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The $200,000 Software Developer
itwbennett writes "You can make a decent living as a software developer, and if you were lucky enough to get hired at a pre-IPO tech phenom, you can even get rich at it. But set your sights above the average and below Scrooge McDuck and you won't find many developers in that salary range. In fact, the number of developers earning $200,000 and above is under 10%, writes blogger Phil Johnson who looked at salary data from Glassdoor, Salary.com and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. How does your salary rate? What's your advice for earning the big bucks?"
Financial engineering. Wall street is sucking them up to implement high frequency and not so high frequency trading apps. Doesn't hurt to have a mathematics degree on top of that which would probably jack you up even further.
You'll never make that much money as a salary. High annual rates are usually the exclusive province of contractual obligations and performance bonuses.
Threaten to go abroad and reveal all the details of the SuperSekretSystem you've been working on. You'll either get very rich or be spending a long time in state-provided accommodation....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Make a time machine, and go back to the 80's.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I would imagine most jobs paying $200K are in areas where $200K does't go as far as it would in other places. It is somewhat arbitrary to look at a dollar figure without looking at what it will cost you to live within a reasonable distance of said job.
I work in IT for a large multinational company and the issue I see with our approach to developers is better, faster, cheaper. In reality what this boils down to is cheaper and good enough. Projects tend to drag on for longer then they should but the development expense from a salary perspective is fairly minimal because the bulk of it is being done offshore.
I think if you want to earn the big dollars as a programmer either need to be the best in the field working for one of the big tech guys like Apple, Google, Etc... Or you need to go work for a start-up for bad starting wages but a percentage ownership in the company.
The only other option I see is going out on your own and starting your own development company but then if you earn big dollars it's because your business is doing well not because you are programming most of the time.
Do it better. Do it faster. Work longer hours. Bullshit. Kiss ass. Draw a firm line when everyone is so dependent on you that they can't survive without you. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Sabotage the competition. Don't ever settle. Sue. Keep your heart on your sleeve at home. Nail people to the cross in business. Cheat. Lie when you can get away with it. Bend the rules until they break.
The Blade Itself
Only a few people make 2.5x the average...
Also news:
Only a few people have substantially higher than average intelligence,
Only a few cars have much higher maximum acceleration than the industry average,
Only a few people have substantially lower sprint or marathon times than average,
Only a few drisophila have curlier wings than average...
Only a few people have substantially more acute hearing perception than average,
I'm not sure if it's just the summary, but it seems the author may not understand the nature of the bell curve and why it's a decent model for population distributions.
I own my own c-corp and act like a staffing company whose main client if myself. I get on average $120 an hour. I get to take a lot of write-offs and earn above the $200K mark.
Soon I will probably get certified in things like JBoss and Spring - I know them both, but without those little pieces of paper, my M.S. doesn't seem to convince a lot of the mid/large size companies that I'm fully qualified in the manner they were hoping for. At that point I should be able to raise my rates even more so.
I've been with the same software development company in Florida for well over a decade, and one of my friends got his first development job in California a year ago making as much money as I was at the time.
Some time later I got to see pictures of the apartment he lives in...and then I felt better about my house.
Posting anonymously only because I know my employees read Slashdot but:
I make a very decent living (not 200k but well above the median income for the area) working managing data analysts using SAS and R. This field is rapidly growing and without enough graduates coming out of college with the appropriate mix of programming, math, and business skill we find ourselves looking for anyone with any relevant knowledge combination.
This void is being filled at a nearly alarming rate of high salaries for what amounts to somewhat limited skill. The average salary for someone with 3-5 years of related experience is just under $100,000/year + benefits, which is pretty impressive for an area which has a median income of about $53,000 a year.
Want to get money as a developer? Learn to write SQL, SAS and now especially R and be able to do simple statistics, generate explanatory charts on queried data, and have decent communication skill.
The best predictor of how much a talented software engineer can earn is how good a salesman and communicator they are. Of course you need a lot of technical skill too, but being able to sell yourself and communicate with non-programmers can almost double your salary. Of course then you'll need to fight against being sucked into management, but that's another story.
If you're a top-notch engineer, you need to move around to keep your salary competitive. With the demand for engineers the way it is now, if you don't move around, raises to your base salary will be limited by merit/cost of living increases. When you decide to interview around, interview with multiple companies (Google, Hulu, Microsoft, Amazon, etc - just to name a few in the Seattle area) and play the offers against each other.
