11 ms·

I'm a software engineer with ~3 years of experience. I also want professional growth. Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, part

by nscalf 7y ago

I'm a software engineer with ~3 years of experience. I also want professional growth. Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it. levels.fyi sort of convinced me that being a good engineer is a life changing event for more than 1 generation. I answer questions like these as growth primarily because I know growth is an investment for my life long earning potential, and I just so happen to have a passion for growth to begin with---it's a lucky combination to be drawn to. I'd love to see questions like this phrased to account for this: "Opportunity for professional growth, to grow my future earning potential." "Opportunity for professional growth, because I enjoy learning new things." "Opportunity for professional growth, to reach a role I cannot fill with my current skills." I know the article tried to address this with the responses, but that's sort of the default answer you give in this field. No one really says, or enjoys hearing, "I want to learn more so I can make more money".

chadash 7y ago
> "Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it." And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior equipment. Making $200K/year? I'll be you also have top of the line equipment, no one keeping close tabs on your hours, 4 weeks or more vacation, money to go to conferences, etc. A mentor of mine once told me that I should seek to make more money, even if that's not my motivation. He said that more money is always nice to have, but also that when someone pays you more, they respect you more, so you get all the benefits that come along with that.
- logifail 7y ago
  > when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.
  - mattwad 7y ago
    > If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work. True, but if you're good at your job, then this should be a very rare occurrence! It's still well worth the trade-off.
  - natefox 7y ago
    I give my boss/coworkers my wife's phone number when I go on vacation. I tell them you have to talk to her to get to me. I then put my phone in airplane mode 95% of the time and use it as a camera. I'll occasionally undo airplane mode to upload photos or check the internets for something, but vacation for me is usually unplugging as well. I've yet to be called with this strategy.
    - RussianCow 7y ago
      Funny, I tried this once when I was on call and I still got called. And for a while after that, whenever someone couldn't reach me on my phone, they would call my wife. So really, it was a lose-lose.
      - chucksmash 7y ago
        That strikes me as wildly out of bounds. I imagine your wife has a job too, and her own work issues to deal with. I'd be very upset with the individual bothering my spouse because I hadn't returned their call fast enough for their tastes.
        RussianCow 7y ago
        People in desperation tend not to think things through, especially when customers are the ones telling them that there's an issue. After the second occurrence, I explained to the relevant parties that my wife's phone cannot be used as a secondary contact for myself, and it didn't happen again after that, so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding. It was annoying, yes, but no one was pestering my wife on purpose.
        7y ago
- m0zg 7y ago
  A nice side effect of this is, if you're making multiple six figures, your chances of being asked to work on bullshit projects that don't matter is much lower, and you can basically pick and choose what to do, and _tell your boss_ what to do as well. Money is not just compensation, it's also a powerful signaling mechanism. People just assume that if your time costs a lot, you must be super good. This is _mostly_ true, but not always. Some people get paid a lot for no apparent reason at all. The inverse, however, is often not true (yet the pricing signal is interpreted exactly as you'd expect): there are lots and lots of great people who are severely underpaid. Some are victims of circumstance, some just consider pursuing top dollar to be "beneath their dignity", majority (anecdotally, I don't have data) are just too lazy to do anything about it and change jobs once every 2 years as they should.
  - artsyca 7y ago
    There's another thread that recently rose to prominence about ascertaining the quality of clothing and something along the same lines popped up: expensive clothes are not always high quality, but high quality clothes are generally more expensive -- the cost is a signalling mechanism aka heuristic and like any heuristic it can be gamed
- puranjay 7y ago
  > when someone pays you more, they respect you more I can't stress this enough. The more I charged as a consultant, the more my clients would shut up and heed my advice.
  - sharkweek 7y ago
    The lesson every consultant, including me, seems to have to learn on their own. When I went out on my own a few years back, it was a rush to sign any client at an hourly rate not that much higher than my previous salary rate. Those first clients were rough. As you’re saying, I’ve also seen first hand the more I charge the more people take my suggestions seriously, and overall the better the clients are for my business. Go figure.
  - Iv 7y ago
