
Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do? - amagicalsunday
Having been writing software for over 10 years, I recently learnt that a friend has been making more than $220K for the past several years (similar background). I&#x27;m at $170K and always thought I&#x27;m getting paid really well (I&#x27;m an engg manager + programmer in bay area, Java expertise).<p>Curious if people here make more than $200K - what your role&#x2F;salary&#x2F;experience is.<p>How did you get your high salary? How have you been raising it? Do you plan for it, or does the company reward you automatically? Do you switch jobs a lot?<p>Side curiosity: how much do execs (such has CTO or VPE make?)
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tsunamifury
I make about $275k (145 base, 35 bonus, 90+RSUs) as a designer with strong
technical and product management skills. For example I can write you a basic
Android front end and also a PRD while tangling through legal and security.

I am an individual contributor and just about to begin managing. However I
unofficially lead a team of 20. There are still 4 levels above me that can be
paid upwards of low millions dollars before entering executive titles like VP.

I'm 30 and it took running a startup, then pushing high profile products in a
big 3 company then launching net new products and running as a solo
entrepreneur within the company.

At the upper end, it's not about just being a manager or even being good. It's
about how well you can create new opportunities that are strategically
valuable for the company.

Honestly, I think of myself as just getting started, as I aim to reach 1m+
total comp per year.

~~~
VSPrw3C1yK
> I am an individual contributor and just about to begin managing. However I
> unofficially lead a team of 20.

How common is this? I'm in a similar position, albeit a smaller group. I've
gotten pushback on a management title, but I think I've largely negotiated the
unofficial duties into my salary, so I don't mind much. I make $250K (base and
total) at a non-profit.

~~~
aaronyy
> I make $250K (base and total) at a non-profit.

This is pretty intriguing. May I ask how common this is? I have imagined non-
profit careers to be in the <$150k range and not comparable (compensation-
wise) to tech companies/startups.

~~~
VSPrw3C1yK
In general I think there is a discount to working at a non-profit. I'd expect
a salary bump if I went back to industry. That said, I think it is not
uncommon. Non-profits span a wide range of organizations. There are well-
funded non-profits like the Gates Foundation, Simons Foundation or the Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative, medical research institutes and research hospitals,
health insurers, and leading museums. Non-profits report salaries of officers,
highly paid and key employees. Have a look at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer
[0]. Look for IRS Form 990. It's pretty interesting. As tsunamifury says, if
you can demonstrate strategic value to the organization you will be in a
strong negotiating position.

[0]
[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/)

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throwaway198511
Currently making ~$300k/year in total comp.

31 years old. 5 years of experience as a hardware engineer, and 2 years as a
software engineer (back-end).

Master's degree from Stanford.

Practice hackerrank, cracking-the-coding-interview, read a
programming/architecture book every few months, till you can ace programming
interviews and understand your field really well.

Living in NYC, where the financial companies have driven comp levels really
high for software-engineers.

Working at a big-4 software company.

Currently at my 4th company. Interview and negotiate aggressively at many
different places every time you switch, so you can get 20-40% increases.

Don't know how much this helped me, but do a side-project and blog about your
experiences.

~~~
toephu2
what's your base salary?

~~~
bsvalley
probably $150k like everyone else :) If you're base salary is $200k and you
only have $100k stock/RSU's, then there's a problem somewhere...

------
oblio
I have the opposite question for people here: what drives you to more money?

A very expensive house costs a few million dollars, which you should afford
quite easily, especially if you have a partner making a decent amount of
money. Children and their education cost quite a bit in the US, but even that
shouldn't cost a lot. A few expensive holidays per year plus retirement money
should be easily doable.

So, basically, why do you want/need more money?

~~~
FireBeyond
"A few million"... say $3M?

So a down payment would likely be $300K-$600K.

Let's say $400K income.

NerdWallet says that even at $600K down with under $2K of monthly obligations,
you're still "stretching" to get to $2.25M, so "afford quite easily" seems a
bit questionable.

------
chrisgoman
If you are already at $170k, you are doing good (even considering you are in
the Bay Area).

Like it was mentioned here, focus more on the value you bring to the company,
always make decisions like you own the company. If I were the owner, this is
what I would do ...