Always strive to get the most you can, but honestly don't worry about not making over $200k. Doing something you can enjoy is more important.
I was making $50k/year or so, saved money, avoided credit card debt, but I also had a car payment, house payment, etc.
I then made it up to $100k/year or so, saved money, avoided credit card debt, but I also had a car payment, house payment, etc.
Which was ridiculous! I'm making double the money but my debt ratio is the same!
I now have no car payment, investing money into retirement, giving, and I'm on goal to have my house paid off this year - at age 30.
Yes I know cost of living varies, but if you budget your money, stay out of restaurants, and get out of debt you'll live great even earning well below Scrooge McDuck.
(Dave Ramsey's baby steps...)
In fact, the number of developers earning $200,000 and above is under 10%,
In other news, water is wet.
Was anyone under the delusion that it was ever over 10%?
I made 50K doing IT for a department at MIT.
I made 120K for exactly the same work at a hedge fund.
THat's a 70K price to pay for the intense satisfaction that comes from helping scientists engage in science. Worth it IMO.
In Taiwan, I make about twice what the average person with an equivalent education level in a different field would make, but that's still way, way lower than $200000usd a year. Adjusting for the cost of living, I'm actually pretty well off, but this pay would suck in the US.
$200K? That's crazy talk. Maybe in San Francisco but not back East...
Computer engineer working on Aerospace control system software: less than half of that. Much less than half.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Programmers in particular can have a huge variance on ability.. and that can affect projects accordingly. A great programmer is worth 100x an average programmer... especially if you're on cutting edge technology or under great time constraints. The problem is, there aren't that many great programmers.
That NSA-CIA whistleblower guy, who is now all over the news, was earning exactly 200 federal kilobucks per year, plus they assigned him to the Hawaii station and embedded him with a blonde poledancer. Yet he decided to abscond and leak? Can't grasp.
Most SD audience would probably work for free there, provided they could get Miss Poledancer embedded. After all, Hawaii has sharks and it's only a little leap to attach friggin' lasers to their heads!
I hear an NSA contractor has an opening in Hawaii. Pays $200,000.
Apparently IT people with top secret clearances working for defense contractors can make $125k up to $200k,
Just saying...
I would be happy to have ANY job in Software Development. .NET or Oracle or J2EE or any number of other technologies and no-one is going to give you the experience.
But around here everyone wants 3-5 years experience in
The #1 advice I can give is NOT to take a "full time" job. Work as a contractor. Contractors have always gotten paid significantly more than "full time" developers, and have the added benefits of being able to move between jobs much more quickly.
I don't respond to AC's.
Two factors to consider: Location and risk/reward ratio.
The "$200,000" figure -- as mentioned earlier in the discussion -- is extremely location-dependent. Let's say you live in Salt Lake City, UT and make $100,000 per year. I'm from the area, and $90K-$110K seems to be a very typical pay rate for sysadmins and programmers with 10 or more years of experience in their field, if you include health and other benefits in the W-2 (all the employers do!). Then let's cross-reference that with the Cost Of Living calculator at http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ . To enjoy an equivalent quality of life, here's what that guy needs to make (these are all area averages, not the specific cities referenced):
San Francisco, CA: $171,987
Los Angeles, CA: $140,380
Seattle, WA: $123,784
Raleigh, NC: $99,154
Austin, TX: $97,991
Washington, DC:$151,479
New York, NY (Manhattan): $231,289
New York, NY (Queens): $162,684
Advice for earning the big bucks? If you want to earn a high-end "salary", move to one of the technology hubs. Get an education in finance and high-end mathematics. Or get a security clearance, shine up your resume and skills, and plan to have no life outside of work due to travel abroad. Get some solid experience, get in on some high-profile projects, and job-hop when you're at the apex of your visibility in your company for much better pay.
If you don't want to live in Silicon Valley or New York, then be your own boss. Write your own products. Innovate in a field that lacks innovation. Develop software nobody has really thought of before. Monetize it and make a living. Cash out by selling the company to a bigger fish, and start working on your next idea. My company, for instance, buys small companies who create innovative software a LOT and integrates that software into its other offerings. And that strategy works very well for continually expanding the customer base and revenue. Sometimes it works out well for the little guy, sometimes not. It's a risk of running your own business.
