My networth increased by $600k in the past year, but my actual income after taxes was a quarter of that. I haven't sold and collected gains, but it still feels like I "made" that much money in that span of time, especially since most of the appreciation came from RSUs. I'm just choosing to not convert it to cash.
It comes with test suites, so that gives you a base to start from. You can at the very least do trial-and-error and come up with some heuristics on the fly. You're at a huge disadvantage to someone who has some familiarity but can convincingly play it off as being a newcomer, though.
I don't mean this to be a callout, but what do you mean you led teams as an L4? Even if you were unofficially leading them, you get caught in the politics trap of not being able to claim any credit for having done so, because that means the higher levels in the workstream weren't doing their jobs, and you can't write that down or say it outloud. This is a problem in every hierarchical organization, and learning how to navigate it is unfortunately a part of the leveling process in itself when you are starting from a lower level versus being hired into a higher one.
Why can't everything you just described be done by someone who doesn't have the CEO legal title? The CTO can be the CEO in title, but fulfill the duties of both, with consultation from the "CEO" (pick whatever title you want). Basically inverting the non-technical-founder / CTO relationship, in favor of the technical founder who needs non-technical expertise and guidance, but still wants to maintain overall control of the business.
>Consider this: You aim to buy all 100 units, and then you can charge whatever rent you like, right? What happens is sellers discover you are doing this, and then raise their asking prices through the roof. The result is it costs you so much to get that monopoly that you cannot hope to be able to rent at a profit. Especially if it is possible to create new units for the purpose of selling at a high price to you. And it is possible, unless the government prevents new construction.
This doesn't matter to you as a buyer when the money you're spending is either borrowed, being printed out of thin air, or both.
If you own enough homes in a rental market, you can determine the market rate. An empty house has value simply by depleting local housing stock, since it is giving you greater leverage to drive market rate up.
Of course its less value than actually having it rented, but its still value. Tax code will also allow for softening the loss.
I'm going to pick an arbitrary number here that's loosely based on top 100 tech companies by market cap.
If you are working for a company that employs at least 1000 full-time engineers, I think you should consider joining a team where every project involves AI in some way, if you aren't already on one. Whether its owning AI tooling, or developing client features that use AI directly, or even just prototyping AI concepts that never launch. The safest roles like research and directly working on the models are out of reach for most people due to competition and position scarcity, but that's ok. There are so many positions downstream from those. The key thing to look for is to be in a position where your AI features can actually turn a profit, which might be rare, but not as difficult to get as an upstream role. But its still fine to be in a role that isn't profitable.
I think AI-adjacent roles will either be the first or last fulltime SWE jobs to go during the next tech downturn, which I don't think we are in yet. I am betting on the latter, because I think corporations will continue to reroute more and more funding towards AI all the way down. Even if the current AI cycle ends up as a failure, we are already in the sunk cost stages of commitment. There is no turning back without anything short of a total collapse.
Something I want HN's thoughts on: Does a 7% pay gap matter more or less between low incomes and high incomes?
I'm looking at the bar chart with median annual earnings and a earnings gap percentage. The first gap is 7% (misleadingly labeled as 93%...), which does seem somewhat high.
But then it's for $33,598 vs $31,288. A difference of $2310, an amount that your average Bay Area FAANG SWE earns in two workdays or less (when counting amortized RSU vesting and bonuses).
You could argue that every single dollar matters for someone in that bracket. But what about when the 7% difference hits someone who is making over $500k a year in the Bay Area? Then it's a $40,000 swing. Most of that will get eaten up by taxes anyways.
Which one is worse? I would say the $2310 difference, since the $40,000 is really closer to $20,000 after taxes, and having $220,000 a year after taxes vs. $200,000 doesn't make a huge difference when you're competing for homes that cost $2 million dollars or more.
It would sound way worse with the title "x outearn y by $40,000 a year in the Bay Area", but only to people who don't realize how bonkers the financial scales are here in comparison to developing parts of the country.
>I would be very surprised if you say literally this and get results. No self-respecting company or manager is going to invest in talking to you if you describe yourself so overtly mercenary.
It paid significantly less than other engineering fields, and much, much less than specializations in finance, medicine and law (which artificially constrain supply through various gatekeeping mechanisms) up until recently, when the wage-fixing and anti-poaching policies were quashed.
There were also two periods in the past 25 years where it was very difficult to find work, especially for entry-level, without there being an especially large glut of engineers. Dot-com bust and the 2007 recession.
I've been wanting to do an online MSCS program for years, but it probably won't happen anytime soon. I looked into WGU, but I didn't like the lack of accreditation.
I found one school/program that seemed fair in terms of cost and time, but I couldn't fully test out of all of my pre-requisites, and I would still have to spend a considerable amount of time (and money) doing community college courses.
I just can't justify the time and effort involved when it would do nothing for my career at this point. I'm already at a top employer, top 5% income, a ridiculous upward trajectory that beats out all of my friends with a CS degree, and I'm basically set for the rest of my working life if I just keep doing what I've been doing for the past five years.
Coworkers have always assumed I had a CS degree, and have been surprised when they find out that I don't. I've grinded leetcode twice in the past, and when I'm in interviewing shape, I perform as well as someone with a CS background, and that's the only thing that really matters.
The main benefits I see at this point are that it would help for immigration, but I'm confident that the United States will remain the best market for software engineers for years to come. I'd rather invest the time in learning Mandarin, which I think will become increasingly important for software engineering. I at least have a non-STEM undergrad degree, so immigration wouldn't be impossible. The employers on my resume mean more than any CS degree would in the US market, but I don't know how true that is in other job markets.
For people who don't have experience, and especially for those doing the typical college path from ages 18-21, a CS bachelor's is great. You get priority for internships (a huge advantage over people from non-CS backgrounds, and the most significant IMO), a network of peers, and you have the opportunity to land in FAANG straight out of college, which means you'll be able to retire early if you want to. If you don't, you still get the other two.
I started my career late, but if I had the opportunity to go back in time to when I had just graduated from a non-STEM program and trade two years of working for a CS degree, I wouldn't do it. I don't think I would be as successful as I am now if I had done that.
Things would be different if software engineering had gatekeeping similar to what's seen in other high-paying fields like finance, law, and medicine. The only real form of gatekeeping is the aforementioned prioritization (and sometimes even exclusivity) for internships.
The best employers don't care. People will stop asking once you have FAANG experience, but once you do, why would you want to work at the places where interviewers ask that question anyways?