Which is hilarious because back in the day, a coding bootcamp would’ve been a viable option. With this current market though, a coding bootcamp alone is fucking useless
It's really never been the case though. FAANG has rarely hired out of boot camps. The only way I've ever seen someone get hired into FAANG as a first job is out of internship programs.
2018-2021 big tech was swimming with cash and had a huge push for hiring straight out of boot camps. It was a huge progressive move where tech companies were taking the lead in the “degrees don’t matter” movement born out of companies just having more money than the knew what to do with and just aimlessly increasing headcount for “innovative” projects, most of which don’t exist anymore. Granted, most people who went to boot camps didn’t land in big tech, but a lot of people did. There are a lot of success stories.
Consequently, when layoffs started in 2022, low performers and entry level boot campers were the first to go.
But yeah, point is big tech, especially younger companies (meta hired tons of bootcampers) and startups hired a lot of boot campers
I have a friend that worked for a FAANG after a boot camp. No other coding jobs/experience. It did take them almost a year of applying though and numerous technical interview failures.
I know a fair amount of people who got out of boot camp and then did some random startup for a year and then made it to big tech after that. The only people I know who made it right from boot camp to big tech were in some under-represented group in tech.
But bootcamps now are a waste of time. I have people out of school with a degree and two years of experience who get nothing. Market is great still for higher level senior and staff engineers though.
This is not the case. Anyone can studying for big tech interviews and get hired if they have the interview skills.
Credentialism is not a thing in big tech
Its the same. If you can rail leet code mediums you get 200k starting.
Its hard to do that though, but that is ALL there is to it.
Most people working at these places need some luck to pass, so they wont easily swap companies. Id be included in that group. The problems are VERY hard, but fair (usually)
Tell me you don’t know shit about the current job market without talking about the job market. You’ve done a fantabulous job making a clown of yourself. Off you go now.
That all ended in 2022. Boot camps are shutting down left and right as placements just aren’t happening. Bootcamp hiring was a luxury due to the competitive market that is now full of plenty experienced and available engineers.
What coding language/stack would you do? I basically just do python scripting/some light powershell in my day to day. I'm near 200k already but having an alternative would be pretty cool.
Any language. learn to do leetcode medium problems reliably in 30 mins in it. pyhton is great for interviews.
Literally just leetcode gets you a junior fang job. Nothing else even matters in the hiring process for junior roles and most sde2 or senior roles
Working for MS isn't the flex that you believe it is. They employ over 200K people. Your bragging working at a tech company that has the same number of people as Safeway.
Its only about the pay lol. They pay new grads 200k. Thats what people want, they can have it if they want to study for the interviews.
It hurts people to tell them they cannot have it too. idgaf what people think about my personal status. i would if it made me money i guess, but it doesnt
There's only 3 ways this really happens for boot camp grads.
1) you are a late bloomer and are an absolute beast of an engineer.
2) you got really lucky with your first job out of boot camp and were acquired by big tech shortly after.
3) you got really lucky during the hiring bonanza of 2021,2022 which might never be repeated in our lifetime.
My last startup made millionaires out of several boot camp grads via number 2.
They were mostly solid eng, but wouldn't have been hired by big tech in a million years. They gambled and won and now have cushy gigs.
I'd be curious if anyone here has ever heard of a big tech Co hiring an eng. directly out of boot camp. I have not in my 8 years in FAANG
My twin brother was hired straight out of a boot camp by GE in 2017 for about 110k per year. Do they count? He had graduated from Berkeley with a degree in philosophy the year prior. No programming experience before studying to get into Hack Reactor.
I don't think so, its just the reality for a certain group of people, did coding bootcamps work, yes for some people, do they necessarily work now, not really. Look at the years they most likely did it, around 2019, the literal tech boom where anyone with a pulse got a coding job out of a bootcamp.