Working for someone in a "typical" IT or software engineering field is typically not gonna make you rich. It can make you a good living with solid pay and far less stress than running your own business or working in high-pressure financial and security markets, though. And you're less likely to lose several fortunes on your way to making a fortune if someone else takes the risk, and you get paid the salary. Risk/Reward.
For me, quality of life matters a lot. I've been on both sides of the fence (trying to make it in business for myself vs. drawing a salary), and right now in my life it makes more sense to draw a reasonable salary doing a job that I love in a great environment working with quality people and making a positive difference without feeling that my job is my life. But I know I'm probably not going to strike it rich doing so... and I'm OK with that.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
I graduated in 2010 with a BS in Computer Science and managed to have a Software Developer job lined up beforehand. I started with a pretty bottom barrel salary at $40k for a local startup. I have leveraged some fairly good demand here in the Northwest to now be starting in a new position next week making $75k, in a city where the average household income is $39k. Moving up is all about getting your foot in the door and then using your experience to move around where there is demand for good developers. Now, I may not be anywhere near the $200k talked about in the article, but my salary compared to my cost of living is pretty good whereas I would venture a guess that those close to that upper range are living in places where the salary to cost of living ratio probably isn't a lot different than where I'm at right now.
If you don't take into account geographical issues, saying "$200K" means very little.
I am a Mexican software developer. I consider myself well paid, and while I am far from living a life of luxury, I get enough to even set some aside to make some savings. My salary? Somehwere around US$25K a year. And I find I am a bit over the average in my country — Take as an example the study on salaries for 2012 published by Software Gurú, a national software development magazine.
(For reference sake, the US dollar is currently at ~MX$12, and we usually talk about our payment in monthly periods... so for your convenience, you can even read the numbers presented as if they were yearly salaries in US dollars ;-) )
If you work for someone, they make the money. Period.
Don't forgot some of the basic stuff. Specialize in a needed area, and become excellent at it. Be social and known in your field, make lots of work-friends and contacts. Play well with others while looking out for your own self interests. Good communication and documentation of goals when working in a group. Learn how to estimate development times and make sure that they are known to your boss. Be willing to put in ungodly hours to meet your goals, but know when to stop so that you don't burn out and cannot produce well in the long term. Help others in who are having trouble in your group when it helps you finish your portion of the project more promptly. Be a salary whore, just don't burn people.
Anyhow, that's how sweetie does it. :)
You can't expect to get rich as an employee in any industry. Programmers only get the above-average pay they do now because of the scarcity of the labor pool and the demand of high tech products. If you want to make real money you have to get on the business ownership side of things.
I have 15 years of experience and do Java-based software engineering.
Why make $200K if you can't enjoy it because you are working 18x7x52???
I make above $100K working 8x5x48. Been doing it since I was 40. Last two nights I worked 10 hours, but it really was needed. Rarely get called.
I'm smart, but not an expert in anything. I am a damn good trouble shooter and work on old software because new developers are too full of themselves to do it and I have a lot of experience working on code I know nothing about without finding excuses.
My salary gives me a very comfortable lifestyle. I drive a 2001 Blazer because I'm too cheap to trade in a truck that works. A truck I paid $12K for in 2003. I have a 1984 and 1989 Goldwing in the garage that get ridden over 15K miles a year because I see no reason to buy a new bike when I can get a used bike has less than 50K miles on it for $5K and will probably run over 200K miles instead buying an overpriced new bike because "it's cool". I have no debt except for the house, and pretty darn good 401K and savings accounts.
It's amazing how far a good $100K salary can go if you spend it on stuff you need instead of stuff you just want. I do buy things from time to time that I just 'want', I don't live like a pauper. But I've found that a $1000 audio system meets my needs, and 42" TV is actually big enough. So my wife and I spend our spare money enjoying life by traveling a few times a year on long weekend trips instead of stuff that just takes up space.
I have nothing against an extravagant lifestyle. If I could make $200K or more a year doing what I do now with the same level of stress, of course I'd do it. And I'd probably have a newer car and, nicer house. But not the bikes, I live my old Wings.
But I don't think I'm good enough make that much, and I don't think too many jobs like that exist. And I'm not willing to work harder to make it that far.
So I guess self-motivation is probably also a factor.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
>What's your advice for earning the big bucks?
Become a prostitute. Writing code isn't about money, it's about passion.
I would imagine that anyone wanting to earn over $200,000 per year (and not living in some of the super high cost of living cities like NYC or LA) would need to:
1) Have a PhD and a proven record in developing marketable, patentable technology. Basically advanced knowledge and experience that makes you extremely valuable AND very, very difficult to replace.
