I'm looking for a new job, but I don't know if I should aim for a really high salary, depending on how much more work I'll have to put in.
So I'm wondering about your experience, how many hours do you put in weekly or monthly/salary after of before taxes/location/job title/experience?
However, I just found out I'm getting laid off in october as they're moving services overseas to cut costs. I work for the largest Clinical research org in the world & we were bought by them last year. I'm a bit surprised & the group that bought us was not known for tech. I think they're going to ruin a lot of their tech offerings because I've worked a lot with their Systems/Devops people over the last couple years and they are extremely unimpressive.
As for experience... I technically started at age 17 in the military doing tactical communications via satellite, networking, servers, radios etc. But been working in private sector for about 12-13 years after going to school for about 2 years upon getting out.
I have a pretty chill job working at a large company where there are no deadlines and the bar for 'hard working' is pretty low. I try and get urgent things done as fast as possible but otherwise I take it pretty easy. I work in the evenings so I have my days free to ski/bike/ be with the kids in the hols, then i take some time off to pic them up from school and put them to bed, and i usually finish early to watch tv with my wife before bed.
I'm in a similar situation as you where I feel like I could work harder, but i wont get any more money for working harder where i am, and i think i'd need to be paid waay more to be persuaded to do 40 full hours a week.
My suspicion is that the majority of people lie online about salaries to inflate their egos, even in an anonymous setting. There are some people making ridiculous amounts of money - but most are not.
I usually work 35-40 hours a week, fully remotely. Last time I worked in an office was in January 2011.
Senior programmer with 21.5 years of experience, currently working mostly with Rust and Elixir, and some Golang here and there. I know shell scripting and automation quite well, I know many CLI / TUI tools (don't like coding things when I can assemble my own LEGO for a lot of problems with 1-2h of work), and know Linux well-ish. Interested in network administration, true AI (not ML/DL), robotics and algo trading but never had the chance and time to give in to those passions so far, sadly. Also worked with C, C++, Assembly, PHP, Javascript, Ruby and Java.
I'm in Eastern Europe. Will likely settle for 50% less payment because I am extremely tired of the startup culture; the hustle and hurrying never ends. Some people thrive in that but it honestly is killing me in an accelerated manner and I'll just refuse startup offers straight away, I feel. I would hate the pay drop but the time has come in my life to choose between money and health.
I started just with a CS Degree and graduated college in 2016. My first job was data entry for Uber maps. I made about 30k a year. Next, I worked on a smart-grow application for large size cannabis farms in CO. 3-5 people sized team, I made around 40k a year. Next, I worked at an online advertising startup, around 20 people, and I made 70k a year. Now I'm at my current job as a Senior Fullstack engineer, in a late-stage startup, that does online coupons and cashback.
I really enjoyed every previous professional experience, and believe that working at a startup accelerates you much faster than starting at a larger company.
If you can afford it, and aren't living in a high cost of living city, concentrate on job culture first. Alternatively, if you don't have family to worry about, move wherever needed to get the most money and bank it for 5-10 years living as cheaply as you can, then reconsider your direction and priorities. You don't mention how old you are or what kind of area you're living in, so it's hard to give anything resembling advice.
i would say that my current position is probably unsustainable long term and that im feeling a bit of burn out creep. I definitely wouldn't call it chill, but the cash is.
10 years exp.
Was sought out for this startup because I'm active on social media and originally offered $125, but negotiated higher.
Idk how many hours, probably averaging 50/wk, but there will definitely be outlier weeks that I'm cool with.
I also had a really chill job two weeks ago for just under $100k. That was a gov job - strict 40 hr/wk. I don't like "average" lifestyles though, so even though I work more (and harder) now, I love it.
Then I also have side projects and another two companies that I have 50% ownership and 100% ownership of respectively. All together I usually end up working about 100 hours/wk
Case in point: I also had a really chill job and was ridiculously underpaid. The recruiter I worked with got me a job paying 2x more, with much better benefits, a great working environment, a much shorter commute (10 minutes) and cool projects to boot. There was literally no downside to taking the job. Work expectation was 40 hours/week. Yeah, for a while I did work a lot more than that because I was single (no reason to go home early) and I really liked the work. There was absolutely no pressure on me to work more than a regular work week.
I've been in industry for 30 years and have never taken a job where I worked more than 40 hours/week unless it was a short crunch. No one can force you to work more; they can suggest it, they can try to make you feel guilty, but they can't force you. And unless they want to get rid of you for some other reason, you're not going to be fired for working "just" a normal week.
