
Ask HN: People making $150k+ / yr, what was your career path? - servlate
I have been contemplating jumping ship from Python &#x2F; C at a small company to Enterprisy Java at medium to large corp.<p>This comes after the realization of having no visible career path despite being good and working hard and most friends (Java &#x2F; C#) jumping to $150k+ jobs.<p>Thank you, responses would really give some helpful insights.
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canterburry
From my experience language and years of experience have very little to do
with salary IF you stay at the same employer. To get frequent salary and title
bumps you HAVE to move employers. It's the single fastest path to more money.
Move every 3 years at a minimum and never accept a lateral move or for equal
pay with new title. Your future salaries will depend on your previous comp,
not by title.

Also, independent contracting is often a better option than employment in most
parts of the country, but you have to be independent (1099-MISC, never W2).
Being a W2 at a consulting company is just as bad as anywhere else.
Independent consulting will get you a 2x bump instantly assuming you can find
a full time gig but that's usually not that difficult. Furthermore, as a 1099,
you'll be able to put away far more in retirement savings. I recommend an LLC
with a 401K (not SAP), max out your personal contributions and then kick in
another 6% from your 'company'. You'll be socking away ~50K in retirement
alone this way while lowering your taxable income. Compare that to your
16K/year max as W2.

Another trick: if a company ever offers you a larger than usual bonus for some
reason (i.e. retention, goal met etc) leave the next year when it shows up on
your W2 and ask the next employer to merely 'match' your current W2 without
breaking out base salary and bonus. I've scored 50% pay increases this way.

Following the above methods, I was making $180K+ at my 8 year mark and $230K+
at my 12 year mark. Most of this happened in the midwest although I currently
live in the bay area.

~~~
thrwawy20160421
Could you elaborate more on what you actually do?

I am really trying to understand how someone is worth $230k+

I am a server-side guy with a CS degree, proficient with C, C++, Java, bash
scripting, and some .NET, PHP, Node.js, and I have never gotten close to even
$180k in salary, and I have been working for almost 20 years, and I am in the
Bay Area.

~~~
canterburry
First time I made 230K+ was as a contractor at $120/hour. For several years my
fees ranged $105-120/hour. My niche were rule engines (Drools, JRules, FICO
Blaze) but I came out of the plain vanilla backend Java world and fortune
500s. In fact, that's where I discovered this need. These days I have moved
into management and lead 3 dev teams in the Big Data space.

~~~
jtfairbank
I'm looking for a contractor who knows rules based linear integer programming
systems like Gurobi or CPLEX (or open source variants). Can you shoot me an
email with recommendations? It's in my profile.

~~~
canterburry
Sorry to say the only constraints based programmers I know are all PhDs in
Operations Research and they run Target's logistics.

~~~
jtfairbank
We're working with the head of the University of Illinois operations research
lab. Would they be interested in the contracting with academic research in
mind?

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yolesaber
Perhaps I'm an outlier but this was my progression.

Got 90k job out of college in NYC. Worked on a legacy PHP app with some
Python, Java, Hadoop occasionally in there.

Negotiated salary to 100k + 10k bonus after one year and good performance
reviews.

Next year asked for a bonus increase. 120k total now.

Started getting bored at the job. Asked around, got a 135k offer from another
company. Went to my current employer and said if I don't get 150k I'm leaving.
They said they could do 140k. I went back to the other company and told them
their offer and they gave me 150k.

It has less to do with skillset or language choice than it does with just
being able to negotiate and iterate on offers and take the opportunity when
you can.

~~~
codegeek
Good comment. I totally agree that after a certain point in career, it comes
down to how well you can negotiate. When you start, you don't have a lot of
say in terms of salary (well may be you do if you are the cream) but after you
have about 5+ years of good experience, you need to learn how to negotiate.

Sometimes when you are in a strong position, you gotta bluff. If they call it,
then no worries as you have nothing to lose. If they don't call your bluff,
you may just have got a $15K raise :)

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servlate
Thank you all for your responses.

Sorry for not mentioning what areas I had in mind. I was talking about friends
in Dallas, Atlanta, New York and Raleigh among others.

We are talking 5-8 years of experience.

I have seen and tried to follow the advice in this thread and it has not
worked out.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or I'm just not good enough yet. I get a lot
of interview calls, but the salaries offered are nowhere in the ballpark of
$150k.

Also, every friend of mine, that I have spoken to, is doing either Java or C#,
none that I know mention Python. When they offer me referrals I politely turn
them down due to lack of experience in the Java and C# stacks.

I'm not a ninja or a rockstar but I get work done. My current role is one that
requires me to learn all sorts of new things and thus my resume is a
splattering of all kinds of skills.

I just want to stop worrying about my future and focus on enjoying family,
hobbies and hobby projects instead. (But then who doesn't?)

It would also help me greatly if people could mention if the advice being
given has worked out for them also.