2) An ownership stake in whatever the business is beyond being a minor shareholder. This means partner or substantial investor in the business where you get to make decisions.
3) Management involvement, and this probably removes you from the programmer or "do-er" category.
I think salaries over $200k in most of the country would be extremely unusual for people who actually do work and aren't management, highly educated/professionally credentialed or owners.
I think senior management generally doesn't want to pay that kind of money for people who actually do work. I think it violates cultural norms in business by altering the status quo hierarchy. Pay is used to enforce the hierarchy and someone making that much money might feel a little too independent for his actual place in the system.
It's also an open question why you would need to spend so much money for someone in that role. I'm sure there are a small handful of "superstars" who might be that valuable, but there's only so many of those people, jobs and managers who recognize that.
And even if you found a job that would pay like that, I'm sure it would come with horrible deadlines, terrible travel, bad working conditions, etc.
Develop a bank virus that rounds-off the pennies of every transaction and dumps them into an account you set up.
If you go to work for the money, you will probably cap out at the 80%-90% percentile in your given field. Which isn't bad, but you won't set the right-edge of the curve.
Inspirational speak Zig Ziglar had a story that illustrates this point pretty well. I'm going to try to recall the details, but the gist is pretty simple.
Some railroad laborers were out working on a track one day when a luxurious single-car train pulled up. A voice called out from the car and said "Dave! Is that you?". One of the laborers looked up and said "Yea, I'm Dave. John, how are you?"
Dave was invited into the car and the two were in there for nearly an hour before Dave emerged and the two men embraced as old friends would do.
When Dave got back down and picked up his tools to begin working again, the luxury rail car pulled away. One of the other laborers asked Dave, "Was that John Abrams, president of the railroad?" Dave replied "Yes, sure is. He and I started on the same day in the same job 30 years ago." When the man pushed a little further and said "Well, if you two started on the same day in the same job, why is he running things and you're out here with a shovel?"
Dave thought for only a moment before answering.
"When I went to work for this company 30 years ago I went to work for $3.25 an hour. When John started, he went to work for the railroad."
Maybe a tad cheesy, but the point is pretty simple.
It still depends on the local market and what state you are in.
Under Ohio law, individuals (which includes LLCs with a single employee, etc) can't get a group rate. The individual rate, checking this morning is $1400 / mo for the individual (not family!) bottom tier option. I'm a healthy, non-smoking mid-30s adult male with no existing medical issues.
The Affordable Care Act opens up the exchanges (the so-called marketplaces) you you can shop around for policies. The reality, however, is that in most locations, providers are not participating in the exchanges. In the bigger markets -- a handful, including as NYC or LA -- you might have 2-3 players. In northeast Ohio, we have... OhioMed. That's the only option. And even that came out to $800/mo last I checked. And again, the plan is ridiculous in terms of coverage and option ($40 co-pays per visit, etc.)
I was just looking at the 2012/2013 MIT career stats with a quarter of the MIT grads entering financial services, investment banking or consulting. You get to stay on the east coast and make lots of money. I would find the work boring.
Ferraris are for suckers. Get a ZR1 and mod it, and wave at the Ferrari drivers as you pass them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
1. Experience and salary are very related, Salary.com's mention from TFA is 8-10 years... that's a fuckin decade in the biz, it's basically saying you haven't moved up to management, or gone crazy yet, so here's a senior position because everybody else has.
2. Finance is boring, the people are boring, the parties... hilarious.
3. It also varies by state: http://salarybystate.org/tag/computer-software-engineer-salary-in-2013 , my state happens to suck, but is that because we haven't been hit by inflation as hard yet? My point here is that even if you're making under the 100k mark as many probably are, the linked statistics will actually show you if you're at or below your state's average, which is really where your quality of life statements would kick in.
My software collegues in Houston average this salary according to professional society surverys. I make a less to live in a more interesting place.
The NSA-leaker claimed to have had gigs in this range even though he never formally completed high school or college. having a TS rating helps.
In many of these cases its being an expert in computers and something lese like finance or geophysics that gives an edge. A large fraction of my classmates from the 1970s and 1980s are in software, but did not major in computers. Its dual dmain knowledge that helped them.
It's not just the financial industry that lusts after money. It's every single business that exists, from the local hot dog vendor to JP Morgan. They aren't there for the love of work. Especially the people who climb the corporate ladder (i.e. the ones interviewing you and who will be your boss) -- they certainly didn't do it because they love the work. They do it for the money. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but simply reality.
