[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to grow after 10 years in the industry?
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Ask HN: How to grow after 10 years in the industry?
Hey! - I've been working for around 10 years - half of that was
as a software engineer and the other half as a VP of Engineering -
I am good with people and I really love my industry, I don't
consider myself at work - I make something like 65k after taxes -
I live outside the states (not a US citizen) but I've been working
directly with US companies (international contractor) for the last
7 years - I have a family, 2 kids and my wife is pregnant I love
my work, love my team. I really enjoy it When I look back at the
last 3 years, I don't see a clear growth. I try to do things in the
right way, go deeper with what I do (read books, and articles) and
improve my skills I feel that my career is steady and not growing
fast enough at this time I am not sure about how to move forward,
but I am thinking about: - should I look for a new adventure with
some real challenges? - should I stay and keep growing myself? -
am I underpaid? I mean, will I be able to get a better salary if I
find a better fit? - should I pursue a master's degree? I
appreciate your feedback and help!
Author : theory_of_10_1
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-06-28 13:30 UTC (2 days ago)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| All good questions to ask!
|
| First some context, there is no "win" in life. it is the journey
| that you will look back on and either be proud of or regret. And
| understanding that, understand that everyone's journey is
| different and so it is nearly impossible to compare yourself to
| others and their journeys and say with certainty your are doing
| 'better' or 'worse' than them. It is one of the few cases where
| it really is "all about you" :-)
|
| So should you keep growing yourself? Absolutely. It is how you
| don't get bored and how you move to the next stage of the
| journey. Some of the choices you make will be less satisfying and
| being in the practice of always growing and learning you may
| find, as I have, that you don't feel 'trapped' by them, instead
| you just change direction.
|
| Are you underpaid? Who knows? I have known people with the title
| "VP Engineering" who make literally three times what you are
| making as a base salary and have a bonus program besides. Not all
| of them liked their life. One in particular was constantly
| fighting depression and guilt over how little time they spent
| with their family and how their non-work relationships suffered.
| Their life had plenty of money but not enough joy. So it is a
| balance. My philosophy has always been if I'm making enough to
| cover my needs (current and projected), and I've got a life
| outside of work that is rewarding and enjoyable, then I don't
| need to change things (at least in compensation).
|
| In my career more money has always come with more expectations
| and more responsibility, which manifests itself as stress when
| things are not going as they need to. I have turned down raises
| and promotions when I knew they wouldn't increase the quality of
| my life and would likely decrease it.
|
| Should you pursue a Master's degree? If you have the resources
| and time, it helps with flexibility later. I have known folks who
| "grew up" in a company, started as an undergrad and were looking
| for a new job 20 years later. And their experience gave them a
| masters or PhD level of experience in their area of expertise,
| but without the certificate any new job was going to assume their
| expertise was over stated and there would be a 1 - 3 year 'ramp'
| period at the new job where the new employer got to internalize
| if they really were as expert as they thought/said.
|
| From a technical perspective, if you're an engineer and get an
| MBa or business degree that makes you both more valuable and able
| to 'span' more of an organization. There is only so much you can
| accomplish as an individual, being able to bring a team together
| under a single vision gives you a huge boost in what you can get
| done. To do that you have to be able to talk to everyone in the
| concepts they understand so that you can clearly articulate a
| vision they can then help you execute.
|
| Lastly, one trick that a college counselor taught me is to
| imagine you are doing your dream job or living your dream life.
| Now write a fictional history of that persons life, like someone
| reading an introduction of you before a TED talk. Start with the
| end point and work backwards in the history to where you are
| right now. It can give you ideas about what your next steps
| should be.
| nickd2001 wrote:
| Sounds like you're already well on the way to "a new adventure
| with some real challenges" because you also mentioned your wife
| is pregnant. ;) But seriously, maybe wait till your 3rd little
| one is 2 or 3 before making any major career changes? I did a
| master's, it was well worth it for interesting parts of comp sci,
| and definitely opens some doors in terms of getting interviews.
