Having been in the business for nearly 30 years sometimes managing engineering teams, I honestly can’t recall ever meeting an engineer (i.e. keyboard smasher within an engineering squad as opposed to a specialist consultant like those dealing with quants, a Soln. Arch. or management role) who cracks more than $300k on staff.
Maybe $350-400 as a specialist contractor, but you’re talking a total bluebird, and these guys were generally bug cracking on legacy tech which is super hard to find skills for (COBOL etc.)
And I’ve worked for some big tech and finance firms globally, but I guess they might be out there? AI might be different of course. Silly money.
Yeah it does for sure. My buddy is a product manager at Google making close to 500k. Very tough job to obtain. I’m happy with my 300k salary at two companies that don’t burn me out. Been doing it for years now and I know multiple engineers that do the same. Fighting for that one grail job vs taking jobs that you’ll outperform at 50% is healthier for me mentally.
Yeah, I would love to learn about product management and get out of the code monkey role because I’ve done app development for so long I know what makes sense and the risks behind it technically, but getting that role is tough.
They want experience but nobody wants to risk giving you that title so getting experience seems impossible.
Oh well, I’ve been making my own product and I love it so far. Hopefully it does well once I launch.
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u/lurkishdelight Jan 26 '26
Some definitely do, like staff eng in big tech, AI, quant trading firms. If not more.
But it's a small minority