12 ms·

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make th

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set. The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows perhaps just a leeetle disconnect with the mainstream tech world

codegeek 5y ago
I hear you. I meant in the context of people who can get that 200K job instead of indie hacking. I don't know the founder of "actual" personally but I just checked his twitter profile and he works in design systems at Stripe. I would guess he is not too far off from that number (all in).
daenz 5y ago
My read on that is that it is total comp, so it includes bonuses/RSUs/options. If you're not negotiating for those things, what are you doing. Though $200k base salary is not a crazy salary for a staff/principle/high-level engineer. I don't think people realize how corrosive to mental health a $200k engineering job can be though. I was making very close to that as a base salary, and the amount of responsibilities I had, that all directly contributed to the success of the organization and the engineering team, was frankly staggering. I was always available, even when I wasn't "on call." I was always putting out very important fires. It never ended.
- conductr 5y ago
  This is pretty universal to all industries. You just don’t get paid well for the work you do in X hours. You get paid well became you’re expected to put in a high amount of effort that isn’t measured in time or stress, except by you. Mo’ money, mo’ problems
  - samhw 5y ago
    Also, speaking personally as someone doing £180k when I know my market salary is at most two thirds of that: I don't really spend the money, because I never want to be pinioned to my job, or to even feel like I'm locked into my job because I'd e.g. have to move out of my house if I quit. That limits you quite a bit, unless you're preternaturally confident in your jobseeking ability.
    - conductr 5y ago
      I do the same. I’m naturally frugal but have loosened up some as earnings increases but I don’t spend or leverage like my peers. They are prisoners to their jobs and I can (and have) said “enough” and walked away when jobs get too toxic. I don’t generally have a problem working long hard hours but I unplug at times where interruptions will not be fielded and I’ve been present during complete shit show management stuff that I just morally will not be associated with. It’s immensely helpful to my mental health knowing I can walk off anytime things go sideways. I even negotiate my compensation in a manner that I’m not beholden like those with stock, options or anything where vesting periods are involved. It’s typically event based and more short term. But, I don’t work in a field where I’m turning down early Facebook equity or something like that.
      - samhw 5y ago
        Yeah, that sounds very similar to me. I’m the opposite in terms of spending - I’ll naturally default to spending my income, rather than defaulting to not spending – but that only holds up to about £100k, at which point it goes beyond my capacity to (in a natural way) spend it all. But I share the concern about being a prisoner to one’s job. That’s my main concern. I don’t understand how so many people are willing to put themselves in a position - partly in terms of spending habits but primarily in terms of fixed commitments like rent and women - where they could not live their current life without their job, where losing or forgoing it would mean ruination, by the standards of the life they choose for themselves. That’s just beyond my comprehension. For me a job is a very contingent thing.
- Dayshine 5y ago
  You realise people work jobs as vital and stressful as that for a quarter of the money right? And that most people in the workforce don't get significant bonuses, and no shares. Software engineering is an absurd bubble.
  - jasonjayr 5y ago
    Maybe the problem is not that tech is overpaid. Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough?
    - cwalv 5y ago
      > Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough? One possible reason for this is that in software the "means of production" is much more accessible, so it's easier for a group of developerss to go it alone than it is in many other professions. When tech salaries are compared to "small business owners" in general, it doesn't seem so out of whack.
  - daenz 5y ago
    I'm not going to say people don't also have stressful and difficult jobs while making less. But I will say that I was paid what I was paid because the employer and I negotiated, and determined that my salary was mutually financially beneficial.
  - e-clinton 5y ago
    Software engineering is a bubble like sports is a bubble
  - julienb_sea 5y ago
