[hellogoodbyeeee]

Does this work for your entire career or does it only work until you hit some kind of "salary cap" for your local market? I've had a few good raises in a short period of time, but I'm scared I can realistically only get one or two more in before I reach the top of the market.

[sk1pper]

I’ve hit that in my market - or a soft cap, at least, meaning if I want to earn more, I’m going to have to make 2-3x as much effort than I did before.

Through working my ass off, and pretty great luck, (working on lots of side projects didn’t hurt either), I recently did some looking just to feel the market out and I’m making like $20k more than I “should” be.

Part of this is because my company is based out of Bethesda, MD and I live in Denver, CO - cost of living differences. My company pays really well which allows them to compete with Silicon Valley and everywhere else for the best engineers.

No complaints here. I’m making double what I thought I would be making at this point in my career.

Anyway, yes, anecdotally, it caps out, but I also like to think that if I really hustled, I could keep raising it. But I’m pretty happy where I’m at and would rather spend my free time doing stuff other than coding and hustling right now.

[molsongolden]

Were your feelers all in Denver? Denver seems to have surprisingly low salaries, especially when accounting for the housing boom of the past 5-6 years.

[resolaibohp]

Denver seems to pay very low, considering the cost of living these days. I think they refer to it as the "Denver Discount"

[iopuy]

What would be considered surprisingly low? A level 3 software engineer making $100K? Genuinely curious.

[azemetre]

That seems absurdly low. For reference, I work for a major ISP and we pay our new college grads between $85-110K across our regions of operations.

[Latteland]

110k nationwide is pretty good. In seattle we pay at least 120k for new college hires.

[twblalock]

Salary caps but stock does not. FAANG companies give massive RSU grants to senior people. There is no ceiling at companies that can afford to do that, which gives them a big advantage over startups.

[Bombthecat]

There was a statistic in germany about doctors, diploma and other high income people. Around 40 to 45 the salary capped or even started to decline. (age discrimination is real)

[Pfhreak]

I'd imagine the gains are somewhat asymptotic -- there's definitely a theoretical maximum somewhere out there, and every jump moves you closer to it. The bigger gains (percentage wise) probably come earlier?

My first company switch literally doubled my total comp. My second one was a double digit increase as well. I expect any future jumps to be smaller. (Though, who knows where the market will be then, as I'm likely years away from any move.)