If you want a guaranteed 6 figure salary, you might need to change careers.

On the other hand, your income will be at least 3X the poverty line. How do you know if software development is a good career? Should you pay attention to the averages? The data is conflicting. I always thought these were the same job. What can you expect to make a few years into your job? But what if you spent that time going to law or medical school instead? Unfortunately, school takes money, time, and work. Most of my friends in medical school would not do it again.

All of the salaries above were taken from around San Jose where Google, Apple, and Facebook are headquartered. Facebook, Google and Apple are battling for engineers. When I was at Google, engineers were handed huge sums of stock for not leaving. Then in , everyone got a raise. Most of us engineers dread management. Assuming you jump from senior software engineer to engineering manager, you double your pay at Apple and Facebook. During his first reign as CEO, Larry Page fired all the managers.

For one, Google and Microsoft pay better in general. You get a west coast salary without the west coast expenses. The disadvantage is that your career may hit a ceiling.

How Much Money Does It Take To Be In The Top 1% of Wealth and Net Worth in the United States

Headquarters have more projects and more influential people. Working for a startup is a dream for most software engineers. The stories of Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook are legends. Again, data was difficult to come by.

Mark Zuckerberg owned And Bill Gates owned a whopping VPs own significantly less equity than founders, and regular employees fare even worse. The 20th engineer would be lucky to own. Join earlier, and you risk taking no salary, meaning your opportunity cost is greater.

Are these risks worth it? But how many Facebooks and Googles are there every decade? You can count them on your fingers.

Can you make “big money” in software?

Furthermore, most startups are worse than the ones I plotted. Uber, Square, and AirBnb are the best of breed in Or nothing if the company goes broke. What surprised me most during this study was finding engineers who drastically out earned their peers. All I know is that these salaries are X larger than the averages for similar engineers at the same companies.

Microsoft | ZDNet

How do you feel about the financial future of software? Leave me a comment below. Home Blog Contact About.

I researched GlassDoor trying to find answers. Go for the companies at the top of the industry.

They pay X better than average. Consider becoming a manager Work for a top company, even outside of Silicon Valley. Choose your startup carefully. Why are salaries at the top companies so much greater than the rest of the industry? But being a manager pays. The data is clear.

The folks over at Google and Microsoft make double of everyone else. To examine this question, I looked at some of the current hottest startups in silicon valley. Startups are like feudal society, and the founders are the lords. Here are a few companies, spread across the Bay Area and Seattle: A couple of possible explanations: Someone made up their data when entering it in GlassDoor.

I doubt this; I heard stories of engineers making this much when I worked for Google. You Might Like Do Elite Colleges Help your Salary as a Software Engineer? Beware of the Silicon Valley cult Personal Finance is More Important than Skill in Software Development How to avoid the software salary ceiling.

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all. The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Weekly Essays Motivation, Software, Productivity.

Microsoft Salaries | CareerBliss

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