    Tech salaries are a direct result of basic supply/demand. The available supply of workers and the demand for a job are, to a certain extent, independent from how "vital and stressful" the job is. The only bubble that might pop is an America first hiring mindset which constricts the supply. If this were to change I would expect tech salaries in America to go lower. Then again, this is not that hard to do, most large tech companies already have major offshore dev teams. There are clearly reasons why companies don't move more of their spend offshore.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Again, what part of the world are you on? Even in Berlin, with all the talks about it becoming a top destination for tech people, I'm yet to hear any 6-figures offer. Even the blockchain companies that were flush with cash were paying 90-95k€ to their top people, maybe a 10-20% performance bonus. Mind you, we are talking about Germany where the tax is ~42% of your income at this bracket if you are single. When I was freelancing, pay was higher, but my best year hit around 130k€ net income, and that only because I deferred a lot of it and got an accountant that advised me to put as much as possible into a private pension fund to have a bigger tax deduction. If I wanted to have that cash in hand, I would've ended up with maybe 80k€? Yes, cost of living is lower (though rapidly rising, and it is not a post-pandemic thing) and there is plenty of social welfare benefits. Especially after having kids, I wouldn't go to the US for a $200k/year job. But to think that this kind of compensation is par for the course shows a huge disconnect from the reality in the rest of world.
  - shankr 5y ago
    yeah as another tech worker in Berlin, reading these salaries on consistent basis is kinda depressing. The 70-80K is like a starting tech salaries in larger part of US. Here in Berlin you have to toll for multiple years and then before you know you have hit the 90-100K ceiling. Just compare Berlin with any big American US city, Berliner's PPP is still quite low. This is after the salary "boom" in Berlin.
    - klausa 5y ago
      COVID and companies being more open to hire remotely has partially fixed that, I know of multiple people making 130kE+ in Berlin now, working remotely, with full benefits of being an employee of a German GmbH. I can give you some details via DM if you want.
      - shankr 5y ago
        yeah I won't say no :) Thank you!
      - atalw 5y ago
- gabereiser 5y ago
  The mental health aspect I think is often overlooked. When young engineers are eager to climb the ladder into senior/principal/distinguished positions (this was me, btw) they often overlook what it does to your mental health. The beginning seems great. Big problems, big solutions, everyone knows what’s their role in it and how to get it done. Over the years that view will fade. The certainty of success replaced by tooling up, research, supporting articles, still engineering hard stuff, fielding workshops by the business to help educate and rehash the vision to this next set of recent college grads. The complexity of the job increases as the responsibility increases. My brother is also an engineer and instead of going after titles and management he decided to stay as an engineer for as long as he could. He’s extremely happy working on things without having direct reports. There’s a sweet spot for everyone here. Some like more freedom and time to recharge (this is me) and some can balance the demands of the work with the demands to explore work (my brother). Then there are others who dive so far head first into work they burn themselves out. Please, take the time to find your balance. Not only will you be happier, people around you will be too.
  - daenz 5y ago
    I tried to re-negotiate a 4 day work week, but they weren't having it, so ended up walking. I know it is privileged to say, but sometimes no amount of money is worth giving up things that are important to you. For me, I was giving up my time and ignoring a project that I think is very important. When I came to my senses about how the money isn't worth giving that up, they had to yield, or I had to leave.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I’d like to do four days a week at 70% pay. No can do. Ok I quit, but I can consult 3 days a week at 200% pay. Sounds good.
      - aparsons 5y ago
        How would one go about finding such consulting gigs? I’m semi-retired now, but with nearly 4 decades of experience, I still didn’t feel comfortable becoming a full-time consultant.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I think of it like this: They can't pay me enough to take a $200k job. By which I mean that for most $200k jobs, the money would not be enough to justify the trade off. But everyone makes their own choices on that sort of thing.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  Not sure why people say this. In the US, you can get a 200k USD job without any RSUs/bonuses/options, all in base salary, and these jobs won't be over 40 hours a week. I see it among my friends daily. And in FAANG, it's even higher, I've seen offers for people only with a few years of experience at 350k or more (RSU appreciation mainly, not base salary). It's more that people don't really believe the high salaries and think that there must be some catch. In reality, there isn't, it's just that software is eating the world and thus companies must pay for talent.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Google L5 in the Bay Area doesn’t pay $200k base. Your friends are either lying to you or you are an exceptional group not representative of standard senior Bay Area FAANG base salaries.