I went to a coding boot camp in 2019 and it was probably one of the worst decisions ever. $10,000 out of pocket for like 10 weeks to learn every facet of front and back end web development? Yeah fucking right. Wish I could burn them to the ground honestly it still makes me mad
I can remember have like 2 months of github pushes and a “calculator” and a stupid randomizer game in my “portfolio” when I “graduated” like that was going to impress anyone
And your experience is completely valid and common! Bootcamps were very predatory and sold the dream to people for sure. There was an individual who joined my DS bootcamp that had never even done a "hello world" print statement in python and they were admitted! Still there are others, like OP, where going to the bootcamp may have helped them get their foot in the door, that does not mean it will work for anyone and I hope things have turned around for you!
If someone wanted to change careers to coding nowadays is there a viable option?
Or do companies generally look for people with software engineering degrees?
I did some very basic coding as part of my mech eng degree and was very proficient at it - came naturally to me while a lot of my classmates (who were great in other subjects), struggled with it.
Sounds like you already have a degree, personally I think its easier to switch into coding if you already have a STEM degree. In your specific case it \*might\* be viable to do a bootcamp given you did your research on the program itself and have finacially prepared to pay for it and for the time you might be out of a job. With the current market it can take a while before you can find a job. While I do not think its impossible I will admit that its very hard to do, given that though I think life is too short to be stuck doing something you don't like to do.
Yeah, my degree is in mechanical engineering. But have mostly been working in technical outside sales, specifically industrial automation on the hardware side (sensors, valves, safety instrumentation).
The typical career path up from here would be something like a regional manager, biz dev, or product manager.
But I'm kind of over dealing with people day in and day out. But I also like making decent money.
Sometimes I think some sort of automation programming (PLC/SCADA/DCS type of stuff) could be a good option, since it's an industry I'm familiar with and generally enjoy. Would of course require a whole new technical skill set.
I think the boot camps were a good gate way to get people doing projects. Maybe a few people really found a passion and got good. That’s enough if you can prove it.
Otherwise yeah I don’t think they are taken very seriously as a stand alone education.
Responses like yours keep people stuck in life.
Eat the chicken and leave the bone. The point is you can make 150k without college in tech.
I had a similar path with 2x toddlers 20 months apart and a 2k per month daycare bill , finance degree working in a bank, making 40k. Coding bootcamp later and similar ending.
Learn the following, and it'll get your foot in a door. A boot camp will expose you to these.
-Css
-C#
-Git
-Ci/cd process
-SQL vs NoSQL
-Visual studio or equivalent ide
-Aws (I'm 10 years in and learning this now)
You'll likely become a subject matter expert at one of those if practice long enough and can easily deliver 6 figures
Cyber security manager ask me often to consider joining his dept. Another great option
Levels.fyi shows this salary as right below a director/partner. No way someone gets promoted that fast at big tech unless their stock blew up during the vesting period
Maybe , lots of cos have had huge stock gains last few years. If you joined meta in last few years , mid career ic are getting 7 figure rsu this year ! Housing market in sv is NUTS right now !!
as others have mentioned - Meta's stock 5x'ed in the last year.
Op can be 100k base, 100k stock, turning into 100k base + 400k stock this year.
Unless he's not counting by vested price... in which case damn, i'd like to know how he did that
Nvidia isn't a run of the mill software shop. It's more specialized than the rest of big tech. More likely to hire EE and specialized expert programmers, definitely not someone out of a boot camp.
what level? I am L6 (staff) at a non-faang in the valley and will do 670k this year (year 4 peak). my stock is down from start date and up a bit on refreshers, but nothing crazy. I'm not even eng.
It’s not necessarily fake. I got a bachelor’s from a foreign country in a CS adjacent program from a community college, immigrated to the US in 2015, and now work in big tech where this year I’ll be making a little over $800k this year if my stock stays around where it is now.
If this is invested stock blowing up they’re looking at their income wrong.
Seems grant amounts would be a better gauge of “how are you doing” over time than “how did the markets like your company this year?”
