5 ms·

How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer

78 points by somid3 9y ago

goodoldboys 9y ago
In my experience, just do the following: Be generally likable Write decent to good code Connect on a regular basis with current and former co-workers Be aggressive about finding new opportunities (usually through people you've worked with) I agree with most of the points the author makes here, but I don't think you need to stay 2 years at a particular job - 1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects and still get some decent projects under your belt.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  >1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects A string of one year stints would be a huge red flag to me. I would have a hard time selling this person up as we don't hire FTE's to come and go in a span of 12 months. Too much churn kills you, I'd likely pass unless circumstances where extraordinary.
  - jonny_eh 9y ago
    I'd say 1 year minimum (if you're unhappy), 3 years max if it's a company you enjoy. If you're "meh", start looking at 1.5 years, but only switch if you find something exciting, take your time.
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Yeah I wouldn't expect someone to stay when they're unhappy, but I also wouldn't expect to see e.g. eight of those in a row. A couple of short stints here and there, but a pattern would scare me off or at least place them well below similarly qualified candidates.
  - escherize 9y ago
    I've worked for many 1 year stints (everywhere I've worked besides my old startup), and have never had a problem finding jobs. Of course I probably wouldn't know if a place passed on me because of that. I wonder what the probability distribution for how much hirers weight "loyalty" or "stick-around-ness" looks like.
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Yeah, no idea. I'm not concerned with loyalty so much as I am with dealing with the fallout of churn. I've only ever worked at small companies on small teams, so a single engineer leaving tends to hurt. The company isn't loyal to them, so I expect an engineer to look out for their own self interest in the same way. That said, one year is a pretty short time, and if they're _only_ concerned with that next pay bump then they're probably going to cause my team some problems. On the flip side, it's my responsibility to make sure that my engineers are happy in their position and weren't sold on a lie.
      - luckydude 9y ago
        What EpicEng said. When I went to Sun it was more than a year before I was really worth anything as a kernel engineer. Took that long for the kernel to "come into focus" for me and the feedback I got from peers and management was that I was fast (I did POSIX conformance in the kernel that first year). There is a huge difference between being able to fix bugs and being able to fix architecture problems. I needed at least a year before I was capable of the latter in SunOS, probably more than a year.
        EpicEng 9y ago
        Yup, and there are plenty of places which expect this sort of churn. Where I work (biotech) there is a _ton_ of time dedicated up front to transferring domain knowledge. It takes at least a year for new hires to really understand how the lab works, how the hardware and assays work (even if they're in a more typical IT role, they need to 'get' what the hell we're actually doing), what the data means, etc. If I think they're likely to leave shortly after that investment I just can't bring them on.
  - axus 9y ago
    It's better for the job hopper (and you) if you pass on him, and he's hired by companies that aren't bothered by him leaving after a year. According to the post, there are plenty of opportunities like that. It sounds like consulting to me, though.
  - nickthemagicman 9y ago
    Kinda sounds like poor management. It seems to me that proper management would have everything arranged such that an employee is a drop and replace asset.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Even if there is perfect replaceability of transferrable skills, there's a non-zero time to gain familiarity with the unique aspects of the tech stack, specialized domain niche, etc. Good process reduced this to the level that is practical, but reducing churn is an important key to managing the unavoidable cost due to this.
- goalieca 9y ago
  1 year stints wouldn't really fly where I live.
- piptastic 9y ago
  Yeah you will get to 2x much faster doing 1 year instead of 2. Also, you can probably even explain away one job being less than 1 year pretty easily. "Oh, I didn't get to work there long because X company made an offer that I couldn't reasonably turn down when taking into account my family's future". Granted you have to get to the interview stage...
- amorphid 9y ago
  Having recruited several hundred people, I can say with certainty that several ~12 month "regular" jobs is not optimal for projecting career stability. It's not a positive most of the time.
EGreg 9y ago
Can someone fill me in, do most jurisdictions allow employers to report to each other how much you made in the previous job? Or is this considered protected data that employers cannot ask for? Which jurisdictions have which rules? Obviously if you don't have to disclose your previous salary you get an advantage. The same advantage as the employer has in not disclosing the salary they paid to the person you'll be replacing.
- frankc 9y ago
  In the US most allow but not always. For instance, NYC recently passed a law forbidding it. Many companies will not report anything other than whether or not you were an employee and the dates of your employment, but that is by their choice to limit lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.
- codazoda 9y ago
  As far as I know, in my state, a previous employer is only allowed to say weather or not I worked there and for how long. Nothing else should be discussed, legally. IANAL I've only changed jobs twice in my career but I included my salary requirements in a cover letter and did not disclose my previous salary.
