[throwaway19170]

So there are all these people in these threads who are like "I only make $175K/200K/150K, I feel like I'm grossly underpaid when I read these things."

I got you all beat.

I have 15+ experience. I am a really good coder. I can be very not humble because this is a throwaway, but everyone who has ever worked with me or gone to school with me or worked on open source with me would agree, I am very good at designing and writing and maintaining software, including understanding what software should be written, let's just accept that for the sake of discussion.

I only make around $90K.

Now, I work in the non-profit/academic sector, and have my whole career. That's what I wanted to do, and I make more than most people in my social circles even at $90K, but the work is getting old, it's not actually that "meaningful" in the end, and especially when people keep saying that I could be making literally 4-5x what I'm making.

I also these days mostly only know ruby and Rails (but that's not un-marketable right? And I certainly can learn other things, I have before. And I know ruby really well).

People here are like "Sure, but don't you want good work/life balance, maybe $175K is just fine for that." Yes, and $175K would be a fortune to me!

I literally don't understand how I get into that market. Because I have worked in academic/non-profit industry my whole career. (which I don't know if that leaves me out now. And I'm in my mid-40s, does that doom me?). I know how to get more jobs in the industries I'm in at about what I'm already getting paid, and have several times...

But I don't understand even the first step to this world where $175K is considered low-paying. I believe I have the engineering skills of anyone at that level. I don't know how to get into it. Help me out?

[overrun11]

Stupid question but have you actually ever tried? Your tech stack seems modern enough that I'd be surprised if you couldn't get some offers from startups. New grad level at a startup generally pays 90k+ in my market so you shouldn't have a problem at least matching your current comp but I think 150-200k is probably reasonable but you might need to work remote for a company in a major city.

[throwaway19170]

Based on OP, 150-200K is actually really low, no?

When i read these things, I'm never sure if it's reality or what.

[indecisive_user]

It is low given your level of experience and self-proclaimed proficiency, but the point is that it should be relatively straight forward to get one of these positions and double your salary.

Go look for salaries on a site like levels.fyi, find companies that pay well, apply to companies or find recruiters on linkedin and reach out to them.

[psim1]

I left tech at the university as soon as it started feeling like things were "getting old." And at that point I realized I should have left maybe 4 years earlier to get on with my career.

I think I will try to get back in when I am ready to retire, maybe a nice IT management position for a few years.

[throwaway19170]

What sort of company/employer in what general industry did you go on to?

[x1798DE]

I don't know if it's right for everyone, but the way I did it was to practice a bunch of leetcode style questions and send out resumes go for job postings at big companies.

That was for my first tech job. Once I had that one advertised on LinkedIn (and some open source participation, and some talks at conferences - not sure what generated interest), I started getting a steady stream of unsolicited emails from recruiters. Next time I was ready to switch jobs I just responded to the ones from FAANG companies and went back to practicing leetcode.

You can probably also just reach out directly to recruiters at big companies, or ask someone you know who works at a big company to put you in touch with a recruiter or recommend you.

[rokob]

If you know Ruby really well you might want to look at Stripe. You might be able to just apply and get an interview and see where it goes.

[sciurus]

Also GitHub and Shopify.

[moosebear847]

I think there are many straightforward answers. Try to get the $500k jobs. If that doesn't work and you don't want to grind LC for 6 months, go for $150-200k jobs like startups. If you are as good as you say you are, you could probably study/talk your way into a job or at least figure out what you need after applying to 100 startups.

[throwaway19170]

Stupid question, but where do you find em to apply to? The $500K jobs or otherwise, the 100 startups.

[moosebear847]

Faangs always seem to be hiring, not sure but having a LinkedIn seems to get inbound Faang recruiters, at least for me as a US dev. And startups, YC who's hiring has worked for friends, I'm sure grinding applications on aggregators like indeed, stackoverflow, angelist etc has some chance of working.

[saagarjha]

Where do you live, and where have you been looking for work? Try applying to some companies that specifically do software.

[nikon]

Rails isn't dead and can demand high salaries.

[lotsofpulp]

> I don't know how to get into it. Help me out?

Go to levels.fyi and apply to those companies’ job listings.

[throwaway19170]

I hadn't known about levels.fyi, thanks.

When I go there.... I see a lot of data points with ~10 years of experience paying ~$140K.

Which is more like I expected honestly -- it's just that OP was blowing my mind suggesting $175K-$225k and up... saying they are using levels.fyi as data too... or discussions here on this post with someone making $175K being considered very underpaid... every time I see salaries discussed on HN I end up confused.

[lotsofpulp]

Are you looking at total compensation including RSUs?