If you take your blinders off for a second you might just catch a glimpse of what early retirement could mean for you. Work for the assholes for 5 years and you're home free.
I bet all of the $200k/year software engineers are either in the expensive silicon valley/san fancisco area, or are in NYC where the cost of living inflates apparent wages. No other US geographical locations are likely to pay near that much.
The average software engineer salary with some experience in the silicon valley/SF area is around low-100k's.
Advice for making the big bucks: Transfer yourself from being an independent technical contributor to getting into the managerial or executive tracks; that's the only way. Few companies think technical workers are worth that much.
I think location is the big consideration. Cost of living. You may very well be able to do the exact same work in another location and make $200k/year. But your cost of living might double as well. That's why specific numbers like $200k don't really matter. I make six figures but I live in an area with an extremely low cost of living. Using a cost of living calculator, I would have to make $250k to live in NYC with the same standard of living.
if you want lots of money don't work for other people, just convince yourself that exploiting others for personal gain is a perfectly reasonable way to live
1. convince someone to pay you to do work
2. convince someone gullible to do that work for less money than you are getting paid
2.a force the gullible person to assume responsibility for any unforeseen issues with the project
3. live happy and stress free while both making more money than your employees and also doing less work
3.a fire any employee who gets too experienced because experienced people either want more money or know how to game the system to produce exactly the amount of work that supports their salary, but not any extra for you to siphon off as "profit"
It helps to be something more than just a pure software engineer. I'm at a little under the $200K mark (probably 1 or 2 years away) but have gotten steady raises for the past 10 years and moved up in rank considerably. Mostly, I've kept up my software engineering skills, never wandering away from actually "touching code", but I've also built a good reputation for leading other programmers worldwide. It's one thing to get yourself to be a great coding machine, but another skill entirely to get an entire worldwide team of 20-30 coders performing at a high level. This means keeping up your own programming skills so you can speak with some authority, honing communication and interpersonal skills, learning full cycle software development and delivering code that isn't just used by a few people, but is a consumer or business product. It also means working with people who aren't coders - marketing types, lawyers, documentation people, beta testers, support desk people, etc. and being able to explain things clearly and succinctly to all of them.
TL;DR - Work on your soft skills and keep coding too!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The company I currently work for has a number of career paths and the vast majority are not management. All of the career tracks however are capable of going all the way up to the VP level in terms of compensation. Each step in each track has a listing of what is expected and what's needed to move up. Long before you ever make it to the VP level, you're making over 200K a year. It goes into the half mil range in compensation by the time you near the VP level. We're not finance.
Mind you, this is the first company I've ever worked for that has actually recognized that the knowledge and skill level required of some engineers is as rare and valuable as the "skills" of management.
I hear they even have an opening in Hawaii.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Simple way to make 200k+. Make sure your skills are comparable to those in the top 10% catagory, support an industry that is will to pay a premium for the highest skilled labor, and be willing to move to where the work is.....
This means that you actually need to be in the top 10% in terms of skills, and they just can't be any skills, they need to be the ones that are in demand and pay a premium.... Also, the area that is willing to pay this premium changes over time, so you need to be willing to change as well....
The vast majority of engineers are not willing to put the effort in to actually be the best, or migrate to an industry that is willing to pay for it, or migrate to a location where that industry/business requires.
Work hard and be flexible.... this generally comes at the expense of a personal and family life... so be careful what you wish for or strive for....
"When I went to work for this company 30 years ago I went to work for $3.25 an hour. When John started, he went to work for the railroad."
Yeah and?
And what about ALL the OTHERS who also "went to work for the railroad"?
These stories make it sound like there was this ONE person who saw the way. Or this ONE person who had PASSION about what he was doing.
It's called survivorship bias and is the basis of our culture's propaganda - "think positive; work hard; and with a LITTLE luck, you're BOUND to succeed!"
That's up there with:
The check is in the mail. I won't cum in your mouth. I'll respect you in the morning.
La di da da.
The only major difference is the housing. If you want a giant house, in a low cost of living area, it will cost you 250k, in Manhattan...it may not even exist under 5 million dollars, so even making 250k you're not gonna get it.
Once your housing is taken care of, very few other things are different. So those cost of living calculator are kind of bullshit if "having a giant house" is not part of your big requirements.