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    "Can't" is not the same as "shouldn't". Any labor attorney worth their salt will adivse their clients not to divulge more than the minimum they can get away with, but that is not the same as not being allowed to.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  There are third-party services that will provide that information but only in exchange for the same information about your company (staff members, salaries, etc), and a modest fee of course. It is very secretive though, for obvious reasons.
- patrickbeeson 9y ago
  According to this USA Today story, it depends on where you live (down to the city): https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/27/whats-your-salary-becomes-no-no-job-interviews/100933948/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/27/whats-your-s... Personally, I've always been asked and it has definitely bitten me especially when moving from a region with a different cost-of-living.
acconrad 9y ago
How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years?
- corobo 9y ago
  How realistic (better question - how likely) is it to set the start point at $100k? I think I was earning (the equivalent of) $8k/year in my first job hah
  - dmoy 9y ago
    For the big tech employers, specifically as a software developer, a reasonable start point now is probably 140-150k. If that's the premise from GP.
    - patrickbeeson 9y ago
      This is highly dependent on where you live. Those figures are very high for the Portland, OR area for instance.
      - squegles 9y ago
        Portland starting salary for a SWE is much closer to the 65k mark.
      - dmoy 9y ago
        Yup true, unspoken assumption there is bay area / nyc / seattle / etc, where the big 4 hire a lot (the majority?) of their workers.
- phd514 9y ago
  IMO, you see diminishing returns once you reach somewhere between ~125k (if you're in a low-demand area) and ~250k (if you're in a high-demand area such as the Bay Area). To get above that, you generally need to both switch jobs and be good at what you do.
myrandomcomment 9y ago
This is pretty spot on based on my experience.
fridek 9y ago
In my experience this approach doesn't really scale any higher than junior to senior steps. I was repeatedly told "we just don't hire on levels higher than X". I guess once you reach the famous rockstar level this again becomes a thing, but probably the best bet at moving from 150k to 500k jobs is to stick in one place for ten or so years.
- phd514 9y ago
  Apart from working at one of the big tech companies (Google, Amazon, MS, Facebook, etc), I can't see staying in one place for ten years as a good way to move from 150k to 500k. In most of the companies I've worked (outside of the big tech companies), going from 150k to 200k in 10 years would have been above average.
  - fridek 9y ago
    Does moving through smaller companies in 1-2 year steps do better? They don't seem to have that many high paying positions (maybe anymore, or in my region).
    - phd514 9y ago
      In my experience, switching among smaller companies at ~2-year intervals does better up until you hit that area-specific level of diminishing returns. When I was a team lead, I wasn't involved in salary negotiations, but I had access to my team's salary data and they were all over the map based on what their previous salaries had been, not what their value to the company was. It was eye-opening.
codingdave 9y ago
Step 1 - Take a low paying job as your first software job. Step 2 - Switch jobs for pay increases every couple of years. Step 3 - When you get to market rate for senior devs, say, "Look! I doubled my salary!"
- danjoc 9y ago
  Yeah. Correlation something something causation. "People who switch jobs are making more money!" "People who are offered more money will switch jobs."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tiggybear 9y ago
What is the difference between value and leverage on a microeconomic level? Despite the common notion to "provide more value" to a business if you want a raise, it seems most business people, and thus those responsible for employee raises, conflate value with leverage. Someone can double their output and easily be denied a raise because they have no leverage. However, if you have leverage but do not increase your output, you can likely get a raise. So maybe we should nix the old advice about "creating more value" as it's a very confusing and an unclear metric. If businesses see value as leverage, employees should do the same as that's the only way they'll get what they want. I hope this makes sense, I've been trying to figure out the relationship between value and leverage (at s microeconomic level) and they seem to be almost, if not completely, identical. Thoughts?
marssaxman 9y ago
Is "double" not a verb anymore?
- danjoc 9y ago
  I 2Xed back at 2X time to 2X check that title before 2Xing over in pain as well ;)
Walkman 9y ago
> One strategy to increase your salary 1.5X or even 2X across the next few years is to switch companies every two years. I did exactly that and my salary is more than double in less then 4 years. I started working after 1 year of experience, I have 5 years now.
ezoe 9y ago
Job switching is the most effective way to pressure the employer to raise and keep the high salary. If you pay well, good engineers swarm to apply the job. Job switching is the best opportunity to negotiate your salary for both current and next employers. "If current employer don't pay more, I'll leave." "If the next would-be employer don't pay more, I'll stick with the current job." Also, it pressures existing employers to raise and keep the high salary because if they don't, they'll lose the good engineers to the competitors. So the fact there are many job switching engineers benefits those who don't switch job that often.
slavapestov 9y ago
If you switch jobs every two years, you'll spend most of your time just ramping up and getting to know your team, unless the problems you're solving are so trivial that whatever you do does not justify a 2x bump in compensation.