| Not essential though. I did mine part-time. Not sure if its worth
| doing full-time as a more mature student.
| ssss11 wrote:
| I need to second this ^ there's nothing harder than a new job
| (let alone a challenging one!) with a new born. Maybe take a
| couple of years to really consider what the next move is before
| doing it. Speak with recruiters, find out what your role will
| pay at a similar company where you are, what other adjacent
| roles would pay and whether you'd get a look in, talk about
| your options for other industries or roles you're interested in
| but not qualified for, hell even go for interviews for practice
| if you think you can (I'm awful at that but people have
| recommended to me before)
| redisman wrote:
| Depends how far along she is. I changed to a less stressful
| and better paid and better leave job about 4 months before
| birth and it was a great move. I also went from 0 to 4 weeks
| of parental leave which I didn't even know at the time
| pnutjam wrote:
| I have 6 kids, 7 is on the way. I have changed jobs when my
| wife is pregnant. If you have no parental bonding leave, it's
| not big deal. I had no leave with my 1st 5 kids and 2 weeks
| with my 6th. My current company has 6 weeks, so I'm
| incentivized to stick around. They treat me pretty well
| overall.
|
| Find something you like and keep at it, since 2001, I've gone
| from: helpdesk > pc /network tech > network admin > system
| admin (windows) > system admin (linux) > sr. sysadmin (linux).
|
| Unfortunately I've never had a decent raise without changing
| jobs.
| zn44 wrote:
| My solution after 8 years in industry was to join an early stage
| startup as technical co-founder. It has been most challenging,
| difficult and satisfying experience by far compared to anything
| else I've done before. I feel i've grown a lot both
| professionally and personally.
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| Will anyone be willing to have a remote co-founder?
|
| I have a feeling that I would need to travel and relocate to
| find a co-founder with a solid business idea
| zn44 wrote:
| After covid sure, I have friends starting fully remote
| distributed startups over last few months
| [deleted]
| Clubber wrote:
| > should I look for a new adventure with some real challenges?
|
| Yes, at least always be open to it and looking for it. You need
| to meet new people who have an itch that you can scratch. People
| with deep pockets.
|
| > should I stay and keep growing myself?
|
| If you are happy with where you are and what you are doing, sure,
| but it sounds like you are ready to move on. You'll grow more
| with more experience at different companies / systems. You
| definitely need to learn to build system from scratch if you
| haven't already.
|
| > am I underpaid? I mean, will I be able to get a better salary
| if I find a better fit?
|
| Yes, probably by about 25-100%, depending on market.
|
| > should I pursue a master's degree?
|
| Probably not. You learn way more on the streets. Not having a
| Bachelor's is sometimes a blocker to bigger things, but Master's,
| not so much. You get a much better education in the field.
| shuki wrote:
| Lots of good advice around. My Personal story might have a few
| takeaways for you. Started as a sw developer in India, moved to
| US progressed as technical expert on the product. Moved back to
| India and became Manager. In 3 years as a manager realized how
| much I liked coding. I am at best an average developer, but the
| satisfaction I got after fixing a small defect was priceless. By
| this time I've had 15 years of "experience" in industry. I did my
| masters and now working as a full stack developer. Couldn't be
| happier.
|
| Take a month off your job. Find out what you really like. You can
| read through all the replies let them brew, but the final answer
| will come from within. Trust your gut and take the risk.
|
| May the force be with you !!!
| laurent92 wrote:
| I abhorred being a developer because it's like being a factory
| worker. I then created my company, have 2-3 people under me,
| I'm 70% coding and customers are throwing money at us. I'm
| still a developer, but super happy through work. I believe the
| difference is leeway in how I can organize my schedule, and the
| 30% variety which allows me to speak to humans instead of
| computers.
|
| I was always denied promotions, I'm from the generation where
| cool workplaces promoted only women, so it was very unfair. I
| wanted to be on the path to become PO. And given how fast the
| startup I created reached $1m ARR, I confirm I'm satisfyingly
| able to PO and the lost promotions were just plain old gender
| preferences of workplaces.
|
| I now love my work. Speaking to humans (and not through chat)
| was my need, I've told it to every employer. So yes, find what
| you need and move heaven and earth until you get it, may the
| force be with you.
| rasikjain wrote:
| Hi Shuki, I am interested in talking to you. you profile does
| not have contact info. How can I reach you? My contact is in my
| profile.
| aprdm wrote:
| What growth is expected for someone who has being VP of
| Engineering? That's as close as high as you can go, no? Or was it
| a small company with just you and a few others?
