That is a lot of money.

But it is not unreasonable, as you have to think of how much the large publicly traded tech companies pay for talent which is in the same level as a startup founder.

Also that work life balance seems decent. Are you worried that you will find enough of a challenge at the position?

I'm not really worried. I'm both bored with self-employment and a little burned out. I think this will be a different kind of challenge but I also want a bit of a rest tbh. I'm also interested in transitioning to engineering management, which would be a whole new world for me.

Yeah these startups are a scam, the founders walk away with a fortune on a successful exit and the employees who toiled away for years get basically nothing. I've seen cases of founders getting 25 - 50 Million each and the earliest employees get a few hundred k.

Thanks for this response!

Follow up:

How long have you been working there?

Is it a manager position or engineering?

I just signed offer, haven't started yet, but I've looked at people's responses on places like Blind and Reddit about work-life balance there and I asked multiple people in my interview loop about it. Sounds like 10a to 6p is pretty standard, people work from home when they need to, and the average (flexible) PTO per year for engineering is 20-25 days per year. My start date actually got pushed back because it sounds like no one is in the office most of the next two weeks.

It's an IC role, roughly equivalent to the upper band of L5 / E5 at Google or FB (though they might pay better).

$420k.

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

Here in Italy, to get that money, you need to be the CEO of a huge company.

I know, it's insane. It seems like the only other clearly defined paths to that kind of money in your 30s are medicine, law, consulting, finance, etc., and all of them come with pretty significant downsides in terms of required education and/or work-life balance. The idea that I could never go to college (I did, but not for software) and somehow wind up getting paid a half million dollars a year working 40 hours a week in jeans and a t-shirt writing code?

I feel so fucking lucky.

What was ypour path to get to that? I knew software paid well, but not that well

Got my undergrad at a no-name state school in international business and worked for about a year as a jr product mgr at a tech company in SF, but I've been programming since I was 12 or so, and I left that job to freelance. Did that for over a decade, mostly focused on iOS dev. I've done a few apps for larger companies that you'd recognize, but most of my work is for early stage startups that no longer exist. Still, I guess iOS is in enough demand that it was enough to open doors at these companies, and from there it's a matter of passing the interviews. I've been really successful as a freelancer, so the non-technical parts of the interview process were really easy, just like selling yourself to potential clients, basically.

Your story is certainly inspiring. Few follow up questions:

How did you do on the technical interviews?

Can you give us examples of “sell yourself” as a potential client?

Any interesting interview tips?

I’ve been freelancing/self-employed/raised money etc... about 8+ years and I’m debating if it’s worth it to apply to larger tech companies. They tend to have a higher barrier to entry with the tech interviews so I probably need to brush up, any tips there? I’ve been managing a small team and looking to do the same so not sure how much to study for the tech interviews.

Appreciate your responses so far! It’s been very insightful