    My first boss started to respect me after we had a shouting negotiation with him over my work contract. The employer-employee relationship is weird and toxic as hell. Work long hours? Develop additional tool during your free time? Help clients more than your job requires? You are a sucker. Manage to shout enough to get a raise? Now you are a champion.
    - repomies691 7y ago
      > The employer-employee relationship is weird and toxic as hell. Doesn't need to be in my experience, both the employee and employer can respect each other even when they don't get along well on personal level. However it is actually quite interesting that it is a relationship that can be weird and toxic, while still providing (economical) value for both parties.
      - Iv 7y ago
        I had some healthy relationships with bosses, but every employer I had who was a decent human ended up being fired by shareholders. And yes, the strength of free market and capitalism is to transform greed and all the behaviors that come with it into a fuel that helps the economy for everyone. It does not transform these into virtues though...
- jshowa3 7y ago
  This rarely has anything to do with salary and more so to do with what your company can afford. I've made 60k/yr at jobs where I've had awesome equipment and flexible hours. People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management? Just geography alone determines salary. I could make double if I simply moved to San Francisco for the same job. Doesn't mean I'm "more respected".
  - tylerhou 7y ago
    > People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management? That's not what the person you replied to is saying. The above person is saying that companies which pay well also tend to respect their employees more, so seek out a higher salary because those companies also tend to offer better benefits/culture.
    - jshowa3 7y ago
      That isn't necessarily true. There's a difference between respect and benefits/culture. Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies.
      - tylerhou 7y ago
        > Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies. The protests were mostly against sexual abusers/harassers and the arbitration policies. Are you implying that most other tech companies haven't had any executive-level sexual harassers? That most other tech companies don't have forced-arbitration policies? How many other companies openly allow their employees to organize protests through company emails and forums? Not many. The open culture is what allows people to protest. Disclaimer: I work at Google.
        7y ago
- matt-snider 7y ago
  20 days is the legal minimum in Germany. I think a lot of other countries have similar rules. It's kind of sad that in the US and Canada, 4 weeks vacation is special, and 2 weeks vacation is legal.
  - travbrack 7y ago
    There's no minimum in the US
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    I think the exact opposite way. I wish there were no legally paid time off ever. Just pay people when they work and not when they don't.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  With $200k/year also comes accountability. No one keeps tabs on your hours, but you better get stuff done!
  - autotune 7y ago
    As long as it’s mostly fun stuff with proper checks and balances hell yeah!
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  You observe a correlation but not necessarily causation. Technical jobs that are well payed and well respected are found more often in companies that produce a product or service that is sold rather than in companies that sell your time, whether directly or under the guise of 'projects'. If your time-sheet impacts the bill to the customer, you are the product being sold. The reason to avoid the latter is that all benefits to you, either salary or equipment/working conditions, are seen as expenses that impact the margin on the rate, while in a product company they are far more likely to written of as investments into the IP producing engine.
zuhayeer 7y ago
Creator of levels.fyi here - a big part of making the site was to highlight the economic impact of working a technical job and the exponential growth it comes with as you progress in your career (Glassdoor sucked at showing this). There are just more & better opportunities the farther you go!
- eropple 7y ago
  Hey, thanks for the site - it's pretty cool. I was curious what made you pick your cities, though. Data availability? Boulder and not Boston surprised me.
  - zuhayeer 7y ago
    Just added Boston to the filter dropdown. Honestly, we've just been adding cities as we go and totally overlooked Boston, thanks for pointing it out!
    - eropple 7y ago
      Hey, that's really cool. Thanks!
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  Huge fan. Not only is it great to see the data there, but the story that it tells is super compelling too. I myself wasn't sure just how much more worth it was to think about the BigCo game but now, after so many bouts at growth stage startups and plateauing out, I'm seriously considering it.
- baron816 7y ago
  Yep, it can be a big motivator. I think companies should dangle those numbers around more. “Competitive compensation” doesn’t really mean anything. Saying top engineers can earn >$1M will make a lot of people ask “what do I need to do to be a top engineer?”