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| it's a small company. We have 15 engineers working on few
| products
| cgh wrote:
| My advice is to join a large company (50,000+ employees) as
| they offer considerably more room for growth. Your career
| will go in unexpected directions thanks to all the options
| you'll have. And you'll make more money.
| opk wrote:
| Depends what you enjoy. If you want to be a manager then
| yes. But if you prefer to stay technical, a small company
| often has a much nicer atmosphere and less bureaucratic
| rubbish.
| [deleted]
| dism wrote:
| First of all - If you are happy - everyone around is happy or
| content at least ( except teenagers - you cannot do it right for
| them - so don't try )
|
| The thing with 'growth' is that tiny little man inside your head
| you were raised with - ignore him
|
| think like a cave man - if the mammal(current stuff) still exist
| until I longer/resign, I'll will stay
|
| If this mammal extinct(e.g. program language) - evolve
|
| You have everything - which makes really (life)happy
|
| Life is not your Job - Its your Life
|
| If a nice opportunity looks around, peek into it, maybe its worth
| a change
|
| choose wisely at this point
|
| If you are sad everyone else is sad, maybe you lose everything
| because of sadness
|
| To my person I work roughly 20 years in the industry - as a
| networking guy - raised & built networks you use
|
| I did the unwisely way
|
| Took a unwisely chosen because of indoctrinated emotions and lost
| everything
|
| If you stay in between - make a clear mind first
| tsjq wrote:
| You're severely underpaid. Yes, indeed pursue a master's degree.
| Definitely add an MBA also to your arsenal. Take risks.
| Diversify. Be ready to fail, to fall, and rise from ashes. Do you
| have second/ passive income to pay bills & rent irrespective of
| your paychecks ?
| onion2k wrote:
| _You 're severely underpaid._
|
| You can't judge everywhere against US developer wages. The
| poster doesn't say where they're posting from, so we can't
| really tell if 65k (presumably USD) is particularly good or bad
| for where they live. Here in the UK, 65k USD would be a fairly
| typical senior developer salary. Maybe even a little higher
| than average for people outside of London.
|
| If they could get a role employed by a US company rather than
| one that's outsourcing then it'd be fair to say they're
| underpaid, but there could be a whole lot of reasons why that
| might not be reasonable or even possible.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| He also said 65k AFTER taxes. So he likely makes 80-100k.
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| I work directly with a US company. 65k USD is a great salary
| if I compared it with local wages in non-tech fields but
| really an ok salary for my position. I have friends who got
| paid more
|
| Money is important, but it's not my only motivation
| throwawaynumber wrote:
| he's paid more than almost all tech workers and developers in
| the 1st world, who also typically have .... zero passive
| income.
|
| You live in an elite bubble full of rich Americans I suspect.
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I have a Mini-MBA from a popular business school. I feel that I
| have enough business skills from my mini-mba
|
| I don't have a passive income but working on it
| codegeek wrote:
| Just to clarify, OP said 65K after taxes. Depending on the
| country they live in, it could be an easy 25-40% tax. So pretax
| can get close to 100K.