I work in IT for a large multinational company...
Now you have n! problems as a developer.
$0.05 worth of free advice to anyone out there:
#1 - _NEVER_ do software development for a large company as an employee. There's too much bullshit, politics, and brain dead process to get anything done. Also, you're nothing but a replaceable part. Go small to mid size, or (better yet) be a contractor. Which brings me to my second point:
#2 - _NEVER_ do software development where your efforts do not generate revenue unless you're taking the job to try and learn something. If the project/organization/whatever isn't making a profit off of every line of code you write, GTFO. Otherwise, you are simply an expense to be fucking MBA'd and "managed" as opposed to a source of revenue. When those goddamned suits look at you, make sure they smile and see dollar signs & black ink.
#3 - Contracting let's you violate rule #1 & #2 for fun and profit. BDC's (Big Dumb Companies) are so fucked up, most competent hands-on developers don't want to touch them with a 10 foot pole. That's where contractors & contracting firms come in. When you're not an employee of BDC, Inc. you get to go work for HotShit consultants LLC. When some project is fucked and some idiot CIOs neck is on the line he'll shell out a metric ass-load of cash to get it fixed. Enter you and your friends as HotShit LLC to come in and do the dirty work. Since you work for HotShit LLC, you're of course not a direct employee of BDC Inc. (or directly involved with the politics and BS thereof ) which fixes rule #1 and most importantly, as a consultant you're putting money in the pocket of HotShit LLC thus fixing rule #2 at the same time. Fun. Profit.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Most people don't have a superpower that lets them create a product that can be magically mass produced for only the cost of copying bits, either. And managers especially don't have this superpower. So screw the bosses, and DON'T try to be like them. Keep your day job, but write software on your own time.
Software Developers who want to make a lot of money need to work in the right business and have very good skills. News at 11.
I've been in this business a long time so, for what it's worth, here are some observations:
1) If you want to make the big bucks then stay away from 'generalist' types of programming activities. Find an area of specialization that is in demand. You'll have fewer people to compete against while still being able to command a high compensation.
2) 200K might be a really good salary depending on where you live. If you're in SF or NYC it's really not that much money. But...living in SF or NYC has it's own benefits apart from money. It also has a lot of drawbacks.
3) Related to 2...live where you want to live. Money is only really important when you don't have any at all. Once you reach a comfortable salary it's more about quality of life. For some that quality is in a big city. For others it's in a rural area. To each their own.
4) Find an area you like and work hard to get really, really good at it. Once you get good you don't have to worry about looking for money. It will find you.
5) Don't work for someone else - work for yourself. Sure, some people get rich at Pre-IPO companies but those are few and far between. In the interim you have to put up with sweatshop conditions and a low salary. In my experience, contracting is the way to go. You'll make more money, you'll get more interesting work to do, you'll avoid office politics for the most part. If you don't like the people you work with don't worry. In 6 months you'll be on a new gig.
6) Don't ever throw away a business card. Building up your network of contacts is critical, particularly if you decide to go the contracting route.
7) Never stop learning. You've got to stay on top of the new technologies. If you get complacent you'll find yourself getting passed over for promotions and getting stuck with the grunt work that nobody else wants to do. If you stop learning and you're contracting then your phone stops ringing. Not good.
The money buys things; most of which you don't really need. It takes a while to realize what you actually need to be happy. For me, I realized I didn't need to make more money to be happy. I work from home and I am traveling around the world. I live on 80K easily. In the past, when I made more money, I wasted in on cars, and other things that didn't make me happy.
Cook Meth :)
Oddly, whenever they show meth houses on the news, they always seem to be run down shacks. So where do these people put all their money?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
To take home 200k worth of compensation, you'll have to be a key contributor to a product that makes millions of dollars. Two obvious scenarios that allow that: successful startup, or being a very senior (e.g.: "principal" or "staff" or whatever) dev working on a existing successful product. As far as startups go, it's mostly luck and being in the right place at the right time. I haven't been there myself, so there is not much more I can say here.
Making 200k developing an existing product of which you were not a founder\early employee is not an easy road, but I knew quite a few folks like that and some patterns started to emerge. To clarify, for several years I worked in a team where I personally knew at least a couple of dozen people that were making 200+, and maybe half a dozen making 400+ by the time I left. I am not in either category myself though, as I don't have that kind of experience yet. I was about halfway there between entry level and 200k when I went somewhere else.