    - cercatrova 5y ago
      I never said FAANG pays 200k base. Companies who only pay in cash will have their total compensation be 200k. FAANG meanwhile pays a lower base, such as 170k, and the rest is RSUs. While FAANG base is lower, their total compensation is higher than other companies.
      - bornfreddy 5y ago
        Curious, which companies "pay in cash"? (I'm not from US)
        cercatrova 5y ago
        Most companies pay in cash. It's really among FAANG and FAANG adjacent that pay in RSUs. Fortune 500s pay in cash, many of them at least.
        bornfreddy 5y ago
        Ah, misunderstood completely. Thank you for clarifying!
trafnar 5y ago
I'm guessing this comes from the California / Bay Area perspective where 200k salaries are not rare (but a "just ok" house costs $2.5 million)
runako 5y ago
$200k is increasingly a mid-career engineering salary in many parts of the US. Some quick examples taken from companies reported on levels.fyi, where pay around $200k was reported for people working outside the most expensive US cities plus Austin: - Lowe's (Charlotte): https://www.levels.fyi/company/Lowe-s/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Lowe-s/salaries/Software-Engi... - Equifax (Atlanta): https://www.levels.fyi/company/Equifax/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Equifax/salaries/Software-Eng... - ExxonMobil (Houston): https://www.levels.fyi/company/ExxonMobil/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/ExxonMobil/salaries/Software-... - T-Mobile (Dallas): https://www.levels.fyi/company/T-Mobile/salaries/Software-Engineer/Principal-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/T-Mobile/salaries/Software-En... TL;DR; look around and ask for more if you don't see $200k near you and you would like to earn more. I'm biased, but I think it's also worth noting that $200k in Dallas leaves a person with a lot more money left over after basic expenses than it does in SF.
- usayimunderpaid 5y ago
  As a technical lead (one level above senior software developer in my current company), I make €96k in Germany. I had an interview with Klarna, and they offered me €85k (they actually started with 75 and went up to 85), and the interviewer nearly laughed at me when I asked for €110k. Different continent, different problems? :)
  - shankr 5y ago
    For me it was Shopify laughing at me for asking for 90K with 7 years of experience. EDIT: Shopify not Spotify
  - runako 5y ago
    https://techpays.com https://techpays.com looks really interesting for European compensation transparency. Tech folks should get paid a lot more, especially those outside the US.
  - jypepin 5y ago
    salaries in europe are much lower - but to be fair, I lived much better in amsterdam with 100k euro than SF with 150k
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen.
- junon 5y ago
  > If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. I've been able to build and ship my own apps for almost a decade now and have never received an offer close to that, even in SF. Maybe things have changed in the last 5 years, but whenever I see the 200k figure I always have to scoff.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Sounds like the missing piece is the interviewing and negotiation skills. The money is there, you just have to convince them that it is in their best interests to give it to you.
    - junon 5y ago
      That was certainly not the problem.
      - motoxpro 5y ago
        If that wasn't the problem, sounds like you didn't have the right skills.
        junon 5y ago
        Ah yes, the lady at Uber who was being paid 250k who used Edit>Copy/Paste to paste lines of Python from Notepad into a REPL and got confused with extraneous whitespace errors in order to prove to me that some python doesn't work (even though it did) with a position of "Staff Engineer 1" certainly deserved it more than almost literally everyone else I've worked with. Skillset has nothing to do with this problem.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
noobermin 5y ago
The keyword I'm assuming is "relatively," I'm hoping it's not absolutely an easy job because that would just be wasted money, which I don't put as being above some people's intelligence but still.
Dig1t 5y ago
I grew up in the US, my parents are very blue collar, neither of them went to college, and they worked hard to give me and my sibling a decent childhood. I went to the cheapest college I could (a local university you've never heard of) to get a BS in Computer Science. I worked my ass off, grinding on interview studying, working internships and jumping companies whenever I could get a better offer. I'm about to turn 30 and I made 430k (200k of which is salary) in 2021 working at a big company in the US. I would not consider my background to be particularly privileged and I don't consider myself to be all that smart, but I managed to get here just by working hard and never getting comfortable. Yes, if you get comfortable in the first tech job you land and just sit around enjoying your life, then you probably won't naturally end up in a place making lots of money. Obviously being privileged and getting everything handed to you makes landing a nice cushy job much easier, but there are still plenty of paths to these high paying jobs if you're willing to work hard. Also, as mentioned by another person in this thread, this totally does take a toll on your mental health and you absolutely have to sacrifice things. I gave up a lot of things that would have given me a better quality of life, but those were choices I was willing to make.