Staff software engineer. Full-stack web & app engineer/architect. What that practically means is: Java/Kotlin Services on AWS, Kafka, Kubernetes, SQL/Mongo/DynamoDB/Redis etc, JS/TS React for frontend web, Kotlin+Android, Swift+iOS. Starting to build out AI/LLM/ChatGPT stuff now as well.
Hours: remote 9-5, so 40 hrs/week (nice try boss!). But one could imagine someone working ~4hrs/day in such a position.
Salary: 240k base + 70k signing, 120k stocks, and 10% quarterly bonus
Loc: Seattle
I could probably work my ass off and get a 20% quarterly bonus and work toward Principle Engineer, but I've found promotions come out of luck combined with concerted effort. However I'm very financially satisfied and can prioritize my free-time and happiness. I've done my time at FAANG and even though they're trying to get me to come back, I'm happy with clocking out at 5:00pm on the dot with no on-call.
The more I've made, the less I've worked, and it keeps going up.
I was working full-time making $325k, and I decided I wanted to trade comp for flexibility and free time. I’m now a self-employed contractor lucky enough to have a client that wants me 3 days/week.
EU, full remote.
Been working for a decade-ish now, of which last five years specifically devops.
I probably could be making more money, but I value other things more, like working only 4 days a week fully remotely.
You can search by state, county, and profession. Then, assume that people receiving these salaries are at the low end of the scale because they hold lesser bargaining power (because they require a job to get this visa and remain in the US).
EDIT: Also, talk to your coworkers about how much they make and the benefits they receive. This gives you real data for your area and normalizes sharing some of the most valuable information employees can have. I suggest doing this whenever you leave a job. Also, union positions post their salaries online. Aside from actually taking a union position, that can also help you establish what's a moderately competitive salary (it may be more or it may be less, depending on the strength of the union).
~200K
YOE 5
40 hours/week majority of the time, more around milestones but nothing crazy
Edit: Bachelor and Master in CS + 6 yoe
I keep telling this company I have nothing to do and they keep wasting my time. It's one mismanaged project after another where the organisation gets in the way of me doing work with endless meetings, etc.
Have you thought of getting a second job if your current one is so chill?
I live in Canada, work 40 real intense hours per week
~50h a week. 7 YOE Sr SRE with a BSc in CS.
Right around the $400k mark with base/equity/bonus. Private company though.
Specifically working on distributed systems.
My last post had a much better salary; +50% or so. The working hours were grueling though -- 60+ hour weeks often, and constantly putting out fires. I'm happy to have moved, even if it meant a big pay cut. Burn out isn't worth the extra money.
Before that, I worked for not-a-tech company,doing basic IT help desk stuff. That only paid about 45k. That seemed OK at first, as I was starting my career over and didn't have a related degree or experience. But after about a year of experience, that pay didn't make sense, and I could see other places hiring for the same kind of role for quite a bit more. Than employer had a reputation for paying below market rates and there was quite a bit of churn.
I've worked at multiple big firms and startups and I don't believe that even the majority of people are working "40 hours" in the same way that most people work 40 hours.
This is the wonderful thing about technology. I was literally motivated to get into tech by the old "The Website is Down" videos, and in practice, it seems to be how many tech workers operate:
Then burnt out.
Now $24k/y AUD passive income, not working. Much happier life just parenting my kids and keeping fit.
I do about about 5 real hours of work a week, 10 if you count the internal meetings that I passively listen to. Fully remote.
About 11 years experience in current role.
~8 years at the company (joined very early on as a software engineer), would average around 80+ hours at the beginning because it was fun and interesting, mellowed down to 40 once we grew, and now just doing what's needed to get the handover stuff written and attend meetings that I'm still useful in.
<=40hrs/week, $235k base + ~$50k/year stock (real stock) + benefits. ~18 years experience.
Check out http://www.levels.fyi for aggregate data.
117k/year salary, some bonus based on various business and personal performance metrics, usually 2-5k, 40 hours a week, 7 years experience.
15 years experience
TC is around 1M (base 300k)
Work 30 hours a week on average (sometimes more sometimes less)
Salary has nothing to do with work.
Just use a site like https://www.levels.fyi or the StackOverflow salary ranges as a guide and you'll get much more useful data points.