How to avoid the software salary ceiling

Moneyquote: <i>&quot;Now I understand why older programmers complain about rampant ageism in Tech. Younger workers are cheaper, and programmer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, so most companies opt for the cheaper option.&quot;</i><p>Wow that is so spot on, as a &quot;generic&quot; programmer asking $150K versus a &quot;generic&quot; programmer asking $75K ? Easy choice, we&#x27;ll get two and double our productivity and halve the sick days! I noted that in the medical profession &quot;General Practitioners&quot; made the least, while specialists made the most. They were all doctors.<p>Specialist software categories:<p>Embedded Software - bringing up code without an OS, understanding hardware function and tools.<p>Graphics Programmer - these days understanding 3D programming with Shaders and other features common in todays GPUs<p>Kernel programmer - understanding the insides of the kernel and how to write code that works there.<p>Networking software - understanding all of the intricacies of how packets get from point A to point B, and what interferes with that and what facilitates that.<p>Security specialist - someone who understands what makes programs and systems break and can program fixes for them or ways to spot attempts at exploiting them.<p>Storage specialist - someone who understands file systems and disk drives and getting data to and from programs reliably.

Good strategy, bad choice of specialties.<p>There are lots of 3D graphics professionals working on video games, which is a notoriously over-worked, under-paid field. To hire 3D graphics professionals:<p>1. go to a video game hub, like Montreal<p>2. offer sane working hours<p>3. there is no step 3.<p>Notice the complete lack of any mention of salary.

&quot;Many people reach senior software engineer, and then they get stuck. They’ll still be a “senior” level developer 5 or 10 years later. For many, getting stuck is just fine. They like coding, and they don’t want to manage people, and the money is pretty good.&quot;<p>I have a problem with this part. Basically, being a developer and not making it to a managing position is &quot;getting stuck&quot;. I strongly disagree with that. Developers and managers have very different roles, a great developer will not necessarily be a great manager. It&#x27;s like expecting great athletes to become great coaches, and if they don&#x27;t they&#x27;re stuck?<p>Is becoming a manager really a promotion? I would argue that in such a hot market great developers should be making more money than their own manager.

I agree with the premise of this article (if you wanna get paid, specialise) as it strongly echoes my own, perhaps limited, experience.<p>I am a generalist. I like being able to solve problems across a wide spectrum of fields. Working at a startup for the last three years has given me plenty of time for that. The flipside is that I have not had much opportunity to specialise. I take pride in being comfortable diving into anything. However this has meant I don&#x27;t have DEEP knowledge of a specialist.<p>At a previous job, I was able to dig really deep on Solr and build some expertise. In the intervening years however most of that has become way outdated.<p>Also I&#x27;ve found (in an admittedly limited sample size of interviews) that jobs seeking &quot;full stack&quot; developers tend to really be seeking someone to fulfill a specialised role but ALSO be comfortable moving up and down the stack as the need arises.<p>So obviously in my next job I&#x27;ve been looking for more established organizations where my opportunity to specialise in something I enjoy is greater. I think I&#x27;ve found one and am quite excited about it.

Unfortunately, the author does not offer much to actually answer the question posed by the title.<p>He does complain about the whiteboarding during interviews, and would prefer to be taken at his word about his past experience. As an older engineer (much older than the author, I might add), I can understand the feeling; however, in my years of experience, I have seen too many people coast on their former laurels and contribute, basically, nothing to the day-to-day business of the company. They can talk a mean talk, but never deliver anything of value. They sure are quick to jump on a hot idea once it&#x27;s proven out and take credit, though!<p>So is whiteboarding the best way to higher people? I don&#x27;t know; but I think it is a good way to keep the slackers _out_.

In other words, your worth is equal to your replacement cost. Specialization helps because of demand&#x2F;supply dichotomy.<p>There is another option; grossly unpopular, but I have to lay it out: make a career in startups. You&#x27;ll eventually land with one or two that work out very well. That may not increase your yearly salary, but it increases your overall payout over a decade, because you&#x27;ll get a windfall or two.<p>How? As you keep working for startups, some will fail and some will succeed, in different ways. Eventually, you&#x27;ll learn how to recognize the more promising ones. Are there any guarantees? No. But there are no guarantees in any path.<p>(Link to my bit more detailed answer on Quora: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-can-I-increase-my-income-as-a-software-engineer-over-the-years" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-can-I-increase-my-income-as-a-softw...</a>)<p>[About me: Software Engineer by education and trade. Been in the valley for several years. Early employee at Box, left last year as their Director of Engineering. Now run <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;InterviewKickstart.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;InterviewKickstart.com</a>. We&#x27;ve trained a lot of people on how to prepare for technical interviews, the right way, the no-shortcuts way]

&quot;I worked at Google so treat me differently&quot; shows up several times in this article.