- arsfeld 5y ago
  I don't think the privilege is just about being handled things easily, it's also about being able to reach such positions, no matter what the upbringing you had. A lot of people are going to work as hard or harder than you, but because they chose a different career or because they don't have your set of skills, they'll never reach what you got and that is a huge privilege.
  - cwalv 5y ago
    > I don't think the privilege is just about being handled things easily It seems like there are many cases like this where people have different perspectives because they have different understandings of certain word. E.g. "privilege": to some this doesn't have any implications around fairness, like "you pass the exam and you can get your driver's license; then you have the privilege to drive." To others "you're privileged" has an implicit "which isn't fair, and shouldn't be so* attached.
  - 5y ago
lkrubner 5y ago
A lot of people on Hacker News are in the USA, so we see a lot of USA salaries posted here. Obviously you'll make a bit less in Europe, that is a different system, salaries are lower but social services are higher. And outside of the West, I think we all understand that salaries are lower. We could adopt the habit of stating which country we are in, with every comment that we post. Would that help?
soneca 5y ago
I agree with you, but I appreciate that people on HN talk like this because then I am presented to this world of privileges. It shows to me that this world exists and I might benefit from it. That happened to me. Instead of anchoring myself to what Brazilian companies pay for developers, I focused on getting a remote job at a US company. One that would anchor themselves among their peers around SV, LA, NY. Now I earn about 12x more than when I started as a junior when I started 5 years ago. I earn about 3x more than if I was lucky to get the best paying job for my experience level here in my city. This 3x salary increase is very related to knowing that this privileged world existed, which is mainly HN’s fault in my case. Bear in mind that I am not earning close to USD200k (but six digits). I learned around here that FAANG salaries exists, but then I decided that those are not for me. But that’s a conscious decision. A much better position of not even knowing this exists.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Whitexican problems we call it here in Mexico: I'm in a similar position. 6 digit USD salary while living in Mexico. My problem is that I've been wanting to setup a business: real life like a gym, a store or similar. The issue is that there's no way I'll get as much money as what I'm earning now... and I know building the business will require insurmountable efforts. So I'm reduced to keep working in IT, wait until my good luck ends and hopefully be able to retire around 45
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    You are not "reduced" to do that. You are making that choice, that's all. Nobody is forcing you. If you badly wanted to create a business, you'd just go ahead and do it.
    - LesZedCB 5y ago
      > > will require insurmountable efforts regardless of whether or not you believe it's just "making that choice," completely discrediting somebody's claim the effort is insurmountable _to them_ makes you a breaker of Rule 1
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trunnell 5y ago
If 200K sounds high to you, check out the salaries posted on Levels FYI [1] The Bay Area might have the world's highest paying market for software engineers. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Netflix&track=Software%20Engineer# https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Netflix&trac...
yumraj 5y ago
I think most people interpret that, and similar, numbers incorrectly. The way it needs to be interpreted is that one can get a $200K job in a high cost of living area such as the SF Bay Area, and other similar areas. Additionally, one can get a correspondingly high salary, whatever that number might be, in an area with a different cost of living. In other words, in most areas one can get a good paying tech job relatively easily for that area.
nine_k 5y ago
Ingnore the 200k number. The point is that it's much easier and more lucrative to use your expertise as a well-paid employee than to run your own small business. Been on either side, can confirm.
r0rshrk 5y ago
I come from a very poor part of the world, and know people worse off than me be able to reach this position via hard work. So, in my personal opinion, I'm inclined to believe GP in this instance.

