Programming

was making 125k. Got laid off. Interviewed at another company and asked for 200k. Ended up with 185k. Got laid off again and still haven't been able to find a job. Ups and downs :/

I played a negotiation game of spending two weeks of research to explain to my company that I should be paid $165k, based on roles similar to me.

They said, "Well those are in expensive cities." And I said, "They're all remote jobs. And they're all hiring."

They came to the table with 155k, which was 30k more than a month prior. The scary part was a few months later, fucking Musk fired a bunch of Twitter people, and triggered the layoffs. So now I can't do that negotiation again.

You just learned a valuable lesson. Always add like at least 25% to what you think you can get. Unless you are very aware of what the salary range should be. They'll almost always make a counter offer if you've gone over. It's hard to walk it back if you lowball yourself though.

When someone asks what you were paid or what your salary expectations are, ask them what the budget is for the role. They have one. They will not want to tell you, and you shouldn’t tell them your expectations

140-150 is pretty average for a senior DevOps/AWS person. Coding and terrorism/AWS will pay more then networking in general.

It’s only a sample of one but I almost doubled my salary by switching jobs. I was bullied and harassed in a shitty startup for more than 3 years. I got fat, almost had a depression and I was not doing anything interesting. Even my skills were decreasing.

A bunch of managers asked me once to do something illegal. HR was also telling me to do this because "it’s an order from the bosses." That was the last straw and I told them to fuck off, and I resigned.

I was underpaid at this shitty company, but I accidentally found another job at a good company with nice people. My salary almost doubled overnight. I don’t want that much money but it was nice "fuck you" to my previous manager that I deeply thanked for being such an asshole.

99% of the time, the only way people get a raise around these parts is by switching jobs. There's never budget until you resign.

I haven't seen any huge increase 'cos I don't have access to manager's records.

Two years ago our software lead left. Me with 3 years experience was the most knowledgeable person on the team. He left because we had gotten acquired. 3 months later they gave me a raise from 92 to 103k, which I showed annoyance with. 6 months later the new company decided to throw money at the people they couldn't afford to lose so I went to 128k. 6 months later I went to 143k

This is on a small team at a government contractor

TLDR: 51K (56%) in 1 year without switching companies

I worked on a team where everyone but one employee was making 100k+. He was the only one who worked his way up the ranks, and he was only making 49k. I pointed out to him that his job title didn't match everyone else on the team, as titles matched pay bands. He got more than a 100% raise when he showed our manager.

I don't wait to be asked how much I am expecting to be paid. I generally ask the HR person what the salary range is for the role. You have 8 years experience so you can demand the top end of that pay scale.

I didn't finish my degree so ended up going ops -> devops route.

Salary include estimated benefit values (ending salary) 12/hr -> 50k (60k) -> 70k (80k) -> 115k (125k) -> 115k (counter offered 185k upon resignation which I rejected) -> 190k -> 210k

There's a lot more to the story but that might give an idea of possible bumps. Each jump I took mostly to progress my career where they were looking for skills that built on top of what I had already been doing. I went from like a windows admin, to network admin, to windows/network automation, to ansible automation for anything (and other devops-y things), to a cloud consulting company which focused on automation, to a internal platform architect on a team, to a small business where I'm pretty much the infrastructure wizard, with a junior team member, who does the infra deployments, changes, design, cicd for dev and own team, etc.

When I took a pay decrease from 125k -> 115k it was because the weekly cash was still slightly better but the benefits were far worse. I mostly took it because I needed to get to a cloud focused company to progress my career where I wanted it to go and my company at the time couldn't get me any meaningful experience in cloud stuff at all. The pay jump after that really proved that the experience was worth it. I kind of wish I never joined the 190k company and instead took the counter offer. The 190k company I ended up really not liking leadership's direction and handling of things.

Super happy now at 210k company where I am a bit of a manager. I really like the people, responsibilities, etc. Pay is pretty great, more than I need for sure, so paying extra on the house and good bucks in retirement for later. Of the higher paying places I've been at it is the only one I feel fulfilled and not constantly frustrated.

65k->72k->80k->92k->106k->113k->118k->277k

See if you can pinpoint the year I got into a big tech job.

Was making 80k at my last job, asked for 110k when interviewing and my new job offered my 125k, then after a year they bumped it to 145k. I work in devops.

I jumped from 65k to 110k switching jobs and cities, but that was the biggest. The rest were like 10-20k

41k -> 60k -> 70k -> 85k -> 100k -> 110k (2018-2023) That 41 -> 60 felt huge. 60 -> 70 felt like a drop, it was a job change and I lost overtime and we were paid every 2 weeks instead of twice a month. (26 paychecks instead of 24)

These days, what makes all the difference are the bonus programs. My income is generally 25% higher than my base through company stock programs, bonuses and high performance grants.

The simple answer is, maybe. You could have had more if the competition wasn't better. But you will never know if they were. My advice would be to focus on the fact that you just got a big raise, and enjoy the work. In a year, ask for more, say 10%, and if you're good and fit the culture, they'll do it. If not, start looking. Just be careful of jumping jobs too much.

I'm from India so these numbers might be a bit weird. My yearly comp has basically gone like this from 2017 to 2023

$0.7k -> $3.6k -> $4.8k -> $20k

When I went from being Head Chef in fine dining, at $34,000 a year, to being a General Manager at Taco Bell, for $36,000, but because of some law that was passed and went into effect in 2019, I got another $3000 per year raise, giving me a salary of $39,000 a year two months after I took the job.

I guess when I threw my back out a year later at 36, 20 years after I took my first Line Cook job, and started working for myself, growing flower, fostering dogs, and building computers would be my highest pay raise, since I either went from $39,000 a year, or really $0 a year, to making almost $100,000 my first year, and now I'm considering "retiring" at 43 years old because I have consistently made about $1,500,000 after taxes for the last couple years. I only need about $10,000,000 to retire and buy a house in the town I want to live in, that I currently live in.

I also self describe as "the luckiest bastard to ever live," so I'm well aware that most people couldn't do even half of what I have stumbled through. I'm being completely serious there. Any of the two plane crashes, or many of the 36 car wrecks I've been in should have killed me. That doesn't include the mountain climbing accident that had me falling a full 125 feet onto a dry creekbed made of limestone. It also doesn't include the many instances of me making, and testing, my own explosives. I shouldn't have lived past puberty. I was playing around with things that no one should play around with, and somehow I've made it to 43, while actively antagonizing the US cops every chance I get. I "literally" told a cop at the age of 5, "I know where my mother is, she knows where I am. You can fuck off, thanks." That didn't go over well.

200% increase once I moved to the U. S from Sweden. I'm so happy to finally leave Europe

My first "real" job (I used to work at McD's and Walmart, barely three months each) was 120k a year as a software engineer. I left that job for 200k within six months and here I happily stay

Over the last 5 years I have went from 50k to 90k. Same company, but recently got promoted to a new department.

I'm fresh out of grad school, and the shift from 22k to 60k has been life changing

I got a 35% salary increase when I started a new job a few months ago. I was very excited.

My last raise was 10k. But that was after 7+ years of no raises (agency work, slow times). When COVID hit, our business picked up for 2 years straight and I finally convinced them it was stable enough to commit. We're a small company and they'd rather give out bonuses or assistance with personal expenses than commit to an annual salary increase (which I get), but COL has spiked in recent times, so the raise was well past due.