78 points by somid3 9y ago

In my experience, just do the following: Be generally likable Write decent to good code Connect on a regular basis with current and former co-workers Be aggressive about finding new opportunities (usually through people you've worked with) I agree with most of the points the author makes here, but I don't think you need to stay 2 years at a particular job - 1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects and still get some decent projects under your belt.

EpicEng 9y ago
>1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects A string of one year stints would be a huge red flag to me. I would have a hard time selling this person up as we don't hire FTE's to come and go in a span of 12 months. Too much churn kills you, I'd likely pass unless circumstances where extraordinary.
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  I'd say 1 year minimum (if you're unhappy), 3 years max if it's a company you enjoy. If you're "meh", start looking at 1.5 years, but only switch if you find something exciting, take your time.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    Yeah I wouldn't expect someone to stay when they're unhappy, but I also wouldn't expect to see e.g. eight of those in a row. A couple of short stints here and there, but a pattern would scare me off or at least place them well below similarly qualified candidates.
- escherize 9y ago
  I've worked for many 1 year stints (everywhere I've worked besides my old startup), and have never had a problem finding jobs. Of course I probably wouldn't know if a place passed on me because of that. I wonder what the probability distribution for how much hirers weight "loyalty" or "stick-around-ness" looks like.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    Yeah, no idea. I'm not concerned with loyalty so much as I am with dealing with the fallout of churn. I've only ever worked at small companies on small teams, so a single engineer leaving tends to hurt. The company isn't loyal to them, so I expect an engineer to look out for their own self interest in the same way. That said, one year is a pretty short time, and if they're _only_ concerned with that next pay bump then they're probably going to cause my team some problems. On the flip side, it's my responsibility to make sure that my engineers are happy in their position and weren't sold on a lie.
    - luckydude 9y ago
      What EpicEng said. When I went to Sun it was more than a year before I was really worth anything as a kernel engineer. Took that long for the kernel to "come into focus" for me and the feedback I got from peers and management was that I was fast (I did POSIX conformance in the kernel that first year). There is a huge difference between being able to fix bugs and being able to fix architecture problems. I needed at least a year before I was capable of the latter in SunOS, probably more than a year.
      - EpicEng 9y ago
        Yup, and there are plenty of places which expect this sort of churn. Where I work (biotech) there is a _ton_ of time dedicated up front to transferring domain knowledge. It takes at least a year for new hires to really understand how the lab works, how the hardware and assays work (even if they're in a more typical IT role, they need to 'get' what the hell we're actually doing), what the data means, etc. If I think they're likely to leave shortly after that investment I just can't bring them on.
- axus 9y ago
  It's better for the job hopper (and you) if you pass on him, and he's hired by companies that aren't bothered by him leaving after a year. According to the post, there are plenty of opportunities like that. It sounds like consulting to me, though.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Kinda sounds like poor management. It seems to me that proper management would have everything arranged such that an employee is a drop and replace asset.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Even if there is perfect replaceability of transferrable skills, there's a non-zero time to gain familiarity with the unique aspects of the tech stack, specialized domain niche, etc. Good process reduced this to the level that is practical, but reducing churn is an important key to managing the unavoidable cost due to this.
goalieca 9y ago
1 year stints wouldn't really fly where I live.
piptastic 9y ago
Yeah you will get to 2x much faster doing 1 year instead of 2. Also, you can probably even explain away one job being less than 1 year pretty easily. "Oh, I didn't get to work there long because X company made an offer that I couldn't reasonably turn down when taking into account my family's future". Granted you have to get to the interview stage...
amorphid 9y ago
Having recruited several hundred people, I can say with certainty that several ~12 month "regular" jobs is not optimal for projecting career stability. It's not a positive most of the time.

EGreg 9y ago

Can someone fill me in, do most jurisdictions allow employers to report to each other how much you made in the previous job? Or is this considered protected data that employers cannot ask for? Which jurisdictions have which rules? Obviously if you don't have to disclose your previous salary you get an advantage. The same advantage as the employer has in not disclosing the salary they paid to the person you'll be replacing.

frankc 9y ago
In the US most allow but not always. For instance, NYC recently passed a law forbidding it. Many companies will not report anything other than whether or not you were an employee and the dates of your employment, but that is by their choice to limit lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.
codazoda 9y ago
As far as I know, in my state, a previous employer is only allowed to say weather or not I worked there and for how long. Nothing else should be discussed, legally. IANAL I've only changed jobs twice in my career but I included my salary requirements in a cover letter and did not disclose my previous salary.
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  "Can't" is not the same as "shouldn't". Any labor attorney worth their salt will adivse their clients not to divulge more than the minimum they can get away with, but that is not the same as not being allowed to.
ihsw2 9y ago
There are third-party services that will provide that information but only in exchange for the same information about your company (staff members, salaries, etc), and a modest fee of course. It is very secretive though, for obvious reasons.
patrickbeeson 9y ago
According to this USA Today story, it depends on where you live (down to the city): https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/27/whats-your-salary-becomes-no-no-job-interviews/100933948/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/27/whats-your-s... Personally, I've always been asked and it has definitely bitten me especially when moving from a region with a different cost-of-living.