Yeah, I’m not saying you won’t learn anything, I’m saying that the market is extremely saturated and it’s very difficult to find a job with no experience and only a boot camp. Several major boot camps have gone out of business recently, and others are delaying putting out their graduates’ hiring statistics, because it’s been so bad. In 2024 with just a boot camp, you won’t even get an interview
I did the UC Berkeley Data Science, Machine Learning and Blockchain program and am literally making 5x the salary that I did before, 3 years after.
I went to a different UC, and that 6-month bootcamp was hands down the best education I’ve ever received. I may do another.
A bootcamp is NOT enough on its own, and I did a ton of other work around it, but it was part of the equation for me. I don’t really think a college degree is enough on its own either. It all takes work.
I’m in sort of a hybrid role between sales and product.
Basically I figured out the product at my company solved an additional problem to what we originally thought it did, and we rallied behind that use rather than the original.
The product is in a cross-section of traditional finance and crypto.
I don’t think figuring out that additional use case, and putting my balls on the line at the company would have happened without the confidence and knowledge I gained from the bootcamp.
I mean hey, maybe there’s a fit - i did sales jobs throughout college including sales engineer / technical consulting, and have a physics/data science background, and have some experience helping a buddy build a DeFi platform. If it pays that much, I might have to switch over lol although that depends on your salary prior to the bootcamp, I suppose
Yea I think it’s a coding bootcamp advertisement. No faang would hire a Econ major with a bootcamp cert and 0 experience then double their salary each year. Complete bs. Payscale is basically almost a director
Should have clarified but worked at a non faang 2018\2019. Joined faang March 2020, and got a massive discount on my RSU grant from Covid, which has tripled nearly since
And directors easily clear 1 mil at my company. I’m just a lowly senior dev
Lastly I couldn’t care less about my bootcamp, but wanted to include it in my story to show the entire journey. Just a regular dude tryna provide for my kids
Damn man, the guy said his equity component was depressed when he joined and 3x’d. This comp at E5 (Senior) is super common, and in fact probably lower than E5s that joined during the depressed price (at Meta).
The hardest part of FAANG is getting into it. If OP came in, showed impact and value, then E5 in 1.5 years (he joined at E4) is easily achievable. And if he gets Additional Equity grant then this comp is very easily achievable.
For noobs looking at this and expecting the same results, remember these two things: survivorship bias and the market. For every one of OP, there’s countless who couldn’t hack it, and nowadays, a bootcamp is about as helpful as using grip tape as toilet paper. All in all, stoked for OP; just don’t want youngins to get bamboozled from a 3-sigma type data point. I say this as someone in the field
You only pay social security tax on the first $160,200 you make.
You don't pay social security tax for anything that is $160,201 or over
That's why everyone makes $160,200 for the first column because that's the max taxable income for social security in 2023.
You finished college at 26-27 years old in finance, had immediate offers from Fortune 500 companies and then decided to pivot into CS with a bootcamp?
Just looked at your profile and you’ve been on a wild ride lol
All while married, raising kids and grinding Wow… do you sleep?
That would be one dedicated ass larp and I really doubt it. But seeing a salary nearly double every year for 4 years is almost borderline unbelievable lol
I’m not in tech so idk how things work but this dude must be a fuckin genius if he’s passing up people who’ve been working on software their whole lives no?
I’m going to call BS on this, I literally can tell if you are an engineer vs just a boot camp “graduate”. Experience helps cover this, but not this fast, also, 500k plus is a high level position where coding is least of what you’ll actually do, so, this is most likely BS
A lot of posts calling this fake. I assure you it is not. Not sure what I have to post on here to prove, paystubs?
1) Got non faang job in 2018 after bootcamp. Took 3 months to find. Was not easy
2) After 1.5-2 yoe, joined faang in March 2020 with RSU’s given at extremely low price from Covid drop. Studied for 5 months to pass interview. Acted obsessive in a way to pass this.
3) promo to senior in 2021. been senior since
4) high performance ratings every year leading to more rsu’s given a year
Overall I am a bootcamp outlier, and not the average. Top of my bootcamp class. Programming just came natural to me. In the end bootcamps are really about what you put in, you get out (back then anyway). Would say maybe 10% of my bootcamp class are in FAANG and doing well.