1) Most of the guys in that range are at least 40 years old, and they entered software engineering a decade or more ago.
2) Over their career they would have to stay in at least one team or domain long enough to become one of the go-to technical experts of the product or technology. How long is "long enough?". Four-five years, with some people having more than a decade under their belt. For example, if you worked on compilers for 10 years, you would probably stand a good chance of developing this kind of expertise.
3) They are almost all very good engineers. They tend to quickly rise above their peers when just starting out of college--not because they know more, but rather because of their powerful problem-solving skills, how much complexity they can handle, etc.
4) Most of them managed other devs at least once in their career. Once you're in a shoes of a manager, you can appreciate better the social aspects of making software and working in a team.
The last point is that the reality most devs will never ever reach that level of compensation (equivalent of 200k in today's dollars). And that's not because they're not smart enough or don't know enough, but because they're too lazy, timid, risk-averse or just refuse to see the big picture ("Leave me alone, I just want to write my code"). If you're one of the few that can remove those mental blocks in your head, congratulations and have a safe flight.
A $200K developer is $190K arrogance and $10k effectiveness.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Yes, don't settle. Be the pushy guy who everyone just goes along with because it's just not worth it to fight you. Ever wonder why complete idiots are managers? Sometimes it's dumb luck, sometimes it's because you are good at what you do, but more than not someone above notices that a person is vocal with a capital V and doesn't compromise aka is a leader.
Being the nice guy or "doing the right thing" doesn't get you anywhere in business. When it comes down to it you can either A) be really really freaking good at what you do and have the balls to negotiate for your services without backing down or B) be that vocal pushy guy who gets places due to shear willpower. If you think that just doing your job well day after day and year after year while being a good coworker will move you ahead you are sorely mistaken.
Common sense probably, I know. But that's definitely not what they teach you before you get sent out into the world.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Is that unusual?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I found that I didn't really need to make $200K per year.
I'm in Las Vegas, where salaries are low. I have 25 years of software dev experience and I make $95K per year in a job that would easily pay $150K+ in California. (And that's up from $55K when I started 10 years ago.)
Over the years I've managed to build up about $1.5 million in savings (all self-earned, plus market appreciation), and I'm on track to hit about $2M by the time I retire. To be honest, that's enough money. In retrospect, chasing more money wasn't necessary, and I'm glad I didn't. I work with a nice bunch of guys, and I have a stable and steady job, and those things mean a lot to me. I'm able to have all that -- plus all the money I would realistically need -- on a salary that's below industry average.
Have you heard of a little thing called "The Affordable Care Act"?
I sure have. It is making health insurance less affordable, to an astonishing degree:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/05/30/rate-shock-in-california-obamacare-to-increase-individual-insurance-premiums-by-64-146/
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
As I've written before: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847578&cid=34100224
The circle of knowledge, a poem by Paul D. Fernhout
All philosophy is anthropology; :-)
All anthropology is psychology;
All psychology is biology;
All biology is chemistry;
All chemistry is physics;
All physics is math;
All math is philosophy.
See my website for lots about the future of economics. I passed on my change to work on Wall Street at J.P. Morgan Chase doing Smalltalk around 2000. Back then I didn't think it worth the commute there (which my wife had hated earlier), as well as the risk for a Japanese-style subway gassing. Little did I imagine someone attacking the WTC, but I guess otherwise it is possible I might have been at a meeting in the WTC as the group met over there sometimes.
Still, as imaginary as fiat dollars are, if enough people believe in the idea, that gives it a sort of reality. And, like most US Americans, I have to deal with that collective fantasy as a way to ration the fruits of production. But it is hard also to look past how the abstractions related to the fantasy of money often hurt so many people. "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips is great down-to-Earth book on money by a creator of MasterCard, and reading it around age 15 was a formative experience in my life -- helping me avoid an early pursuit of fiat dollars and instead working towards ideals I cared about (with what limited success I've had).
But really, almost all financial engineering is pointless zero-sum gambling work, as interesting as it may still be as an abstract game. As it was explained to me by a friendly mathematician at IBM Research over lunch when I was in the speech group there (which was a group constantly being poached by Wall Street), it rally is picking up nickels before a streamroller (Buffet's analogy). You bet other people's money in such a way as you have a high chance at getting a small percentage increase on a big sum, and you (legally) skim some money off the top as a fee (or reward), while cleverly "managing" the risks, including those black swan events that most everyone ignores and you probably will too. If you are lucky, you do this for a bunch of years and then retire. If you are unlucky, you have a bad year (either badly managed risk or a black swan?) and maybe even lose your job as the company folds, but you don't generally have to give back previous years profits -- plus you get to learn "How to Speak Hedgie": :-) ... ..."
