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> Categorizing yourself exclusively as "a Ruby developer" is a career trap. And a lucrative one at that.
by makk 2y ago
> Categorizing yourself exclusively as "a Ruby developer" is a career trap.
And a lucrative one at that.
- bluedevilzn 2y agoIt’s lucrative if your bar is 6 figures. No engineer that makes 7 figures calls themselves a ruby developer with the exception of DHH.
- qwertygnu 2y agoThere's no need to be shooting for 7 figures. Get a life
- bluedevilzn 2y agoWorking 40 hours and making 7 figures, gives you plenty of time to have a life. The key here is not to categorize as a “language developer”.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoIs 7 figures even realistic? I was under the impression that even a senior FAANG job was still just under $300k typically. Does anyone outside of a CTO/CIO make $1mil+?
- inerte 2y agoI know half a dozen of Senior Staff at FAANGs and they make I would say around 600k - 700k, more of course if stocks appreciate but that's hard to control. Consistent total compensation offers of $1mil+ is probably reserved for roles above these, sometimes called Principal or Distinguished. I would say the rate of having one of these in an org are like 1 for ~150 engineers.
- Xelynega 2y agoIsn't the average for software developers in the US ~100k(before taxes)? Assuming that high earners are offsetting that to the higher end, most people aren't making 6 figures, and the bar isn't which language they're programming in.
- duped 2y ago100k is on the lower end of junior salary
- Jtsummers 2y agohttps://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... Junior salaries go down much lower than $100k.
- duped 2y agoThat doesn't match my experience on both ends of the hiring table. And forgive me if forwarding the BLS statistics to candidates doesn't get them to accept offers, because I know it wouldn't help me when I can get paid a lot more elsewhere.
- Jtsummers 2y ago> That doesn't match my experience on both ends of the hiring table. Congratulations, your experience is limited. The BLS stats represent the actual US salary data, not just your limited experience. If you want to make a claim about salaries in the US then look at data across the US and not just whatever is true within your limited bubble. > And forgive me if forwarding the BLS statistics to candidates doesn't get them to accept offers Did I ever even suggest such a thing?
- duped 2y agoI take the BLS numbers with a huge grain of salt, they are useful for identifying trends and not absolute facts on the ground. > Did I ever even suggest such a thing? My point is that the BLS doesn't set market rates or report on them.
- sundaeofshock 2y agoHow many developers are out there making $1,000,000/year? Not in the hopes of hitting it big someday off of equity, but actual annual payoff? How many companies are out there paying $1,000,000/year for devs? How many devs who can command that kind salary are going to put up with bullshit coding challenges?
- bluedevilzn 2y agoMany thousands of Sr. Staff engineers+ and Sr. managers+ across FAANG. Google alone has 4000 directors all making a million at minimum. I have only worked at FAANG across my nearly decade long career. So, it’s a biased but very large sample.
- alexawarrior4 2y agoIf you sample only from the 10,000 or so current Olympic athletes, you will draw similarly incorrect conclusions about the 8 billion planetary general population's athletic ability.
- margalabargala 2y agoOkay, and let's say there's another 4000 Sr Staff+ engineers at Google making that much. That's 4% of the company. That's not unheard of, but it's certainly rare. $1 million+ is not a "typical salary", even at Google.
- marcellus23 2y agoNominated for most HN comment of the week.
- ryandrake 2y agoCome on! Everyone posting on HN makes $500K a year, has a vacation home in Tahoe and drives a brand new Ferrari. They think "L6 at Google in the Bay Area" is the median job level for the entire software industry.
- ForHackernews 2y agoIf this article and the comments here are to be believed, all you need to do to make L6 is grind on leetcode. Sounds like a good deal to me.
- dmvdoug 2y agoWhere’s n-gate.com when you need them, eh? :)
- marcellus23 2y agoMan I miss n-gate. Sometimes I go back and read the archives just for fun.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoBro this comment is so out of touch it's ridiculous. A 6 figure salary is lucrative. 7 figures is a crazy pipe dream that basically nobody will ever experience.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 2y agoIn the short term. And then the entire industry experiences some kind of a technological shift, as it will for many more cycles, and you're jobless as early as the first wave. It's ridiculous how developers mindlessly accept that you should constantly be learning to keep yourself relevant, but keep it shallow by just jumping from one tool to another, instead of encouraging deeper knowledge of generalizable patterns that stay relevant across waves of technological disruption.
- ryandrake 2y agoExactly. I managed to ride a nice maybe 8 year wave as an "OpenGL expert" but the industry moved on and I didn't go more general with 3D graphics to climb out of my niche. I haven't been in that industry since the OpenGL waterline crested and went back out to sea. Learned that lesson. Be a generalist. Yes, deep specialists exist and yes, some of them have successful careers based on their deep specialty, but betting on specialization is like a high school kid planning to be a MLB baseball player.
- bboygravity 2y agoEmbedded C and C++ should be good for at least another 20 years or so (except AI will take over by then).
- em-bee 2y agothat's what i am trying to explain in every job application. but almost every job description expects multiple years of experience with a very specific tech stack. so far being a generalist with senior level experience did not yield a single positive response, let alone an offer.
- makk 2y agoSo frustrating. Keep trying! You’ll find someone who values your background.
- __loam 2y agoRuby is so god awful yet so many successful companies use it as the bedrock language there's always going to be jobs maintaining the piles of crap it leads to.