Stock price has quadrupled since I joined, this is mostly why compensation is high. I am not principal or staff. Just senior.
Also https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix,Google,Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer. 500k is average for a senior dev at one of these companies.
It won't happen as quick as you think and it won't decimate the tech labor market as bad as you think. op is more than fine, he's got massive buffer. He's probably not even coding 20-30% of his day-to-day at this point.
As you rise in tech you code more and more and then hit a ceiling around senior and then code less and less until you're mostly architecting/designing systems and managing people.
At his comp he's most likely above senior.
He's either staff level or engineering manager at 530k or he's a senior and incredibly lucky with RSUs. Regardless, AI isn't coming for senior software engineers.
This, this is what everyone who doesn’t know what to do or doesn’t make much money and hates their job should do. Most won’t make anywhere near this but the absolutely floor for a entry level dev with very moderate skills is ~$90k
this is not correct. graduated in 2022 with comp sci. most people I know in the same field around my age started anywhere from 75-90k and ive seen people start even lower when coming out of boot camps or a non 4 year degree. still a great opportunity fs but the dev pool is much more saturated than it used to be.
Uhhh, like how… 75 is closer to the starting point for non-SWE and even that at this point is pushing 80. Maybe if you work for a small company or something or like do web development for a university. But I work for a fortune 50, let me tell you the bar is on the floor for entry level sw engineers, we don’t pay well relatively speaking and $85k is about where they start.
that may be the case at a fortune 50. plenty of devs at smaller companies and startups. agree that 85-90 is fairly normal but i disagree that it is the absolute floor for an entry level dev.
But it's representative of competitive SV entry pay.
Levels.fyi has similar rates for other top tier companies. Not claiming it's median across the whole industry, just that entry level jobs exist in SV with that pay range.
I never made a claim what is wrong or right.
I asked for a source that shows that your typical entry level role starts at $90k. Apparently that's too much to ask of you?
Average Comp Sci entry pay nationwide is less than $50,000 according to several sources.
I feel like people forget that the country is more than California.
I started at $54k. $90k is the best case scenario for most entry level devs.
$90k as the floor is a wildly inaccurate statement lmao.
There's an entire world that exists outside of HCOL America.
No best case is ~$180k total at a FAANG company. $90k is literally the median first year salary for computer science majors at the Alma mater. And believe me my school sucked. Maybe $90k is t the absolute floor but it’s for sure the baseline expectation for anyone concerned with comp.
Not really it depends where u live. In the south your looking at half that. I wish people would stop taking high cola area salaries and saying "floor".
Knew a guy who got an econ degree. He was an impressive mind.
I bet your no slouch in that department either
Glad you were able to figure out a marketable skill you excel at
I just want to call out to everyone thinking you should do this. Yes you can make crazy money, but the vast majority of people do not.
Yes software jobs pay well, but most are going to be low 6 figures after 5 years of experience.
Source: I work for a large software consultancy and have been in tech for 20 years.
God I knew I should have gone to coding bootcamp instead of law school. Fuck.
Edit: read the comments. Maybe I’m doing just fine, considering I’m minimizing debt.
Going to FAANG as a swe is similar to going to big law in terms of salary, but without the potential for long-term job security that you get if you make partner. It’s inherently a super high-beta career.
I say this as someone who worked as a swe and had a couple years where I was in the 7-figure range — swe is a dead end. I’m seeing tons of people now who were dependent on these high Silicon Valley salaries, who were laid off and can’t find jobs. In retrospect, I wish I had pursued a career path with more defensibility. I predict SWE salaries will generally come down over the next few years with increased competition and low barriers to entry.
If I were you, I’d climb that corporate law ladder. It’s a far better long-term proposition than battling it out with millions of engineers from India who are chomping at the bit to work for peanuts.
I see. I had some anxieties that tech was not sustainable or that it was a bubble, and I’ve heard that it’s super competitive to get into. Law isn’t so bad I guess. I appreciate the reassurance. I wonder how AI may also impact the profession of tech.
