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I ask this honestly because you seem like a sharp guy and I'm genuinely curious: what's stopping you from working a dev job for 6-12 months, saving 2-3k/month o

by _dps 15y ago

I ask this honestly because you seem like a sharp guy and I'm genuinely curious: what's stopping you from working a dev job for 6-12 months, saving 2-3k/month of a 8-10k/month paycheck, and then starting your own thing when you have 6-12 months of personal runway in the bank? I re-iterate that this is not meant to be snarky, but I meet several people who express this idea and many of them seem to be stuck in local optima that can be easily escaped with a little persistence. Edit: a bit of nuance. I know most people in the world can't easily get 8-10k/mo salaries. But talented developers in the US (or willing to work remotely) can. I don't mean to be insensitive to people with more constrained opportunities.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago
>a bit of nuance. I know most people in the world can't easily get 8-10k/mo salaries. But talented developers in the US (or willing to work remotely) can. No, we can't, if we don't live in Silicon Valley. I would call myself "talented", but the highest salary offer I've ever received was $87k/year. The lowest was around $72k/year. The average was around $80k/year. Mind, most of these offers sounded better once you factored in things like stock options, working for a start-up, or really nice health insurance with stock options, but still. Outside of Silicon Valley, it's not at all routine to earn $120k/year as a programmer, even a reasonably good one. EDIT: and I don't live in some Hicksville, either. I live in Massachusetts.