Or just be a CONSULTANT and raise your rates usng the wealth of information like patio11.<p>Seriously, FTE is considered &quot;the&quot; way to fo by far too many people. Is it really that hard to manage your own health insurance plan and deduct taxes?

I recently blogged about this similar topic (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobtipsforgeeks.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;moremoney&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobtipsforgeeks.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;moremoney&#x2F;</a>) and listed a handful of ways to avoid what I referred to as a salary plateau. The basic list was change jobs, get promoted, ask for a raise, brand additional benefits to your hire (network, visibility, etc.), consult&#x2F;contract, moonlight or add revenue streams, and specialize.<p>I haven&#x27;t read &quot;Career Superpowers, but it sounds like Whitaker did almost all of these things - moved between Google&#x2F;Apple, became a nationally recognized authority, specialized, added a revenue stream (book), and got promoted to VP.

The other thing that&#x27;s somewhat related to this is the old &quot;X years of experience means this range salary&quot;. Nothing like that cold, hard statement to remind you that the person across from you sees you as nothing but a cog or entry in a balance sheet. It immediately puts everything you&#x27;ve done, no matter how incredible&#x2F;complicated&#x2F;significant, down as if it&#x27;s irrelevant.

&quot;We can&#x27;t hire 3D graphics people&quot;<p>&quot;I&#x27;m teaching myself 3D graphics&quot;<p>There&#x27;s more than a hint here. It&#x27;s not hard to hire competent people and then give them space to grow. As engineers, that is what we want, to grow, challenge yourselves. And it is the only way that experience occurs. If you as a company are not willing to invest in that, don&#x27;t be surprised when people don&#x27;t walk in your door and agree to do exactly the same things they&#x27;ve done 5x already, with no opportunity for growth.<p>I&#x27;ll take a job that offers great opportunity and a mediocre salary any day. The vice versa not so much.

Key takeaway: You should become an expert in a deeply technical software specialty. Also, bounce back and forth between Google and Microsoft a few times.

I second this wholeheartedly. Unless you are specialized in some vertical with locally or nationally recognized skills, you are going to hit the ceiling. I&#x27;m not commanding 200-300K salary yet. But story is true for someone earning 150-160K. It seems like 150K is the beginning of the ceiling.<p>From a company&#x27;s point of view, it&#x27;s legit to not offer high salary for individuals with generic skills and experiences. They can always hire 2 at the cost 1 engineer. Then pay thru slower productivity, buggy software, inefficient architecture and so on.

I&#x27;m much less stressed about this after I realized it doesn&#x27;t take more than 10-15 years of saving to become financially independent. It&#x27;s seriously stressful to know you have to find a career that can sustain you until 65. Many people seem to have problems fairly early in their tech careers, with rampant ageism etc. So I plan on being FI by 45, preferably 40. So liberating to know my current job could be my last.

We should have a discussion about default SQL connectivity limits and the problems with using persistent connections.<p>There seems to be a ripe opportunity to make something similar to Amazon RDS, except with automatic scaling. The current version of RDS presents the user with different instance sizes and doesn&#x27;t automatically scale during high CPU loads.

What other specialisms aside from WebGL&#x2F;graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

Nice writeup. I think that the final message to be specialized is great, and I&#x27;d underline that this should come after you proved that you master the &quot;general knowledge&quot;.<p>This is clearly true for the author, he can specialize on 3d graphics after 3y web+mobile dev at Google and 3y in a startup, but the assumption that one could start specializing in 3d graphics from 0 imo is wrong.<p>All great painters were highly specialized, but all of them mastered the &quot;general skills&quot; in painting before taking their art to another level.

If financial side is so important, why not specialize in fintech &#x2F; quant software development?<p>No special education (except for the general interest in finance and some math — easier than in computer graphics) is needed, and salaries are quite attractive.<p>The downside is zero work-life balance and huge stress levels, but everything has its price.

&gt;&gt; Error establishing a database connection<p>Oh... irony?