There are millions of people in the US that are making a lot less than you do who manage to buy houses, go on vacations, save for retirement and put their kids through college.
I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc.
I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane.
Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested.
We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable
Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K.
Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future
For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging.
I have no other income besides my job.
I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.
> For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years.
And more to the point, when I mentioned what I was making, I didn’t want to get the response that “you know you could make $400K+ by grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG”.
I guess I'm confused by your take then, and the evidence you use to support it. You stated "But you move up in your career just like everyone else does" from a 65-75K starting salary as a college grad, when your own figures show that the average household income is oftentimes comprised of two people making even less than that, but have reached the stage of upwards mobility to buy a house, albeit oftentimes "house-broke" and in strife to pay mortgages.
These people didn't move up, as per your assessment. Most people need to combine salaries with someone else to even have a fair chance in this system, to get any upwards mobility.
When I was single until I was 28, I didn’t even want a house. I wanted the flexibility of being able to move. In fact, I hated the maintenances of owning a single family home and as I mentioned in my first reply We downsized to a condo as soon as we could.
If you are single with no responsibilities but yourself in many major cities, you can make it off of $65K. Homeownership is not the only metric of success
People making less than that aren’t homeless and starving.
And the original person I replied to was in the top percentile of income according to him and considered “survival” not being able to live his current lifestyle.
What do you consider “making it” for a single person?
> For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college
Maybe, if new grad is defined as:
- A remarkable programmer on their own time. i.e. Impressive Github profile, side projects, leetcode expert, etc. Just going through Comp Sci isn't going to get you hired at BigTech today.
- Someone with a fantastic network. Better hope you've got friends in high places or family with connections.
Go to salary.com and select any major city in the US and see what a senior software engineer makes.
Anecdotally, I spent my entire career between 1996- 2020 working local jobs in Atlanta. Which is not exactly a tech hub. Look at the compensation of your standard non tech well known companies that are either based in Atlanta or have a large presence like Delta, Home Depot, Coke, GE (GE Transportation), State Farm.
I’ve never studied a line of leetcode nor have I had a GitHub portfolio my entire career until 2021.
I did a back of the napkin estimate before from all of the sources I could find and the best numbers I could find was that the top paying tech companies employ around 10% of all developers in the US.
On the other hand, the average CRUD developer in any major city in the US can make $140K-$170K within seven years of graduating with strategic job hopping
Warning, just kind of rat-holing on terminology a little. You've used the phrase "can make" twice now. I've always found that way of expressing it kind of weasel-y. Yes, a software developer "can make" $140-170K, by the definition of "can" meaning a non-zero possibility. A new grad "can make" $100K+. A senior software engineer "can make" $1M/yr. All these things are true. I "can win" the lottery, too, and my kid "can be" president of the USA one day. Also technically true. It's more interesting to talk about typical cases, rather than best-case aspirational ones, which I see you are doing in other parts of the thread (great!). I think HN very often mistakes the best case for the typical case, especially when we talk about salaries.
Even using typical case, salary means and medians don't tell the whole story, as the distributions can be wild.
I posted sources at salary.com where you can filter by city and is more applicable to most developers than levels.fyi. I also mentioned what non tech companies are paying like Coke, Delta, Home Depot , etc in non tech hubs.
Median is not “best case”. I’m also well aware of the bi modal distribution of comp in the industry where a “senior” enterprise dev tops out at around what an entry level developer makes at BigTech.
Before the current shit show of the last couple of years in the industry, as a senior enterprise CRUD developer, I could throw my resume in the air and get a “full stack developer” job in Atlanta making $150k within a couple of weeks. This was the norm in Atlanta.
I’ve moved on since then. But the last time I was looking last year, my old recruiters were still saying if I lived in Atlanta I could make around that as just a C# developer. None of those jobs required any more than 5-7 years of experience.
“Enterprise CRUD developer” was my plan B.
I’m probably one of the few people commenting here who has been in both worlds recently and now purposefully on the tip top end of “enterprise” dev and still on the low end of BigTech.
Making $140K to $170k as a senior CRUD/franework enterprise “full stack developer” is the norm. I’ve moved to strategic cloud consulting now making more.
They specifically select against folks like me (on multiple dimensions) so 0 * any-percentage still equals nada. I might be able to swing the second one when the market improves.
I myself didn’t get in through the front door. I got in via the consulting division at AWS (Professional Services). Yes it was a full time direct hire under Amazons usual 4 year offer with base + large signing bonus + RSUs. I am no longer there.
There are all sorts of non tech white collar jobs at all of the BigTech companies that pay top of market. My best friend was hired in the finance department at Amazon Retail. He is now a director at a smaller place and is just now matching the comp of an L6 at Amazon five years later.
There is a better than 50% chance I could get into Google (GCP) doing similar work if I put in the work and learned and could speak about the GCP equivalent of the AWS tech that I know well and where I lead large implementations.
But they only do hybrid and I have no desire to work in an office.
I am in a similar boat. Many of us in similar boats would be very thankful if you can expand on what are the names of these consulting companies and how can we breakthrough?
Honestly, there is no easy way. It was partially strategic and partially luck. I started down this path in 2016. The only actionable advice I can give is start taking on projects with greater scope, impact and that is closer to dealing with the “business”. Work on your soft skills and presentation skills.
My favorite book is “The Geek Leaders Handbook”
2016 - I chose a job that would give me a chance to lead my first green field major implementation from scratch over one that paid more. But I would have just been pulling tickets off the board. I was first exposed to AWS here. But “consultants” did all of the AWS setup. After I started learning AWS, I realized that they were just a bunch of old school operations people. I thought I could be a better consultant since I knew software development and could learn cloud.
This is hugely helpful and one of the most helpful things I read. Thanks for your kindness. This is a very good blueprint on how to think about career advancement at our age. Thanks again
"survive" typically means "maintain this quality of life".
If I were to be displaced by AI, I'm not sure how I'd the mortgage and two kids (that an average college grad doesn't have).
I could sell the house and net several hundred thousand dollars, but if I want to keep the kids in the same district, it's a wash because the township has been fervently fighting fair-value housing.
So your complaint is that because of AI, you might not be able to maintain the lifestyle that puts you in I assume at least the top 5% of earners and make around $350K (https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/)?
The average household is making less than $100k a year (same source) and are somehow surviving, you might have to make different life choices.
I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc.
I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane.
Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested.
We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable
Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K.
Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future
For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging.
I have no other income besides my job.
I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.