
Your lifetime earnings are probably determined in your 20s - henrik_w
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/10/your-lifetime-earnings-are-probably-determined-in-your-twenties/
======
dsr_
If you are reading this comment on HN, you are not normal, average, or a
reasonable datum to extrapolate from. You are more likely to have a career in
which you are rarely seen as a replaceable part. Your employers will negotiate
with you rather than fire you. You will build up enough reserves that an
unexpected layoff is painful rather than crippling, and you will consider many
factors besides money when taking a new job.

In short, if your comment on this can be summarized as "that isn't what
happened to me", that's because you are an outlier.

~~~
collyw
That's the whole point in unit testing, agile methodologies and all the other
processes - to make programmers like parts of a machine and easily
replaceable. Having worked for one large investment bank, the work was really
boring, and in my team hardly anyone lasted much more than a year. But they
had the money to keep hiring and essentially throw more money at the problem.

~~~
go1979
Totally agree on your comment on agile. It is a blight on our profession. I
was having beers with an old friend from undergrad yesterday - our career
paths have taken us very different places. What's common is that both of our
employers have been instituting agile in very dysfunctional forms. My friend
and I are both in our 30s and we were jokingly thinking how long we can take
this crap before we have to either move to management or change careers
completely (unlikely since we love tech so much).

I would not put unit testing in the same camp - frankly, my employer doesn't
care about unit testing at all - to my chagrin. Senior developers sneak in
unit tests on the minutes of breathing room we get. I actually got a lecture
on "company cares about customer visible features". Well .. you know what?
Software that doesn't crash is a pretty darned customer visible feature.

What makes me very uncomfortable is that my current situation reminds me of
what I saw on the news about the BP oil spill incident. Management asks very
pointed and specific questions - engineers answer truthfully. Mgmt makes wild
decisions based on half information. I fear this kind of crap is rampant in
organizations not run by technical people. Is it any better at places run by
technical people?

The fundamental problem plaguing our industry is perhaps not agile - that is a
mere symptom of it. The core problem IMHO are treating people like cogs and
the need to continuously move faster.

Rant over. I needed that. Off to sneak in some unit tests.

------
mathgeek
I started working as help desk at 23 for $28k a year.

I switched jobs to software development at 30 to go from $34k to 45k (note
that I made a bigger jump at 30 than in all of my twenties.

I'm in the process of switching to a job that pays $115k, two years later.

Do I wish I'd done this a decade ago? Certainly. But if you're sitting there
thinking "my twenties are over, I'm done," think again and go learn something
new.

~~~
tinkerdol
Exactly. I now make more than double of the highest-grossing year from my
20's.

This article is just fear mongering. If you belong to the group of people
reading comments on HN, you are able to drop in and out of the work force as
you wish and do whatever you want with your life. If you want to maximize
income in your 20's and reap the rewards of early investment, fine. If you
want to travel the world now and jump in the game later, that's also fine.

~~~
id
Why does everyone seem to assume all HN readers are smart, highly motivated
and undoubtedly will be successful?

~~~
aragot
Correct, we all are in startups with 90% chance of failure ;)

More seriously, I laugh when former colleagues think of me as successful. It's
correct that I've launched a successful product, but money is so random that I
rather consider myself as "having fun and learning to launch a product" than
"being successful".

------
withdavidli
At first the 38% increase from 25-55 seems absurdly low for the average
worker, but I have to remind myself what average is. I recruited for roles in
areas where pay for a position starts at $12-15/hr, and don't go much above
$20/hr. People get stuck in this range. Similary I've seen accountants stay
around the $60k range in some areas throughout their career.

Wish they dug into deeper analysis instead of having fluffy explanation and
conclusion. Interesting things to look into would be what makes average
increase so low? What are the top 5% doing to get 230% growth, how about those
1% that get 1500% growth?

------
nbaksalyar
That's another good reason to start saving as early and as much as you can.

If you're interested in this topic, there's a good subreddit [0] with much
information on how to start.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

~~~
learnstats2
Or, it's a good reason to make sure you do everything you can to get in the
top percentile careers, spending whatever resources you have to do that.

------
kralko
"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it,
earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it." Einstein.