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| around 15% where I live
| hoffspot wrote:
| Eh. For managing only 15 engineers in a non US market, 65k
| might be the going rate. If the OP is money driven, join a big
| firm with the resources to double their salary. Given the
| current talent market, they should be able to easily make that
| happen based on their ability to get the proper visa. Of course
| they may have to sacrifice a great degree of autonomy and job
| satisfaction to make that happen. Only they can decide if that
| tradeoff is worth it. Titles mean nothing, work experience and
| ability to contribute is everything. I'm a VP, have 20+ years
| of experience, and manage an engineering team of over 250
| people. Different animals certainly.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| 1) Examine what it is you are really missing: you say you love
| your work and the team and it brings you joy. That is not so
| common. So maybe it is more about a new project or some lateral
| things that could be accomplished within the existing setup?
|
| 2) Not sure there is a (good) relationship between fit and
| salary. Some high salaries have a reason and those reasons might
| not be so pretty.
|
| 3) Masters. My experience is that folks opting for a masters
| later in their career tend to often have one of two things in
| mind: (a) some move towards executive/different career path,
| which then tends to mean MBA with the respective networking; or
| (b) some change in the "underlying", i.e. trying to add more
| skills that are somewhat different to the existing
| sedeki wrote:
| Not contradicting what you wrote per se, but a master's degree
| in a European context usually does not mean an MBA. And also
| tends to be quite common to get a master's/MSc while you're at
| it.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Agreed. I meant it more in terms of what I see people do
| after the first 10 years working or so
| thejosh wrote:
| Country helps!
| muzani wrote:
| If you could be the best in the world at something, what would it
| be? Let's ignore market for now. There's a lot of well paid jobs,
| and it's easier when you're the best option for it.
|
| What do you love about your work now? 5 years as a VP of
| engineering is impressive for someone with a total of 10 years
| experience. Are you a great technical leader? Do you enjoy
| systems?
|
| Maybe list down the things that you're happy with doing, and
| things that you're able to do which others hate doing.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| You'll grow more as a producer[1] of know-how, rather than just a
| consumer of other's knowledge. People who _really_ know something
| can teach others through blogging, speaking. Or they can
| synthesize their knowledge into working projects that capture an
| aspect of the problem. The act of synthesizing and adding to a
| body of knowledge reinforces your own understanding, and forces
| you to stay up to date.
|
| Instead of asking "where do I go to grow", think "what can I
| contribute?" "what can I teach?"... If money is also a priority,
| then find the intersection of that and what pays well (which
| luckily isn't that hard as a dev).
|
| 1 - By "producer" I mean an evangelizer, synthesizer, teacher,
| not just an "inventor" of brand new ideas
| stonecharioteer wrote:
| Not OP but you bring up something interesting. I'm nearing 10
| years of exp and I am faced with a rather unique role. I can
| join Twilio as a Developer Evangelist.
|
| I'm a good developer, I enjoy coding but I also love teaching,
| blogging, and mentoring. This would be a dream role, but does
| it close off other opportunities to me? I am slightly
| disillusioned with enterprise software because of how chock-
| full of politics these places are. I'm too old for the early
| stage startup scene, so I'm wondering whether this would be a
| good opportunity.
|
| What do you see as the roadmap for someone who specializes in
| teaching software development, and being an advocate?
| mooreds wrote:
| I'm currently in developer relations. I haven't bounced back
| to being a developer, but I'm sure that developer jobs of the
| same type as I had before would be open to me. Sure, I'd need
| to do some off-hours studying to be up to speed on the latest
| tech, because it'd have been a few years since I was deep
| into it, but I'd have to do that anyway.
|
| I don't know how much coding Twilio developer evangelists do,
| but at my current position (admittedly a much smaller
| company) I can do a fair amount of coding if I choose to.
|
| The next step I might take after being an advocate (if you
| don't want to stay in that space and take on larger and
| larger projects, going from dev advocate -> senior dev
| advocate -> lead dev advocate -> staff dev advocate), would
| depend if you wanted to keep training.
|
| There's a large need for professional software trainers out
| there. I was involved in AWS training for a while and was
| able to get $1300/day. I know some folks getting $1500+/day.
|
| Another option would to be consult, either in devrel or in
| whatever Twilio is training you up on. Or write some books
| and see if you can make a living that way. Consulting + books
| + training is a great way to make a living being a teacher.
