Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years.

One thing a lot of people forget about this 20-40% number is: It's only true early in your career. It might be hard for younger folks to believe, but you will all hit a ceiling and plateau. My first job hop was for +50%! The next one was about 40%, the next one 15%, and so on. Now, with 20+ years of experience, my last job hop was for maybe 0.25%.

If I could get +40% every time I switched jobs, I'd only have to have switched jobs 9 times in my life in order to be making $1M/yr.

View on HN

Your example is not actually that crazy at FAANG level companies. I know a lot of people in their early 30's that are L6 or even L7 at big tech companies, maybe they've changed jobs every 2 years on average in their career which is well under 9 times, and those level of roles have a total comp of 500k-750k/yr. With a 4-year stock grant and some luck on the stock performance in that time, that can turn into well over $1M/yr in years 3 & 4 at the company.

You're right that there's a ceiling somewhere, but the ceiling is (or at least has been) ludicrously high for the past decade or so in big tech in the US.

This is a thing that can happen and does happen for a very small number of people.

But when discussing the entire job market, it's a minuscule fraction of tech workers who could even get there if they tried (sometimes due to no fault of their own e.g. location), and it's a much smaller number that even get there at all.

Hitting L7 in mid 30s and catching a massive bull market to pump up compensation is mythical unicorn levels of lucky. It does happen to some people, but it's not useful at all when discussing realistic expectations even 95th percentile developers in the general population.

Getting into a bubble with top FAANG engineers can really distort perceptions of what the market looks like for the median developer.

I've also seen people get to L7 or equivalent by age 30, and they have done it by being phenomenal engineers who quickly produce great results of impressive scope. I'm skeptical that a median engineer can get to L7 by just job-hopping a few times getting promoted each time. If nothing else, organizations just don't need more than a small percent of their people doing L7 level work.

Yeah. Job-hopping tends to top out around L5/L6, in my experience.

I guess I'm somewhat lucky that I was able to double my compensation over 5 years within the same company, but at this point I've hit the ceiling for rapid compensation growth for the most part.

Maybe I should just grind leetcode for a few months (my dynamic-programming algo skills are a bit rusty) and switch jobs. I would miss the 30 days of PTO though.

leetcode is a good idea - but coding problems are more like to get foot in the door (pass phone screen). Senior and above candidates are "leveled" and judged using design and behavioral questions - so the way you answer them would impact level and target compensation significantly. So it make sense to spend time preparing for Systems' Design questions Behavioral questions.

From another point of view - design and behavioral questions original goal is to confirm that candidate have related experience from day to day work, so if you have enough practice on your current job - it is not so much time to prepare for design and behavioral part of interviews.

To be honest, I used to think developers in tech did well, then I worked with some really good sales people in tech and realized they're making WAY more on top free vacations and spiff (even more money) opportunities. It's night and day. We've heard about developers making upwards of 500K, I've seen sales people make triple on a single deal with similar deals lined up for following quarters. It is insane, and most developers don't have a clue when it comes to this type of disparity in pay because they don't interact with that process or people at all in most situations. The work is very different, especially the types of pressure each role faces, but they're valued very differently. Maybe most folks know this, I had no clue.

Sales pay scales are very bimodal. A handful of rock star people make incredible amounts of money, most just get by alright, and maybe a quarter drop out because they can't close enough. It can be very high pressure, and a significant factor in your own success is outside of your control (i.e. depends on your product/service actually being good).

In a more civilized world they'd have higher bases across the board and the commission/incentive structures would be less "winner-take-all" but they operate those divisions like running greyhounds around a track.

"You all know first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of Steak Knives. Third prize is you're fired."

This has always been the case. Sales is compensated based on the money they bring in. High-performing salespeople have always made way more than the engineers who built the products they're selling.

My GF works in sales. Nominally she makes $29/hr which is pretty good for someone with only a HS degree, and she is an hourly sales person so she gets time and a half. However, she manages a $1 million dollar portfolio of sales that are already completed and currently in between contract signing and fulfillment, and when the orders are fulfilled she gets .5% of the total contract amount.

Orders take about 6 weeks to be fulfilled barring catastrophe, so when it's all calculated out every 3 months she makes $29 * 62.5 (40 hours plus 15 * 1.5 = 40 + 22.5 paid hours at base rate) * 12 (weeks) + $10,000 bonus every 3 months = roughly $31,750 or $10,567 a month before taxes.

That's almost as much as I make with a BS degree in the tech field. It's crazy, but then again she does work more hours than I do.

There is a little more variance in sales people's earnings, since it's based on commission. Their base salary is probably pretty paltry. To do a proper comparison you want to look at OTE(on target earnings), that's how much they earn if they hit their numbers.

The sales people in tech i know get pretty good base pay ($150-250K).

