And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income.

The harder I push on comp the more I get each time.

I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companies bidding against each other.

Meanwhile I get offered nothing in terms of growth from every employer I have ever worked for ever. Literally never happened my entire career. Just this time after I already had an undisclosed offer in hand I got a promotion with no meaningful compensation increase. It was the first promotion of my 15 year career!

Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone.

I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a company that's already shown they don't respect you?

I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate.

Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise.

I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong.

Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.

If employers can't afford market salaries, they should think very hard about the issue and see if they can't address it in other way, or accept that they're going to deserve and get no loyalty from most of their employees.

To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats - especially considering the vast majority just gem/npm/pip install this and that and glue all the code together. Of course the market deserves to pay accordingly but I think it's just a big bubble that's going to crash soon - since there is a huge mismatch between demand and supply of CRUD glue programmers (which most programmers are).

My guess is that once Lambda School, Make School, ISAs all become mainstream and the pool of CRUD glue programmers matches the demand all salaries will come crashing down. I think overall it's a good thing for society in general (and especially the tech towns).

ps: Pardon my tone. I work in the space industry. Maybe I have an axe to grind ;)

I think discussing compensation frankly and openly is very important. People have no idea what is possible. Two people on the same team at the same company can have wildly different compensation. My goal with this alt is to get people to take the biggest slice of the pie they can for themselves and avoid wasting their precious time doing lousy work for lousy money.

I have wasted a lot of time and life opportunities working for less then what I am capable of getting. I wish my future self had been around to tell me to push harder and be more mindful and efficient with my time.

I don't think CRUD glue programmers are at the top of the market right now. You could flood the market with them and it might not move compensation for people in my space. Even so, that is just another argument for pushing hard right now. Strike while the iron is hot. No one knows how long this will last.

Might cost me money, but I don’t feel bad about that, since I still get my moneys worth.

I think your entire attitude is wrong. Not in the sense of "you're being mean"; rather, in the sense of your orientation toward engineer pay. Any money that doesn't go to salary will generally go to the owners of the business. If engineers can get more, why shouldn't they? Imagine someone saying professional sports stars make too much money and should be perfectly happy to make $1 million per year. What you're actually arguing for is that even-richer people (the team owners) should make EVEN MORE money than they already do.

Seriously? Why the hate?

300k is Tier 1 (FAANG) and 2 companies. They don't just do CRUD. Those that do CRUD probably work on the SETI/Infra/Tooling division for the BigCos and even some of these "Tool-Devs" created amazing OSS tools. Do you suggest they should be treated as 2nd class citizens and get paid half of the "product" people and creating an old-time rift?

I've seen a few Bootcampers that get a job in Tier 1 and 2 companies but they have "solid" background/previous experience (hardcore Math, Stats, Data Scientist switching to SWE, greybeard embedded software engineers), just not up to date skill set.

This whole "salaries" will crash down demise has been around forever and it hasn't happened yet just like any other "demise" prediction.

I'd suggest people not to hate the situation: our sector/field is getting paid serious money, why the envy/jealousy/negativity?

Do you like the situation where hi-tech industry as a cutthroat, no-union, rampant ageism, low-paying wage?

Think of the bigger picture here...

- agreed, lots of people can some problems the naive way but you need to be at a deeper level of understanding and experience to know what will and wont work before you build it

I know what CRUD is but what exactly are they doing?

Building web-app to map network/machines?

I'm not speaking toward your argument of a bubble bursting, but engineering isn't going anywhere. And where else would an entry level engineer start than at the bottom, npm installing the package that solves their problem? It's using these concepts every day that builds good engineers who think of tomorrow's solutions, and can architect it both technically and socially. That is the line between software development and computer science.

Engineers paid under 120k that whine aren't doing anything beyond their immediate usefulness, i.e. 'just doing their jobs.' The engineers that get paid 300k are usually the ones running the show, and writing significantly less / no code.

Engineers getting paid $300K could easily be the stereotypical r/cscareerquestions “learn LeetCode and work for a FAANG” type graduating from college.

Yeah, $300k in the Bay Area isn’t that much. But if you work for a Tier 1/2 company for a few years, it can have a drastic impact on your future employment prospects and salary levels. Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

Consider the scaling factor for salaries; My salary is on the high end in my area, but would be on the low end of a living wage in the Bay Area. My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience...

