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If you can't afford an apartment on 250K you need to take a serious look at your spending and figure out what you actually want to prioritize. Sure, you won't be picking up a $3M apartment overlooking Central Park, but toooooons of Brooklyn and Queens should be affordable to you with that level of income. I got a mortgage a few years ago when I was only pulling down $180K and I was approved for up to $1MM loan, most of the city is doable at that budget. https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/brooklyn/price:-1000000?view...

I agree... likely this person is paying something like $5k/m in rent and wonders why they have no money.

I imagine this person has some other expenses they are not disclosing. Or they have a SO that doesn't work or something. Otherwise it makes no sense.

$250k is not rich in NYC - but you can get a house in NYC for $250k....

I don't think this person is claiming to make 250k. They probably used that as a reference figure because the root post uses that as a reference point.

Most likely this person makes a more median tech salary in the mid 100s.

> never been able to clear more than 250k - moved from coding to mgmt but still cant break 250

Even though making $100k fits this description, it would be like saying Julius Caesar died more than 10 years ago. that's technically true but no one would say that.

It's implied from the part I cited he makes around 250k, maybe fluctuating between 230 and 240

If you earn 250k and can’t buy a home, relocate, that sounds like a nightmare. I’m in France and up until last month I earned ~45k€. I bought my home 2 years ago.

I can’t imagine living somewhere where 250k is not enough to live, that’s insane. If you relocate you probably won’t make 250k, but your money might be worth something instead.

When you say NY I assume you mean NYC.

If you want to buy a house you either need to live somewhere cheaper or make more money. $250k salary following a 3 rule is $750k should be enough to buy a house in NYC, it will not be in Manhattan. Staten Island, the not hip parts of Brooklyn, Queens, or going to the suburbs is where you need to go to make that possible. A lot of the people who buy houses in Manhattan and such are doing so with a combination of family money, or they are a double income couple where both are making $250k, or someone is just making a ton of money. If you want to go to big tech you need to do the grunt work of studying algorithms. The Finance places are probably going to be harder to get into with no degree, but depending on your infra skills it might be possible.

Have you looked into living in NJ? In honesty, I don't know that there'll be much sympathy for someone able to make $250k/yr with no degree. NYC is an expensive place to live period. Virtually everyone I know who lives in the city rents.

Don’t study leetcode. If you want to work at FAANG, get some interviews with them. You may discover that you really didn’t need to spend days studying stuff that’s not relevant to your job. At the very least, you’ll get some interview practice and figure out what you do need to study. Those companies will let you interview again and again after a 6-12 month break.

Also, companies like Stripe and Airbnb also pay competitively with FAANG. There’s probably 15-20 biggish companies out there that would pay in the ballpark of what you’re looking for.

If you want to work at FAANG, get some interviews with them.

That requires Leetcode, no? Am I missing something?

I dunno where everyone got the idea that Leetcode is required for this stuff. You learn everything you need to pass these interviews in a 101 or 102 level algorithms/data structures class.

This is weird because I work at FAANG and one of the things that everyone acknowledges is that we all studied to get past the damn interview loop. Yes it is covered in classes, there is nothing new but at the very least you need to brush up.

Sure, you should study a bit. That doesn't mean you have to 'grind leetcode' or anything. I usually go implement a couple data structures (a heap and a graph search, or something) and then feel pretty good. Typical interview questions just aren't that hard and if you aren't too nervous about it you can figure them out live if you know basic computer science.

As a university student looking for internships, I highly disagree. I've taken the highest level DSA course my university offers and it's nowhere near enough to tackle interviews from top tech companies.

It's not about knowing how to implement DFS. Its about understanding the problem and requirements quick enough, then figuring out what DSA to use, and then doing it quick enough within the time limit.

I feel like all of that is pretty easy if you solve like 3 DFS problems, which I at least did in my classwork.

