7 ms·

I wouldn't want my bosses job. I don't think it pays all that much more than mine but it requires a lot of days full of meetings and late nights. I may even do

I wouldn't want my bosses job. I don't think it pays all that much more than mine but it requires a lot of days full of meetings and late nights. I may even do better on a hourly basis. I think some people get wrapped up in the headline salary number (XXX,XXX per year, that's a lot of money!) and never break it down into a hourly number to see if it's actually a better deal.

browningstreet 4y ago
I was denied a promotion to a level that had unlimited vacation. I have a set number of days. I’m much happier without the promotion. But I won’t stay forever.
fnbr 4y ago
100%. In big tech, as you get more senior, the job becomes miserable. I wouldn’t want to be a Director, or even a Senior Staff engineer. At a certain point you sacrifice your sanity to be in that many meetings.
- bradlys 4y ago
  I think it really depends on the type of big tech you’re talking about. Being senior staff often means $800k+ comp. I’d gladly take that over the $400k senior ranges. Directors are past $1m. It’s a huge pay bump - not just 20% to go into management and more managerial roles. It pays.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Unless have strong social anxiety and can't habdle being around people, meetings are much better than coding on something that will never work because the meetings people are making terrible decisions.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  My career trajectory was Dev -> Senior -> Lead -> Director -> Senior. I left a company and purposefully looked for my next job further down the ladder, after having profound burnout that made me question whether I wanted to keep working in the industry at all. I decided I like making software, I just didn't like the amount of stress, anxiety, uncertainty, politics, and bickering I was experiencing. In my experience, these things grew exponentially at each level, while the salary only grew linearly. So, I'm fine making merely "way more money than I need" while not crying in my car in the garage before work, which is something that actually happened many times at my old job.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    How do you find a job at a lower level? I was trying to do this and no one would hire me. I guess I could lie about my experience.
    - lelandfe 4y ago
      I stepped back from a lead to a senior dev this year. I was open about it to recruiters, saying my intent was to get back into being an IC. No one was even slightly put off by my resume or career direction. I'm not sure what "no one would hire me" means, precisely, but I didn't have an easy time – it took many months and near 100 applications to find the right spot.
      - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
        Yeah, BUT its the easiest job market in IT history to get hired right now ..
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear you had to go through all that. What I've realized is the corporate ladder is a fiction that serves to keep people working harder and harder without significant pay bumps. It is an artificial status game that has real ramifications; however, since it is a zero-sum game, it ends up bringing out the worst in everyone. What are your goals now around your career?
  - RemoteIsHeaven 4y ago
    > My career trajectory was Dev -> Senior -> Lead -> Director -> Senior. I left a company and purposefully looked for my next job further down the ladder, after having profound burnout that made me question whether I wanted to keep working in the industry at all Any chance you had terrible, even substandard leadership where you were Director (assuming that's where you had the profound burnout) and you would absolutely have loved it otherwise?
    - 4y ago
- rot13xor 4y ago
  I'd even say you need a degree of sociopathy to reach upper management. I can't imagine being responsible for 1000 other people and keep them working in sync. At some point those people become a faceless resource in a spreadsheet.
- at-fates-hands 4y ago
  I spent some time in middle management (first as a lead, then as a manager of a small team of devs) and I refuse to do that again. You're 100% right, as you move up, it gets more miserable. As a lead, I was constantly doing adult daycare and counseling for the developers. At the same time, upper management was constantly breathing down my back to improve my teams analytics and performance - regardless of how well the team was doing. The worst part of the two gigs I had was the director who was in the position above me? Not moving. In both companies. I spent almost six years between two companies trying to find a way out of middle management. I finally realized a lot of companies structure gets flat very quickly because a lot of the upper level executives are not moving, or not getting promoted, so then you have another set of issues you're dealing with. Its just not worth it unless you can get in and get out of middle management in less than 2 years.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Being a line engineer can also have bad micromanagement and bad priorities, while also paying less. It's funny to say you don't like "constantly doing adult daycare" and conclude that it is better to be the one being adult daycares for instead.
jayroh 4y ago
It's funny how fast and profoundly "perspective" will hit you. When I was a young programmer I always dreamed of that promotion and comp adjustment. Constantly looking for that next step. That's not inherently bad, per se, but once you reach a particular place you come to find out what the commensurate responsibility looks like. Sometimes -- dare I say, often? -- it's just not fun. That's what they pay you for, though, right? The friends and colleagues in my cohort, the ones NOW with larger financial and familial responsibilities, curse their former selves for not knowing how good they had it. I guess all that is to say, as cliche as it is, "be careful what you wish for".
- taylodl 4y ago
  That's why I've never gone into management. It's not an honor to be a manager, it's a skill - and that's not a skill I want to develop. Better to work for a company that recognizes technical talent is a skill that's at least as-important as management and will financially compensate accordingly for that skill.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Being more successful younger makes it easier to handle financial responsibilities later. Partying when you are young isn't something always looked back on fondly. Fun is good now and in future expectation.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Grass is greener etc. Other peoples situations always seem better/easier. We don’t have enough data and are just too poor at objective evaluation.
  - phil21 4y ago
    The grass is never greener, it's just a different shade of brown.
    - rxhernandez 4y ago
      I think if I were homeless, a FAANG SWE job would definitely be greener.
subsubzero 4y ago
What people don't realize is the job that pays 30% or so more than your current job requires alot more work and a ton more stress, and for me that is not worth the extra money - which by the way most of which goes to taxes anyway. I really feel like it doesn't "pay" to move up in an org mainly due to the extremely high tax hit along with stress the title comes with.
- levi-turner 4y ago
  I really think you are narrowly looking at things from near the peak of earning potential and an established career track. That's fine for some and this _is_ a tech oriented site, but still seems rather narrowly focused. Sample size of 1: - Job 1 -> Job 2: Neither in tech; 80% raise; even in terms of stress / work - Job 2 -> Job 3: Move to a Support group in a tech company; 11% raise; much higher stress / work - Job 2 -> Job 3: Support to Technical Sales; 70% raise (after 5 raises at job 2); less work / higher peak stress (maybe) but lower average stress
- kingrazor 4y ago
  I'm not a developer but when my last job paid half of what I make now and I have even less responsibility than I did at the previous job.
- dekhn 4y ago
  this is literally what my dad told me (when I asked him why he didn't go for his boss's job). The marginal effort was large compared to the marginal revenue, and that would eat into quality of life for him.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  There isn't a tax bracket in the US where most of any income goes to taxes. There should be though!
  - subsubzero 4y ago
    So in California we were losing about half of our money to taxes, its always fun to make estimated tax payments when you received your quarterly RSUs(~40% of the RSU money goes to taxes when you get them) and then with the rest putting half of that towards a quarterly tax payment, we left the state to avoid the stranglehold of taxes and will probably go to 1 income as two high earners just isn't worth it, but if you like higher taxes move to Europe, you may love it there.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Hourly is meaningless if you can’t choose more hours. If you had a job that paid $1000/hr but you only work 1 hr/week that is not enough for many people to live on. So if you need a lot of money for your lifestyle the high hours/high pay job might be your only option.
- tintor 4y ago
  But you'd have time to do another $1000/hr job elsewhere.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    Depending how you come into the job a lot of places won't let you work 2 jobs, especially if you're salaried.
- danuker 4y ago
  There's always the chance you discover frugality, when you stand back, account for the expenses in time and money, and what you've gotten in exchange. Maybe you'll see how that $20k car is twice as expensive to maintain as the $10k car. Or maybe you'll get a taste of life in a city with public transit that is faster than walking. Or maybe you just move to a cabin in the woods with satellite Internet and grow your own food.