The dark side of sales is that the instant you have a good year, your sales goal gets adjusted upwards which makes it even harder for you next year. If you're selling something that will give you 6-7 figure commissions, you can bet management won't be keeping you around once you've closed that sale.

A lot of the people in Reddit's fatFIRE community got there through software or tech sales.

What industry are you in?

Operating bastards.

This is something I don't think gets discussed enough. In my first 10 years of career I basically doubled my salary, by moving every 2-3 years, but I also now know I am pretty much hitting a plateau, anytime I talk with recruiters and talk about the salary I'd like to move which is about 10-20% (which is pretty reasonable given the benefits I got now) then people express reservations. Some people will end up making 200+ but I for an IC type position it seems to top out around 150 is the max, generally. If you want more you need to be an "Enterprise Architect" or "Director" which that becomes a whole different bag of worms. On the other hand love my job, I have enough money to provide for myself and my family, and am working on getting financially secure and paying off debt so I also don't have a strong drive to make more.

Good news, friend. I'm an IC making ~400k/year (it's half RSUs, so that number fluctuates a lot) with 15 years' experience and not much networking/politicking skill

I have some friends making ~600, although a lot of that was getting lucky with RSUs, so I'm not sure they can keep it up in the long run

Either way, the ceiling is a lot higher than 150

Well, what is there to discuss about it? (Genuine question).

You could extend the curve and plateau higher, but then, that money is probably going to cause problems elsewhere for the younger generations. Meanwhile, the younger generations are seeking income increases so they can get the basics out of the way and start working towards their goals. They are already at the point where, despite studying for a long time and taking longer to enter the market, they are starting lower and have to delay their goals way more than the generations before them.

I don't really see a solution here. You can make young people work earlier, but that'll flood the job market even more. Boosting young people will make the curve flatter, which exacerbates the problem. You could extend the curve otherwise, but that means your yearly growth at the start will be smaller (which hurts everyone along the curve). The only solution I see here is to take a larger portion of the profits, and stakeholders are fighting tooth and nail to prevent that.

15 years in. Stuck at 200K, and I doubt that's going to go up much because the layoffs have started and we're heading back into "lucky to have a job" territory.

>"Stuck at 200K, and I doubt that's going to go up much because the layoffs have started and we're heading back into "lucky to have a job" territory."

Where have there have the layoffs started? What evidence do you have that we are "heading back into 'lucky to have a job' territory"?

Were you around in 2008?

That's not an answer to the question. he/she was asking for evidence or an explanation, because your claim is not intuitive.

I sure was. I fail to see how your question answers either of the two questions I was asking however.

It becomes increasingly stock heavy, and for good reason. Taxes become a huge thing.

If you can get the income as long term capital gains, you get to keep a lot more.

At the same time, money is money, and stock isn’t money.

You'll need to spend some time on levels.fyi

Due to anecdotal reasons, going to have to disagree. Last switch was a 39% increase at 11 years in industry. The market is hot. Most of my friends/colleagues have seen a similar increase the last year.

Obviously market, location, expertise will vary, etc.

YMMV.

The thing with countering averages with anecdotes is that neither really paints a holistic picture of the demand pyramid. Back of napkin calculations say around 4% of US developers work at the FAANGMULAs, meaning that some 29 out 30 dev earnings are somewhere lower in the pay scale. But 1 out of 30 isn't an astronomically small number, so you could very well be one of those 300k TC people surrounded by others in that cohort and thinking the market is hot because professionals w/ that experience set are rare and in demand, and at the same time you could go on r/cscareerquestions and see a deluge of new grads complaining they sent out hundreds of resumes and heard nothing back.

The thing about pay that the job hoppers apparently don't take into account is that levels aren't static. Looking at my own network over the years, virtually everyone I know has been promoted or otherwise landed more senior roles, to varying degrees on both sides. You may also have noticed a significant increase of "staff engineers" in the past few years, whereas the role was basically unknown some 10 years ago. Many companies also have been quietly giving out retainer bonuses/raises to slow down attrition.

Since I started my career, I've had multiple significant compensation increases, some from raises, some from promos, one from a team move, and some from changing jobs. Increasing your experience/expertise over time can have a huge impact. Going from no-name companies to household names can have a huge impact. Relocating can have a huge impact. Negotiations (even internal ones) can have a huge impact. There isn't a one-glove-fits-all when it comes to an individual's opportunities for comp growth.

On the other hand, stagnation is very much real. There are plenty of people that do nothing in terms of career progressions, negotiations, etc and just wait for year-end bonuses to fall into their laps. It'd naive to be surprised these folks aren't keeping up pay-wise.

> The thing with countering averages with anecdotes is that neither really paints a holistic picture of the demand pyramid. Back of napkin calculations say around 4% of US developers work at the FAANGMULAs, meaning that some 29 out 30 dev earnings are somewhere lower in the pay scale.

