"Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, "fuck you, pay me" whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid)."
I'm one of those engineers that drank the kool-aid. Yeah, I could probably make more elsewhere. However, I'm at the stage of my career where I'm optimizing for experience, not for earnings. I'd rather trade salary for skills now, so that those skills can bring more salary later. That's capitalism.
Besides, I honestly don't see the point of going from $100K to $200K (made-up numbers, but presumably the ballpark we're talking about). I save half my take-home pay anyway; I can't really think of what else I'd like to buy with it. When I choose to optimize for earnings, I'd rather be in the tens of millions, i.e. found a company and grow it - which also happens to be quite satisfying, although lots of hard work. There's a material difference between "never has to work again" and "still a wage slave". There isn't one (to me) between "can afford a Beemer" and "can afford a Honda Civic."
I went from $100K to $200K and to $300K and then to $150K in a relatively short period of time. There's a HUGE difference in lifestyle even with a $100K difference. Obviously it didn't make me independently wealthy, but the difference was still night and day.
The $200K+ allowed me to invest in a house in NYC for my family. At $100K I couldn't afford one. Before the house purchase the $200K+ allowed me to vacation abroad 2-3 times a year. The experiences I gained doing that can not be measured in money.
But most importantly it allowed me to completely avoid worrying about money. I knew that whatever happened, I wouldn't be in a financial hole. That type of financial freedom is priceless.
Obviously if my life situation was different...if I was single or living in less expensive part of the country, I could probably achieve the same financial freedom at $100K.
It's good to hear that you were smart with your money but also did get a chance to enjoy it.
We have a neighbor who is a heart surgeon who recently went into bankruptcy. It's almost unbelievable that would be possible with someone making that kind of money, but it really is as simple as revenues minus expenditures.
Well, the very obvious difference between the made up $100k and $200k is that you can build a much bigger nest egg.
You're saying half your pay now, so lets say this would let you live off your savings for 2 years to try and make a start up. Well, if you keep the same lifestyle than $200k gives you nearly 3 times as long (you're saving half now, so the extra $100k would all be savings, aside from the extra taxes).
Well, the way it plays out in practice is that I have a certain finite number of job offers to choose between. Each of them will teach me something. Each of them will give me a chance to accomplish something. Each of them may be more or less enjoyable. And each of them will pay me something.
And I'm saying that since I'm relatively early in my career, it makes sense to optimize for the ones that teach me a lot and let me accomplish a lot, even if they don't pay as much. That doesn't mean ignore money. If I have an offer that will teach me more, pay me more, and let me accomplish more, it's a no-brainer to take it. But if I have one that'll teach me more and have me working on highly-visible projects, vs. another that pays more but has me writing CRUDscreens that nobody but a few Intranet departments will use, I'd rather take the one that teaches me more.
I understand our point - it's really a trade-off between things; and as well the situation is definitely more or less tough, depending on your area.
I totally agree with searching for jobs that actually teach you things does bring money on the long run.
Sidenote: I put an emphasis on 'actually' because it seems to me that it's difficult to know which job will teach you the most beforehands... It could be the CRUD one, if I use your example :)
For instance, in 2006, I had already been moving heavily from .Net to Ruby. Yet someone called me back with a .Net project in mind. I went there just by principle - and ended up doing data aggregation, continuous integration at a scale I had never done before! This has heavily influenced what I do today.
As well I was working as a consultant for a large bank, promoting application infrastructure (services, ioc etc), continuous integration, testing practices. Before that, I could possibly have told that bank was boring and I wouldn't learn anything - it was the other way round in the end.
Wait? What? Which engineers are getting paid $200K?
If that's the ballpark I must have been playing a different sport for the last 6 years.
Anyhow, I've also had a swig of the kool-aid over those years and is now the basis of my new-found freedom and upstart dreams... time will tell if that investment paid off however.
The engineers I know who are making $200k+ are either working at Goldman Sachs (and only GS for some reason) in New York. The others have left engineering to become IP lawyers, or to become financial analysts and leverage their understanding of the enterprise technology market at ... you guessed it, Goldman Sachs.
I'm one of those engineers that drank the kool-aid. Yeah, I could probably make more elsewhere. However, I'm at the stage of my career where I'm optimizing for experience, not for earnings. I'd rather trade salary for skills now, so that those skills can bring more salary later. That's capitalism.
Besides, I honestly don't see the point of going from $100K to $200K (made-up numbers, but presumably the ballpark we're talking about). I save half my take-home pay anyway; I can't really think of what else I'd like to buy with it. When I choose to optimize for earnings, I'd rather be in the tens of millions, i.e. found a company and grow it - which also happens to be quite satisfying, although lots of hard work. There's a material difference between "never has to work again" and "still a wage slave". There isn't one (to me) between "can afford a Beemer" and "can afford a Honda Civic."