codegeek 5y ago

I hear you. I meant in the context of people who can get that 200K job instead of indie hacking. I don't know the founder of "actual" personally but I just checked his twitter profile and he works in design systems at Stripe. I would guess he is not too far off from that number (all in).

daenz 5y ago

My read on that is that it is total comp, so it includes bonuses/RSUs/options. If you're not negotiating for those things, what are you doing. Though $200k base salary is not a crazy salary for a staff/principle/high-level engineer. I don't think people realize how corrosive to mental health a $200k engineering job can be though. I was making very close to that as a base salary, and the amount of responsibilities I had, that all directly contributed to the success of the organization and the engineering team, was frankly staggering. I was always available, even when I wasn't "on call." I was always putting out very important fires. It never ended.

conductr 5y ago
This is pretty universal to all industries. You just don’t get paid well for the work you do in X hours. You get paid well became you’re expected to put in a high amount of effort that isn’t measured in time or stress, except by you. Mo’ money, mo’ problems
- samhw 5y ago
  Also, speaking personally as someone doing £180k when I know my market salary is at most two thirds of that: I don't really spend the money, because I never want to be pinioned to my job, or to even feel like I'm locked into my job because I'd e.g. have to move out of my house if I quit. That limits you quite a bit, unless you're preternaturally confident in your jobseeking ability.
  - conductr 5y ago
    I do the same. I’m naturally frugal but have loosened up some as earnings increases but I don’t spend or leverage like my peers. They are prisoners to their jobs and I can (and have) said “enough” and walked away when jobs get too toxic. I don’t generally have a problem working long hard hours but I unplug at times where interruptions will not be fielded and I’ve been present during complete shit show management stuff that I just morally will not be associated with. It’s immensely helpful to my mental health knowing I can walk off anytime things go sideways. I even negotiate my compensation in a manner that I’m not beholden like those with stock, options or anything where vesting periods are involved. It’s typically event based and more short term. But, I don’t work in a field where I’m turning down early Facebook equity or something like that.
    - samhw 5y ago
      Yeah, that sounds very similar to me. I’m the opposite in terms of spending - I’ll naturally default to spending my income, rather than defaulting to not spending – but that only holds up to about £100k, at which point it goes beyond my capacity to (in a natural way) spend it all. But I share the concern about being a prisoner to one’s job. That’s my main concern. I don’t understand how so many people are willing to put themselves in a position - partly in terms of spending habits but primarily in terms of fixed commitments like rent and women - where they could not live their current life without their job, where losing or forgoing it would mean ruination, by the standards of the life they choose for themselves. That’s just beyond my comprehension. For me a job is a very contingent thing.
Dayshine 5y ago
You realise people work jobs as vital and stressful as that for a quarter of the money right? And that most people in the workforce don't get significant bonuses, and no shares. Software engineering is an absurd bubble.
- jasonjayr 5y ago
  Maybe the problem is not that tech is overpaid. Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough?
  - cwalv 5y ago
    > Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough? One possible reason for this is that in software the "means of production" is much more accessible, so it's easier for a group of developerss to go it alone than it is in many other professions. When tech salaries are compared to "small business owners" in general, it doesn't seem so out of whack.
- daenz 5y ago
  I'm not going to say people don't also have stressful and difficult jobs while making less. But I will say that I was paid what I was paid because the employer and I negotiated, and determined that my salary was mutually financially beneficial.
- e-clinton 5y ago
  Software engineering is a bubble like sports is a bubble
- julienb_sea 5y ago
  Tech salaries are a direct result of basic supply/demand. The available supply of workers and the demand for a job are, to a certain extent, independent from how "vital and stressful" the job is. The only bubble that might pop is an America first hiring mindset which constricts the supply. If this were to change I would expect tech salaries in America to go lower. Then again, this is not that hard to do, most large tech companies already have major offshore dev teams. There are clearly reasons why companies don't move more of their spend offshore.
rglullis 5y ago