Agreed, the leetcode stuff is unnecessary. I never did for my FAANG job. Really just the following in depth: hash tables, heaps, string manipulation, 5 min of O(n), and then a review pass through other algos/data structures.

There was a joke that you just had to say "hash tables" 3x fast and you'd just get an offer. So many interview questions get torn apart by a good hash application.

Those classes teach the algorithms and how to implement them.

What they lack is:

1. how to recognize which algorithm the interviewer is expecting 2. how to present said algorithm on a whiteboard in under 30 min 3. how to speak fluently about the tradeoffs made in said whiteboard implementation 4. 'mutually agreed upon head compilation' where both you and the interviewer agree how your whiteboard code will be executed.

These are skills that you can, and should, practice to interview with large companies. Leetcode helps with 1 and 2.

All of that stuff comes pretty easily if you have spent any time in a day job talking to coworkers about algorithms. Running code in your head and talking about its tradeoffs is not like an esoteric skill.

If you have a BS in computer science and remember some of your coursework, you’ll pass an interview.

Getting to the interview phase is straightforward if you have a few years of experience. _Passing_ the interviews is another story, and will require study if you haven’t studied algorithms recently.

I’ve never passed, but I encourage folks to apply, use the failure to figure out what to study, and try again in six months. I see many folks feeling unprepared, and they never get around to interviewing, so they never know if they are truly unprepared.

I work at a FAANG as a SWE. Never spent more than 5 minute on Leetcode. I do mostly frontend, but I doubt a manager’s interview would be very different from an algorithms coding perspective.

They probably have a rich, well connected daddy. For normal people, $250k is probably as high as you can possibly go. I also have experience with distributed systems, worked 80 hours a week for 10 years straight and built several popular open source projects and I can't get past $80k... Almost feels like a conspiracy against me at this stage but I suspect it just comes down to not having a rich daddy who is connected to politicians and corporate execs.

If you look at any rich person these days with a high salary, there is always a rich daddy, rich mommy, rich sugarmomma, rich sugardaddy or rich buddies pulling strings behind the scenes. It's just the new spoiled brat reality. HR people probably run candidates through an opaque automated system which filters out anyone who doesn't have a rich sugardaddy.

> Almost feels like a conspiracy against me at this stage but I suspect it just comes down to not having a rich daddy who is connected to politicians and corporate execs.

I don't know where you live but there is no way this is the case. 80k is less than starting salaries for new grads.

Maybe you meant 180k? In which case, that's still around the level for a second level employee at a big company (a few years of experience). Getting a job at FAANG or whatever else doesn't require special connections, just knowing how to interview and knowing how to be pleasant to work with. It doesn't require connections at all -- if anything it's one of the most democratic hiring processes of any field, where you can apply online and have a job a few months later on your merit alone without any networking being required.

Outside the US, 80k is a high salary. It matters a lot which country we are talking about for whether 80k with that experience is insanely low (USA) or insanely high (India). Take a look at the StackOverflow (self-reported) income statistics in various countries:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-wh... (compare Global vs United States)

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#salary-comp-t... (compare All Respondents vs United States)

https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/05/developer-salaries-in-...

I recently applied to a job at a well known company which offered $160k. The interview process was going perfectly I aced every stage of the process both in terms of tech skills and communication/people skills then got to the final stage which involved talking to the director of engineering. I assumed that was just a formality and it was a done deal... But surprise, the director didn't even show up to the interview, instead I got someone else and they interviewed me. I thought it went perfectly, I was able to answer every question without issue and demonstrate my knowledge... Then after over 1 week with no response, I send them an email to ask about next steps and I get an email back saying that "Unfortunately, another candidate has been chosen"... But the thing is, I know that they had multiple positions available and we had even discussed multiple options and they saw me as a potential fit for multiple different teams.

This is just one story I have among many. My resume is stellar, my communication skills are great, the interviewers always seem impressed while I'm taking to them, my colleagues always treat me with respect wherever I go... But somehow all these weird things happen to me whenever I deal with big corporations or startups backed by big VCs.