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/08/how_to_speak_hedgie.html
"In these days of market volatility, hedge-fund managers and executives at all types of money management firms have been forced to explain why their funds are shutting down, losing money hand over fist, and freezing investors' funds. When they do so, however, they frequently lapse into a strange euphemistic dialect. And so we thought it would be helpful to provide a handy Hedgie-English glossary.
Hedge-Fund Phrase: Unprecedented, unique circumstances
Translation: Stuff happens. But we had no clue.
But, and I only realized this much later, by indirectly raising issues about systemic risk in the 1980s around the Princeton University Operations Research group, I pretty much ensured I would not get a PhD, at least there. :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
But, like hedge fund managers, do those professors have to give back decades of salary because they were in some sense
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I've been meaning to put up the comments I had on Ray Dalio's principles somewhere for a long time. I finally just put them up here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sent-to-Bridgewater-on-Ray-Dalio-Principles.html
As I note there, obviously, writing stuff like that must not be the way to get a high paying (>$200K annual) job programming in the financial industry. :-) But this may be of interest to others looking at Ray Dalio's "Principles" or in Bridgewater Associates (the world's biggest hedge fund in 2011) as a place of employment. Or perhaps it may be of interest in trying to understand, from a psychological perspective, some of the potential limits of Bridgewater's financial models if they reflect only that version of "Principles"?
From what I sent: :-) I'm supplying some of the results of my having read widely for many years on a variety of topics related to evolution, technology, psychology, and social change. Maybe someone at Bridgewater will read this, maybe not, but it was also interesting to write it and try to get a message through the filters all organizations have. It's a first draft, and it could be a lot better, a lot shorter, and so on were I to spend a lot more time on it, or were I to have better tools with which to communicate it (which I can aspire to create someday, like supplying a semantic web to your inbox).
----
I guess one might say that from the outside, with this cover letter I'm trying to upgrade Bridgewater in my own way, even as Bridgewater would probably upgrade me in some sense if I worked there.
The key points here are that: ...
* "Evolution" does not mean "progress" as humans normally think of it (this from someone who was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution for a time),
* All reasoning depends on emotions (which give us reason to reason),
* Bridgewater has reached the size where it has a significant effect on the exchange economy that supports it and needs to consider the broader issues in its modeling and responsibilities to stakeholders;
* There can be many overlapping senses of "self" (body, family, philosophy, company, state, etc.) and models (including financial models) may need to take that in account, but that is not reflected in "Principles";
* There is a pressing need for sensemaking tools and I feel I can help create them (and have helped create some in the past);
* such tools might, through the FOSS gift economy, even be a way to take aspects of Bridgewater's self-improvement culture (like through structured arguments) and make that available to the general public, as if things like openness and rationality are true for Bridgewater, they must be true for the rest of the world, and maybe Bridgewater try to help the rest of the world achieve those things too (while also increasing its potential employee pool of people learning such tools);
* Bridgewater can probably better promote health among its community in terms of vitamin D, eating more vegetables, understanding the "Pleasure Trap", and having treadmill workstations;
---
Realistically, I'd have probably been a better match for the Dalio Family Foundation perhaps, directing time and money to open source sensemaking software efforts? :-)
Anyway, thankfully I found some other way to earn ration units (fiat dollars) that I can exchange for food and shelter, in the absence of a "basic income" and given pretty much all the land is enclosed and privatized, and even if it was not, it takes a village and lots of specific skills to live well in the wilderness...
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=income+distribution+of+physicians&go=&qs=n&form=QBIR&pq=income+distribution+of+physicians&sc=0-23&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&id=77C7D39FC89AA8A82289D78F1BB743782D575E18&selectedIndex=5
Specialize and focus on long-term (6+ month) consulting gigs. By specializing you stand out from the crowd.
Value your relationships with friends and clients, and understand that the best way to promote yourself is to always do good work, beyond what is expected. $200k-$300k per year consistently is not hard to achieve if you can stay on long-term projects.
Everyone knows that getting a high pay has nothing to do with what you know. It's all a horse and pony show.
Insider trading is/was never illegal.
http://cnbc.com/id/43471561
Casteism