It is a whole different perspective than thinking about "how much can I
personally make". Once you get comfortable thinking in that mode (may take a
couple of months & years), things will get clearer and you will be able to
elevate your thinking and see the forest. It will then get easier for you to
talk about "business" and negotiate your pay relative to what you bring. You
may realize you are in the wrong company as getting paid $200k is not possible
where you are.

If you keep looking around your peers and "at your level" (aka, why is he
making more than me), it is definitely easier but you will not elevate your
game and get to CTO/VPE.

------
notacoward
I've had a few years when I made over $200K. I expect that whatever years
remain in my career will all be above that level. Instead of participating in
the usual ____-size war, I 'll try to focus on the "what did I have to do"
part.

First, I had to be willing to learn. Everything. Constantly. Whatever I knew
was never enough. There was always some new specialty, some new technique,
some new tool. I didn't waste time on puttering around with these things for
their own sake, but nor did I balk at picking them up just because they were
unfamiliar.

Second, I had to take risks. I changed specialties. I took jobs at companies,
or with technologies, that had uncertain futures. I bit off more than I was
sure I could chew. It's much easier to make these kinds of leaps by switching
companies, but it's not unheard of to do it within the right kind of company
either.

Third, I put in the effort. Part of this is developing depth as well as
breadth. Neither alone is sufficient, you need to develop both which means you
need to recognize when to pursue each kind of opportunity. Also, nobody likes
fair-weather friends and quitters. You have to show you _can_ stay with the
ship through rough weather, even if you don't always choose to.

Fourth, I kept myself sane. Charging hard can literally drive you nuts. You
need friends, and hobbies, and sometimes you just need a break. I went part-
time for a couple of years to avoid burnout. Sooner or later most people will
hit that point. If they don't steer away from the abyss, they'll fall in -
quite often right before they hit their best earning years. Dumb move. Learn
to ease up on the throttle when you need to.

------
throwawaygoog14
Staff engineer at Google pays pretty well. I'm somewhere in the $215-245k base
salary range, with a 20-30% bonus target and equity comp that is roughly equal
to my base salary. So all in all I pull down about $500k per year. I get a bit
more if the stock has been going up, a bit less if the stock has been going
down. We sell all our stock automatically as it vests, so the compensation is
very close to being like cash. I have 8-12 years of experience and tenure with
the company. (The ranges are partly obscured so that I can't be identified,
and partly because I genuinely do not keep track at this point of how much I
make.)

Didn't do anything particularly amazing to get here. Worked for a few good
teams, and people liked the code I wrote, especially my management. I had very
supportive managers who pushed hard for their people to be promoted when
warranted. I don't have any special skills beyond being a C++ server
programmer and everything that entails -- expert knowledge of debugging and
performance on various levels, solid design and coding skill, and deep
familiarity with many Google proprietary systems.

------
bsvalley
First off, are you talking base salary or full package? There is no such thing
as $200k base salary for 10 years exp in java. You'd have to specialize.
$170k/y base salary for an eng manager is right where you want to be.

If your talking about base salary + bonus + annual sotcks/RSU's then you're
way below market.

~~~
charlesdm
Not to sound like an asshole, but there probably is. There probably are roles
paying $500k a year doing exactly that. Not many, but they will be out there
for certain people.

~~~
donovanm
Yeah I've seen positions offering 200k base salary for less then 10 years
experience with java.

------
throwaway5024
First thing first. I am FANATIC about people calling me 'programmer' or 'Java
Programmer' or even 'coder'.

Even though I DO code and I DO write programs, I never define myself as such
and promptly call people out when they call me that.

I focus on the value I bring. It can be Java with Hadoop and it can be
deploying a Kubernetes cluster or writing a React application. I solve
problems in a creative way.

I am making more than 200K. I don't work for the big 4 (or 5 or 50 or 100 or
even 1000)

Recently switched jobs. Making 200K base and around 280K total comp.

Recently, to be honest, I am really less focused on the numbers. I live in SV
and those numbers make no sense. I would be more than happy making 150K and
saving and investing more money than I am able to right now.