Again, what part of the world are you on? Even in Berlin, with all the talks about it becoming a top destination for tech people, I'm yet to hear any 6-figures offer. Even the blockchain companies that were flush with cash were paying 90-95k€ to their top people, maybe a 10-20% performance bonus. Mind you, we are talking about Germany where the tax is ~42% of your income at this bracket if you are single. When I was freelancing, pay was higher, but my best year hit around 130k€ net income, and that only because I deferred a lot of it and got an accountant that advised me to put as much as possible into a private pension fund to have a bigger tax deduction. If I wanted to have that cash in hand, I would've ended up with maybe 80k€? Yes, cost of living is lower (though rapidly rising, and it is not a post-pandemic thing) and there is plenty of social welfare benefits. Especially after having kids, I wouldn't go to the US for a $200k/year job. But to think that this kind of compensation is par for the course shows a huge disconnect from the reality in the rest of world.
- shankr 5y ago
  yeah as another tech worker in Berlin, reading these salaries on consistent basis is kinda depressing. The 70-80K is like a starting tech salaries in larger part of US. Here in Berlin you have to toll for multiple years and then before you know you have hit the 90-100K ceiling. Just compare Berlin with any big American US city, Berliner's PPP is still quite low. This is after the salary "boom" in Berlin.
  - klausa 5y ago
    COVID and companies being more open to hire remotely has partially fixed that, I know of multiple people making 130kE+ in Berlin now, working remotely, with full benefits of being an employee of a German GmbH. I can give you some details via DM if you want.
    - shankr 5y ago
      yeah I won't say no :) Thank you!
    - atalw 5y ago
gabereiser 5y ago
The mental health aspect I think is often overlooked. When young engineers are eager to climb the ladder into senior/principal/distinguished positions (this was me, btw) they often overlook what it does to your mental health. The beginning seems great. Big problems, big solutions, everyone knows what’s their role in it and how to get it done. Over the years that view will fade. The certainty of success replaced by tooling up, research, supporting articles, still engineering hard stuff, fielding workshops by the business to help educate and rehash the vision to this next set of recent college grads. The complexity of the job increases as the responsibility increases. My brother is also an engineer and instead of going after titles and management he decided to stay as an engineer for as long as he could. He’s extremely happy working on things without having direct reports. There’s a sweet spot for everyone here. Some like more freedom and time to recharge (this is me) and some can balance the demands of the work with the demands to explore work (my brother). Then there are others who dive so far head first into work they burn themselves out. Please, take the time to find your balance. Not only will you be happier, people around you will be too.
- daenz 5y ago
  I tried to re-negotiate a 4 day work week, but they weren't having it, so ended up walking. I know it is privileged to say, but sometimes no amount of money is worth giving up things that are important to you. For me, I was giving up my time and ignoring a project that I think is very important. When I came to my senses about how the money isn't worth giving that up, they had to yield, or I had to leave.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I’d like to do four days a week at 70% pay. No can do. Ok I quit, but I can consult 3 days a week at 200% pay. Sounds good.
    - aparsons 5y ago
      How would one go about finding such consulting gigs? I’m semi-retired now, but with nearly 4 decades of experience, I still didn’t feel comfortable becoming a full-time consultant.
ineedasername 5y ago
I think of it like this: They can't pay me enough to take a $200k job. By which I mean that for most $200k jobs, the money would not be enough to justify the trade off. But everyone makes their own choices on that sort of thing.
cercatrova 5y ago
Not sure why people say this. In the US, you can get a 200k USD job without any RSUs/bonuses/options, all in base salary, and these jobs won't be over 40 hours a week. I see it among my friends daily. And in FAANG, it's even higher, I've seen offers for people only with a few years of experience at 350k or more (RSU appreciation mainly, not base salary). It's more that people don't really believe the high salaries and think that there must be some catch. In reality, there isn't, it's just that software is eating the world and thus companies must pay for talent.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Google L5 in the Bay Area doesn’t pay $200k base. Your friends are either lying to you or you are an exceptional group not representative of standard senior Bay Area FAANG base salaries.
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    I never said FAANG pays 200k base. Companies who only pay in cash will have their total compensation be 200k. FAANG meanwhile pays a lower base, such as 170k, and the rest is RSUs. While FAANG base is lower, their total compensation is higher than other companies.
    - bornfreddy 5y ago
      Curious, which companies "pay in cash"? (I'm not from US)
      - cercatrova 5y ago
        Most companies pay in cash. It's really among FAANG and FAANG adjacent that pay in RSUs. Fortune 500s pay in cash, many of them at least.
        bornfreddy 5y ago
        Ah, misunderstood completely. Thank you for clarifying!