|
| And finally, I think if you are a developer, you can always
| fall back to that. It may be a salary or autonomy decrease,
| but the market for experienced devs is pretty tight right now
| and I don't see that changing for a few years. There's just
| so much appetite for software and the complements of software
| devs (CPU, memory, disk, network access) keep getting
| cheaper.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Twilio is fucking awesome (apologies for the language).
|
| Like genuinely a pleasure to work with compared to almost
| anything else I can think.
|
| Been a developer evangelist for them would be a cool role,
| delivering a good product to appreciative devs.
| haswell wrote:
| I started my career as a dev, and when given the opportunity
| I spent a few years in a Dev Evangelist/Advocate role. I
| loved it, and still remember it fondly - probably the most
| fun I've ever had at work.
|
| As for opportunities, for me, this became a direct stepping
| stone to a Product Management role. I also strongly believe I
| could have shifted back to a dev role if I wanted to. YMMV,
| and maybe the PM track isn't for you, but I think
| Evangelist/Advocate roles can be great "generalist" positions
| that set you up nicely for the next thing, whatever that is.
| cweill wrote:
| If you could take that job and leverage it to build your
| personal brand (blog, YouTube channel) I'd agree it's a dream
| job! The next best thing would be working in a research lab
| where you get to publish or speak under your own name.
| stonecharioteer wrote:
| I'm mainly concerned about bouncing back as a developer
| should this not pan out.
| luigibosco wrote:
| I am mainly concerned your letting past achievements
| limit future growth. One thing about technology, you
| leave and come back often times things get better.
| Besides you already got there once...
| tstrimple wrote:
| Being able to mentor and communicate effectively is a force
| multiplier for someone in software development. A senior dev
| who's capable of elevating those around them is tremendously
| valuable to most organizations. It absolutely should not
| close off any doors, and should open quite a few more.
|
| I took a similar path as a Microsoft Technical Evangelist and
| then Cloud Solution Architect. I moved from building products
| to helping other companies build on Azure effectively. This
| took many paths. Sometimes all the companies needed was some
| high level guidance. Sometimes this required rolling up my
| sleeves and diving into 3rd party code base to figure out
| where things are going wrong. Occasionally it involves
| surfacing bugs to the product team and working with them on
| the use case to get them resolved.
|
| Broadly I'd consider my role to be more aligned with
| architecture than software developer now, but that term can
| have a bad connotation especially in the enterprise space
| with many "astronaut" or "ivory tower" architects. I work
| with developers, product teams and engineering managers to
| help improve the overall software development processes. A
| lot of times this means being a developer advocate and
| helping push communication and ideas from the bottom up.
| Other times it means making sure some of the foundational
| software development practices are in place. Other times it
| means helping identify and close skill gaps on development
| teams. And then there are the times I've got to become an
| internal evangelist to sell the technology vision to
| leadership. The work is extremely diverse which is a huge
| plus for me. I still get to roll up my sleeves and work on
| interesting problems, but I'm never on the critical path for
| building yet another CRUD form.
| sbahr001 wrote:
| Here is my 2 cents: 1. It looks like you have been a successful
| software engineer and were able to move up.
|
| 2. From the sound of it you hit the mastery portion of S learning
| curve in terms of technical ability. So no matter how much you
| "educate" yourself you will never hit the level of growth you
| experienced when you were younger. So staying current is the best
| part you can do in this section as that is how the tech world
| works.
|
| 3. There is a new skill set that you might still be in the early
| stages of and that is as a VP of Engineering/Managing people are
| getting the best of your team and being able to challenge
| yourself is this department. Technically no two companies are the
| same so this is a place where you can constantly challenge
| yourself. So changing the place you work at can lead to a lot of
| growth here, or possibly acting as a consultant for companies
| that don't need a "VP of Engineering" quiet yet.
|
| 3b. If being in management doesn't really interest you and you
| want to be an engineer, then working in another industry might
| keep you excited, like becoming a game programmer/iOT programmer,
| AI, Architecture, etc.
|
| 4. Could be changing careers all together because you don't feel
| challenged enough, you can use your current job to help fund your
| family and the learning for that new career.