So think about the trade offs. If you’re young and single, the tradeoff between a one bedroom in a major city anywhere not on the west coast and the west coast and the difference in the salary you can make is well worth it.

In most major cities a junior developer will make $60K and can probably find an apartment for $900/month in a decent part of town. If they work on the west coast and get $250K and find an apartment for $2400K/month, that’s a tradeoff worth making.

10-15 years into your career, you may already be married with kids. That $120K he’s making can easily buy a 3000 square foot house in the burbs, brand new build, great school system and close to work for $350K. This is from personal experience (not the salary, the price of the house). Now that tradeoff between $150K and $300K-$400K doesn’t look so appealing when you can’t live nearly the same lifestyle on the West Coast that you could live on much less money

If he’s like me, he’s probably built a local network where any door he wants to open locally is probably already open to him.

In my case, I’m 45, but because of $bad_life_decisions, I only started taking my software development career seriously a decade ago. But I do have a great local network, skills that match what the market demands and the house in the burbs with the wife, the white picket fence and 2.1 kids.

I don’t really need new doors opened to me. As soon as the youngest graduates and I’m willing to travel, I am already in the position of being a high earning “consultant”. Not bragging, I have been working over 20 years, I should be able to consult somebody

The assumption here is that technical screenings actually work. As many here have pointed out, technical interviews today are highly capricious and pretty have no correlation with actual technical qualifications. "Street cred" and even superb interview performance don't seem to matter anymore.

Most small companies I’ve worked for, I’ve had to go back and forth between every layer of the stack - currently including the infrastructure set up. You just don’t get your hands dirty with multiple parts of the stack at a large company.

I've seen quite a few people only focus on the $300k aspect in HackerNews (and made negative remarks) without thinking about the trajectory.

In my case, I’m 45, why would I move to the west coast for $300K when I can just stay in $major_city and work for a consulting when my younger son graduates and can make $180K-200K+ and still have the same lifestyle?

And then go back to being just a developer anytime I wanted to and still live comfortably?

People who advanced in their career at Bay Area can make 500k or more (IC, not management), solving challenges that did not exist in the first place too (that alone might potentially put you in top 1-5%?). There are more startup opportunities (whether IPO or just the technical challenges, that's up to you) with higher chances of success.

Different people have different goals.

It’s not like I go to work everyday hating software development and hating what I have been doing since I was 12 years old. My wife works for the government and we have guaranteed access to health care whether she works or quits tomorrow.

I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

Outside of the west coast/HN bubble, people retire comfortably all the time with a million in the bank, I paid off house, and social security.

If you're a single? none.

Married couple with no child? none.

Married couple wanting more children? yes, it matters.

Parents who want their kids to enjoy life? yes, it matters.

Parents who need to take care both in-laws and kids? absolutely, it matters a lot.

2 mills can get you a Duplex (closer to center) /House (further away) in the suburb of Vancouver/Toronto (Canada) with probably 100-200k left. Certainly not enough for retirement. In Seattle (USA), I suppose it depends on the area of your chosen.

How long do you have to work to reach the point of no-mortgage (nice house), kids done college paid by parents, and $2 mills for retirement?

But this is just what might be one dimension of the discussion: financial => lifestyle.

> I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

We both live in different cities. I don't know your city as well as you do but where I live, there's definitely a ceiling to that technical challenges. Now before we go further with examples... I live in a city that certainly have huge hi-tech ecosystems and quite well known internationally.

I don't see Facebook/Google/Uber/Netflix/AirBnB anywhere nearby. My coworker would love to do impactful ML work. There's zero companies in my city that does ML meaningfully (more than just gluing OSS solutions or calling 3rd-party APIs). I personally would love to work on tackling scaling challenges. These opportunities just don't exist here.

The companies here are quite good compare to major cities out there, but certainly there's a virtual ceiling/limit due to a mix of VC, culture, talent, etc.

Just to wrap things up and to put things into perspective, I'm not a workaholic or ambitious person. I see those challenges as opportunity to invest my skill to stay relevant for years to come so I can take my foot off the pedal a bit. Otherwise, I'd be just an Engineer like everybody else in this city...

