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How realistic is it to earn 200k in your twenties? I'm familiar with the starting numbers at companies like Google and Facebook, which are very competitive but

• artmageddon 11y ago
  That'll depend on your location, skills, experience, and perhaps most important of all, your ability to convince someone that you're worth paying $200k. A great friend of mine was the sole(not just figuratively, literally) IT/developer at a pharma company for a good portion of his 20's, making ~$50k with slow incremental raises. Finally after several years of being undervalued, he had enough, and gave his company an ultimatum that he found another job(one with a massive raise). He agreed to consult part time to them to help train the replacement, but no one could get up to speed well enough on the complexities of the system in use there. After several months, the company was in dire need of him to come back, and he agreed on the condition that the company let him consult there for $100/hr. I'd say he's the exception, in most cases you're probably not pulling that kind of money unless you're at an early stage of a startup. Not too likely, but not impossible either.
• eshvk 11y ago
  There are many people in their twenties clearing > 200K at Google/FB/Apple. A lot of them don't call themselves [JS/ML/Scala] engineers and build systems that scale well, have good leadership abilities, and can have a good sense for politics and product.