I don't want to sound mean/ungrateful/rude, I really do appreciate all the
help.

~~~
emilburzo
I understand your frustration perfectly.

I'm a Java guy, but I can only work remotely (as I'm from Romania/EU), and it
seems all the job posts are either Python or Ruby.

Too bad we can't trade jobs.

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JSeymourATL
> the realization of having no visible career path despite being good and
> working hard ...

Scott Adams talks about how one can dramatically increase their odds of
success by learning multiple skills. You might imagine adding languages to
your skill set is a smart play. Learning the Art of Negotiation on top of
those skills is a force multiplier.

Incidentally, Adams book is a brilliant read, full of solid, unconventional
career advice > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-
at-a...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost-
everything-and-still-win-big)

------
insamniac
I joined the army and got trained to be an Arabic linguist. That was getting
old and frustrating, so I taught myself javascript/ksh/Tcl and made some dumb
applications at work, which was enough to get noticed by some neighboring IT
shops (I was out of the army, working as a contractor by this time).

I ended up doing Groovy, then Java, and now I'm in the government version of
"Enterprisy Java" and I feel stuck myself. 150k isn't that much if it leaves
you empty inside.

~~~
servlate
True, but do you think it would be different if you had chosen a different
stack? Honest question.

Doesn't that 150k lets you afford other fun stuff?

~~~
insamniac
It would if I didn't have mouths to feed, taxes and rent. I'm starting to
prefer time over money at this point.

I think my stuckness has more to do with working at a place that's always a
few steps behind the private sector, so nothing I'm doing really translates
well into finding new work. It doesn't help my confidence, that's for sure.

Besides, if anyone _is_ looking for an experienced Java 7, Spring 3.2, Oracle
dev, I probably don't want to work there either!

I know the way out is side projects, building a portfolio, contributing, etc..
and being able to prove (to myself too) that I can do more than what I'm doing
currently..

It's the odd coupling of frustration and complacency that I need to figure my
way out of.

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baccheion
Learn Java, Javascript, and Python, then move to San Francisco. You can pull
in a base salary of $150K within 4 years of graduating if you get jobs at
hot/popular companies.

That said, due to its high cost of living, $150K isn't _that_ outrageous in
San Francisco. You can use online cost of living adjusters to see what the
equivalent salary would be in areas you're familiar with.

~~~
gt565k
I was about to say, this is all relative to the location.

Living and making $90k in Atlanta is the equivalent of living and making $150k
in San Francisco.

[http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-
living/](http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/)

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tyh
You can make $150K+ by doing some really mind numbing work. I am seriously
considering almost halving my salary to do something that gets me excited to
go to work again.

Anyways, like other people have mentioned timing can be very useful. In trying
to leave I was offered raises and from one guy a chance to take on whatever
role I wanted to. Still leaving though.

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ascotan
Salary is a function of perceived importance it has nothing to do with the
language. There just appear to be a lot of high paying Java jobs, because
there are a lot of companies still using Java as their lingua franca.

Most programers will tell you that the pay scale in software is like a hockey
stick curve. Up really fast then flat line. Therefore, you move to the top of
the S curve and then stick around long enough to approximate O(n).

~~~
infinii
Strange that you use a hockey stick for your analogy when most would visualize
it the opposite; flat and then a steep incline. As that's how it's held.

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rgovind
Please include your location. In SF Bay area, outside GOOGFBAMZNMSFT, if you
put in 10 yrs of work and jump companies once in a while you should get there.
(I am from semiconductor background)

~~~
servlate
I was aiming for any of the major cities (except SF for which I would hope for
a little more).

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rt2016
It also depends on what part of the country you're looking at. If you're in
the SF Bay Area 150k+ within range of entry level jobs for software grads. If
you're in the Midwest or East Coast (not finance) 150k+ could mean a decade of
experience.

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pinewurst
It's the role, not the languages that provides that kind of career path. If it
was purely that, becoming a mainframe systems programmer would probably
provide you a good sinecure these days. Instead it's using your Python to
become, for example, a cloud orchestration expert or something in sufficiently
hot demand. I'm not convinced that becoming another Java zombie would be any
more lucrative that what you could do with your current base.

~~~
scalesolved
Let's not throw around the term Java zombie, there are lots of high paying and
interesting roles within the Java world, every language has boring jobs.

To the OP the hot and well paid areas of Java development at the moment seem
to be around:

Spring Boot/Hystrix/Feign Play Framework Java 8 Hadoop Spark ML

From what I've seen of the hiring market Android looks to be one of the
hottest areas, there is a real dearth of good quality talent in this field.

~~~
stuxnet79
What kind of places would be looking for native Android developers? I was
learning Android a year ago but decided to switch to web because I figured
there would be more opportunities.

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tmaly
Working at the same job in Financial Services for 10 years.

You have to continue to self-learn and improve yourself.

~~~
servlate
I do, and I do understand the point your trying to make, but the growth
potential also depends on the company, not just the employee.

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drakenot
What does your salary history look like and how many jobs have you worked at?