That was kind of the point of my replies. I live in metro Atlanta. Not exactly small town America. We just bought a house in the burbs two years ago - 5 bedrooms, 3-1/2 bath almost 3000 square feet, brand new build for less than $350K.

Parents who want their kids to enjoy life? yes, it matters.

And somehow kids manage to “enjoy life” where the average household income in the US is $60K a year.

How long do you have to work to reach the point of no-mortgage (nice house), kids done college paid by parents, and $2 mills for retirement?

Let’s talk about a stereotypical couple. Someone brought up that they were making $120K in a low cost city and they were in their early 30s. Let’s also say the spouse was grossing $50K (about average for a college educated person in the US).

According to paycheckcity.com. The lower earning spouse would bring home $3400 a month. The higher earning spouse would bring home a little over $6000 after maxing our his 401K (pretax) at $19K a year for retirement. Many couples I know in that situation live completely off the higher earners income. That’s what I would have done if I got married at the average age of around 30.

If they were just hitting their stride at 30 with no kids. That $350K-$400K 5 bedroom house could be paid off in around 10-12 years.

If the developer just put $2083 a month (that includes the $1583/month in his 401K) in an S&P Index fund that historically earned 11% a year, they would have 2.1 million in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation (2.9%) by the time he was 52.

Getting the kids through college? Let’s add some variables. The wife could take a year or two off when they had kids and the house would still be paid off by the time they graduated from college and they could put her income toward cash flowing the kids through college. I also didn’t take into account that hopefully they will get more than inflation adjusted wages.

We both live in different cities. I don't know your city as well as you do but where I live, there's definitely a ceiling to that technical challenges. Now before we go further with examples... I live in a city that certainly have huge hi-tech ecosystems and quite well known internationally.

While the numbers for income I quoted above were theoretical, the fact that I have plenty of opportunities to work for a consulting company after my youngest graduates in two years and I’m willing to travel isn’t. I live in the same city as the world’s busiest airport. Getting a direct flight to almost anywhere isn’t a problem. Even Amazon is hiring AWS consultants who live in most major cities.

I personally would love to work on tackling scaling challenges. These opportunities just don't exist here

Even if the challenges don’t exist where I live, one or two of my friends/former coworkers work remotely. As I said above, I’m willing to travel.

But I know people, like my former manager who is in his late 50s, that wanted and did just the opposite, he changed jobs, self demoted to a developer and is doing your basic Microsoft/Azure full stack development. Once you have “enough”, you can get off the hedonic treadmill and make different life choices, you can take a pay cut to have a less stressful life, a better work life balance, etc.

I didn’t make nearly the same “good life choices” as the idealized couple I wrote about above but even I can say no to consulting companies that would pay me more than I am making now because I just really don’t want the headache at this point in life.

One final point. My parents are in their 70s, they retired in their mid 50s in the small town south with less than a million in the bank. My mom was a teacher (with a pension) and my dad was a factory worker (no pension). They aren’t struggling. They had 5 years left on their 30 year mortgage when they retired - they were paying $600/month for their mortgage.

I'm referring to million sctive users of messaging app.

https://www.railinc.com/rportal/documents/18/260737/CRB_Proc...

There is more to it than this.

Did we have millions of users? No. The rules were complicated, and most processing happened once a month. There is a central exchange that both sides go through.

I’ve had three jobs in healthcare. While the scale of users weren’t anything crazy. The business requirements were complex.

My background has always been in Enterprise software (healthcare, insurance, BI, etc, almost a decade). At some point I felt that translating complex biz reqs are no longer interesting.

I find dealing with scalability (and hopefully build my own system library) is more interesting and challenging that the Enterprise market.

Consistent Hashing algorithms, Distributed Systems, System programming, build your own programming languages, maybe build my own messaging/background processing?

YMMV.

My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience, involved in some of the high-level planning tasks you describe.

As for CRUD glue...hard call about long term labor market. There's a lot of slip-shod working being done to hold up other slip-shod work. I think there's a good analogy in "unregulated construction." You can hire anybody off the street to build you a shed. If you have money to throw at it, though, you still might be willing to pay 15x to hire a well-vetted professional who will make something both beautiful and lasting.

Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your preferred compensation number until they've made a first offer.

The only point where quoting your current salary makes sense is if the company offers less than you are currently making, and you are in such a bad situation at your current where you'd be willing to absorb the pain of changing jobs for no additional money.

