I'd consider myself in the same boat. Also been a professional developer for 20 years. Wouldn't say I'm full stack anymore as I'm a little out of the loop with all of the changes with front-end development in recent years, but trying to improve in that area and become a better, more-rounded developer.

Also in Florida and in the low $100k range. Always a bit surprised to hear these stories on HN and elsewhere of developers making $150-200k+ salaries, and wonder how I can get to that level.

Imposter syndrome is very real for me too, especially in my current role where my coworkers all seem much smarter and more technological-savvy than me.

Would also like to contribute to open source projects, but not really sure where I'd start and whether I am good enough.

fastest way to big bucks is to create an auction market (have multiple simultaneous offers) at companies with revenues growing fast enough that they don’t care

Sounds like you're my technical doppelganger. Hopefully some of the comments on my post are helpful to you as well. I can't change location right now, so I think I'm going to work on the imposter/confidence aspect and try to find some projects to contribute to.

col in florida is so low though plus no state income tax right?

100k in orlando is like 220k in sf so you're probably doing alright.

Location is a factor but also tech salaries have seen tremendous continued growth over the last 20 years.

new grads are getting jobs at FAANGs out of college starting at 150-200k+ tc these days.

granted these are mostly in higher col areas - sf, seattle, nyc.

you just need to get a new job if you want to make more money, it's that simple.

in 2015 i had my first job as a junior engineer at a startup at 60k. over 3 years i worked my way up to a tech lead and 100k. not bad but i could've made more faster had i just switched companies sooner.

i finally started interviewing and got up to a 150k offer at another startup of the same size, same area - my current company valued me at 100k and this new company 150k.

a year later this startup was acquired and i negotiated my way into a 200k+ offer at the acquiring company - mostly because the bigger company was bigger and just paid more in general than my small startup company.

making more money isn't that closely tied to your job skills actually. it's tied to your interviewing skills and desire to get a job at a FAANG or similarly large tech company that pays high comps.

i'm not saying it's the easiest thing - the FAANG interviews are fairly hard and require quite a bit of prep. But if you really want it I'm sure you could do it - it's more about dedication, preparation and time than anything else.

A lot of it is probably location, and also comparing yourself to anecdata.

But some percentage of it needs to be standing out. There are a lot of developers in cube farms working with stacks that look exactly like your resume. The javascript stuff is very quickly becoming devalued as boot camps crank out front end devs by the hundred.

Maybe becoming (or just advertising yourself) as a leading specialist in one or two of those technologies, or becoming an expert in an emerging technology would do it.

I've been in a rather similar boat. I spent a few years in "the show", but am back down in the real world now. Not sure I regret getting it out of my system, but it did harm my life.

Am also an introvert, and it does reduce the possibilities, in my opinion. Still struggling with that. But trying to meet technical people who can hire or refer you is pretty useful (and try to maintain relationships like that when you leave a job).

Location is a problem. If you move to a place like BA or NY, you can probably double your salary right off, even if your skill level is rather low. This is very hard, though, if you have a family or your local social connections are important.

I doubt you're an imposter. Most of the people I met at my high-paying jobs were no more skilled than those I meet in the hinterlands. (And the brilliant ones are often insufferable.)

Rich companies are rich, so they can pay more. That's about it. There's a lot more competition for high-paying spots, but generally the people hiring are doing it pretty randomly. Having a resume that looks good and being able to talk a good game are more important than actual skill.

Appreciate the insight. Definitely seems location is a big factor, but I'm not incentivized to change that right now - so I'll need to look at this from different angles. Networking seems to be key.

Sure thing. Either way, don't torture yourself about it. Probably getting a dog or learning to ride a motorcycle would give you more enjoyment than working at a big-bucks tech job.

We have 2 dogs and a cat. Pets aren't my thing. I'd love to learn to ride though.

Location is definitely a factor. The only way I've heard people making make Bay Area money in places like Ohio is to land a remote gig with a Bay Area company, which isn't easy.

You probably have better quality of life in Ohio with your salary than many much higher paid people in the Bay Area. A starter home near Google costs around 2 million.

There’s more to life than owning a home as soon as possible.

Not much, if you want to have kids and raise them with a decent quality of life.

You can do that once you amass wealth in your 20s (and even early 30s if that's your style, not necessary though) and then move to a lower COL.