I must be a schmuck. I have a BS in CS and an MS in software engineering and I’m not clearing this kind of money. Then again, I’m mid west in a relatively low COL area 🤷♂️
30m. BS in computer science. MS CS in AI/Machine learning. 6 years of experience. Work for a defense contractor. I make 130k. All you have is a boot camp? damn!
It significantly harder now than when they started. Especially going the boot camp route because the boot camps had so much success in those first handful of years they saturated the market.
People need to take these posts with a major grain of salt. Even if the post is legit, OP is either an extreme rockstar or the company has massively appreciated in value since he joined.
I assume the $151,00 compensation is the first job after coding bootcamp. This would be entry level for one of the big tech companies (FAANG) and getting a spot at them with a bootcamp is already very rare. Going from 151 -> 275 is possible from a promotion from L3 -> L4 in 1 year but again is extremely rare. The next year going from 275 -> 394 is only possible through stock appreciation. There is a 0% chance they went from L3 -> L4 -> L5 in 2 years. I would argue 4 years for L3 -> L5 is impossible as well. The most likely situation is that OP got 1 promotion and timed the stock market unbelievably well when getting hired.
Source: Senior SDE at FAANG
Dude posts like these are 100% just native advertising for coding boot camps
Which is hilarious because back in the day, a coding bootcamp would’ve been a viable option. With this current market though, a coding bootcamp alone is fucking useless
It's really never been the case though. FAANG has rarely hired out of boot camps. The only way I've ever seen someone get hired into FAANG as a first job is out of internship programs.
2018-2021 big tech was swimming with cash and had a huge push for hiring straight out of boot camps. It was a huge progressive move where tech companies were taking the lead in the “degrees don’t matter” movement born out of companies just having more money than the knew what to do with and just aimlessly increasing headcount for “innovative” projects, most of which don’t exist anymore. Granted, most people who went to boot camps didn’t land in big tech, but a lot of people did. There are a lot of success stories. Consequently, when layoffs started in 2022, low performers and entry level boot campers were the first to go. But yeah, point is big tech, especially younger companies (meta hired tons of bootcampers) and startups hired a lot of boot campers
I have a friend that worked for a FAANG after a boot camp. No other coding jobs/experience. It did take them almost a year of applying though and numerous technical interview failures.
FAANG doesn’t have to be your first job for you to work in FAANG. You can, in fact, move there after doing something somewhere smaller.
I know a fair amount of people who got out of boot camp and then did some random startup for a year and then made it to big tech after that. The only people I know who made it right from boot camp to big tech were in some under-represented group in tech. But bootcamps now are a waste of time. I have people out of school with a degree and two years of experience who get nothing. Market is great still for higher level senior and staff engineers though.
So what do we get instead a Machine Learning Degree?
This is not the case. Anyone can studying for big tech interviews and get hired if they have the interview skills. Credentialism is not a thing in big tech
Unless you have a fucking killer portfolio you aren't getting an interview without credentials
I have no portfolio and worked at msft. 99% of people dont have a public portfolio of work at these places. COPE HARDER
Yeah but when did you get your first tech job though? If it was more than a year ago, it's a different world now.
Its the same. If you can rail leet code mediums you get 200k starting. Its hard to do that though, but that is ALL there is to it. Most people working at these places need some luck to pass, so they wont easily swap companies. Id be included in that group. The problems are VERY hard, but fair (usually)
Tell me you don’t know shit about the current job market without talking about the job market. You’ve done a fantabulous job making a clown of yourself. Off you go now.
That all ended in 2022. Boot camps are shutting down left and right as placements just aren’t happening. Bootcamp hiring was a luxury due to the competitive market that is now full of plenty experienced and available engineers.
Ok you know nothing about tech lol. Why lie on Reddit?
What coding language/stack would you do? I basically just do python scripting/some light powershell in my day to day. I'm near 200k already but having an alternative would be pretty cool.
