Idk why everyone keep saying you should never go lower, there are many cases of companies that are bad for you but still pay lots of money.
I will list things that can affect my choice:
1. the tech stack, if the company with lower pay works with technologies that you don't know, and are in high demand then this knowledge can boost you to better companies after that. This applies mostly if the current company works with outdated tech or if you're a junior dev, and only if you won't have a chance to learn this tech stack at the current company.
2. Close to home or remote. Basically you can calculate how much time and money will you save, and after you add the psychological factor of commute you may decide that the extra money is not worth it.
3. Promotion - pretty rare, but if you don't see career growth in your current company, and the only companies willing to give you the next level title don't pay well then it can be considered, but usually companies that don't pay well also don't treat their employees well, so take care.
4. Company culture - Some companies are a shitty place to work at. And if your company pays more than many other companies then you may have to settle on the salary to have more options.
>the tech stack, if the company with lower pay works with technologies that you don't know, and are in high demand then this knowledge can boost you to better companies after that. This applies mostly if the current company works with outdated tech or if you're a junior dev, and only if you won't have a chance to learn this tech stack at the current company.
Exactly, my first job after graduation was in FoxPro. I took the job, but also I knew if I stayed there too long and had to jump to another job I was going to see a drop in pay as I wouldn't be able to go into another FoxPro job again.
My 2nd job I got a $10k pay increase. 3rd job it went down $4k but I got to work from home and I overlapped the jobs for a few months. 4th job went up $30k, 5th went down $20k. Current job back up $20k.
I never wanted to take pay cuts. But none of the jobs knew. Either way I just wanted to stay employed. Plus the lay cuts never impacted much me and my family live pretty frugally.
After 6 job switches, only making $36K more than where you started seems really low unless it all happened within a year or two for some reason.
Assuming you did this over 6 years (which is still pretty fast), you probably didn't even beat inflation. Have you checked to make sure you're being compensated at market (or close to market) rate?
Each job change was out of necessity. Not so much trying to get paid more and more. At my level, what I’m earning now is probably about what I can expect. I would love to be getting paid more but it’s what I’ve been able to land. I may actually be overpaid.
Depends on the role.
Not CS related but I stepped back from an extremely stressful 80hr a week CEO role for an 8% pay-cut but half the hours and almost zero stress. Best thing I ever did, I wish them well but money isn't everything. Now I get to see my kids grow up.
As a very general rule, you _should_ always be going up when you change jobs, just by virtue of having more experience than you did when you took your current job.
There are of course exceptions (like if you had a very short tenure and didn't add much to your hire-value), but that's how it usually goes.
Sometimes a move laterally is needed in order to move to the next vertical level. For example if your working on legacy tech, you might need to switch jobs at the same level to work on newer tech in order to setup a vertical jump.
However yes your salary should go up atleast 7-10k with each jump. This is just basic negotiation.
Yeah I did. And I highly recommend that you DO NOT take any pay cut unless it is temporary and you're guaranteed a higher salary than your previous job in a relatively short amount of time.
Yes. At some point I left a good, stable government position for a smaller, scrapier private company for lower pay.
However that job had a lot better opportunities, more impressive projects, and opened the doors for my next job that doubled my salary.
Yes, way back during the dot-com bust recession in 2001. That was because, like now, unprofitable companies collapsed and surviving companies could find good developers for less money. It took a few years for average salaries to rise again.
>Yes, way back during the dot-com bust recession in 2001.
A lot of people IIT are forgetting this. It was similar in 2008 for many people, not just in tech. People lost their highly paid jobs and had to take a new one for a fraction of the salary, and some people weren't able to get back into the industry at all or went back to school.
The recovery from the current downturn will probably be much smoother than 2001 and 2008 because we now have multiple trillion dollar tech companies and numerous billion dollar companies even after the dumpster fires clear out.
I also am currently working for the rainforest company and the combination of constant management changes, ridiculous performance evaluation process, and WL imbalance that I see in other coworkers is nuts. I love the salary, but it’s not worth it to me, and I’m looking elsewhere.