------
transparentlabs
I run a company that collects compensation data. We do have a lot of people
making well over $200K, though its much rarer in pure salary form. Most of the
people in our database with masters degrees and a few years of top-tier
experience make in the $120K-$160K salary range, but including stock options
and bonuses, a lot of people are easily passing $300K at top companies in mid-
level engineering and product roles.

I'd be happy to do some custom data pulls for anyone if anyone has any
specific questions. If you want to explore more of the data yourself, check
out [https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com)

------
anontalk
I make $190k base:

$190k base + $10k signing bonus + RSUs = ~$300k total comp

> what your role/salary/experience is.

Senior full-stack engineer. Located in SF.

> How did you get your high salary?

Interviewed at many companies and received multiple offers. Kept every door
open, made sure the company/team knew I was excited to join, and moved the
negotiations and base salary forward. It helped a lot to have an existing open
offer when companies asked what I was making previously. This anchored their
starting offer.

> How have you been raising it?

Switched jobs my salary increased by $10k, $40k, $10k, and $60k. Contracting
for 4 years increased my yearly income to $330k. The biggest raise was
interviewing at 10+ companies and choosing the best offer. Got a lot of
rejection emails too.

> Do you plan for it, or does the company reward you automatically?

I never received a substantial raise without switching companies. Larger
companies with lucrative bonus programs might be different.

> Do you switch jobs a lot?

First company I stayed 5 years, second 3 years, third 1.5 years, fourth 6
months, fifth just started a few months ago.

Out of my friend circle I'm not the highest paid engineer. A friend just
accepted a senior engineer position a recent IPO company making $210k base.
Another friend is an eng. manager at a finance company making $1m but not sure
if that's base or total comp.

~~~
whalabi
Are you sure you don't want to stay in your new job for 3 months?

------
hackerboos
I'm at $95k Canadian. These threads make me feel bad.

~~~
samsonradu
Makes me feel bad also, until I think of the living costs in US big cities. I
would really like to see an European version of this thread. Probably the bar
would be set somewhere around EUR 100k?

~~~
Tiktaalik
The living costs of some Canadian cities are also very high. Both Vancouver
and Toronto are currently experiencing a housing bubble that has made housing
extremely expensive. At this point a software engineer in Vancouver is
certainly priced out of being able to own a detached home. It is unlikely a
duplex or townhouse would be affordable either.

------
Epenthesis
To clarify what people are saying: 200 k$/yr+ in base salary is rare (but not
unheard of) in SV/NYC for programmers. It usually implies some degree of
specialization beyond "Java programmer" ("highly available systems expert"
being an example that I know has garnered that base salary.)

200 k$/yr+ in total compensation (ie, salary + bonus + RSUs, at a public
company where RSUs are liquid) is much more common. I personally received that
as a SDE II at Google, with 4 years of experience, and from my understanding,
I was not in any way an exceptional case.

------
13of40
I've made a little over 200K for the past few years, but my problem is how to
keep it and build wealth from it. I store a fair amount in home equity, 401k,
etc. but any time I've tried anything in the stock market I've lost my ass.
But to answer your question, I will echo a lot of people and say "specialize".
My brother made a lot of money in the 00's by becoming the last expert of an
obscure database product used by local governments.

~~~
toephu2
Give up trying to beat the market, just call it a day and invest in a S&P 500
index fund. Hedge funds and money managers that get paid $1m+/year can't even
beat the S&P 500 in the long run (20+ years). The only one that has beat the
S&P year in and year out is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, but even now
he admits his conglomerate is so big it will be tough to do that in the future
and he also recommends a low cost S&P 500 index fund instead.

------
Bahamut
I'm at $160k in the Valley (lead developer with engineering management focus &
high quality developer background, originally hired as just an engineer at
this amount), but I could easily flip the switch to make over $300k if I want
(I have turned down offers greater than this) - I'm very happy where I am
right now is my caveat, as my workplace checks every single mark I have as
desired/nice to have except compensation.