A better strategy is to really research competitive wages and anchor high by honestly saying what you want. If they can’t come close, then walk away. If they ask you to compromise, tell them you’re not going to negotiate against yourself by stating any specific compromises, that you arrived at what you stated by considering what you’re worth, and that you’re happy to consider any kind of offer they would like to make, but that to accept an offer you have to believe it is competitive for the value you can add.

Any arguments about salaries at different cohorts of companies, or salary bands based on years of experience, just outright ignore and tell them if it’s a dealbreaker, you understand but aren’t going to compromise just because of their pay bands or random assertions about market analysis.

If you still decline to discuss a range of expectations at that point, they will usually just drop interest in you and decline to interview you further, assuming that you might just be fishing for a high offer to use to negotiate somewhere else, or that you want way more than they could possibly offer, etc.

This is not just IT, this is the entire job market. The reason is because jobs are "sticky" — it's a pain to apply for jobs, arrange interviews, deal with the possibility of getting rejected. If you're successful you also have to deal with possibility of leaving colleagues that may be friends, the risk that the new position is less stimulating, or having to move house or deal with a new commute.

There is a very real salary range between "low enough that I'll think about applying for other jobs" and "so low I'll actually start applying for jobs". Employers are aware of this and are paying salaries accordingly. It sucks for everyone in that salary band but — ethics and long-term viability aside — it's still the rational economic choice for employers. Every now and again someone will quit and get their deserved 40% increase, but many will delay leaving for years, or simply put up with it indefinitely.

edit: Side-note: if you happen to find interviewing and changing jobs more tolerable than most then congratulations! — You've won the job-market pain-of-change-vs-salary arbitrage game and will enjoy above-average year-on-year salary increases.

At a growing company, if you're a growing individual, there's room for you to rise.

At a stagnant or declining company, if you're outperforming your boss, there's a strong incentive for your boss to want to keep you down to keep his/her job.

In a growing company, your boss might be happy to get your promoted to his/her level. Instead of subordinate, now you're a potential ally on the same level. I think in a healthy environment almost anyone would see that as appealing. In a stagnant company, that could be mean your boss loses the job. Almost anyone would see that as unappealing.

I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's just that typical corporate culture (in the US at least) is not accustomed to giving large internal raises to employees based on increases in that employee's market value.

Most companies base their annual compensation on giving people a few percentage points for cost of living adjustment, then a few more percentage points based on performance. They standardize those numbers so they can say, 'you did average, you get 4%' 'you did great this year, you get 6.5%'.

Many, many companies don't factor in at all that employee value on the market can increase much, much faster than 2-8% per year. Even companies making money hand over fist. The usual way of approaching annual raises is wildly unsuited for compensating talent that is in high demand.

Only once has this gone badly for me, but it went really bad. Tried to mentor a guy, two years later he’s our boss and everybody hates him. Like we go out for coffee to talk about how much we hate him.

Ladder climber extraordinaire. Gotta learn to watch out for those, but in this case he only connived in private and nobody caught on but one and he left.

This is gold. It's just a specific application of, "You shouldn't fight market forces, if you can help it."

Simply coming close to parody

parity

Though, this started me thinking on what "parody bits" would be.

From what I've noticed, companies really want to avoid raising salary of an employee in a meaningful way, because it means they will have to increase pay of others also

So 10% increase of salary of 1 employee would eventually equal 10% in crease for the whole team or company, which gets expensive.

This seems to be why they really really hate giving out meaningful raise. They'd rather lose an employee and suffer the consequences, than give 10% raise to one and inevitably end up raising salary for the entire team/company.

And yet, they want to higher senior devs, who obviously left old company to seek higher pay.

Can confirm. I just got a 54% raise by switching companies. It's absurd. I think a lot of companies just get complacent and don't keep up with the pace of developer salaries, then start leaking talent until it becomes a problem.

As far as I can tell, management that can see beyond the idea that your current payscale is what you should be payed is pretty rare. There's just something about anchoring on a price once it's negotiated.

This is a very US-centric perspective. At least in Germany, the situation is somehwat different. Here, changing companies too regularly, often bears a social stigma.

There's nothing curious or special about the IT industry. It's the same effect as you getting gas at the local gas station rather than driving a few miles to the cheaper station.

All "Senior X," right?