(No longer with Box btw)
A track with 6-7 difficult rungs and +10% pay increase? nah, I'm good.
You’re going to top out as a developer after about a decade if you’re semi aggressive. The only way I found to make the next jump is true consultancy (not staff augmentation).
I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k USD.
Sure, health care is free, education is free (no college fund for my kids) and employer-paid-for pension plans are quite decent, but housing is not cheap (450k USD for a simple 4 bed room family home, luckily I don't live in Stockholm where that costs an additional 200-300k USD) and we also pay 25% VAT on almost everything.
30 days paid vacation (not PTO) per year is pretty sweet and so is the lack of overtime (40 hours is 40 hours) and the parental leave (at home with your kids for a year as a father? no problem!). But man, these salaries that I see quoted here on HN regularly (200-300k) do sting a bit...
Cost of living isn't lower, especially in Dublin, our healthcare system is a slightly worse, college isn't totally free (3k/year or so), and pensions less generous.
On balance though, you'd still be better off working here.
A lot of the value you can gain from money (e.g. hiring a maid to clean & cook, buying better quality food) is about clawing back what you lost to get the extra money.
Not for my definitions of quality of life!
I just know I would absolutely hate competing over positions and titles. The real beneficiaries of this are the owners of the businesses who make up these meaningless distinctions in order to get everyone grinding their lives away for shiny baubles.
These mid-size and larger companies offer defined pay, bonus, perks, expectations, and many other predictable attributes. This structure is of a high value to folks who prize stability, to take care of things like their family.
I think it works out fine for people with a good manager who for whatever reason thinks your style is good. But if they aren't good or don't quite care about you then you'll eat shit forever.
Is they the internal decision makers or the HR/recruiters gatekeepers who kvetch about the 'talent shortage' in software engineering? Am I out of line here for feeling like that line could easily come from either group?
Asking as a guy who was rejected by a recruiting agency for my current job, and only got hired later on after discovering by complete and utter coincidence a friend (well, more of an acquaintance, a regular at my neighborhood pub) worked on the team, referred me to his boss who was absolutely delighted with my experience and qualifications, was a near instant-hire.
Sometimes I wonder (quite negatively and cynically) about the agency hiring model.