Earlier in my career I would job search & up my compensation through job
hopping. I always had done some substantial open source work on major projects
(several of the 150 most starred on GitHub), but I accelerated my work in open
source at one point and demonstrated the high quality & unusually high volume
I was able to output, while still having a full time job & not doing open
source during work for the most part. That experience, along with the volume
of accomplishments I have from my work experience, has resulted in excellent
dividends for me, as it has allowed me to have my pick of engineering jobs for
the most part (whether it'd be a founding engineer, principal engineer, or
director of engineering role). I picked my current job very carefully after
getting laid off from my previous job (and I was already checked out and
actively interviewing at other companies by that point because I was fed up),
ending up with a company I still am at almost 2 years later, longest I have
been at a job.

I started my career late though - I only am 3 months removed from 4 years in
software engineering, after dropping out of a PhD program in math and a stint
in the Marine Corps. I did not program prior - I was actually desperate for
any job.

------
throwaway838383
Obviously a throwaway.

I worked at a Series C startup in the Bay Area as an architect. I made about
450K in total cash comp + lots of options.

Some of the executives were clearing over 500K a year in cash.

~~~
pbreit
How did that turn out?

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DDerTyp
200k US$? I am from Germany, currently working in a company and studying at a
university (both in the fields of computer science). To be honest, I never
thought about how much I wanna earn in 5 or 10 years, but 200k US$ is super
high.. Or am I missing something? I don't know how the US tax system works,
but is this, what you can spend? Or is it 200k US$ minus taxes? I am kinda
confused right know, can somebody help me please? :D

~~~
adventurer
Yes, I assume we are talking about gross earnings before taxes.

~~~
DDerTyp
Thank God, already thought about moving to the USA

~~~
et-al
In California, after taxes, you take home about 60-70% of your gross income
depending on deductions. It's a lot of money, but property in San Francisco is
going for at least $800k right now.

If you want a further breakdown on numbers, linkregister and I came up with a
fairly solid breakdown a while back for a new grad in SF:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13009702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13009702)

Note that $1200 gets you a room in a shared flat. If you want your own one-
bedroom apartment, it's probably averaging $2500/mo right now.

The US is still the one of the best places to make a filthy amount of money.
For that, we trade job security, healthcare, and decently-priced universities.

------
throwaway945123
$350k total with $160k base as CTO of medium sized company (350 employees)

I got a masters degree, started as a junior at a small company and stuck with
it for 15 years.

------
tylerlarson
There is a difference between the mindset of an employee working for a
paycheck and an employee considering the success of themselves being tied to
the success of the company.

How much money did the company make because of your contributions? What can
you do to make the company worth more?

Are you forming relationships with people outside of the company that will
enable the company to hire more qualified people or become better by any
metric?

Are you applying your skills in a way that shows others in the company how to
do their jobs better?

And so on.

You are not being paid because of your computer programming ability, you are
being paid because you can provide worth to the company with this knowledge.
If you are unable to find a way to apply these skills the company will keep
you on, giving you a chance to find yourself and keep things going but the
people that make more money than you are likely the ones that enable the
company to make more money.

------
rodrickbrown
I'm an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) for a Fintech startup based in NYC my
base is $190000, with options + bonus my total compensation is probably closer
to $300k. I've mostly worked in financial for large firms such as Lehman
Brothers, Bank of America, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. I now solely work for
fintech startups. My career started out as a traditional system administrator
working on large Sun Solaris servers (2000 - 2006), I transitioned over to
Linux (2007+) then picked up some Java, Python, SQL and I'm now learning Go
and big data (Spark) and have a strong background in networking. I primarily
get paid to automate and scale infrastructures these days -- my background is
that of Google's definition of Site Reliability Engineering, 40% Code 60%
infrastructure.

------
throwaway234092
Not over $200k but just for a point of reference, I'm close to where OP is at
with maybe ~half the industry experience (non-manager). Not at
GoogAmaFaceAppleSoft. I imagine I could possible get more at one of those.

------
salaryrevealer
IC full stack 180k(base)+40k(bonus)+50k(rsu). Did not switch a lot of jobs.
This is not the highest salary offer I received, but I liked the tech stack so
chose this one.

Didn't negotiate or didn't get them into bidding war to get this salary. I
thought I'd maintain good terms when joining them so didn't share my other
better offers.

But in bay area, these numbers don't make any sense. I pay about $3000 in rent
and $2000 in tuition fee as the school district sucks. So in reality my salary
might be equivalent to about $100k in any other places.