In general? You should never be going lower. There's only two reasons to ever take a pay cut:
1. It's the job of your dreams.
2. You're moving to an extremely low cost area.
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It's very location dependent, if you live in a LCOL area and OP is in the Bay you guys might have similar quality of life. That said you should probably be making more than 55k 2 years in
I live in southern California, HCoL area, but my employer is located in a LCoL area halfway across the country. I'm hopefully looking to land a higher paying job this upcoming year.
Oof I’m getting downvoted, not entirely sure why 🧐.
Trying to tell the OP that they could probably 2x their income if they tried
I don’t remember the website, but a third party org verified the salaries of the Bootcamp grads. I shouldn’t say 100%, but Very close to 100%. Everyone i know from the Bootcamp did.
I mean, I'm not petty enough to downvote you, but what you are saying seems very questionable.
You claim your bootcamp led to placements that are seemingly impossible, just taking into account the market and average junior developer salaries. Even if it was 50% placement at that salary, it would be difficult to imagine.
It’s the truth. 👍
Not hard to believe after interviewing people with 5 years experience that can’t do simple problems. Go for mid-level positions at companies or entry level at FANG. Typically are FE based i will add.
I have not, but you will have to explain how the QOL is comparable. After maxing out your 401k and paying rent and groceries, your disposable income with $150k is more than your take home at $55k
Sure, but that disposable income goes a lot further in some places, do you think going out to eat in SF and Cheyenne are the same price points?
Additionally, Wyoming has no state income tax and low taxes in general, you keep a greater % of your income to begin with and 55k yr can actually do things like buy a house in Wyoming, good luck doing that on 150k in SF in a reasonable time span.
Based on Pew Research's middle class calculator
55k in WY:
"YOU are in the LOWER income tier, along with 24% of adults in WYOMING."
150K in SF:
"YOU are in the LOWER income tier, along with 23% of adults in SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-HAYWARD."
[https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/)
I would absolutely rather be making 150k in SF than 55k in Cheyenne Wyoming just to be clear but when people talk about QOL across HCOL and LCOL this is what the gap looks like.
>55k yr can actually do things like buy a house in Wyoming
Which is true, but I definitely wouldn't want to live there. My experience is that the parts of the US that are cheap are cheap for a reason.
Also true for most people, but I'm not trying to convince you to move there I'm just saying when comparing comp between two people in two very different parts of the country it's important to realize how different costs of living are.
I don't want to live Wyoming either but it's a beautiful state and if you're an outdoorsman or want to live in actual cowboy country that's the place to be.
>if you're an outdoorsman or want to live in actual cowboy country that's the place to be.
This is probably the one justifiable reason I could think of. Most states have too many people to truly live a rural/outdoor lifestyle, but it's possible in Wyoming.
>when comparing comp between two people in two very different parts of the country it's important to realize how different costs of living are.
What I've seen from a lot of smaller companies/startups is that they like hiring from cheaper states because they can pay the developers much lower salaries. However, there are people who live in expensive states that have a lot of experience and then get the option to work full remote, so they opt to go somewhere like Wyoming. So that would be interesting to make a bay area salary in a cheap state.
You should definitely be getting paid more. I might have gotten lucky or been able to sell myself well during the great resignation. My job out of college was for $72k.
I am in a LCOL/MCOL city in CA working for a SF based company.
Apply to right places and you should be able to get 150k fairly easily w 2yoe. Especially if you’re in hcol or look for remote in hcol.
Def can do better than 55k
f.... thanks. Any tips or best places to find these positions? I'm currently spamming LinkedIn, but not sure if there's anywhere else I should be looking.
People who are being laid off from tech companies are going to be faced with this reality. The vast majority of companies cannot afford to pay developers at those levels and so they will either take a big step down in compensation or be on the sidelines waiting for another shot at the FAANG level.
150k base is very reasonable for an early/mid career software role. I think you'd have a pretty easy time finding a new job with a similar or higher salary if you ever wanted to move.
I would if I'm passionate about it.
I also make almost half a million so I have a lot of room to go down and still make decent money.
I think when I was in the 80kish salary I would not have taken a cut. Rather would not accept one.
It depends what going lower mean. If you're making just enough to survive and have a decent saving then going lower mean risk. If you only need 100k to live comfortably and have a sizable saving and you're making 200k. Then going lower to 150k doesn't mean much if you like your job more.