trafnar 5y ago

I'm guessing this comes from the California / Bay Area perspective where 200k salaries are not rare (but a "just ok" house costs $2.5 million)

runako 5y ago

$200k is increasingly a mid-career engineering salary in many parts of the US. Some quick examples taken from companies reported on levels.fyi, where pay around $200k was reported for people working outside the most expensive US cities plus Austin: - Lowe's (Charlotte): https://www.levels.fyi/company/Lowe-s/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Lowe-s/salaries/Software-Engi... - Equifax (Atlanta): https://www.levels.fyi/company/Equifax/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Equifax/salaries/Software-Eng... - ExxonMobil (Houston): https://www.levels.fyi/company/ExxonMobil/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/ExxonMobil/salaries/Software-... - T-Mobile (Dallas): https://www.levels.fyi/company/T-Mobile/salaries/Software-Engineer/Principal-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/T-Mobile/salaries/Software-En... TL;DR; look around and ask for more if you don't see $200k near you and you would like to earn more. I'm biased, but I think it's also worth noting that $200k in Dallas leaves a person with a lot more money left over after basic expenses than it does in SF.

usayimunderpaid 5y ago
As a technical lead (one level above senior software developer in my current company), I make €96k in Germany. I had an interview with Klarna, and they offered me €85k (they actually started with 75 and went up to 85), and the interviewer nearly laughed at me when I asked for €110k. Different continent, different problems? :)
- shankr 5y ago
  For me it was Shopify laughing at me for asking for 90K with 7 years of experience. EDIT: Shopify not Spotify
- runako 5y ago
  https://techpays.com https://techpays.com looks really interesting for European compensation transparency. Tech folks should get paid a lot more, especially those outside the US.
- jypepin 5y ago
  salaries in europe are much lower - but to be fair, I lived much better in amsterdam with 100k euro than SF with 150k

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen.

junon 5y ago
> If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. I've been able to build and ship my own apps for almost a decade now and have never received an offer close to that, even in SF. Maybe things have changed in the last 5 years, but whenever I see the 200k figure I always have to scoff.
- daenz 5y ago
  Sounds like the missing piece is the interviewing and negotiation skills. The money is there, you just have to convince them that it is in their best interests to give it to you.
  - junon 5y ago
    That was certainly not the problem.
    - motoxpro 5y ago
      If that wasn't the problem, sounds like you didn't have the right skills.
      - junon 5y ago
        Ah yes, the lady at Uber who was being paid 250k who used Edit>Copy/Paste to paste lines of Python from Notepad into a REPL and got confused with extraneous whitespace errors in order to prove to me that some python doesn't work (even though it did) with a position of "Staff Engineer 1" certainly deserved it more than almost literally everyone else I've worked with. Skillset has nothing to do with this problem.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

noobermin 5y ago

The keyword I'm assuming is "relatively," I'm hoping it's not absolutely an easy job because that would just be wasted money, which I don't put as being above some people's intelligence but still.