------
derFunk
Side question: What is the current average rent per apartment in SF/SV? What's
the current average income? This report from 04/2016 states around $118k/year
for income, probably base, and $4,5k rent:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/san-
franc...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/san-francisco-
tech-firms-see-workers-flee-from-4-500-rents) \- What do you think - still up
to date and realistic?

~~~
emcq
With a roommate and no rent control monthly cost is 1500-1800. For a studio
~2500. 1br closer to 3000. 3 bedroom homes for a family are easily 6k+.

If you are young and don't mind living with others or in small spaces you can
save a lot here. This usually ends with children where families frequently
move to cheaper locales like Austin.

------
ta_googler
Been a Googler for >8 years, currently among top 10% of engineers at Google.

Base: >200K, Total comp (w/ bonus + RSU): >500K

Total comp number counts RSUs which are going to vest in 2017, at the current
GOOG price of 825+. If GOOG tanks, total comp would go down accordingly.

Didn't have to do anything special, neither I am a rockstar/ninja like Jeff
Dean or Amit Singhal - just worked hard, made sure to be on a team with good
people, avoided bad managers (lots of data sources within Google to figure out
who is a good/bad manager).

~~~
yeshodham99
Mate, Care to elaborate? I got offer from goog but something seemed off about
the manager. He is of Indian origin. I have offer with total comp of 1/3 of
what you make. But, I want to make sure that I am on right team and right
manager. What are things to watch out for good/bad managers?

~~~
obstinate
If you think a manager being of Indian descent is a relevant detail, you're
probably not a good fit for Google, or any software company really.

------
CCing
Senior eng in big 4 can easily earn these money...(or in bank sector)

~~~
blahshaw
Probably don't even need to be senior for +$200k total comp at Big 4.

------
throwawayderp11
SWE at Post IPO in SF, Currently making (~150K Base) + (~200K from stock
option proceeds at current stock price) + (~20K from RSU bonuses) = ~370K but
will vary based on stock price fluctuations.

I got pretty lucky honestly. Joined a pre-IPO company at a good time so I
ended up with a relatively low strike price. People I know who joined only a
few months later make a fraction of what I do from their options because the
valuation went up a lot shortly after I joined. Company went public 1 year
after I joined.

------
throwaway-vamoo
Bay area, early 30s, making $200k base at non-public ~200 person company. I
was an early engineer at the company and have done significant work that has
directly contributed to the success of the company.

Get good at what you do. Try to maximize the direct impact your work has to
the company's bottom line. You are more likely to be compensated well when you
are working on a core product.

Once you have demonstrated your value you can ask for more (don't be afraid to
ask if you think you deserve it).

------
throw20170226
Around 400, depending on the yearly bonus. Programmer at one of the big tech
companies, 10 years. As best I can tell I got here mostly by doing my best to
solve whichever problems were most important for my team. I feel pretty lucky.
I never worried much about compensation and have never negotiated or asked for
raises nor have I been forced into management. I think there are others who
have done exactly what I have done and haven't been rewarded as much.

~~~
emcq
I don't think it's luck that this happened to you. All companies with HR
departments that care about attrition should compensate their employees
fairly. If you weren't, I suspect you would have left.

Contrast this to a small engineering firm my friend worked for with high
turnover. Skills and contributions had little influence in compensation and
instead the strongest influence was how much an engineer initially asked for.

------
madengr
Damn, I should have gone into software instead of hardware.

------
scarface74
Let me ask the same question a different way. How do you make more than $150K
outside of California or New York in another (cheaper) city that is known for
good tech jobs?

I'm thinking about a city on this list that is not on the West Coast?

[https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-
softwar...](https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-software-
engineers/)

------
Zy3RPwMc
I make $250k as the CTO of a smallish company: 50 to 75 employees, 10 of those
software engineers. I work primarily remotely.

------
Mandatum
Specialised, specialised, specialised. Then networked, networked, networked.
Now consult and contract only. Work is usually okay, but my real enjoyment of
tech happens outside of work hours now.

<25, outside US, no-remote work only.

------
throwawaysv
Staff level at Google/Facebook/LinkedIn will give you ~200k base + stock +
bonus without being 'specialized' like others claim here. E.g. for me at Staff
level it's 200k base (>400k total with stock and bonus for last year) with ~5
years working as a Software Engineer. As a Senior at these companies you'll
likely max out at 180-190k base but with stock + bonus you easily break 300k
after your stocks starts vesting. The stock based part of your salary will
increase more and more the higher your position gets. E.g. from the salaries I
know it's perhaps 20-25k more base salary per level but the amount of stocks
you get each year (or at offer time) will increase by a multiple of that while
also depending a lot on how your work is perceived.