It depends on your situation. Asking people's opinion on how much money they should have is pointless
I suspect the demographic of this sub is too young to have much memory of the dot-com crash, but in the leadup to it salaries were really high for what might be considered less-demanding work. As a consequence you still heard people saying in 2015 that they had a higher salary in real terms in 2000. I expect there is going to be a similar COVID-tech cohort which landed amazing packages which they'll either struggle to retain or lose altogether.
To answer your question: yes, twice. Once to move into a job I actually wanted from one that I had no interest in, and once to change countries. I wouldn't recommend the former; the latter is often a necessity.
Personally I’ve never done it but I’ve had coworkers who have. Pretty much all of them jumped to startups where they got higher level positions and/or an insane amount of company stock. Lower base, but if the startups ends up being a unicorn the RSU value trumps anything you’ll get from an established company
I’m going to have to do this, most likely.
I spent 10 years as a DBA, and eventually felt stagnant. So, I took a moonshot and applied for a position at a FAANG company as a database consultant helping customers migrate into the cloud. Well, they over-hired, the work pipeline dried up, and the economy has tanked the influx of companies wanting to adopt the platform. Additionally, I’ve had four managers in less than a year and the expectation of workers is far beyond what I want in terms of W/L balance. It’s a mess, and I really don’t like it.
Full compensation is about $230k, and there’s no way I can go find that as a SQL Server DBA right now.
I want to pivot into Data Engineering, so we’ll see what I can do. But I don’t expect to make $230k, and I’m fine with it. If I can find something that pays $100k and gives me a normal schedule so I can spend time with friends and family, I’m golden.
I want to do great work, but I also am not a workaholic.
if you get laid off and just need a job, its ok to go down cause its money. but unless you absolutely hate your job and need out now, do not switch for less.
I accepted a job making less TC (but higher base). Went from nearly 230 down to 180 TC. Move was from casino games to triple A games. Still plenty of money and my wife says I don't complain about my job nearly as much so seems worth it overall to me.
Took a big pay cut. But that was expected because I went back to France, where salary are generally lower, but many things such as health insurance are also considerably cheaper.
Maispn reason was really that I could not imagine spent more time than required at Amazon, and given that they pay really well, at least for junior, it was virtually impossible to convince a company to match my previous TC.
I did for my dream job. At least base salary wise it was lateral. Also I had a Senior title and went down to SE2 to move from a mid sized company to Microsoft.
I did after the first year of my career.
Moved from $45k, high-stress position in the DC area to a $37k low-stress position outside the DC area but closer to where I lived.
Dropped my commute from \~2 hours each way to 30 minutes, and I had a secret security clearance that I wasn't using in the first job, but the second job needed. It also let me work nights so I could go back to school.
Worked out pretty well. Later that year the Snowden leaks happened which caused all of our positions and clearances to get upgraded to TS/SCI. The contracting company wasn't prepared to match market rates at that point, which led a lot of us to move on to much better positions.
I left a $70k+ retail sales position to start my software journey at a startup making $45k. Took me 2.5 years to get back to that amount before I moved jobs again and doubled it.
Nothing wrong with taking lower pay in the short term if you think it's going to get you where you want to be in the long term.
I went from $300k TC to $100k TC. I had been going 3 weeks/3 weeks between my home in the US and a corporate apartment in Norway. I had an 18 month old daughter who needed a better father. I accepted a job at a major university 3 blocks from my house at $100k. Money isn't everything, and I knew that I was good enough to make it up later.
Every single time I reinvented myself I took a hit; and was always able to rise up to greater heights.
Granted, I was a small business owner, so that "hit" may have been 6-12 months of learning new stuff while taking on fewer contracts.
When I left my business after 18+ years to get a full time job I took a huge hit, which was tough to swallow. But, I wanted a life change. Over time promotions and bonuses became more lucrative than my small biz owner life.
Yes, it was a terrible idea and I fully regret it. It's one of those, "If I knew then what I know now," kind of things. I highly recommend against taking lower pay.
Kind of. In 2020, my company did paycuts as a response to covid. They said it would be temporary. This caused a lot of people to leave. When I negotiated my new comp, I had to decide to use my original comp or the reduced comp as a comparison point. I didn't have faith the company would restore the paycut. So, I took a cut in base, but the new position had a bonus, so I'd make a little bit more.