That's why it's also so important to start saving early and invest it
regularly.

~~~
lordbusiness
Additionally, compound interest is why it's so important to not carry debt.

That mortgage your financial advisor wants you to keep? Get rid of it. Over
pay principle as much as permitted.

Consumers refer to such things as 'debts' or 'payments', but financial
institutions call these 'liabilities'. Financial institutions use the correct
word, and don't like to hold them for good reason.

~~~
touristtam
Weird that I was given the completely opposite advise by my bank about never
paying off completely any debt straight away, to build up my credit rating
....

~~~
lordbusiness
Precisely!

Financial institutions 'caring' about one's credit rating == confidence that
one can handle the liabilities they want one to hold. :-)

------
smegel
Tell that to the guys who made Jira.

But seriously, this is about as insightful as saying career choice affects
lifetime earnings. Most people have settled their career by their early 30s.
Throw kids into the mix and its no big surprise.

~~~
fhd2
> Throw kids into the mix and its no big surprise.

In my experience kids can have quite the opposite effect - I got a lot more
ambitious when the first one arrived, and I've almost doubled my salary since
then (a bit more than four years).

~~~
michaelt
Sure, but if I double my salary and my wife drops out of the workforce to be a
full-time parent, on average our income stays the same :)

~~~
zurn
The WaPo article wasn't about the Mad Men universe though.

~~~
mithras
In europe this is still very common.

~~~
zurn
Labour force participation rates by sex: USA: 70.2% for men, 57.7% for women.
Europe (OECD countries): 79.7% for men, 62.6% for women. So it's more common
in EU for women to work than their sisters in the US, but the gender
difference in participation rates is also higher in Europe.

Sources:
[http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm)
and
[http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R)

------
chx
Really? My current career essentially started when I was 30 years old. Now I
am 40 and --adjusted to local purchase power based on Numbeo-- I am making ten
times as much compared to when I was 25. I do not think this article is true
in the technology industry -- certainly doesn't apply to me

~~~
ptaipale
First of all, the OP says "probably", not "always". It sure does not apply to
everyone, the claim is it's just a likelihood.

Secondly, you can say that career selection in your 20's impact your later
earnings, even if the actual growth of earnings happens later. An indicative
example is of course two persons, citizens A and B. Citizen A goes to work in
manual labor after primary education. Citizen B goes to high school and then
gets a university education. Citizen A may well be earning much more in his
early 20's than citizen B.

Depending on how long the studies take, citizen B has earned little money by
the time he/she is 25, while citizen A who went straight to work, say in
construction, has been accumulating earnings for many years. Still, the future
potential of earnings for citizen B has been built with the education, even if
it is not visible in his/her annual earnings yet, and the only monetary thing
to his name is some debt taken for studies.

------
Maro
I started working as a fulltime programmer (in Hungary) when I was 23 at
market rate.

Today I'm 34 (still in Hungary), and my net salary has gone up 5.3x.

Another 2-3x is doable by handpicking a high-paying job here in Hungary (eg.
an investment bank), another 2-3x if I were to go abroad.

For 10x and higher further multiplies I will have to try a startup again (my
first one failed), although that's not a salary, it's equity.

I consider this high rate of increase a lucky thing: basically I chose to
become a programmer at the right time when the industry is hot. I often remind
myself that maybe in 30 years this will not be so, and maybe programmers then
will be like chemical engineers today.

~~~
zo1
> _" [...]and maybe programmers then will be like chemical engineers today."_

Could you elaborate what you mean by "chemical engineers today"?

~~~
jib
I studied to be a chemical engineer at one point (with engineering physics,
but ok).

Of the guys in my class, and wildly guessing, I would say that less than 50%
work with something chemical related, mostly either in pulp, oil or fuel
cells. A bit more than 50% work with something related to programming or
computer modeling, and outside that a variety of odd jobs.

------
adamio
This is a tiny article with suspect conclusions. Link to the actual study,
which doesn't really make the same narrow conclusion as the article.
[http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr710.pdf](http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr710.pdf)

------
brudgers
This correlates with reports about the earnings of Phd's in fields like
biology and the system of postdoc work.

------
greatabel
Statistical law can't tell the truth of human life. The past does not mean
everything,at least does not represent future.Anyone can change and alter the
trajectory of his life only one in our study between.

------
ecuzzillo
Surprising they didn't even speculate that maybe labor market fluidity might
be a bit higher than it used to be.