|
| 5. Terms of Salary is all subjective to where you work and what
| the place you work. I technically take a 50k+ pay cut because I
| work for a small company. The current job gives me a lot of
| flexibility, less stress than I have ever had to deal with
| before. That piece of mind and relaxation is more important to me
| given some medical issues I deal with from time to time. So yes
| you can be underpaid, but is the great team and the place you
| work at worth it?
|
| The end of the day these are my 2 cents on the matter, but what I
| will say at the end is to do what really makes you happy. Is it
| family, career, challenges, etc. Finding what truly makes you
| happy and doing that is the best career move you can make. I
| would say start with that :)
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| heh. i am only recently moving into such vp-of-engineering role
| after 30+ years of doing everything softwarish that is not
| managerial-or-political, by any level/title. All the possible
| technical stuff plus mentoring, teaching, philosophy,
| methodology, cultures, "health"...
|
| Why now? May be too late.. but managerial/political stuff has
| always kept me apart. esp. over-bureaucratizing the "process"
| towards people. The doubly-faced "you are not a cog but you are
| part of this machine"
|
| Where can you go if you are already there, succesfully? Probably
| sideways, and much deeper. Growth doesn't need to be up. (what is
| "up" anyway?). It can be as size or area or volume.. or number of
| alternative worldviews/mindsets..
|
| Ask yourself, what is carrer? "growth"? And, what is
| "interesting"? in your terms.. the answers might surprise you.
|
| Degrees do not matter, except @ some bureaucratic places aka
| government. But the ways of learning, which you can learn while
| doing it, do matter.. And it's same with teaching/mentoring -
| what you learn by doing it, noone can ever tell you. Mind you,
| half might be 'seems i dont know enough of this to explain it to
| others'
|
| have fun
| hackerstyle wrote:
| Master might keep you busy for 1-2 years
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| How do you feel about Master in AI?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| muzani wrote:
| Looking at current technical advances, it seems like taking a
| masters in electronics engineering if you want to build apps.
|
| Sure, it's well paid, it's great mental exercise, and good
| prestige. But it's fairly unlikely you'll be working in that
| field as opposed to just connecting to AI via an API. For
| personal development, yes. As a career move, probably not.
| okareaman wrote:
| I struggle with this too. The best I can come up with is find a
| problem that one person can solve that would do the world some
| good and solve it, with software if I have to.
| philote wrote:
| What type of growth are you looking for? You say you are happy
| with your work and team, but you're also here asking for
| something more. What do you feel is missing?
|
| Also, what hobbies do you have? Perhaps you need to find
| something fun to do when you're not working and not being a
| dad/husband.
|
| Or maybe you need to change employment to get out of your comfort
| zone a bit and see what else is out there. I've found it's easy
| to stagnate when staying with the same company too long, though
| there are of course exceptions.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Gonna say something that might trigger you.
|
| You'll never move ahead working for someone else. And I just
| don't mean money. I also mean satisfaction.
|
| You have to consider productizing what you do to curb your
| dissatisfaction.
|
| Yes, some people are fine working all their lives and enjoy where
| they are.
|
| But it sounds like you want to go further.
|
| Make a plan with your life that will buy you more freedom.
|
| Freedom and time is worth more than money. But it comes at a high
| cost with up front work.
|
| P.S. do the hard work now when the kids are little but spend
| quality time with them not quantity time. As your career grows
| you will have incredibly fulfilling times with them when they
| begin to understand the world. Because by then, you would have
| purchased more freedom.
| pnutjam wrote:
| There's always someone willing to throw out the "be your own
| boss".
|
| Don't.
|
| Manage your career, invest in yourself, save and invest where
| you can. Enjoy life.
| reidjs wrote:
| Agree! I tried being my own boss. Hated it. Maybe if I
| understand business better in the future I will try it again.
| But for now, I'm very happy being a worker bee trying to make
| my boss's vision a reality in exchange for fair pay.
| bumby wrote:
| > _You'll never move ahead working for someone else. And I just
| don't mean money._
|
| There's plenty of research that says the opposite: namely, that
| you'll make more and work less if you work for somebody else.
