This is ridiculous, there are hundreds of thousands of engineers making these large sums of money and it’s not an exclusive crowd. The amount of work it takes to get a midlevel FAANG or similar job is a lot less than to start a business. I honestly think people think it’s “otherworldly” or similarly impossible for themselves because they don’t have the confidence to try, or have some extenuating restriction that makes it feel unattainable.
Of course the author is right that a $3.7m exit is non-trivial and that $1k MRR is not a bad place to start but it’s crazy to call people making larger amounts of money as employees “gods” and likely a disservice to oneself to use that kind of language to make them seem like some far away, impossible to reach or understand group.
Right. I don't think anyone is claiming it's not hard to get to. Business is tough, yes. But if you're not making more than working part time at McDonald's after a year or two, then you really need to reconsider your plans. Between $1k MRR and making Facebook or Google money, there is a massive gulf of businesses out there making a respectable profit even outside the tech bubble.
The nail salon down the street is making way more than $1k MRR. I shouldn't need to say this, but if you're a tech company making less than the nail salon or corner liquor store then you're doing it wrong. Or your business model is wrong. I mean, that corner liquor store definitely is paying more than $1,000 USD in rent a month.
You make it sound although everyone lives in a city that FAANG companies hire in? Most of us don't, and most of us don't even have the ability to enter the US to try for most of these jobs. I'm well aware of how Bay area skewered HN is but "just get a job at FAANG" is an incredibly patronising attitude
I think this sentiment is primarily exacerbated when people live in lower CoL areas. Folks routinely balk at typical mid-level comp of ~$500k even here on HN so it doesn't surprise me that the knee-jerk reaction is that ~$4M is out of reach.
Frankly, the software industry has an incredibly low barrier to entry compared to other high paying fields (medicine, law). Sure, not everyone will reach some "distinguished engineer" level but you don't really need to in order to live a life of abundance. Nowadays, if you grind enough leetcode you can land something to the tune of $250-300k (in Seattle/Bay Area). Once you factor in stock appreciation and job hopping every 3 years, comp only goes up. I don't make the rules; it is what it is.
If I sum up the number of engineers at Google/FB/Apple/Amazon/Netflix I’m already there and if I include engineers from successful unicorns and decacorns, plus older big companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Intuit I’ve added way more people although probably not in the $500k range unless they are like directors. Then there are other groups like HFT/Prop trading/Hedge Funds but those are probably only a few thousand or maybe ten thousand.
Sorry, I meant these companies have experienced (10-20 years) engineers at $500k where younger employees could expect to rise up to that level, not that every employee at these companies are making $500k.
Yeah, still not gonna believe some rando with no data.
Let's look at 2017.
Approx 143M people pay income tax [1]. Incomes above 500k are less than .8% of all incomes. [2] That puts the number to work from at ~1M people. There are >1M doctors in the US [3]. There are >1M lawyers in the US [4]. Those are top earners, excluding stock traders and investors. That will eat up the majority of the 1M people. Anecdotally, I've worked in tech for 30 years and have been at dozens of companies and only the top handful fellows and principles make >500k and that is with thinks like deferred compensation and options. So basically, unless you can show me some data, I don't buy your claims.
Check out levels.fyi or blind or the many people here making that much. I didn’t mean to imply that all the engineers at those companies are making $500k although with 10-20 yoe you would probably be making about that much. Also similarly to engineers, definitely not all lawyers or doctors are earning in that range either.
I’m not invested enough in proving the point to find better data (h1bdata is a good start, but IIRC it only includes salary) but as someone who works at one of those companies I can tell you many people I work with are making $500k or more especially with RSU appreciation.
"similarly impossible for themselves because they don’t have the confidence to try, or have some extenuating restriction that makes it feel unattainable."
Of course the author is right that a $3.7m exit is non-trivial and that $1k MRR is not a bad place to start but it’s crazy to call people making larger amounts of money as employees “gods” and likely a disservice to oneself to use that kind of language to make them seem like some far away, impossible to reach or understand group.