by nscalf 7y ago

chadash 7y ago

> "Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it." And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior equipment. Making $200K/year? I'll be you also have top of the line equipment, no one keeping close tabs on your hours, 4 weeks or more vacation, money to go to conferences, etc. A mentor of mine once told me that I should seek to make more money, even if that's not my motivation. He said that more money is always nice to have, but also that when someone pays you more, they respect you more, so you get all the benefits that come along with that.

logifail 7y ago
> when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.
- mattwad 7y ago
  > If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work. True, but if you're good at your job, then this should be a very rare occurrence! It's still well worth the trade-off.
- natefox 7y ago
  I give my boss/coworkers my wife's phone number when I go on vacation. I tell them you have to talk to her to get to me. I then put my phone in airplane mode 95% of the time and use it as a camera. I'll occasionally undo airplane mode to upload photos or check the internets for something, but vacation for me is usually unplugging as well. I've yet to be called with this strategy.
  - RussianCow 7y ago
    Funny, I tried this once when I was on call and I still got called. And for a while after that, whenever someone couldn't reach me on my phone, they would call my wife. So really, it was a lose-lose.
    - chucksmash 7y ago
      That strikes me as wildly out of bounds. I imagine your wife has a job too, and her own work issues to deal with. I'd be very upset with the individual bothering my spouse because I hadn't returned their call fast enough for their tastes.
      - RussianCow 7y ago
        People in desperation tend not to think things through, especially when customers are the ones telling them that there's an issue. After the second occurrence, I explained to the relevant parties that my wife's phone cannot be used as a secondary contact for myself, and it didn't happen again after that, so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding. It was annoying, yes, but no one was pestering my wife on purpose.
        7y ago
m0zg 7y ago
A nice side effect of this is, if you're making multiple six figures, your chances of being asked to work on bullshit projects that don't matter is much lower, and you can basically pick and choose what to do, and _tell your boss_ what to do as well. Money is not just compensation, it's also a powerful signaling mechanism. People just assume that if your time costs a lot, you must be super good. This is _mostly_ true, but not always. Some people get paid a lot for no apparent reason at all. The inverse, however, is often not true (yet the pricing signal is interpreted exactly as you'd expect): there are lots and lots of great people who are severely underpaid. Some are victims of circumstance, some just consider pursuing top dollar to be "beneath their dignity", majority (anecdotally, I don't have data) are just too lazy to do anything about it and change jobs once every 2 years as they should.
- artsyca 7y ago
  There's another thread that recently rose to prominence about ascertaining the quality of clothing and something along the same lines popped up: expensive clothes are not always high quality, but high quality clothes are generally more expensive -- the cost is a signalling mechanism aka heuristic and like any heuristic it can be gamed
puranjay 7y ago
> when someone pays you more, they respect you more I can't stress this enough. The more I charged as a consultant, the more my clients would shut up and heed my advice.
- sharkweek 7y ago
  The lesson every consultant, including me, seems to have to learn on their own. When I went out on my own a few years back, it was a rush to sign any client at an hourly rate not that much higher than my previous salary rate. Those first clients were rough. As you’re saying, I’ve also seen first hand the more I charge the more people take my suggestions seriously, and overall the better the clients are for my business. Go figure.
- Iv 7y ago
  My first boss started to respect me after we had a shouting negotiation with him over my work contract. The employer-employee relationship is weird and toxic as hell. Work long hours? Develop additional tool during your free time? Help clients more than your job requires? You are a sucker. Manage to shout enough to get a raise? Now you are a champion.
  - repomies691 7y ago
    > The employer-employee relationship is weird and toxic as hell. Doesn't need to be in my experience, both the employee and employer can respect each other even when they don't get along well on personal level. However it is actually quite interesting that it is a relationship that can be weird and toxic, while still providing (economical) value for both parties.
    - Iv 7y ago
      I had some healthy relationships with bosses, but every employer I had who was a decent human ended up being fired by shareholders. And yes, the strength of free market and capitalism is to transform greed and all the behaviors that come with it into a fuel that helps the economy for everyone. It does not transform these into virtues though...
jshowa3 7y ago
This rarely has anything to do with salary and more so to do with what your company can afford. I've made 60k/yr at jobs where I've had awesome equipment and flexible hours. People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management? Just geography alone determines salary. I could make double if I simply moved to San Francisco for the same job. Doesn't mean I'm "more respected".
- tylerhou 7y ago
  > People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management? That's not what the person you replied to is saying. The above person is saying that companies which pay well also tend to respect their employees more, so seek out a higher salary because those companies also tend to offer better benefits/culture.
  - jshowa3 7y ago
    That isn't necessarily true. There's a difference between respect and benefits/culture. Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies.
    - tylerhou 7y ago
      > Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies. The protests were mostly against sexual abusers/harassers and the arbitration policies. Are you implying that most other tech companies haven't had any executive-level sexual harassers? That most other tech companies don't have forced-arbitration policies? How many other companies openly allow their employees to organize protests through company emails and forums? Not many. The open culture is what allows people to protest. Disclaimer: I work at Google.
      - 7y ago
matt-snider 7y ago
20 days is the legal minimum in Germany. I think a lot of other countries have similar rules. It's kind of sad that in the US and Canada, 4 weeks vacation is special, and 2 weeks vacation is legal.
- travbrack 7y ago
  There's no minimum in the US
- conanbatt 7y ago
  I think the exact opposite way. I wish there were no legally paid time off ever. Just pay people when they work and not when they don't.
BurningFrog 7y ago
With $200k/year also comes accountability. No one keeps tabs on your hours, but you better get stuff done!
- autotune 7y ago
  As long as it’s mostly fun stuff with proper checks and balances hell yeah!
PeterStuer 7y ago
You observe a correlation but not necessarily causation. Technical jobs that are well payed and well respected are found more often in companies that produce a product or service that is sold rather than in companies that sell your time, whether directly or under the guise of 'projects'. If your time-sheet impacts the bill to the customer, you are the product being sold. The reason to avoid the latter is that all benefits to you, either salary or equipment/working conditions, are seen as expenses that impact the margin on the rate, while in a product company they are far more likely to written of as investments into the IP producing engine.

zuhayeer 7y ago

Creator of levels.fyi here - a big part of making the site was to highlight the economic impact of working a technical job and the exponential growth it comes with as you progress in your career (Glassdoor sucked at showing this). There are just more & better opportunities the farther you go!

eropple 7y ago
Hey, thanks for the site - it's pretty cool. I was curious what made you pick your cities, though. Data availability? Boulder and not Boston surprised me.
- zuhayeer 7y ago
  Just added Boston to the filter dropdown. Honestly, we've just been adding cities as we go and totally overlooked Boston, thanks for pointing it out!
  - eropple 7y ago
    Hey, that's really cool. Thanks!
yowlingcat 7y ago
Huge fan. Not only is it great to see the data there, but the story that it tells is super compelling too. I myself wasn't sure just how much more worth it was to think about the BigCo game but now, after so many bouts at growth stage startups and plateauing out, I'm seriously considering it.
baron816 7y ago
Yep, it can be a big motivator. I think companies should dangle those numbers around more. “Competitive compensation” doesn’t really mean anything. Saying top engineers can earn >$1M will make a lot of people ask “what do I need to do to be a top engineer?”