Dig1t 5y ago

I grew up in the US, my parents are very blue collar, neither of them went to college, and they worked hard to give me and my sibling a decent childhood. I went to the cheapest college I could (a local university you've never heard of) to get a BS in Computer Science. I worked my ass off, grinding on interview studying, working internships and jumping companies whenever I could get a better offer. I'm about to turn 30 and I made 430k (200k of which is salary) in 2021 working at a big company in the US. I would not consider my background to be particularly privileged and I don't consider myself to be all that smart, but I managed to get here just by working hard and never getting comfortable. Yes, if you get comfortable in the first tech job you land and just sit around enjoying your life, then you probably won't naturally end up in a place making lots of money. Obviously being privileged and getting everything handed to you makes landing a nice cushy job much easier, but there are still plenty of paths to these high paying jobs if you're willing to work hard. Also, as mentioned by another person in this thread, this totally does take a toll on your mental health and you absolutely have to sacrifice things. I gave up a lot of things that would have given me a better quality of life, but those were choices I was willing to make.

arsfeld 5y ago
I don't think the privilege is just about being handled things easily, it's also about being able to reach such positions, no matter what the upbringing you had. A lot of people are going to work as hard or harder than you, but because they chose a different career or because they don't have your set of skills, they'll never reach what you got and that is a huge privilege.
- cwalv 5y ago
  > I don't think the privilege is just about being handled things easily It seems like there are many cases like this where people have different perspectives because they have different understandings of certain word. E.g. "privilege": to some this doesn't have any implications around fairness, like "you pass the exam and you can get your driver's license; then you have the privilege to drive." To others "you're privileged" has an implicit "which isn't fair, and shouldn't be so* attached.
- 5y ago

lkrubner 5y ago

A lot of people on Hacker News are in the USA, so we see a lot of USA salaries posted here. Obviously you'll make a bit less in Europe, that is a different system, salaries are lower but social services are higher. And outside of the West, I think we all understand that salaries are lower. We could adopt the habit of stating which country we are in, with every comment that we post. Would that help?

soneca 5y ago

I agree with you, but I appreciate that people on HN talk like this because then I am presented to this world of privileges. It shows to me that this world exists and I might benefit from it. That happened to me. Instead of anchoring myself to what Brazilian companies pay for developers, I focused on getting a remote job at a US company. One that would anchor themselves among their peers around SV, LA, NY. Now I earn about 12x more than when I started as a junior when I started 5 years ago. I earn about 3x more than if I was lucky to get the best paying job for my experience level here in my city. This 3x salary increase is very related to knowing that this privileged world existed, which is mainly HN’s fault in my case. Bear in mind that I am not earning close to USD200k (but six digits). I learned around here that FAANG salaries exists, but then I decided that those are not for me. But that’s a conscious decision. A much better position of not even knowing this exists.

xtracto 5y ago
Whitexican problems we call it here in Mexico: I'm in a similar position. 6 digit USD salary while living in Mexico. My problem is that I've been wanting to setup a business: real life like a gym, a store or similar. The issue is that there's no way I'll get as much money as what I'm earning now... and I know building the business will require insurmountable efforts. So I'm reduced to keep working in IT, wait until my good luck ends and hopefully be able to retire around 45
- jeromegv 5y ago
  You are not "reduced" to do that. You are making that choice, that's all. Nobody is forcing you. If you badly wanted to create a business, you'd just go ahead and do it.
  - LesZedCB 5y ago
    > > will require insurmountable efforts regardless of whether or not you believe it's just "making that choice," completely discrediting somebody's claim the effort is insurmountable _to them_ makes you a breaker of Rule 1

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

trunnell 5y ago

If 200K sounds high to you, check out the salaries posted on Levels FYI [1] The Bay Area might have the world's highest paying market for software engineers. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Netflix&track=Software%20Engineer# https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Netflix&trac...

yumraj 5y ago

I think most people interpret that, and similar, numbers incorrectly. The way it needs to be interpreted is that one can get a $200K job in a high cost of living area such as the SF Bay Area, and other similar areas. Additionally, one can get a correspondingly high salary, whatever that number might be, in an area with a different cost of living. In other words, in most areas one can get a good paying tech job relatively easily for that area.

nine_k 5y ago

Ingnore the 200k number. The point is that it's much easier and more lucrative to use your expertise as a well-paid employee than to run your own small business. Been on either side, can confirm.

r0rshrk 5y ago

I come from a very poor part of the world, and know people worse off than me be able to reach this position via hard work. So, in my personal opinion, I'm inclined to believe GP in this instance.