4 ms·

$500k a year is unbelievable to me (so is $200k)

by bot41 6y ago

_fat_santa 6y ago
At my last job I worked alongside a guy that made $160/hr as a contractor which if you work 50 weeks out of the year at 40hrs a week, works out to $320k. This wasn't at a FAANG, and this wasn't in the Bay Area. The guy was a stellar developer but he didn't have a PhD or anything and was only 5-7 years out of school. We got to talking one day and he said that the only reason he's making so much is that he was at the right place at the right time, he worked for this place before and they asked him to come back, and offered an insane rate to do so. Making $200k to $500k in the industry isn't hard (the actual work). The hard part is finding a company that needs someone of your skill level and are willing to pay whatever they need to. Finding that job is going to be the really hard part.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  >At my last job I worked alongside a guy that made $160/hr as a contractor which if you work 50 weeks out of the year at 40hrs a week, works out to $320k. $320k as a contractor works out to $160k per year if you're comparing to a W2 salary working directly for the employer, which takes into account taxes, health insurance premiums, job security, unemployment insurance premiums, 401k, HSA, Dependent care FSA, and tons of other tax benefits of W2 income. Not to mention you usually get 4+ weeks off as a salaried employee, and probably have to work fewer hours in total.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Billable hours != full time hours. Clocking 8 billable hours a day is actually pretty difficult. Think about how many hours of actual solid work you get done a day - for most devs I know, it's 4, maybe 6 or even (rarely) 8 on a day when they're really pushing for something. Those are your billable hours. Futzing around on twitter or HN, eating lunch, making yourself a snack: not billable hours. Contractors also rarely have a level of stability where they can work every week. Things crop up - your periodic contract renewal takes a week or two to get approved by legal, stuff like that. These factors are broadly why hourly contracting rates can get pretty high.
  - mattmanser 6y ago
    You think that lawyer who billed you 8 hours actually sat at his desk for 8 hours? You might not be billing the time you went to the loo, or made yourself a coffee. Every other professional in the world is. Are you seriously only billing 4 hours for a full day's work? Think of it the opposite way round, of when you're in the shower and have the 'ah-ha' moment of how to structure the code. Or the evening stroll after dinner when you suddenly find that nice elegant solution to the gnarly code. Do you run home and put those 5 minutes in toggl? Because it took your brain far more than those 5 minutes to get there. We have an intellectual job, the down-time is as necessary and critical to the solutions as the time tapping keys. My brain is churning away in the background, laying things out, figuring out solutions. And that's all extremely valuable subconscious processing time that's not going on my own or other client's projects.
ramraj07 6y ago
Levels.fyi shows an E5 Facebook salary of 377k, which sounds about what I heard is reality.
- fizwhiz 6y ago
  I hope the reason you're being downvoted is that you mentioned E5 "salary" but you probably meant "compensation" which includes much more like bonus, initial grant RSUs, refreshers etc. Either ways, I've always been met with some degree of rancor when people realize that some devs on the west coast make $$$ for doing stuff that isn't rocket science (ex: shoveling protos around). So the downvotes are not terribly surprising.

$500k a year is unbelievable to me (so is $200k)

by bot41 6y ago

$500k a year is unbelievable to me (so is $200k)

At my last job I worked alongside a guy that made $160/hr as a contractor which if you work 50 weeks out of the year at 40hrs a week, works out to $320k. This wasn't at a FAANG, and this wasn't in the Bay Area. The guy was a stellar developer but he didn't have a PhD or anything and was only 5-7 years out of school. We got to talking one day and he said that the only reason he's making so much is that he was at the right place at the right time, he worked for this place before and they asked him to come back, and offered an insane rate to do so. Making $200k to $500k in the industry isn't hard (the actual work). The hard part is finding a company that needs someone of your skill level and are willing to pay whatever they need to. Finding that job is going to be the really hard part.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
>At my last job I worked alongside a guy that made $160/hr as a contractor which if you work 50 weeks out of the year at 40hrs a week, works out to $320k. $320k as a contractor works out to $160k per year if you're comparing to a W2 salary working directly for the employer, which takes into account taxes, health insurance premiums, job security, unemployment insurance premiums, 401k, HSA, Dependent care FSA, and tons of other tax benefits of W2 income. Not to mention you usually get 4+ weeks off as a salaried employee, and probably have to work fewer hours in total.
ahelwer 6y ago
Billable hours != full time hours. Clocking 8 billable hours a day is actually pretty difficult. Think about how many hours of actual solid work you get done a day - for most devs I know, it's 4, maybe 6 or even (rarely) 8 on a day when they're really pushing for something. Those are your billable hours. Futzing around on twitter or HN, eating lunch, making yourself a snack: not billable hours. Contractors also rarely have a level of stability where they can work every week. Things crop up - your periodic contract renewal takes a week or two to get approved by legal, stuff like that. These factors are broadly why hourly contracting rates can get pretty high.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  You think that lawyer who billed you 8 hours actually sat at his desk for 8 hours? You might not be billing the time you went to the loo, or made yourself a coffee. Every other professional in the world is. Are you seriously only billing 4 hours for a full day's work? Think of it the opposite way round, of when you're in the shower and have the 'ah-ha' moment of how to structure the code. Or the evening stroll after dinner when you suddenly find that nice elegant solution to the gnarly code. Do you run home and put those 5 minutes in toggl? Because it took your brain far more than those 5 minutes to get there. We have an intellectual job, the down-time is as necessary and critical to the solutions as the time tapping keys. My brain is churning away in the background, laying things out, figuring out solutions. And that's all extremely valuable subconscious processing time that's not going on my own or other client's projects.

ramraj07 6y ago

Levels.fyi shows an E5 Facebook salary of 377k, which sounds about what I heard is reality.

fizwhiz 6y ago
I hope the reason you're being downvoted is that you mentioned E5 "salary" but you probably meant "compensation" which includes much more like bonus, initial grant RSUs, refreshers etc. Either ways, I've always been met with some degree of rancor when people realize that some devs on the west coast make $$$ for doing stuff that isn't rocket science (ex: shoveling protos around). So the downvotes are not terribly surprising.