acconrad 9y ago

How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years?

corobo 9y ago
How realistic (better question - how likely) is it to set the start point at $100k? I think I was earning (the equivalent of) $8k/year in my first job hah
- dmoy 9y ago
  For the big tech employers, specifically as a software developer, a reasonable start point now is probably 140-150k. If that's the premise from GP.
  - patrickbeeson 9y ago
    This is highly dependent on where you live. Those figures are very high for the Portland, OR area for instance.
    - squegles 9y ago
      Portland starting salary for a SWE is much closer to the 65k mark.
    - dmoy 9y ago
      Yup true, unspoken assumption there is bay area / nyc / seattle / etc, where the big 4 hire a lot (the majority?) of their workers.
phd514 9y ago
IMO, you see diminishing returns once you reach somewhere between ~125k (if you're in a low-demand area) and ~250k (if you're in a high-demand area such as the Bay Area). To get above that, you generally need to both switch jobs and be good at what you do.

myrandomcomment 9y ago

This is pretty spot on based on my experience.

fridek 9y ago

In my experience this approach doesn't really scale any higher than junior to senior steps. I was repeatedly told "we just don't hire on levels higher than X". I guess once you reach the famous rockstar level this again becomes a thing, but probably the best bet at moving from 150k to 500k jobs is to stick in one place for ten or so years.

phd514 9y ago
Apart from working at one of the big tech companies (Google, Amazon, MS, Facebook, etc), I can't see staying in one place for ten years as a good way to move from 150k to 500k. In most of the companies I've worked (outside of the big tech companies), going from 150k to 200k in 10 years would have been above average.
- fridek 9y ago
  Does moving through smaller companies in 1-2 year steps do better? They don't seem to have that many high paying positions (maybe anymore, or in my region).
  - phd514 9y ago
    In my experience, switching among smaller companies at ~2-year intervals does better up until you hit that area-specific level of diminishing returns. When I was a team lead, I wasn't involved in salary negotiations, but I had access to my team's salary data and they were all over the map based on what their previous salaries had been, not what their value to the company was. It was eye-opening.

codingdave 9y ago

Step 1 - Take a low paying job as your first software job. Step 2 - Switch jobs for pay increases every couple of years. Step 3 - When you get to market rate for senior devs, say, "Look! I doubled my salary!"

danjoc 9y ago
Yeah. Correlation something something causation. "People who switch jobs are making more money!" "People who are offered more money will switch jobs."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tiggybear 9y ago

What is the difference between value and leverage on a microeconomic level? Despite the common notion to "provide more value" to a business if you want a raise, it seems most business people, and thus those responsible for employee raises, conflate value with leverage. Someone can double their output and easily be denied a raise because they have no leverage. However, if you have leverage but do not increase your output, you can likely get a raise. So maybe we should nix the old advice about "creating more value" as it's a very confusing and an unclear metric. If businesses see value as leverage, employees should do the same as that's the only way they'll get what they want. I hope this makes sense, I've been trying to figure out the relationship between value and leverage (at s microeconomic level) and they seem to be almost, if not completely, identical. Thoughts?

marssaxman 9y ago

Is "double" not a verb anymore?

danjoc 9y ago
I 2Xed back at 2X time to 2X check that title before 2Xing over in pain as well ;)

Walkman 9y ago

> One strategy to increase your salary 1.5X or even 2X across the next few years is to switch companies every two years. I did exactly that and my salary is more than double in less then 4 years. I started working after 1 year of experience, I have 5 years now.

ezoe 9y ago

Job switching is the most effective way to pressure the employer to raise and keep the high salary. If you pay well, good engineers swarm to apply the job. Job switching is the best opportunity to negotiate your salary for both current and next employers. "If current employer don't pay more, I'll leave." "If the next would-be employer don't pay more, I'll stick with the current job." Also, it pressures existing employers to raise and keep the high salary because if they don't, they'll lose the good engineers to the competitors. So the fact there are many job switching engineers benefits those who don't switch job that often.

slavapestov 9y ago

If you switch jobs every two years, you'll spend most of your time just ramping up and getting to know your team, unless the problems you're solving are so trivial that whatever you do does not justify a 2x bump in compensation.