Hope you’re willing to relocate to SF and still spend 50+% of your income on housing you will never own.
If you get a good offer from big tech to move to a high CoL area, it can be worth it because the offers are that good. You will be able to pay off a home within a decade. Even if you start at entry level you will be expected to be promoted within a couple of years. For most hirees this will already make them senior. It’s expected that everyone can eventually make it to senior.
I wasn’t suggesting someone randomly move to SF without an excellent employment opportunity.
As for startup equity, one could argue it shouldn’t be considered part of total comp since most startups do not exit successfully and even fewer exit in a way where the payout will be comparable to a big tech salary.
It’s expected that everyone can eventually make it to senior.
I think this may be the crux of the issue. Of course it is possible to make a lot of money in software. Of course you only want to take excellent offers. The issue I am addressing is that a lot of people see the annual salaries (or the TC figures, or projections of where their career will take them in five years) and take them as inevitabilities, and they simply aren’t. They can’t be; corporations are structured as pyramids and the higher you go, the fewer spots there are with more people competing for them. Promotions can’t be expected because the system is designed to make sure that most people don’t get them. And yet, everyone treats them as inevitable because the the ones who do get them stick around the company and the ones who don’t leave and fall out of touch with their former colleagues. It’s a pretty stable self-sustaining delusion.
I will allow that it is possible to make that salary without living in SF or any major tech center. I’ve done it and I know others who have done it. But it takes a while to get there and most people never do. And crucially, it’s not because they’re worse engineers. It takes a strong network, a little bit of educated risk-taking, and a series of lucky breaks that you won’t be able to fully appreciate until after the fact. But I think for people who want to get into software with a high salary, taking a junior engineering role at a massive company in the bay area (or wherever) with a lucrative salary is the more common route, and those engineers usually get disillusioned pretty quickly at how far that paycheck doesn’t go.
The hard part is getting an offer from a top company in the first place. It’s a lot of luck and the interview process is designed more to avoid bad engineers than it is to find good ones.
Getting to senior shouldn’t be too difficult for any competent engineer. Getting to staff requires significantly more effort.
Also until recently these companies never did lay offs. You had to be PIP’d before being let go.
The real trap is joining a startup. Unless you’re very early it’s a huge roll of the dice.
And I was addressing this:
If you get a good offer from big tech to move to a high CoL area, it can be worth it because the offers are that good. You will be able to pay off a home within a decade. Even if you start at entry level you will be expected to be promoted within a couple of years. For most hirees this will already make them senior. It’s expected that everyone can eventually make it to senior.
I wasn’t suggesting someone randomly move to SF without an excellent employment opportunity.
As for startup equity, one could argue it shouldn’t be considered part of total comp since most startups do not exit successfully and even fewer exit in a way where the payout will be comparable to a big tech salary.
I think this may be the crux of the issue. Of course it is possible to make a lot of money in software. Of course you only want to take excellent offers. The issue I am addressing is that a lot of people see the annual salaries (or the TC figures, or projections of where their career will take them in five years) and take them as inevitabilities, and they simply aren’t. They can’t be; corporations are structured as pyramids and the higher you go, the fewer spots there are with more people competing for them. Promotions can’t be expected because the system is designed to make sure that most people don’t get them. And yet, everyone treats them as inevitable because the the ones who do get them stick around the company and the ones who don’t leave and fall out of touch with their former colleagues. It’s a pretty stable self-sustaining delusion.
I will allow that it is possible to make that salary without living in SF or any major tech center. I’ve done it and I know others who have done it. But it takes a while to get there and most people never do. And crucially, it’s not because they’re worse engineers. It takes a strong network, a little bit of educated risk-taking, and a series of lucky breaks that you won’t be able to fully appreciate until after the fact. But I think for people who want to get into software with a high salary, taking a junior engineering role at a massive company in the bay area (or wherever) with a lucrative salary is the more common route, and those engineers usually get disillusioned pretty quickly at how far that paycheck doesn’t go.
The hard part is getting an offer from a top company in the first place. It’s a lot of luck and the interview process is designed more to avoid bad engineers than it is to find good ones.
Getting to senior shouldn’t be too difficult for any competent engineer. Getting to staff requires significantly more effort.
Also until recently these companies never did lay offs. You had to be PIP’d before being let go.
The real trap is joining a startup. Unless you’re very early it’s a huge roll of the dice.