5 ms·

> 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 s

> 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.
        daenz 5y ago
        I think I know what the problem is now.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      Please take a look at levels.fyi if you don't believe there are $200K offers available (caveat: I can only speak for US+Canada). I'm an above-average-skill but ADHD / below-average-work-ethic software dev in Canada who just finished interviews and my highest offer was $150K USD. I only prepped algorithms for 1-2 months but have a feeling if I spent 4 months prepping, I'd be able to break into the mid to high 200K USD range. And this is well below what a lot of people are making in the U.S. according to levels.fyi and teamblind.com I don't say this to make you feel bad, and I even agree that the average is of course lower (glassdoor says the U.S. average for software engineers is ~$108K USD though I suspect older data-points bring it down from the real figure). But I think >70% of U.S.-based software engineers with >5 years of experience are capable of breaking into 200K USD if they spent 3-6 months preparing (depending on their degree of natural talent and abilities to learn, problem-solve, and retain information). Of course, chasing TC is also not a fun treadmill to be on, so if you're comfortable, you should do what makes you happy :) The point of this is to say that these numbers are very, very real, and even attainable for the majority of devs who set their sights on them, and it's kind of silly to scoff at them as you put it. The only important skills required are ambition, dedication, perseverance, and good research skills (which are among the most critical skills for software engineers anyway) to be able to navigate negotiations and the market.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  The software engineer hiring market is very trimodal: There are companies that hire at average salaries. Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% or whatever numbers they think they can get away with paying. The next cluster of companies pay well but not at FAANG levels. They pay somewhere around 80-90th percentile of salary data. They collect all of the best employees who either can't, won't, or don't want to get FAANG jobs. Then the long tail of FAANG salaries occupies something like the 95th-99th percentile of salaries. These are the numbers you see on the levels.fyi homepage. HN tends to over-emphasize the FAANG level salaries, but there are a lot of companies in the middle bucket that pay much better than average. You might have to network and work to find them, though. Staying at average or below-average companies too long can actually make your resume less attractive over time, so you have to put in some work to break out of the rut and into the higher paying companies.
risyachka 5y ago
It's not that simple. Even if you are a great developer, but not from first-world country, you can forget about 200k unless you literally bust your ass for years and years in order to get US visa.
Goronmon 5y ago
For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen. One issue in this community is its members being unable to understand what "average developer" actually means.
rglullis 5y ago
I've built and shipped my own apps independently. I have almost 20 years of professional experience in Web, some Machine Learning and Data Science. I also led teams distributed around the world. I also got into blockchain development in 2019 and now I am working on a slow-but-steadily-growing open source project [0] to make payments with crypto easier. I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any offer above 90k€/year. Let's make a deal: I will give you my CV and we can work through it to see what I need to improve. If you get me an $200k/year offer that lets me work remotely, I will give you 15% of it for as long as I work there. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any offer above 90k€/year. European compensation is lower. Sorry, I shouldn't be generalizing to United States like I did. That said, in Berlin your options for high comp are largely limited to the big tech companies. You can get some hints here: https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# (sort by total compensation). My suggestion, if you really want to get those high value offers, is to identify the best paying names on that list and start applying now. Stripe, Shopify, Twitter, other big tech US remote companies primarily. Work with their recruiters to optimize your CV and update your study skills. Use the interviews as practice and feedback, because it will be better than just about any advice we can give you online. Whatever you do, don't pay some rando from HN huge amounts of money for help. All of the information about interviewing at big tech companies is out there for free. Plenty of prep material to study from.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    I said that I would pay conditionally on getting the job, not for the help. ;) And it was on purpose. I know that HN is US-centric, but I lived on both sides of the ocean and as time passes I am getting more sensitive to this limited (dare I say privileged?) view from otherwise very smart and educated people. My proposal was more of a provocation to see if you could really back up the statement that "it should be easy for good people to make that much money remotely or medium-sized city". > information about interviewing at big tech companies That's the other thing that bugs me a lot: Big Tech. If these salaries are only attainable at FAANG companies, then the road of getting 200k+ offers is no longer just about being "above average", but also to be okay in selling your soul by working in places that long stopped worrying about the welfare of its consumers.
balls187 5y ago
I'd phrase it slightly different--talented enough to build a small company that generates real revenue, vs building and shipping apps.