~~~
bsvalley
Of course, google has the highest salaries. If you're a staff at Google I'd
expect $200k base. Same if you work in finance. Though, in most of the case
you won't make $200k/y base salary with 10 years of exp in "java" or anything
related to java technologies. Except if you're at the big 5 + financial/stock
market related companies in NYC.

There are way too many people doing Java... It's easy to find and most of the
contractors do java.

~~~
throwawaysv
Even at series A+ startups 180-190k base for 10 years of experience is not
that unusual and if you get less in SV I would assume you should get a pretty
big part of the equity. No matter what I wouldn't count stocks/options in
these cases and there's likely no bonus. But you see that even then it's
already pretty close to 200k. So at least in SV I would say this is pretty
standard for at least the top 10% of companies and likely much more pay this.

Edit: I general I think people complaining about the high cost of living
really don't know how much you can earn here in SV after working a few years
for a company. Especially equity gets underestimated by most people and it's
comparing 'normal' salaries with base + perhaps a small bonus with the
salaries here in SV which are after a while mostly based on stock (at least
half of your salary often more after a few years and as long it's a publicly
traded company that means real money not fake hopes). The houses cost much
more here if you don't waste salary it's not that hard to safe for it
especially before you have kids. And as soon as you're in the game with some
property you have a great salary and fixed costs for your housing situation. I
would n't bet on it but it likely also appreciates in value much more than
anywhere in the US which is a nice side-effect. Just wanted to add this to
make it clear that I think it pays to be in SV salary + experience wise and
outdoors in general are amazing here so the quality of life is pretty nice
here if you get into one of the growing companies or found your own after you
saved enough.

~~~
throwawaysv
Also there is a difference between 'doing Java' and being a Software Engineer
writing code in Java (or whatever other language makes sense or makes you
happy). For sure you can find people 'doing Java' but I wouldn't allow them to
commit a single line of code into anything I care about or want to be
associated with. It's not about how much code you produce (which 'doing Java'
sounds like) but what quality you produce and how little code you write to
make your project do what it should do. That's exactly where these two kinds
of people differ. With 10 years+ I would hope a developer is in the second
part and wouldn't hire someone still being in the first one.

------
throwaway243546
Solopreneur here. Made $445K in gross revenue in the last 12 months. No
employees, just a customer service contractor. Gross profit is around 85%.

16 years of experience as a developer, 2 years of experience running a
company.

------
throw2bit
I live in Montreal and make 95K CAD. 10 years java. Not a startup.

------
ctskier
graduated in 2009, found a sales job on craigslist at a startup, startup was
invested in by Google, worked in another startup, got recruited by facebook,
gg

------
deepnotderp
From the other side of the table, anyone who is a big name in Deep learning
will fetch big bucks (if we can afford it).

------
skylark
Facebook and Google pay 200+ total yearly compensation to most engineers with
over 2 years of experience.

------
throwawayhere
making 220k base salary, as an architect in bay area - about 20 yrs in the
industry, 5 here in bay area - java/hadoop etc etc

------
corporateslave
It's really not very hard to crack 200. Finance and top tech companies all pay
this

------
amitmn
#following

------
throwaway_5376
Senior eng manager at one of the big tech companies, been there about 10
years, 20 years total experience, high performer, work in a non bay area
office.

~$300k base, ~100k bonus, ~$500k stock, per year.

Individual contributor engineers at the same job level / experience at our
company generally make a little more, compared with people on the manager
track.

If those numbers seem shocking, keep in mind that the most reliable way to get
wealthy is not to gamble on a startup, but to get your way into a Amazon,
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc., and stay there for a decade or two.

Which makes sense, since those are the companies making all the profits, and
give generously back to retain top employees.