Amass wealth in your twenties sounds so ridiculous to me. My bank balance for most of my 20’s was barely positive. Now that I’m mid thirties my salary is finally high enough that the savings have started to increase, but it’s still far from anything resembling ‘wealth’.

That’s a shame. I’m sorry if you didn’t have the opportunity to do so. It’s very possible and practical to build wealth in your 20s and many people move to high COL places to do so when they don’t have the burden of kids or strong ties. Even small wealth in your 20s will balloon into big wealth 20-30-40 years later that you simply won’t be able to catch up to saving in your 40s and later. You’re investing in your future by delaying settling down, buying a house, and having kids in your 20s. Whether that’s worth it is up to you and your life goals.

Great advice, but too late for me.

Fellow Orlandonian here, the salaries are not great. I haven't seen the ODevs salary survey from 2019, but if you look at 2018 you're good for the area: https://orlandodevs.com/blog/salary-survey/

I recommend working remote.

Yeah, that’s all on you. I don’t know if confidence training is a thing, but you could hit a huge ROI if you level up your extroversion/confidence game.

The first leap is the hardest. Once you've got your foot in the door of somewhere "prestigious" that you can list on your resume, a lot of doors open.

One of the easier ways to make that first leap is to attach your name to something marketable. I did a few contributor articles for PacketPushers back when they first opened up to letting pretty much anyone write articles. Then I added something like "Contributor at PacketPushers" to my LinkedIn and published a few of the articles on my LinkedIn feed. I ended up getting hired by LinkedIn as an SRE out of it.

I also think you have to find a way to differentiate yourself by having some kind of a personal style or mantra. You aren't just out there to prove you're good enough for a job, you're out there to prove that you're a better candidate than the other people they might hire.

For me, on the SRE side, I lean heavily on the people side of things (which I find is often neglected). Which is not to say that I ignore the tech side, I can hold my own against other senior SREs. But I use that focus on people to try to edge myself out against the other candidates who are equally technically skilled. SRE doesn't do anything a developer couldn't do given sufficient time and motivation. Why don't developers do it themselves? Because it's hard (read: out of their SME), and because it takes time. That's a UX problem to me, so I frame that as something I would fix by making it quick and easy for my developers. A system that increases your availability to 99% that is quick and easy to set up is almost always more valuable than a system that increases it to 99.9% or 99.99% but takes 6 meetings and a book to use effectively.

So find your style or flair. I don't know what that would be for developers, I've never done a pure developer job. If I were going to pick something off the top of my head, I would pick abstractions. Everybody does abstractions, but if you can be the person that can frame a hard problem in a simple abstraction, that's a ton of bonus points. I would talk about the time I can save other people by building a simple abstraction that can be reused over and over again.

Or you could go people oriented like I did. Maybe you can frame yourself as the person that's really good at getting key stakeholders and your PM in a room and translating what the stakeholders want done into actionable work units for your PM. Sure, it's often a thing managers do, but managers love people who can free up some of their schedule.

I've been interviewing people for jobs that pay in the 200k+ range for about 6 years. You have to have something that sets you apart. I've interviewed a lot of people that basically said "Yep, I can solve that problem". Cool, you get to go in the queue with the 7 other people that could solve that problem, and we'll probably decide who wins later on based on who we think we would like most as a person on our team (i.e who's not going to be a wet blanket at lunch). On the other hand, some people stand out. I interviewed a guy who was really particular about writing unit tests and documentation, and really enjoyed doing that stuff. That guy went to the front of the line, because those are two things most people are bad at. I would've given him a really good rating even if he was technically less able than other people.

Once you find your flair, market yourself. Tailor your LinkedIn to your flair. Publish some dumb fluff pieces on LinkedIn about why your specific flair is important to a company. It's not really to inform other people, those fluff pieces exist to cement your position as "that guy/gal".

If I were going to make a wild guess, I think you can do it. I've worked with plenty of people that were making 200-400k that didn't write their own RDBMS at 13. They were just normal go to school, get a job, then get an offer from FAANG kind of people. I've even worked with a couple people in that range that I think we could have replaced with an intern without problems.

I don't think I've done anything spectacular tech-wise, mostly CRUD apps, fairly run of the mill architecture and CLIs designed to make things easier or faster for devs. My LinkedIn and email still rings off the hook just from marketing myself as something more unique than another SRE that does SRE things.