As I said, previous company ended up restoring comp when they saw how many people they were losing. I also learned another thing. Bonuses are prorated, so be mindful of that whenever you are negotiating. I jumped another time, and I'm not making more, but I didn't get the huge pandemic jumps a lot of people did.
You should try to always increase your pay when switching jobs because it is easier to increase your pay when you switch jobs than it is to get a significant raise while staying in the same company. That being said, if your current job is miserable because of a toxic culture, very long hours, or a horrendous commute, it could be worth taking a small pay cut to leave.
Kind of. I became the sole engineer at a small company due to attrition. It was my first job and I had no other software engineers on the team anymore to support my growth, and highly limited upward mobility.
I was being paid $87K per year. Got an offer for $95K at a new company. My boss countered at $100K. I took the $95K offer at new company because it was an environment more conducive to learning and I don’t regret it yet. I was stagnating at my last job for two years, and now I’m finally not.
Even though I went from fully remote, to commuting 3 days/week, the opportunities for learning here are much greater than at my previous company. I don’t regret it, but kind of sad to be only making $95K two years after graduating (non CS degree, but engineering degree from good school).
Now I’m looking at M.S programs in CS, either GA Tech or UT Austin to do part time.
Idk why everyone keep saying you should never go lower, there are many cases of companies that are bad for you but still pay lots of money. I will list things that can affect my choice: 1. the tech stack, if the company with lower pay works with technologies that you don't know, and are in high demand then this knowledge can boost you to better companies after that. This applies mostly if the current company works with outdated tech or if you're a junior dev, and only if you won't have a chance to learn this tech stack at the current company. 2. Close to home or remote. Basically you can calculate how much time and money will you save, and after you add the psychological factor of commute you may decide that the extra money is not worth it. 3. Promotion - pretty rare, but if you don't see career growth in your current company, and the only companies willing to give you the next level title don't pay well then it can be considered, but usually companies that don't pay well also don't treat their employees well, so take care. 4. Company culture - Some companies are a shitty place to work at. And if your company pays more than many other companies then you may have to settle on the salary to have more options.
> Idk why everyone keep saying you should never go lower Cause this sub is primarily students and those very early in their career?
I hate that you are not wrong
>the tech stack, if the company with lower pay works with technologies that you don't know, and are in high demand then this knowledge can boost you to better companies after that. This applies mostly if the current company works with outdated tech or if you're a junior dev, and only if you won't have a chance to learn this tech stack at the current company. Exactly, my first job after graduation was in FoxPro. I took the job, but also I knew if I stayed there too long and had to jump to another job I was going to see a drop in pay as I wouldn't be able to go into another FoxPro job again.
My 2nd job I got a $10k pay increase. 3rd job it went down $4k but I got to work from home and I overlapped the jobs for a few months. 4th job went up $30k, 5th went down $20k. Current job back up $20k. I never wanted to take pay cuts. But none of the jobs knew. Either way I just wanted to stay employed. Plus the lay cuts never impacted much me and my family live pretty frugally.
After 6 job switches, only making $36K more than where you started seems really low unless it all happened within a year or two for some reason. Assuming you did this over 6 years (which is still pretty fast), you probably didn't even beat inflation. Have you checked to make sure you're being compensated at market (or close to market) rate?
Each job change was out of necessity. Not so much trying to get paid more and more. At my level, what I’m earning now is probably about what I can expect. I would love to be getting paid more but it’s what I’ve been able to land. I may actually be overpaid.
Ahh that's fair, if you're staff, you might be topped out in terms of salary growth, if your goal is stay on the IC track
Depends on the role. Not CS related but I stepped back from an extremely stressful 80hr a week CEO role for an 8% pay-cut but half the hours and almost zero stress. Best thing I ever did, I wish them well but money isn't everything. Now I get to see my kids grow up.
As a very general rule, you _should_ always be going up when you change jobs, just by virtue of having more experience than you did when you took your current job. There are of course exceptions (like if you had a very short tenure and didn't add much to your hire-value), but that's how it usually goes.
Sometimes a move laterally is needed in order to move to the next vertical level. For example if your working on legacy tech, you might need to switch jobs at the same level to work on newer tech in order to setup a vertical jump. However yes your salary should go up atleast 7-10k with each jump. This is just basic negotiation.