| The research I found that corroborates your claim doesn't
| control for the skill-level as the contradictory research does
| (i.e., it compares highly-educated, highly skilled
| entrepreneurs to workers across all skill levels).
|
| The most cited research shows that working for someone else
| will get you 35% more pay after a 10 year period.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| Nothing triggers me like someone starting a post with "Gonna
| say something that might trigger you."
| gmadsen wrote:
| really depends. I do applied research for AV. I have no desire
| to fill my time with the BS of funding and executive duties.
|
| I get paid very well to be technical, and thats how I prefer
| it.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Funding and executive duties are what would take away your
| freedom.
|
| There are literally a thousand other ways without going the
| VC route.
|
| The society is pretty dysfunctional that a talented person
| such as yourself think that's that's the only way out.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You mentioned productising what you do. I take that to mean
| consulting of the sort where you go in and charge $10k or
| whatever for an X. You do some work but there is no talk of
| either how many hours or who is physically doing the work.
| They are paying for a problem to be solved. I am attracted
| to this idea because to "build" your MVP you pretty much
| need just your expertise and a PowerPoint deck.
| varispeed wrote:
| You will never get wealthy through employment, because lazy
| governments use tax on salaries as a proxy to tax big
| corporations. So you work hard and get very little in exchange.
|
| Wealthy people live off passive income, dividends, capital gains
| and so on.
|
| So if you want to take a jump, you need to become an expert on
| stock trading and start investing.
|
| Then maybe after 10 or so years you could retire unless the
| government move goal posts again and tax the small guy more.
| debarshri wrote:
| Last year, I was in same situation as you. I don't have wife and
| kids per say. There are two things you could do - may be a tech
| co-founder in startup that would add jet fuel to your career. Jet
| fuel because either you will crash and burn or go to the next
| level. However I wouldn't recommend that to you as you have a
| family and it is difficult to do that with kids and wife.
|
| The other thing I would say is, save up some money and invest in
| thing other than tech. In my situation, I wanted to own a
| restaurant, so I build a cafe in the Rishikesh, India. That gave
| me a side mission in life, I became more content with my career
| situation and pushed me to be better and happier.
| cryptica wrote:
| If you want to succeed in this industry. You have to constantly
| lie, cheat and manipulate. All the people I know who got promoted
| with big salaries had this in common.
| jf22 wrote:
| I enjoy growing my non-technical skills and learning how to work
| with people. Code is easy compared to the politics of a
| bureaucracy.
| quadcore wrote:
| If you are happy, dont touch anything, would be my internet
| advice.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I recently finished the OMSCS program through Georgia Tech. When
| I started I had a 6 month old, and when I finished, I had 3 year
| old and 1.5 year olds (program took 2.5 years). I have a pretty
| low requirements job, so I was able to get away with doing a
| considerable amount of it doing work hours, but there was a lot
| of late nights and weekends too. So, it is possible, but whatever
| you do make sure your wife is onboard and set expectations.
|
| It has definitely helped me out getting job interviews. It seems
| like the only way to a considerably higher salary would be to
| either move to the US or work for a US company remotely. I am in
| the process of moving position for a 50% raise, so I would say it
| paid off for me. You have much more experience then I do, so if
| you are thinking about moving to the US maybe apply to a few
| jobs(even if you don't want them) and see what kind of offers you
| can get. If the offers are good enough you can make the move when
| you are ready, if they aren't what you are expecting maybe look
| into a masters.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > am I underpaid? I mean, will I be able to get a better salary
| if I find a better fit?
|
| Definitely. I'm not sure where you're from, but if you're working
| for a US firm they should be paying you US wages. I could
| understand if you were just contracting out piece work, but a VP
| engineering salary should be double that minimum. The employment
| market is really hot right now, so just spend some time seeing
| what's out there.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'm not sure where you're from, but if you're working for a
| US firm they should be paying you US wages.
|
| Some politicians abroad are bragging that their engineers are
| worth 50K less than the US in their sales pitch. [0]
|
| [0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-
| wor...
