zlacker

Tell me you don't have a mortgage and kids without telling me

>>nikanj+(OP)
But my point is that you do have plenty options in the industry! For sure if you're in charge of something like this you can have a pretty decent job elsewhere. You sound as if those people have nowhere else to continue their careers... Am I wrong?

>>liendo+L
Yeah, you're kind of a little wrong. Sure, there are options. They don't pay like FAANG, like order of magnitude difference.

>>nikanj+(OP)
It's possible to provide for one's children without turning the world into a ruinous corporate dystopia. What a world to subject your children to.

No, "I have kids" is not an excuse. You do see how that makes this even worse, yes? To pretend to give a shit about future generations while gleefully destroying the liberties of those future generations?

>>system+02
Yeah. But those often don't take your soul.

>>system+02
Lots of people get by fine with less-than-FAANG pay.

(FAANG salaries are not an "order of magnitude" higher than salaries at other U.S.-based companies for similar jobs.)

FAANG salaries are just at the level at which those companies discovered people are willing to sell their souls, or that is high enough to attract naive people who won't question why it pays more.

>>nikanj+(OP)
I've got a mortgage and two kids, I don't have a FAANG job and live very comfortably thanks. Stop spreading BS, you don't need to work for one of them to have a high paying tech job.

>>ration+W4
Speaking as someone "getting by" on lesser money, yeah, that's certainly true.

Maybe I'm just really bad at marketing/promoting myself or I gasp have to take work "below my pay grade" because it's still work and I've got bills, but I'm not netting six figures doing highly technical work (embedded development, electromechanical development, board layout and design, etc.). In the last five years I've had one in which I grossed six figures. I'd figure I just suck and am an outlier but I keep hearing the same stories from friends who are also not at big shops.

>>nikanj+(OP)
As the one employed member of my household (spouse is retired) I paid off a Silicon Valley mortgage in under 15 years working for a non-profit software outfit with no stock options or any of that, just a decent salary for a solid company for a good stretch of time. That you think it can only be done with a small handful of specific employers is silly.

>>system+02
It is not an order of magnitude. I work at a software non-profit and am paid reasonably compared to my FAANG friends. Sure, they make more, but not an order of magnitude more, not even double, and I can sleep at night knowing I'm trying to make the world better for humans rather than trying to enrich a few mega-corporations.

>>system+eD
There are plenty of 6 figure jobs outside of FAANG, and the lowest pay I'd even fathom taking for a software development role isn't far below that (maybe 85-90k for a straight-out-of-school junior dev). If you're making less than that, with enough experience to be talking about "the last five years", then you probably should start looking for roles at other companies.

>>OkayPh+2H1
Yeah, probably, but I'm stuck with the current situation for now.

Wages for developer work are not consistent, though. I was making around $45K out of college in upstate NY in 2011 or so. I left that job around $55K in 2015 when we moved from the area. Those were entirely normal salaries in the NY capital district for developers with a four-year degree and proven skills in a given language.

I'm now in central VA and am friends with the owner of a local media/web development shop. Their average pay is around $20/hour. Remote work levels the field a bit now, but that's what folks who want to work locally at a desk are offered. They have people actually working there, so I guess folks think that's a reasonable pay "for the area."

>>asadot+yp1
It's certainly double or more in many cases for rank-and-file developer jobs, in my personal experience, meaning "jobs I've worked or gotten offers on." Again, maybe I just suck, but then so do a lot of folks I know.

I mean "order of magnitude" in the sense that a 6-figure salary is an order of magnitude more than a 5-figure salary.