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.
      - daenz 5y ago
        I think I know what the problem is now.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    Please take a look at levels.fyi if you don't believe there are $200K offers available (caveat: I can only speak for US+Canada). I'm an above-average-skill but ADHD / below-average-work-ethic software dev in Canada who just finished interviews and my highest offer was $150K USD. I only prepped algorithms for 1-2 months but have a feeling if I spent 4 months prepping, I'd be able to break into the mid to high 200K USD range. And this is well below what a lot of people are making in the U.S. according to levels.fyi and teamblind.com I don't say this to make you feel bad, and I even agree that the average is of course lower (glassdoor says the U.S. average for software engineers is ~$108K USD though I suspect older data-points bring it down from the real figure). But I think >70% of U.S.-based software engineers with >5 years of experience are capable of breaking into 200K USD if they spent 3-6 months preparing (depending on their degree of natural talent and abilities to learn, problem-solve, and retain information). Of course, chasing TC is also not a fun treadmill to be on, so if you're comfortable, you should do what makes you happy :) The point of this is to say that these numbers are very, very real, and even attainable for the majority of devs who set their sights on them, and it's kind of silly to scoff at them as you put it. The only important skills required are ambition, dedication, perseverance, and good research skills (which are among the most critical skills for software engineers anyway) to be able to navigate negotiations and the market.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The software engineer hiring market is very trimodal: There are companies that hire at average salaries. Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% or whatever numbers they think they can get away with paying. The next cluster of companies pay well but not at FAANG levels. They pay somewhere around 80-90th percentile of salary data. They collect all of the best employees who either can't, won't, or don't want to get FAANG jobs. Then the long tail of FAANG salaries occupies something like the 95th-99th percentile of salaries. These are the numbers you see on the levels.fyi homepage. HN tends to over-emphasize the FAANG level salaries, but there are a lot of companies in the middle bucket that pay much better than average. You might have to network and work to find them, though. Staying at average or below-average companies too long can actually make your resume less attractive over time, so you have to put in some work to break out of the rut and into the higher paying companies.

risyachka 5y ago

It's not that simple. Even if you are a great developer, but not from first-world country, you can forget about 200k unless you literally bust your ass for years and years in order to get US visa.

Goronmon 5y ago

For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen. One issue in this community is its members being unable to understand what "average developer" actually means.

rglullis 5y ago

I've built and shipped my own apps independently. I have almost 20 years of professional experience in Web, some Machine Learning and Data Science. I also led teams distributed around the world. I also got into blockchain development in 2019 and now I am working on a slow-but-steadily-growing open source project [0] to make payments with crypto easier. I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any offer above 90k€/year. Let's make a deal: I will give you my CV and we can work through it to see what I need to improve. If you get me an $200k/year offer that lets me work remotely, I will give you 15% of it for as long as I work there. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any offer above 90k€/year. European compensation is lower. Sorry, I shouldn't be generalizing to United States like I did. That said, in Berlin your options for high comp are largely limited to the big tech companies. You can get some hints here: https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# (sort by total compensation). My suggestion, if you really want to get those high value offers, is to identify the best paying names on that list and start applying now. Stripe, Shopify, Twitter, other big tech US remote companies primarily. Work with their recruiters to optimize your CV and update your study skills. Use the interviews as practice and feedback, because it will be better than just about any advice we can give you online. Whatever you do, don't pay some rando from HN huge amounts of money for help. All of the information about interviewing at big tech companies is out there for free. Plenty of prep material to study from.
- rglullis 5y ago
  I said that I would pay conditionally on getting the job, not for the help. ;) And it was on purpose. I know that HN is US-centric, but I lived on both sides of the ocean and as time passes I am getting more sensitive to this limited (dare I say privileged?) view from otherwise very smart and educated people. My proposal was more of a provocation to see if you could really back up the statement that "it should be easy for good people to make that much money remotely or medium-sized city". > information about interviewing at big tech companies That's the other thing that bugs me a lot: Big Tech. If these salaries are only attainable at FAANG companies, then the road of getting 200k+ offers is no longer just about being "above average", but also to be okay in selling your soul by working in places that long stopped worrying about the welfare of its consumers.

balls187 5y ago

I'd phrase it slightly different--talented enough to build a small company that generates real revenue, vs building and shipping apps.