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Comment by corrral | Hacker News Reader

OK, but... some places think a "senior software developer" should make $70,000, and other think they should make $250,000 or more. And everything in between.

I don't care how nice the a place it is to work, I'm not applying to the $70k place. If I can't quickly figure out where you fall on that spectrum, I'm not going to bother to contact you because job listings are not rare. If you somehow manage to present as exactly the perfect place to work, I might contact you—to ask what the salary range is, and if you won't say up-front, I'm out.

It takes exactly one time sitting through interviews, having everyone be super excited about hiring you, then naming a totally normal rate when they ask what salary you're looking for, and watching everyone's faces turn green, to never, ever waste time doing that again. I've had mine already.

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Honestly I'm considering the $70k place where as right now I have the $500k total comp.

I can't say I hate my job but I have zero interest in it. Where as I had lots of <$100k jobs I loved. My life was better. I only get one life. I'd prefer to live a happy life than a well paid life. Right now I get paid well but my life feels like it's just bleeding away as a drone.

The biggest reason I haven't pulled the trigger is there's no guarntee that taking the $70k will actually be fun this time. I have my criteria for taking the jump though and if they're met I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Save for one year then take 6 years off and come out roughly the same. That seems like an absolute no-brainer to me.

Not possible because their $500k/year likely only materializes after vesting. Leaving after only 3-4 years on the job would mean the realized yearly comp is closer to 200-250k.

My last job started vesting on Day 1. It was pretty nice.

Sorry but that's not how it works. $500k/year would mean roughly $250k base+bonus and $1 million of stocks vested over four years. And at most companies, the vesting starts after 1 year. So at the end of year one, you would have made $500k in base+bonus+stocks. And after that you would usually get the stocks every quarter so $62.5k worth of stocks every quarter. I am not sure where is your figure of 200-250k Total Comp coming from?

When someone says $500k/year, they usually mean a package like $150k base + $350k stocks with yearly grants.

For the standard 4-year vesting schedule, and assuming a new $350k grant every year, this means actual earnings are:

   Year 1: $150k + $0        $150k
   Year 2: $150k + $87.5k    $237.5k
   Year 3: $150k + $87.5k*2  $325k
   Year 4: $150k + $87.5k*3  $412k

If you leave here, at year 4, and lose all unvested options (expected), your actual average was $281k/year.

Only by year 5 you'll finally actually earn the $500k/year, and the vesting schedule has such an impact on the early earnings that even after a decade, your yearly average is still $400k.

Not to forget taxes. So the idea to "save for one year then take 6 years off" is kinda off the menu unless they've been at the company for a long, long time, or are willing to spend those 6 years living in Thailand.

$500K / year at year four is something entirely different than $500K / year. And that's what the OP said they were making.

How often do people get one large grant upfront, vs yearly refreshers? I was under the impression the latter is the norm.

There are plenty of people making $500K total comp annually right here on HN.

Yearly refreshers come on top of the initial large grant - I've never seen a place that had yearly refreshers without an initial grant.

> roughly the same

Except now you have a 6 year gap on your resume to explain and probably a 6 year degradation of skills unless you're really disciplined.

So what? Depending on the OPs age that might be just fine. And their skills could very well improve, it all depends on what they do in that time.

That kind of freedom is normally only reserved for the kids of the very wealthy, and it opens up all kinds of opportunities.

Nobody cares about gaps in resumes. I swear people think it's 1990 still. If you have desirable tech skills, that's all that matters.

> Nobody cares about gaps in resumes. I swear people think it's 1990 still.

False. I took five years to explore personal projects and then couldn’t get a callback to save my life. After landing a menial temp job, suddenly I got calls and interviews and landed a real job in no time. A huge gap can torpedo your efforts.

I've found lower paying jobs typically treat you worse but YMMV.

Yep, funny how that goes but it's true.

You don't kick your prize chicken.

Yeah 500k all day. People love to preach about secondary benefits, but cold hard cash allows you to pay for most benefits you actually want.

I think work is work, the more a workplaces tries to trick you into believing you're in a family or home environment they're not being clear on the work. Competency trumps all benefits.

Thing is, people live different lifestyles with different priorities.

Sure, if they could press a button and make more, they would, but in reality getting a higher salary requires to change jobs and they often have concerns about moving to a new place, doing something different, working with new people, wondering if they are going to like it or not, which ends up in them settling for a lower salary, especially if that salary covers everything they wanna do.

Often those thoughts are irrational, but thats how humans function.

I can see how it sounds pretentious, but it's somewhat true. After you have the limits of your financial investments explorable, you aren't just going to ignore the potentially soul destroying daily grind. You do it if it does something for you, and if you're basically rich, you might as put your energy in a different place.

But you're right, the 70k place might be just as much work, but they just don't make that much money, or any other series of situations.

Out of curiosity, what were those sub-$100k jobs you loved?

We can swap if you like. I make $55K.

There exists jobs that would be better paid than the $70k and be more fun than the soul crushing very high income terrible job.

Let's say you're in your 20s, single and want to travel the world.

500k requires you to live in San Francisco, commute to the office every day at strict hours and is at a soul crushing, bureaucratic big corp.

70k allows you to work from anywhere in the world, async an on your own schedule. Also, you get more vacation. 6k USD per month is a lot in many countries.

If you want to live now not later, I can see why you'd choose the 70k job.

That's true, but you could also just work the 500k job for 5 years and then possibly (semi) retire. 2.5 million before taxes is a pretty nice chunk to have before your late 20s. It's just delayed gratification.

i ran into a regional bank who wanted to pay a principal engineer $115K to build their entire digital customer facing platform

i was stunned

Plot twist, that was the monthly rate.

What you are likely running into the the trimodal nature of software salaries [1] that has been extensively discussed here on HN in the past. tl;dr there exists (supposedly) in the global market, 3 tiers of tech companies, with 3 distinct salary ranges.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

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