| opk wrote:
| > I'm not sure where you're from, but if you're working for a
| US firm they should be paying you US wages.
|
| What? The only thing that counts is where you live and pay
| taxes. If in Europe $65K/EUR54K after tax is really very
| decent.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Why? The company is US, they should pay you what they can
| bear to pay your peers in the US. SWEs are criminally
| underpaid in Europe. I should know, I am one. Most of my
| salary gets hoovered up before it reaches my pocket and the
| only "out" is paying a bucket load of my salary into a
| pension I can't enjoy until I'm almost dead.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You grow by knowing more without having to think first. That
| means that your first ideas are better ideas, and you arrive at
| solid solutions faster.
|
| This applies in the small (writing a few lines of code) and in
| the large (designing an architecture).
| ecmascript wrote:
| If you enjoy your work, do you really need to grow? You can
| always try to make things grow outside of work, like plants.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I haven't heard of someone being a VP of Engineering after just 5
| years of SE and 65k after taxes after 10 years sounds a little
| low.
|
| I think the main problem is that a few companies have very
| challenging technical work and are happy to pay really high
| salaries (think OpenAI specialists, a few teams at Google /
| Netflix pushing the boundaries forward), the rest need relatively
| trivial solutions and they will pay higher than average (think
| most people working at FANGs on stuff they're overqualified for)
| or average / lower than average (think most startups, small
| companies).
|
| After a while, you won't grow technically in most companies and
| you won't advance the state of technology.
|
| Some people just keep contributing the same stuff over and over
| until they die (1), some people specialise in some technically
| obscure niches and charge a premium for that (2), some people
| decide to become people managers (3) and eventually become CTO.
|
| It doesn't seem like you're happy with (1), you already did (3),
| I would say you have too much people experience to go back and do
| (2).
|
| A master's degree in something you like won't be particularly
| useful at your level, it could be an expensive gift to yourself.
|
| If I were you I would just start my own business: you are
| technical, you are a manager; the next skill to learn could be
| business.
|
| Other options include looking for a CTO role in an early stage
| startup, or doing the interview-algorithm-memorisation-game to
| join a FANG. Early stage startups and FANGs will likely not be
| very nice places to be in terms of politics though, so you may
| not be as happy as you're now.
|
| Best of luck
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a masters and I think it was a complete waste of time and
| money. It has not helped me at all at work nor with salary.
| theory_of_10_1 wrote:
| can you please provide more details? what did you study?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a masters in information science and work as a
| developer. The course work was not that different from my
| comp sci undergrad.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I've read that and MBA looks better than an MS. This is
| also interesting to me because I've been kicking around
| getting one or the other. MBA I guess is the route to go.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| deeply depends on what you want to do with it and the
| knowledge you might acquire.
|
| If you want to go towards the business and/or management
| side of things an MBA might make sense. But for a
| developer an MBA would be very strange on a CV.
| itsmefaz wrote:
| Your growth is attractive! For the first 5years, you worked as a
| Software Engineer. Assuming a good track record, you could have
| been a Senior or Staff engineer within that time frame. Then, how
| did you transition to VP within the next 5?
| digianarchist wrote:
| It's a 15 person company I'm surprised they have VP titles.
| liketochill wrote:
| They matter when the company gets bought and all of the
| sudden you are a VP at a public ally traded company worth
| billions
| exdsq wrote:
| A start-up I left a few years back had 4 employees - CEO,
| CTO, Principle Engineer, and me (bog-standard dev). People
| like fancy titles :)
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| Titles don't mean much without knowing the type of company that
| assigned them. Every second guy is a VP at a bank - it means
| merely something like 'senior SWE' in banking, often you
| wouldn't even have any reports. 5yoe is reasonable time to
| reach it. Another example - anyone can be a CEO of own company.
| But once you get acquihired by FAANG suddenly you're just a PM
| for your startup's team.
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| This. I currently work with a CTO whc has less experience
| than me, because he founded the company, he's CTO by default.
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