[salarycommenter]

Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation.

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.

[dfrage]

> 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?

[salarycommenter]

I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on.

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.

[dfrage]

The bottom line the US is that respect is ultimately measured in dollars. I won't argue there isn't some toxicity to that, but a company that doesn't reward the vastly increased value of its developer employees as they move from entry level to journeymen to experts will suffer greatly from it, often fatally.

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.

[blackflame7000]

It kind of reminds me of the Brain Drain Microsoft experienced in the mid 2000s and saw them fall behind apple and google as the top of the tech food chain.

[hnuser355]

I agree. No need to make it emotional and confrontational with a “respect” interpretation in my opinion. Of course this is hard but if I can do it I imagine the best approach will be to simply make the best choices for my career while recognizing management has their own bizarre incentives I will never understand.

[luminati]

Off topic - but your username and the vast majority of your commenting history is primarily on salaries. Curious - is there some backstory to it? Feel you got severely underpaid?

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 ;)

[salarycommenter]

This is an alt specifically for discussing compensation because I know it elicits that reaction and I don't want that associated with my professional identity.

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.

[veritas_veritad]

I for one appreciate your pushing so hard. Your increased compensation means that I get to charge more for myself.

[oarabbus_]

Any advice on learning your true worth? Assume for a minute that Glassdoor is useless, as the "salary range" it displays shows that the maximum is 2-2.5x the minimum.

[manfredo]

There is no "true worth" that you can look up on a website. Your salary is your cost in the labor market. And like any market, worth is determined by what people are willing to pay. Go out and interview, get some offer sand see who is willing to compete for you. That's how you get your true worth.

[code_duck]

Right, the entire point of the question is to find out what people are willing to pay.

[z3t4]

The only thing that matter is what they think you can get elsewhere. eg. what others are willing to pay. Think of it as an auction. Something might be worth $100 but if the highest bid is $10 you are only going to bid $15 not $100.

[Aeolun]

I don’t know. If I really want that I might bid $110 initially just to put off others from even attempting a bid.

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

[defen]

> 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

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.

[hello_moto]

> 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).

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...

[blackflame7000]

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

- 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

[aiisjustanif]

Excuse me, but define a CRUD developer.

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

[hello_moto]

Building simple tools to assist the whole SDLC?

Building web-app to map network/machines?

[aiisjustanif]

Thank you. I wonder sometimes if that's me and I'm unaware. I currently write REST applications and work on a lot of the stack around that. But it's not as simple as Create Read Delete Update. Well it can be, but it's far more complex in my industry.

[pro-duct]

The hard part of engineering isn't the ability to glue packages and microservices together. Those tasks are literally done by entry level, bottom of the totem pole engineers. You're saying that all bankers do is run models and spit out valuations, and all a chef does is put stuff in a pan.

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.

[scarface74]

$300K to live on the west coast is really not that appealing to someone who is living in a major city, with the stereotypical house in the burbs in a good school system with 2.1 kids where on the higher end you can make $150K to $160K as an architect/team lead/principal. Especially if you are married with two incomes where you can easily put the lower income completely toward increasing net worth or cash flowing your kids college expenses.

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

[enraged_camel]

I think you are perhaps too focused on the immediate salary, and not thinking long-term.

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.

[scarface74]

I think my reply would have had more context in response to a sibling reply made by another poster:

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

[hashfunktion]

> Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

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.

[scarface74]

I’ve found that people who work for large companies are often not a fit for smaller companies. They may be good developers, but most of the time they come in with prebuilt infrastructure, processes, separate departments to handle the infrastructure parts etc.

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.

[hello_moto]

DING DING DING.

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

[scarface74]

Anyone who is making $135K+ in any city that is not on the west coast or NYC, is probably 10 years into their career and may already have a family. In that case, they probably don’t want to make the sacrifices needed to go from making enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle - ie the nice house in the burbs to downgrading to a small apartment.

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?

[ubertaco]

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, involved in some of the high-level planning tasks you describe.

[IggleSniggle]

I feel for people working in video games and in the space industry. Often they enter those industries because of passion, although I think in aerospace it's more common to stay for longer because you end up working with technologies that just don't apply well to most other industries (lots of DSLs that most businesses don't care about).

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.

[scarface74]

I would seriously have to think about giving up my lifestyle where I don’t make nearly $300K to move to the west coast and work for a FAANG. I like my short commute, good school systems, and my big affordable house in the burbs that would cost at least four times as much if we moved.

[aiisjustanif]

Excuse me, but define a CRUD developer.

[fredsanford]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delet...

[noego]

You went from 300k to ~460k? Well done. Have you considered sharing your experiences around how you negotiated that?

[dbancajas]

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

[swiftcoder]

No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best).

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.

[mlthoughts2018]

This advice functionally doesn’t work. They’ll just intentionally lowball the first offer and then say well they can’t read your mind so you need to tell them what you want.

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.

[mamon]

First of all, they cannot force you to give them your current salary. My standard answer to such question is a slightly more polite version of "it's none of your bussiness". And if they don't want to provide a salary range, and ask you to come up with the number, then just give them your current salary +50% and see how they react. Of course you might then need to step down a little, and accept your current salary + 20-30% instead, but that's still pretty good.

[mlthoughts2018]

They won’t try to force you. They’ll just lowball the first offer, and if you say “that’s not close to what I’m seeking” then they’ll say, “well we can’t read your mind, so it’s unreasonable for you to expect us to just repeatedly guess until we hit the number you want, so you need to outline your expectations.”

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.

[jerven]

Thing is in many cases their low ball offer might still be more than you thought you could get. It gives a lower line, on their terms. From there you can negotiate upwards. After all it is their first offer.

[llampx]

They won't lowball a good candidate. People know that lowballing is a good way to lose a good candidate, that's why most companies will try to get you to state a number first rather than give out a too-high or too-low number.

[Retra]

If you want to know what I have in spending money, I expect the other party to show me what they have as well. It's not a fair negotiation if you play with lopsided rules.

[troels]

This is the "common knowledge" thing to do, but I don't think it's always applicable. If you have an advantage in the market (e.g. are sought after), you can simply present a high figure and either they accept or you move on to the next. By playing the let-them-go-first game, you're implicitly signalling that you don't know where the ceiling is. On the other hand, if you say a high figure with confidence, they may accept it even if they weren't really prepared for that to begin with. Information asymmetry can also go the other way.

[swiftcoder]

I don't necessarily disagree with you on anchoring at a high value. But moving first with your current salary is a guaranteed losing strategy.