Ironically, before that, I had an experience on the other side interviewing candidates at my previous company but somehow none of the really good candidates which I recommended got in. Instead, they hired only mediocre developers.

It honestly seems like you have an attitude problem.

Of course now I have since developed an attitude problem in my personal life. Though it doesn't show up in my professional life. What kind of person would go through what I've been through and not develop an attitude problem?

Are you in the US? Where?

Even here in Minneapolis, upper Midwest, there wasn't anyone on the team I managed making less than $80k. And I actually complained to the owner (small company) that we would lose people because their salaries weren't keeping up with the market or even with inflation.

If you're a developer in the US making under $80k I would have to assume that you're in an area with absolutely no tech business or you have no desire to change that.

> worked 80 hours a week for 10 years straight

> Almost feels like a conspiracy against me

You are conspiring against yourself. How did you put in that much work for that long and not switch jobs? It sounds like you chronically undervalued yourself and stayed in bad positions as a result. Hard work only pays off if you find someone to pay you. If you are stuck at a crappy job, work only hard enough to impress your colleagues that are about to leave. Then leverage that reputation to also make your exit. Failing that, just start over and find a new job with no prior connections.

If you're at 80k, you are a loooong way from the shenanigans that go on at executive level work. And you're right, there are politics and it is cutthroat, but again... that's not something most devs will encounter until they're leading large teams.

I did switch jobs 10 times in 12 years and constantly asked for more raises, bargained hard during hiring and always delivered above and beyond. I was always highly regarded by my colleagues. Doesn't matter. Company founders usually treated me terribly. In my last job, the founders said that I was essential but then when I asked for a raise plus more responsibilities and told them that it was a deal breaker otherwise, they refused. In spite of being flush with millions of funding. The CTO even threatened with violence. Their business has been going downhill since I left and the CTO has since turned members of the industry against me as revenge for leaving... In spite of the fact that my work exceeded expectations (by the CTO's own admission). To rub salt into the wound, their company was using an open source project which I had built for free (a popular project with almost 6k stars on GitHub).

You're jumping to conclusions. Society does not work how you think.

The fact that you cannot conceive the system as unmeritocratic and try to blame me without knowing anything about me suggests that you are probably one of the lucky few who has been given special treatment. Maybe in your peer group, one would HAVE to have done something incorrectly to end up in my situation. In my peer group, nobody ever succeeds no matter how good they are or what they do. I suspect that the difference in perception is likely rooted in widespread algorithm-based discrimination based on your social connections to rich or powerful people.

If you can’t breach the glass ceiling, just try saving more- move outside of NY etc. You can save plenty from 250k

Is there any way you can work remotely? If you can get companies to pay you 250k, you can definitely write a nice resumé and probably get a remote job in this market.

I know people who have the kind of history you mention but didn't end up in tech and they don't make anywhere near 250k/y. So all is not lost ;)

Swallow the leetcode prep slowly over time, and then FAANG.

Play the startup lottery (potentially high equity that will pay off in 5-10y).

Try a hedge fund (high base).

Move up the management ladder.

Side gig product or sell a course on something you have unique expertise in.

Move to Philly!

I'm moving to PA, so out of curiosity, why are you recommending to move to Philly?

I assumed OP has a relatively high cost of living in NY, and can work remotely (either at current job or an equivalently paying one).

Then Philly is close-by (can still get to NY for friends/family, similar east coast culture), still a cool city (I had a lot of fun visiting), and MUCH lower cost of living. I saw nice houses there in cool neighborhoods for 300k. It made me strongly consider the emotional cost of starting over in yet another city, just to be able to own where I live and have it be very comfortable.

90% of NYC IT dept lives in Jersey. 150k is enough for a family to live on. Get on the train at 6am like the rest of us. :)

What industry are you in? You should be able to break 250K in finance.