browningstreet 4y ago

I was denied a promotion to a level that had unlimited vacation. I have a set number of days. I’m much happier without the promotion. But I won’t stay forever.

fnbr 4y ago

100%. In big tech, as you get more senior, the job becomes miserable. I wouldn’t want to be a Director, or even a Senior Staff engineer. At a certain point you sacrifice your sanity to be in that many meetings.

bradlys 4y ago
I think it really depends on the type of big tech you’re talking about. Being senior staff often means $800k+ comp. I’d gladly take that over the $400k senior ranges. Directors are past $1m. It’s a huge pay bump - not just 20% to go into management and more managerial roles. It pays.
hgsgm 4y ago
Unless have strong social anxiety and can't habdle being around people, meetings are much better than coding on something that will never work because the meetings people are making terrible decisions.
karaterobot 4y ago
My career trajectory was Dev -> Senior -> Lead -> Director -> Senior. I left a company and purposefully looked for my next job further down the ladder, after having profound burnout that made me question whether I wanted to keep working in the industry at all. I decided I like making software, I just didn't like the amount of stress, anxiety, uncertainty, politics, and bickering I was experiencing. In my experience, these things grew exponentially at each level, while the salary only grew linearly. So, I'm fine making merely "way more money than I need" while not crying in my car in the garage before work, which is something that actually happened many times at my old job.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  How do you find a job at a lower level? I was trying to do this and no one would hire me. I guess I could lie about my experience.
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    I stepped back from a lead to a senior dev this year. I was open about it to recruiters, saying my intent was to get back into being an IC. No one was even slightly put off by my resume or career direction. I'm not sure what "no one would hire me" means, precisely, but I didn't have an easy time – it took many months and near 100 applications to find the right spot.
    - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
      Yeah, BUT its the easiest job market in IT history to get hired right now ..
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear you had to go through all that. What I've realized is the corporate ladder is a fiction that serves to keep people working harder and harder without significant pay bumps. It is an artificial status game that has real ramifications; however, since it is a zero-sum game, it ends up bringing out the worst in everyone. What are your goals now around your career?
- RemoteIsHeaven 4y ago
  > My career trajectory was Dev -> Senior -> Lead -> Director -> Senior. I left a company and purposefully looked for my next job further down the ladder, after having profound burnout that made me question whether I wanted to keep working in the industry at all Any chance you had terrible, even substandard leadership where you were Director (assuming that's where you had the profound burnout) and you would absolutely have loved it otherwise?
  - 4y ago
rot13xor 4y ago
I'd even say you need a degree of sociopathy to reach upper management. I can't imagine being responsible for 1000 other people and keep them working in sync. At some point those people become a faceless resource in a spreadsheet.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
I spent some time in middle management (first as a lead, then as a manager of a small team of devs) and I refuse to do that again. You're 100% right, as you move up, it gets more miserable. As a lead, I was constantly doing adult daycare and counseling for the developers. At the same time, upper management was constantly breathing down my back to improve my teams analytics and performance - regardless of how well the team was doing. The worst part of the two gigs I had was the director who was in the position above me? Not moving. In both companies. I spent almost six years between two companies trying to find a way out of middle management. I finally realized a lot of companies structure gets flat very quickly because a lot of the upper level executives are not moving, or not getting promoted, so then you have another set of issues you're dealing with. Its just not worth it unless you can get in and get out of middle management in less than 2 years.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Being a line engineer can also have bad micromanagement and bad priorities, while also paying less. It's funny to say you don't like "constantly doing adult daycare" and conclude that it is better to be the one being adult daycares for instead.

