throwaway_goog

4 yıl öncediscuss

L6 @ Google, personal AGI last year (not counting capital gains or spouse's income) was just over $900K. You forget the massive stock-price appreciation between 2020 and the end of 2021. If you were granted $400K/year in stock compensation in March 2020 it was worth over $1M/year in Dec 2021.

throwaway_goog

4 yıl öncediscuss

There probably is a plateau, but I was surprised at how high it is. My first job was for $8/hour. Next was for $20/hour. The one after that was $32K/year. Then I went to college. Then it was $66K/year. Then I did a startup for nothing. Then it was $100K/year salary, but TC was about $160K/year. Got up to $300K over the course of that job. Then another startup for nothing. Then back for $630K/year, and it went up to about $900K/year with stock appreciation. Probably less now with the market crash, but still a lot more than I ever thought was possible as a plain old employee.

You do have to interview & negotiate well, and keep your skills sharp, and I'd bet that I'm about at the ceiling of what's possible as an IC. But now I've transitioned into management and all those startup exec positions are theoretically open. :-) There is always somebody making buttloads of money in the economy; if you want it, figure out who it is and how to make yourself useful to them.

throwaway_goog

5 yıl öncediscuss

I've doubled my compensation every time I switched jobs, plus doubled once through internal promotions, and another 50% increase through stock appreciation since most recent rehire. It's been about 5 doublings over a 20-year career. Most recent employer is in my username, and income history is here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10760918

(Plus $630K in 2020 and about $900K in 2021.)

throwaway_goog

5 yıl öncediscuss

It doesn't. I semi-retired at 33 and then spent the time since then doing 20+ different startup ideas. Still no success. Bank account is bigger now than when I retired, but startup dreams are effectively dead.

Bottleneck is that the market moves on in the time you spend pivoting, and eventually your inside information about what's hot and what's worth building gets stale, along with your technical skills. I know a number of other entrepreneur/retirees in the same boat - 5+ years working on various ideas, often after having a previous exit - and it never seems to result in a big company.

throwaway_goog

5 yıl öncediscuss

I doubled my salary each time I changed jobs, from internship -> first job out of high school -> first job out of college -> Google. When I got to Google I said, "I guess that's the end of the doubling." Nope, my compensation doubled again while I was an employee there, and then doubled again. Left to do a startup and then went back - at double the compensation.

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