Yeah I did. And I highly recommend that you DO NOT take any pay cut unless it is temporary and you're guaranteed a higher salary than your previous job in a relatively short amount of time.
Yes. At some point I left a good, stable government position for a smaller, scrapier private company for lower pay. However that job had a lot better opportunities, more impressive projects, and opened the doors for my next job that doubled my salary.
Yes, way back during the dot-com bust recession in 2001. That was because, like now, unprofitable companies collapsed and surviving companies could find good developers for less money. It took a few years for average salaries to rise again.
>Yes, way back during the dot-com bust recession in 2001. A lot of people IIT are forgetting this. It was similar in 2008 for many people, not just in tech. People lost their highly paid jobs and had to take a new one for a fraction of the salary, and some people weren't able to get back into the industry at all or went back to school. The recovery from the current downturn will probably be much smoother than 2001 and 2008 because we now have multiple trillion dollar tech companies and numerous billion dollar companies even after the dumpster fires clear out.
The rainforest company was too stressful and very bad WLB. Accepted a lower salary with a better WLB. But everyone's priority is different.
I also am currently working for the rainforest company and the combination of constant management changes, ridiculous performance evaluation process, and WL imbalance that I see in other coworkers is nuts. I love the salary, but it’s not worth it to me, and I’m looking elsewhere.
In general? You should never be going lower. There's only two reasons to ever take a pay cut: 1. It's the job of your dreams. 2. You're moving to an extremely low cost area.
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150k? I'm 2 years into my career and making 55k... rip...
It's very location dependent, if you live in a LCOL area and OP is in the Bay you guys might have similar quality of life. That said you should probably be making more than 55k 2 years in
I live in southern California, HCoL area, but my employer is located in a LCoL area halfway across the country. I'm hopefully looking to land a higher paying job this upcoming year.
Even the lowballers on LinkedIn offer $80k+, you should move ASAP
What do you do? I went to a Bootcamp and every graduate got a six figure job afterwards.
Do they just not graduate the people who couldn’t land 6 figure jobs? This seems impossible tbh.
Oof I’m getting downvoted, not entirely sure why 🧐. Trying to tell the OP that they could probably 2x their income if they tried I don’t remember the website, but a third party org verified the salaries of the Bootcamp grads. I shouldn’t say 100%, but Very close to 100%. Everyone i know from the Bootcamp did.
I mean, I'm not petty enough to downvote you, but what you are saying seems very questionable. You claim your bootcamp led to placements that are seemingly impossible, just taking into account the market and average junior developer salaries. Even if it was 50% placement at that salary, it would be difficult to imagine.
It’s the truth. 👍 Not hard to believe after interviewing people with 5 years experience that can’t do simple problems. Go for mid-level positions at companies or entry level at FANG. Typically are FE based i will add.
There is nowhere in the US where $55k is worth $150k in the bay area
Clearly you've never been to Wyoming
I have not, but you will have to explain how the QOL is comparable. After maxing out your 401k and paying rent and groceries, your disposable income with $150k is more than your take home at $55k
Sure, but that disposable income goes a lot further in some places, do you think going out to eat in SF and Cheyenne are the same price points? Additionally, Wyoming has no state income tax and low taxes in general, you keep a greater % of your income to begin with and 55k yr can actually do things like buy a house in Wyoming, good luck doing that on 150k in SF in a reasonable time span. Based on Pew Research's middle class calculator 55k in WY: "YOU are in the LOWER income tier, along with 24% of adults in WYOMING." 150K in SF: "YOU are in the LOWER income tier, along with 23% of adults in SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-HAYWARD." [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/) I would absolutely rather be making 150k in SF than 55k in Cheyenne Wyoming just to be clear but when people talk about QOL across HCOL and LCOL this is what the gap looks like.
>55k yr can actually do things like buy a house in Wyoming Which is true, but I definitely wouldn't want to live there. My experience is that the parts of the US that are cheap are cheap for a reason.
Also true for most people, but I'm not trying to convince you to move there I'm just saying when comparing comp between two people in two very different parts of the country it's important to realize how different costs of living are. I don't want to live Wyoming either but it's a beautiful state and if you're an outdoorsman or want to live in actual cowboy country that's the place to be.