jayroh 4y ago

It's funny how fast and profoundly "perspective" will hit you. When I was a young programmer I always dreamed of that promotion and comp adjustment. Constantly looking for that next step. That's not inherently bad, per se, but once you reach a particular place you come to find out what the commensurate responsibility looks like. Sometimes -- dare I say, often? -- it's just not fun. That's what they pay you for, though, right? The friends and colleagues in my cohort, the ones NOW with larger financial and familial responsibilities, curse their former selves for not knowing how good they had it. I guess all that is to say, as cliche as it is, "be careful what you wish for".

taylodl 4y ago
That's why I've never gone into management. It's not an honor to be a manager, it's a skill - and that's not a skill I want to develop. Better to work for a company that recognizes technical talent is a skill that's at least as-important as management and will financially compensate accordingly for that skill.
hgsgm 4y ago
Being more successful younger makes it easier to handle financial responsibilities later. Partying when you are young isn't something always looked back on fondly. Fun is good now and in future expectation.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Grass is greener etc. Other peoples situations always seem better/easier. We don’t have enough data and are just too poor at objective evaluation.
- phil21 4y ago
  The grass is never greener, it's just a different shade of brown.
  - rxhernandez 4y ago
    I think if I were homeless, a FAANG SWE job would definitely be greener.

subsubzero 4y ago

What people don't realize is the job that pays 30% or so more than your current job requires alot more work and a ton more stress, and for me that is not worth the extra money - which by the way most of which goes to taxes anyway. I really feel like it doesn't "pay" to move up in an org mainly due to the extremely high tax hit along with stress the title comes with.

levi-turner 4y ago
I really think you are narrowly looking at things from near the peak of earning potential and an established career track. That's fine for some and this _is_ a tech oriented site, but still seems rather narrowly focused. Sample size of 1: - Job 1 -> Job 2: Neither in tech; 80% raise; even in terms of stress / work - Job 2 -> Job 3: Move to a Support group in a tech company; 11% raise; much higher stress / work - Job 2 -> Job 3: Support to Technical Sales; 70% raise (after 5 raises at job 2); less work / higher peak stress (maybe) but lower average stress
kingrazor 4y ago
I'm not a developer but when my last job paid half of what I make now and I have even less responsibility than I did at the previous job.
dekhn 4y ago
this is literally what my dad told me (when I asked him why he didn't go for his boss's job). The marginal effort was large compared to the marginal revenue, and that would eat into quality of life for him.
idiotsecant 4y ago
There isn't a tax bracket in the US where most of any income goes to taxes. There should be though!
- subsubzero 4y ago
  So in California we were losing about half of our money to taxes, its always fun to make estimated tax payments when you received your quarterly RSUs(~40% of the RSU money goes to taxes when you get them) and then with the rest putting half of that towards a quarterly tax payment, we left the state to avoid the stranglehold of taxes and will probably go to 1 income as two high earners just isn't worth it, but if you like higher taxes move to Europe, you may love it there.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

Hourly is meaningless if you can’t choose more hours. If you had a job that paid $1000/hr but you only work 1 hr/week that is not enough for many people to live on. So if you need a lot of money for your lifestyle the high hours/high pay job might be your only option.

tintor 4y ago
But you'd have time to do another $1000/hr job elsewhere.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  Depending how you come into the job a lot of places won't let you work 2 jobs, especially if you're salaried.
danuker 4y ago
There's always the chance you discover frugality, when you stand back, account for the expenses in time and money, and what you've gotten in exchange. Maybe you'll see how that $20k car is twice as expensive to maintain as the $10k car. Or maybe you'll get a taste of life in a city with public transit that is faster than walking. Or maybe you just move to a cabin in the woods with satellite Internet and grow your own food.