than actual coding skills.

There are a lot of ways that this comes off sounding like bullshit advice a la "make $300k a week with this one simple trick after taking my course" style advertisements. There are a million things that could go wrong over a ten year period with your perfect plan. I think there's a heavy survivorship bias among those who've managed to execute this kind of exit from work life.

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