Not only FAANGABCDEF, but "Staff+, with specialized skills, at FAANGABCDEF, in a small number of specific metro areas". If 1 software engineer can be found who makes $700K for every 29 software engineers at other companies/metros/levels who make $100K, Hacker News Commenters will tell you that "Software engineers make $700K". Important to point out there are a lot of other things in play that make it more complex.

I still think it’s an interesting data point though, which only showing average salaries doesn’t reveal. But yeah, it would be nice to see min/max/median in geography, and just get the more raw data.

It's more accurate to say that job-hopping has diminishing returns.

Get a single +39% increase is one thing.

Getting a +39% increase every single time you change jobs isn't going to happen. If that was possible, you could change jobs every year for a decade and be earning 27X what you started with. If you started at $100K, that would put you at $2.7 million year after 10 iterations.

That's why whenever someone insists that job hopping is an easy way to get huge pay increases, it's probably more a sign that they're early in their career and/or that they haven't been keeping up with compensation negotiations. For people at the sharp end of the compensation scale, job-hopping stops becoming an easy option for compensation increases.

I'd still be very cautious about dissuading people from job hopping. My advice is always "Keep interviewing for new positions at regular intervals until you're bordering on retirement."

A lot of people a lot of people are making less money than they could be due to being complacent about reaffirming their own value. America, and most of the modern world, runs a labour market and to properly value a good in a market you need real sales data - I think it's a solidly good idea to interview regularly, be prepared to job hop... but make a sane evaluation about the decision before committing to leaving or joining a particular job. Most employers over-advertise their business because... well... advertising works - so the grass might not be greener on the other side. But if you have an offer for 120k and are currently making 80k from an employer that values you you can discuss that with your employer to seek a salary equalization.

I agree with always interviewing. I had not been until recently and when I tested the market I found that my current compensation is less than half of the current market rate. I'm kicking myself for leaving basically half a retirement on the table for the last 6 years, and I'm disgruntled in my current position now to boot!

Yes, job hopping is incredibly lucrative and beneficial early in your career. You can work at companies for 12-18 months, jump to another company and get a 40-50% increase between your first 1-3 jobs. That is far faster than sticking around at a single company for even 5 years.

This decreases over your mid-career. You can still get good job bumps of 15% - 25% in your mid years by job hopping.

But later in your career you will get rewarded by loyalty and sticking around. Those massive salaries that everyone brags about generally (not always, but usually) come from internal promotion or from poaching. Those careers require you to be part of specialized teams with high-value business-specific knowledge. Those job roles are not given to engineers who job-hop. Simply put, in your late career, if you are only staying at companies for 12-18 months, then you are not getting deep enough into your specialty to be worth the insane salaries. So long term loyalty becomes much greater rewarded.

This is another reason why I recommend people stay away from FAANG early in your career and move to those jobs later. Early on, you should job hop through smaller companies where you aren't as enticed to stick around and you can more easily get promotions. Then settle down later in your career at the large companies who want and reward loyalty with insane compensation packages.

In the real world, people work about 42 years. With 11 years, you've just finished the first quarter. GP spoke about the latter part of one's career.

GP talked about 20+ years, without knowing, they could either be halfway through their career, or nearing the end. Also assuming they started their career immediately instead of at a later time in life.

11 years in the (relatively young) tech industry is quite the tenure at this point, _imo_.

My point was that the market is hot. Hot enough for an 11 year "veteran" to still get a 39% increase. Also want to point out I've "hopped" as many jobs in about as many years. Some people coming into the industry get taken advantage of compensation wise for a multitude of reasons just to get their foot in the door. I also strongly believe in skill stagnation at certain companies and hopping is the only way out.

Again, none of these arguments really matter as it comes down to individual experiences.

> YMMV.

YMMV is right. There's a lot of factors here. It's almost meaningless to take averages without qualifying those against a fairly large number of conditions.

Total comp North of 300K for an IC sounds like science fiction to many folks which aren't in Silicon Valley, in certain fields, and in certain companies.

That's actually so much of why people feel underpaid. Pay varies incredibly widely. The job also varies quite widely, but when you're not in the job, IC sounds a lot like IC. You could be an IC with a total compensation of $80k (and actually getting $80k), you could be an IC with a TC of $300k (and actually getting $300k), and you could be an IC with a TC of $750k (and actually getting something like $200k-250k because your employer is private and your equity is all hypothetical)

If your employee is private, it is silly to count non liquid statistically meaningless “equity” as part of your compensation.

“compensation” is something I can trade for cash once I have earned it and then exchange for good and services.

It's also silly to discount the value of non-liquid equity to zero, unless you think there is literally zero chance of experiencing a liquidity event.

