Depends on who you are and what your growth potential is. I know SWEs getting offers in the 7-8 figure range. That's not in any way typical but if you're smart enough, hardworking, and get the right breaks hitting a 7 figure income isn't something I'd consider weird and is definitely FU money.
In SF, maybe. In most places, hardly. And keep in mind that entry level SWEs usually don't have kids that are at the age of heading off to Harvard, so they'd earn that income for a decade or two. That would probably put them somewhere in the range of the average income with their dividends alone.
Getting out of the SV bubble this is an insane amount of money. I boostrap my business and I make 40k a year. Most senior SWE around here make less than 100k.
3 to 5 times annual revenue is indeed typical. From there on it's all handwaving about "exponential growth" and "strategic value" to get more than that.
You are "worth" what they are willing to pay, it's that simple. In terms of money, you're worth about a million dollars. But it wouldn't be that weird to get much more, depending on how good you are at handwaving about "strategic value" and "exponential growth", and playing the negotiation game.
I would guess that it is not so easy to become one (since you failed at it till now), and, even after you succeed at that, the "easily make well over 6 figures" seems to me like being a tad bit optimistic.
Side question: Is correct English spelling required to become a SWE?
~$500k is what some Amazon L6's and most L7's make. Don't think you can hit that in most Finance positions until VP level, unless you're in Quant finance in hedge funds but then the SWEs make that much too.
1. you. you are likely successful and in a bubble near other successful people giving the perception of $300k being common. Let's be generous and say there are 1M SWEs in the USA, avg. salary is $150k and 1% of them make >$300k. That's 10k total people. It's hard to find concrete data, but it's also hard to imagine the proportions being more generous than that.
2. stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever.
3. recency bias. SWE is still a relatively young profession. I'm not convinced we'll be as hot or trendy or well payed 5-10 years from now as the labor supply grow and automation continues to take over.
Overall I'm not convinced this field is as solid of a bet as it once was -- at least relative to other fields.
If income is your goal, in this industry, I think that it makes more sense to maximize TC in your day job. SWE can reasonably make over $1m per year, from a single job.
If you’re not in FAANG or equivalent, work on getting there. Then if you’re not L7+ work on that.
being just a regular IT person with 15+years experience and getting paid fairly well for what the local market is, whats the chance of a normal person working at a place that pays $700,000 as a SWE? How do you even approach that? Does someone mid career have a chance to pivot?
It varies. Some specialist skills pay -really- well. You don't really hear about them because they're, well, niche.
Equally, yes, some folk rose up through the ranks at fang (or better yet fintech) and make mountains of loot. For each success there's a fair pile of failures though.
To rise up through those ranks, typically you need to make sacrifices. Long working hours, minimal time off, stand-by weekends, emails at night, and (imo) suffering the bs that comes with corporate jobs.
Building your own business are all those things too, but without the corporate bs.
The interesting thing about 500k though is asking what you can do on 500k, you can't do on 300. Or 200. Or in lots of the world, 50.
Time left for relationships, children, holidays, other interests and so on are important to me. So I'm prepared to balance those with raw income. I'm not making anything like 500k per year, but I've turned down fang recruiters because all the money in the world can't make up for what else it would cost me.
Literally, ask any friend working as SWE in any of those companies - they will confirm numbers. You are pretty much guaranteed to make that money in 5 years if you get promoted with average velocity.
If you work in Stockholm you could easily get closer to 5k or even above that if you have some experience. If you work somewhere else the figure could be smaller.
I’ve been wondering if SWE pay rates have been artificially high for a while due to easy lending - it will be interesting to see if your prediction comes true. Probably a lot of SW companies out there right now are dependent on discretionary income which puts them at risk in a tough market.
Some people do actually end up at that kind of a multiple of their initial salary. It’s not that such growth is impossible it’s just really really uncommon and generally takes regularly changing roles.
By most objective measures, $180k is very much on the high end for that role in the US. Markets vary of course, but the lifestyle you've setup for yourself doesn't determine what your skills are worth.
reply