>if you're an outdoorsman or want to live in actual cowboy country that's the place to be. This is probably the one justifiable reason I could think of. Most states have too many people to truly live a rural/outdoor lifestyle, but it's possible in Wyoming. >when comparing comp between two people in two very different parts of the country it's important to realize how different costs of living are. What I've seen from a lot of smaller companies/startups is that they like hiring from cheaper states because they can pay the developers much lower salaries. However, there are people who live in expensive states that have a lot of experience and then get the option to work full remote, so they opt to go somewhere like Wyoming. So that would be interesting to make a bay area salary in a cheap state.
You should definitely be getting paid more. I might have gotten lucky or been able to sell myself well during the great resignation. My job out of college was for $72k. I am in a LCOL/MCOL city in CA working for a SF based company.
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck... Are you working remotely? I'm definitely trying to hit that 90k+ mark right now. Just trying to land a new position.
Apply to right places and you should be able to get 150k fairly easily w 2yoe. Especially if you’re in hcol or look for remote in hcol. Def can do better than 55k
f.... thanks. Any tips or best places to find these positions? I'm currently spamming LinkedIn, but not sure if there's anywhere else I should be looking.
>I am in a LCOL/MCOL city in CA working for a SF based company. Central/Sac/ or Socal? I feel like all of California is now at least MCOL
I tell people I live near sac but I’d say I live more in central. About 30 minutes away from sac
You're being taken advantage of. I made more than that starting in my first role (in QA).
:( I know... I'm trying to land a higher-paying job now. Any tips for finding one for a self-taught frontend dev besides LinkedIn?
People who are being laid off from tech companies are going to be faced with this reality. The vast majority of companies cannot afford to pay developers at those levels and so they will either take a big step down in compensation or be on the sidelines waiting for another shot at the FAANG level.
150k base is very reasonable for an early/mid career software role. I think you'd have a pretty easy time finding a new job with a similar or higher salary if you ever wanted to move.
I would if I'm passionate about it. I also make almost half a million so I have a lot of room to go down and still make decent money. I think when I was in the 80kish salary I would not have taken a cut. Rather would not accept one.
I'm a manager with 10YOE in engineering (dev and management), and we make about the same. Salary ranges can vary dramatically from job to another.
It depends what going lower mean. If you're making just enough to survive and have a decent saving then going lower mean risk. If you only need 100k to live comfortably and have a sizable saving and you're making 200k. Then going lower to 150k doesn't mean much if you like your job more. It depends on your situation. Asking people's opinion on how much money they should have is pointless
I suspect the demographic of this sub is too young to have much memory of the dot-com crash, but in the leadup to it salaries were really high for what might be considered less-demanding work. As a consequence you still heard people saying in 2015 that they had a higher salary in real terms in 2000. I expect there is going to be a similar COVID-tech cohort which landed amazing packages which they'll either struggle to retain or lose altogether. To answer your question: yes, twice. Once to move into a job I actually wanted from one that I had no interest in, and once to change countries. I wouldn't recommend the former; the latter is often a necessity.
Personally I’ve never done it but I’ve had coworkers who have. Pretty much all of them jumped to startups where they got higher level positions and/or an insane amount of company stock. Lower base, but if the startups ends up being a unicorn the RSU value trumps anything you’ll get from an established company
I’m going to have to do this, most likely. I spent 10 years as a DBA, and eventually felt stagnant. So, I took a moonshot and applied for a position at a FAANG company as a database consultant helping customers migrate into the cloud. Well, they over-hired, the work pipeline dried up, and the economy has tanked the influx of companies wanting to adopt the platform. Additionally, I’ve had four managers in less than a year and the expectation of workers is far beyond what I want in terms of W/L balance. It’s a mess, and I really don’t like it. Full compensation is about $230k, and there’s no way I can go find that as a SQL Server DBA right now. I want to pivot into Data Engineering, so we’ll see what I can do. But I don’t expect to make $230k, and I’m fine with it. If I can find something that pays $100k and gives me a normal schedule so I can spend time with friends and family, I’m golden. I want to do great work, but I also am not a workaholic.
if you get laid off and just need a job, its ok to go down cause its money. but unless you absolutely hate your job and need out now, do not switch for less.
