[scarface_74]

> was talking about career/life strategies. i believe that what worked for your generation isn't as sure a thing for my generation

My generation for the most part never will work for a FAANG or get equivalent compensation because we aren’t going to grind leetcode and do what it takes.

I would never have gotten into one if it weren’t for the very thin needle I threaded and I definitely wasn’t going to sell my big house in the burbs to move to Seattle to be an SDE (what the recruiter originally suggested).

There are plenty of people who post here who are under 30 and will make more than I will ever make. I’m not bitter. Like I said at 50, I can afford to purposefully prioritize lifestyle over chasing money and eschew opportunities to make more.

My Generation didn’t have the chance of graduating from college and getting a job making an (inflation adjusted) almost quarter million working for BigTech or the equivalent company back then. Many in my generation came in during the dot com boom and it took years for us to recover and some never did (I didn’t suffer any ill effects from the crash).

From looking at LinkedIn, none of them are or have ever worked for a company paying as much as my former coworkers at BigTech are making 3-4 years out of college.

The generation graduating post 2010-2012 has way more opportunities to make a lot of money.

[greenie_beans]

gen x in tech are some of the wealthiest people in the world. y'all are the new kings.

i graduated high school during the great financial crisis. i remember being near done with college at the university of mississippi when i visited birmingham, alabama and walked through the occupy encampments. i didn't make enough money to contribute to retirement savings til 2019 when i was in my late 20s. your generation has experienced unprecedented stock market gains over your peak earning years. i'm not hopeful that these gains will continue through my peak earning years therefore i prioritize finding creative ways to generate income before it's too late after being complacent with my fat ass tech paycheck sitting at my standup desk and drinking my kombucha with the wool over my eyes while the ai writes my code.

[scarface_74]

And you were on the opposite side of the bimodal distribution of comp within the industry from 2012-2019.

The top end of enterprise dev salaries for seniors is around that of entry level salaries at BigTech and adjacent companies.

That’s not meant to be an insult. I was on that side until I was 46 and now at 50 I’m back on the very top end of enterprise dev. But it’s still somewhere between entry level and mid level at BigTech and closer to entry level.

The advice I’m giving is to stop wasting time on a side hustle and do whatever it takes to get on the BigTech side of compensation if you want to maximize your income.

If you graduated in 2008, yes it was a shit show. But that means by 2012, BigTech comp and enterprise dev comp started really diverging. The stock market has been gangbusters since 2012. But it stagnated most of the 200x’s.

If you had jumped on the BigTech wave in 2012 you would have been set.

By that time, relocating wasn’t an option for me because I was 38, just gotten married and had two (step)kids.

[greenie_beans]

i didn't start working in the industry until 2019.

> The advice I’m giving is to stop wasting time on a side hustle and do whatever it takes to get on the BigTech side of compensation if you want to maximize your income.

this was good advice 5 years ago, even 2-3 years ago, if your goal is to maximize income. but it's out of date now. nonetheless, we are not talking about maximizing income here, we're talking about surviving in a changing world with a tougher job market for devs. let me remind you of the grandparent orginal comment that started this all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42631755 that person is right.

[scarface_74]

> i didn't start working in the industry until 2019.

Yeah for an entry level developer getting in the industry right before Covid hit had to suck.

> this was good advice 5 years ago, even 2-3 years ago, if your goal is to maximize income. but it's out of date now.

The entire market sucks now. But BigTech is still hiring as well as the enterprise dev side. You might as well shoot for the moon and settle if you must.