If only 1 out of 10 startups “succeed” where success is defined by “the investors got their money back”. What are he chances for you as an employee getting any meaningful returns? The investors are well diversified, you aren’t as an employee.

Besides that, it takes the average startup 7-10 years to exit. As opposed to a public company where you can diversify your risk every three to six months depending on your vesting schedule.

It’s also incorrect to assume the expected value of the equity is zero. It’s much more useful to model it as E(x)=x*p(x), especially if you have some useful information on estimating p(x) that a person working at a startup might.

Every startup thinks their company is going to be successful. No matter what the person thinks who is working their, they don’t know when the investors will cut their losses or when the market isn’t hungry for money losing startups and the VCs have to put off going public…like now.

Paper equity for late stage startups can be traded for cash in secondary markets like EquityZen

If your company allows it and it will probably be at a discount.

Only if the company allows it. Many don’t.

It's not what you make, it's what you keep. That 300K+ in SV comes coupled to an extreme cost of living. :)

SV COL is high, but I don't think it is high enough to explain SV pay.

Looking at a few non-SV cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Nashville, Orlando, Sacramento, Austin, and Fresno it costs $14-18k/year more to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area than to rent in those other places.

The average monthly spending on food in SF is about $150/month more than the US average. That's under $2K/year.

California does have a high income tax. For someone moving from somewhere else to California you might have to pay them maybe 10% more to compensate for that.

Putting it all together, a job that pays around $100k/year in non-SV non-NY decent sized cities should need to pay if we are generous maybe around $140k/year due to higher COL in the Bay Area.

That Bay Area tech pay is way more than that suggests that something other than SV COL is the main factor.

Good thing there are such things as remote jobs…

But you're not going to get paid SV salaries working remotely (yes, I work remotely because living in CA is not appealing to me).

I do and so does my whole team. I live in Seattle but a lot of our guys are in the south making six figure salaries. Not being paid the average salary seems to be fud I’ve heard from anti-remote people.

By “in the south making six figure salaries” do you mean $300k on 4 YOE?

My target is $250k, I'm getting $350k due to stock growth and I am remote with 6 YOE.

$200K with 15 YOE - I think that's pretty typical. I know people with even more experience who make less. Recruiters I talk to balk when I ask for $250K.

The article lists out the average software developer salary as $120k. I have no idea if this is true (it sounds low to me), but I don't hear people saying that $120k remote jobs don't exist...

People are saying $350k remote jobs don't exist. Which obviously is untrue (go work at Airbnb). But they're exceedingly rare.

I work for BigTech remotely. My comp may be about 10% lower than the equivalent position on the west coast according to the internal “anonymous” compensation sharing Slack channel.

It also doesn't help when the previous administration specifically targets you with punitive tax policies.

There probably is a plateau, but I was surprised at how high it is. My first job was for $8/hour. Next was for $20/hour. The one after that was $32K/year. Then I went to college. Then it was $66K/year. Then I did a startup for nothing. Then it was $100K/year salary, but TC was about $160K/year. Got up to $300K over the course of that job. Then another startup for nothing. Then back for $630K/year, and it went up to about $900K/year with stock appreciation. Probably less now with the market crash, but still a lot more than I ever thought was possible as a plain old employee.

You do have to interview & negotiate well, and keep your skills sharp, and I'd bet that I'm about at the ceiling of what's possible as an IC. But now I've transitioned into management and all those startup exec positions are theoretically open. :-) There is always somebody making buttloads of money in the economy; if you want it, figure out who it is and how to make yourself useful to them.

To be fair - you can get to staff and make $500k+/yr. After that - it’s very nebulous as to how you get higher up the ladder and doesn’t involve leetcode as much as it does political prowess and the right connections.

So, I believe it is still possible but it is a very different skill set and does become difficult. Transitioning to management train sometimes is more efficient and then it’s a whole new skill set to progress there.

I will admit though - it does taper off and opportunities do become fewer. But, still, you’re making $500k+ by the time you’re on the really difficult track and that’s a pretty healthy amount. (Still might need a partner to comfortably afford a house in SV but that’s another discussion)

You can make 500K+ as a senior engineer with competing offers - and you can get senior with 4 YoE out of college (bachelor's in a top 3 program) these days. No need to wait for staff.

Source: My current nearly-concluded job search.

Sure but I'd rather not use people who graduated from Stanford, MIT, etc. as a baseline. These are inherently super exclusive and small communities. I'm saying that most people who didn't go to a top program but are at least grindy enough to do leetcode are capable of getting to $500K/yr as long as they are open to FAANG-etc.

I'd rather us not use Stanford as a baseline even if the crowd is numerous and abundant on HN and SV.

If you've been in tech for 20 years and aren't making 1 MM per year, you're doing something wrong. Talk to people around you.

> you're doing something wrong

Like, not being born with a US citizenship?

I honestly can't tell if this a joke or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com