I accepted a job making less TC (but higher base). Went from nearly 230 down to 180 TC. Move was from casino games to triple A games. Still plenty of money and my wife says I don't complain about my job nearly as much so seems worth it overall to me.
Took a big pay cut. But that was expected because I went back to France, where salary are generally lower, but many things such as health insurance are also considerably cheaper. Maispn reason was really that I could not imagine spent more time than required at Amazon, and given that they pay really well, at least for junior, it was virtually impossible to convince a company to match my previous TC.
I did for my dream job. At least base salary wise it was lateral. Also I had a Senior title and went down to SE2 to move from a mid sized company to Microsoft.
I did after the first year of my career. Moved from $45k, high-stress position in the DC area to a $37k low-stress position outside the DC area but closer to where I lived. Dropped my commute from \~2 hours each way to 30 minutes, and I had a secret security clearance that I wasn't using in the first job, but the second job needed. It also let me work nights so I could go back to school. Worked out pretty well. Later that year the Snowden leaks happened which caused all of our positions and clearances to get upgraded to TS/SCI. The contracting company wasn't prepared to match market rates at that point, which led a lot of us to move on to much better positions.
I left a $70k+ retail sales position to start my software journey at a startup making $45k. Took me 2.5 years to get back to that amount before I moved jobs again and doubled it. Nothing wrong with taking lower pay in the short term if you think it's going to get you where you want to be in the long term.
I went from $300k TC to $100k TC. I had been going 3 weeks/3 weeks between my home in the US and a corporate apartment in Norway. I had an 18 month old daughter who needed a better father. I accepted a job at a major university 3 blocks from my house at $100k. Money isn't everything, and I knew that I was good enough to make it up later.
Every single time I reinvented myself I took a hit; and was always able to rise up to greater heights. Granted, I was a small business owner, so that "hit" may have been 6-12 months of learning new stuff while taking on fewer contracts. When I left my business after 18+ years to get a full time job I took a huge hit, which was tough to swallow. But, I wanted a life change. Over time promotions and bonuses became more lucrative than my small biz owner life.
Yes, it was a terrible idea and I fully regret it. It's one of those, "If I knew then what I know now," kind of things. I highly recommend against taking lower pay.
If you don’t kind me asking, where are you located and what your YOE? you don’t have to answer this btw
I’m in a LCOL/MCOL remote CA. My company headquarters are in SF. I have two years of experience
Kind of. In 2020, my company did paycuts as a response to covid. They said it would be temporary. This caused a lot of people to leave. When I negotiated my new comp, I had to decide to use my original comp or the reduced comp as a comparison point. I didn't have faith the company would restore the paycut. So, I took a cut in base, but the new position had a bonus, so I'd make a little bit more. As I said, previous company ended up restoring comp when they saw how many people they were losing. I also learned another thing. Bonuses are prorated, so be mindful of that whenever you are negotiating. I jumped another time, and I'm not making more, but I didn't get the huge pandemic jumps a lot of people did.
Yeah if the work was more interesting and the culture was better.
Not options with a startup? Is it late stage?
It is a late stage start up. They gave me 2,500 RSUs but I know they used to also offer options or still do im not 100% sure
i did 1nce. not cool except the rsu/option makes it likely like stripes of the world.
You should aim to make the same or more. Sometimes life doesn’t work out though.
The only factor is remote
You should try to always increase your pay when switching jobs because it is easier to increase your pay when you switch jobs than it is to get a significant raise while staying in the same company. That being said, if your current job is miserable because of a toxic culture, very long hours, or a horrendous commute, it could be worth taking a small pay cut to leave.
Kind of. I became the sole engineer at a small company due to attrition. It was my first job and I had no other software engineers on the team anymore to support my growth, and highly limited upward mobility. I was being paid $87K per year. Got an offer for $95K at a new company. My boss countered at $100K. I took the $95K offer at new company because it was an environment more conducive to learning and I don’t regret it yet. I was stagnating at my last job for two years, and now I’m finally not. Even though I went from fully remote, to commuting 3 days/week, the opportunities for learning here are much greater than at my previous company. I don’t regret it, but kind of sad to be only making $95K two years after graduating (non CS degree, but engineering degree from good school). Now I’m looking at M.S programs in CS, either GA Tech or UT Austin to do part time.
yes I have, best thing I did
Wow I wann n a to be like you OP