[leakycap]

You have set a high goal of $150k salary without a clear way to achieve it, or a clear passion, if I'm reading correctly.

What is your depth of knowledge in? You say software?

Law would be an risk idea if you don't love it with all your heart, even people who love law hate it by the end of law school.

[jinushaun]

$150k is not a crazy number. That’s not even inside the senior engineer salary band.

[red-iron-pine]

150 is like painfully mid-level IT in a tech hub. Like I jumped from that in the RDU area of NC to something much higher.

competitive in other parts of the US, perhaps, but for serious dyed-in-the-wool devs it's piddly

[silvercymbals]

People on HN saying $150k is a "high bar" is frankly insulting. Anyone in the bay who's not a founder or working for a meaningless company easily clears $200k.

I've started two companies, exited one and technically have the skills of a "senior engineer". I've managed teams of engineers and have architected remote factory production systems for one of my companies along with a dozen or so relatively complex web apps in the fintech space.

[jlarocco]

> Anyone in the bay who's not a founder or working for a meaningless company easily clears $200k.

Maybe your attitude is why you can't find a job?

Nothing in your post indicates you're "in the bay", and in the other 99% of the country $150k is a decent salary.

[TylerLives]

Why can't other people recognize how great you are?

[silvercymbals]

My resume is pretty scattered. I had good interest with a recruiter sending me FDE roles.

But most large orgs look at my resume and run since I have multiple two year stints and stints starting / running my own companies.

I'm also fully willing to admit that relative to "senior engineers" of today, maybe I just suck. In that case, idk how to move to what's next. I'm social, but not exactly normal. Also willing to see the humor in your comment that points to my potential conceit.

[rockemsockem]

Are you only applying to senior roles? Idk the specifics of your background, but it sounds like you haven't been somewhere long enough to get promoted and have largely worked on your own projects.

To me that doesn't really say that you have senior engineer skills, i.e. designing scalable systems (both in compute and development-wise), leading multi-person projects, considering trade-offs, etc.

[silvercymbals]

I built a bespoke IOT stack that currently runs over 10k devices and a full production line interface / deployment for a factory we used in china. I'm not going to define what "senior engineer" is, but this was done largely solo with engineers I managed to maintain it.

[rockemsockem]

Sounds impressive enough to probably get a senior role somewhere. Maybe you aren't selling yourself well in your resume?

[jacktasia]

Where do you lean as far as FE/BE/mobile? What tech stacks and/or programming languages can you hit the ground running with?

[TylerLives]

I jest, but I've been in situations similar to yours. I don't have any advice to give, but I wish you luck.

[silvercymbals]

Thanks for your thoughts :)

[giardini]

silvercymbals sez:"* I'm social, but not exactly normal. *"

It's the cymbals - lose 'em!

[mothballed]

I recently paid a guy about $10k to roof my house. $3500 materials, ~$6500 labor. Maybe 32 hours labor tops, it is a hella small house. Might be worth looking into. He was cheaper than pretty much anyone else.

[platevoltage]

Man, it seems like yesterday we were telling coal miners to "learn to code". Now software devs are being told to become tradesmen.

[antisthenes]

The tradesmen in higher COL areas seem to have no problem charging dev hourly rates ($150-200/hr) and also upcharging ridiculous amounts on materials (one of them tried to charge me $75 for a $3 capacitor).

Maybe there is something to that after all.

[leakycap]

> (one of them tried to charge me $75 for a $3 capacitor)

How much do you upcharge people for your services and "products" (often virtual)? What is acceptable to you?

If you had to have a physical copy of the apps you work with, in your truck, had to buy them in advance, pay shipping, store them, then take the right copy with you to a client's house. If they paid $3 would you be OK with $30? $60? You seem incensed with $75

I used to work retail. Belkin cables were under $2 each for the store, they sold them for $39-$69 depending on what it was.

If you work in a professional role, your markup on services (almost no costs involved) and products (usually very low costs) is probably many many thousands of times more than the hardworking tradesperson you think ripped you off when they were solving an issue you needed help with and had the expertise, time, and parts to help.

[antisthenes]

I don't mark up anything on physical goods, because my profession is services-only.

If the tradesman wants additional income, I have no problem with that, bake it into their hourly rate.

> had to buy them in advance, pay shipping, store them, then take the right copy with you to a client's house.

A warehouse/shipper already does all of this, perhaps not for $3 but for $3 + shipping.

For this purpose in my relationship with tradesmen, I just pay them whatever their rate is to identify what the problem is, and then fix it myself at my own leisure using my materials, unless it involves something hazardous or requires a license.

> I used to work retail. Belkin cables were under $2 each for the store, they sold them for $39-$69 depending on what it was

You certainly don't have to explain these banalities to me (I also worked retail and ecommerce for 11 years) and they don't really contribute to the point. There are scenarios where you can get away with charging exorbitant markups and maybe 1% markup, and everything in-between. The question here is should you take advantage of under-informed homeowners

For professional services, I do mark up my time, obviously, but it is not a 25x markup as in the capacitor case.

If I calculated strictly my bare necessities to live (e.g. mortgage/food/healthcare/utilities), my rough markup would probably be around 2.5x-3x.

[red-iron-pine]

roofing is also notoriously brutal and has non-trivial risks

[mothballed]

There's very rarely any easy way available to make $150k+ a year.

[aaronrobinson]

This reply makes you sound like you’re up your own arse.

[happytoexplain]

What? It's an utterly straight-forward summary of their work experience and a factual statement about salaries offered as a counter-example to the parent. There's is no (obvious) hubris in it.

[rsynnott]

You’re coming across in this thread as, er, honestly pretty insufferable. This likely isn’t doing you any favours in interviews; you may want to work on that. _Particularly_ for senior roles; an asshole junior may be just about tolerable, but an asshole senior can be a real problem and most companies won't want to hire one.

[brazukadev]

Now we can clearly see why you can't get a job

[walkabout]

Um. That’s tens of thousands over median software developer wages in the US.

I know good developers who’ve done more impressive stuff than that, making at or under this $150k cut-off.