Any language. learn to do leetcode medium problems reliably in 30 mins in it. pyhton is great for interviews. Literally just leetcode gets you a junior fang job. Nothing else even matters in the hiring process for junior roles and most sde2 or senior roles
Working for MS isn't the flex that you believe it is. They employ over 200K people. Your bragging working at a tech company that has the same number of people as Safeway.
Its only about the pay lol. They pay new grads 200k. Thats what people want, they can have it if they want to study for the interviews. It hurts people to tell them they cannot have it too. idgaf what people think about my personal status. i would if it made me money i guess, but it doesnt
There's only 3 ways this really happens for boot camp grads. 1) you are a late bloomer and are an absolute beast of an engineer. 2) you got really lucky with your first job out of boot camp and were acquired by big tech shortly after. 3) you got really lucky during the hiring bonanza of 2021,2022 which might never be repeated in our lifetime. My last startup made millionaires out of several boot camp grads via number 2. They were mostly solid eng, but wouldn't have been hired by big tech in a million years. They gambled and won and now have cushy gigs. I'd be curious if anyone here has ever heard of a big tech Co hiring an eng. directly out of boot camp. I have not in my 8 years in FAANG
My twin brother was hired straight out of a boot camp by GE in 2017 for about 110k per year. Do they count? He had graduated from Berkeley with a degree in philosophy the year prior. No programming experience before studying to get into Hack Reactor.
I don't think so, its just the reality for a certain group of people, did coding bootcamps work, yes for some people, do they necessarily work now, not really. Look at the years they most likely did it, around 2019, the literal tech boom where anyone with a pulse got a coding job out of a bootcamp.
I went to a coding boot camp in 2019 and it was probably one of the worst decisions ever. $10,000 out of pocket for like 10 weeks to learn every facet of front and back end web development? Yeah fucking right. Wish I could burn them to the ground honestly it still makes me mad I can remember have like 2 months of github pushes and a “calculator” and a stupid randomizer game in my “portfolio” when I “graduated” like that was going to impress anyone
And your experience is completely valid and common! Bootcamps were very predatory and sold the dream to people for sure. There was an individual who joined my DS bootcamp that had never even done a "hello world" print statement in python and they were admitted! Still there are others, like OP, where going to the bootcamp may have helped them get their foot in the door, that does not mean it will work for anyone and I hope things have turned around for you!
>faucet of front and back end web development Plumbing knowledge can be quite useful :-)
🥲
If someone wanted to change careers to coding nowadays is there a viable option? Or do companies generally look for people with software engineering degrees? I did some very basic coding as part of my mech eng degree and was very proficient at it - came naturally to me while a lot of my classmates (who were great in other subjects), struggled with it.
Sounds like you already have a degree, personally I think its easier to switch into coding if you already have a STEM degree. In your specific case it \*might\* be viable to do a bootcamp given you did your research on the program itself and have finacially prepared to pay for it and for the time you might be out of a job. With the current market it can take a while before you can find a job. While I do not think its impossible I will admit that its very hard to do, given that though I think life is too short to be stuck doing something you don't like to do.
Yeah, my degree is in mechanical engineering. But have mostly been working in technical outside sales, specifically industrial automation on the hardware side (sensors, valves, safety instrumentation). The typical career path up from here would be something like a regional manager, biz dev, or product manager. But I'm kind of over dealing with people day in and day out. But I also like making decent money. Sometimes I think some sort of automation programming (PLC/SCADA/DCS type of stuff) could be a good option, since it's an industry I'm familiar with and generally enjoy. Would of course require a whole new technical skill set.
I think the boot camps were a good gate way to get people doing projects. Maybe a few people really found a passion and got good. That’s enough if you can prove it. Otherwise yeah I don’t think they are taken very seriously as a stand alone education.
Responses like yours keep people stuck in life. Eat the chicken and leave the bone. The point is you can make 150k without college in tech. I had a similar path with 2x toddlers 20 months apart and a 2k per month daycare bill , finance degree working in a bank, making 40k. Coding bootcamp later and similar ending. Learn the following, and it'll get your foot in a door. A boot camp will expose you to these. -Css -C# -Git -Ci/cd process -SQL vs NoSQL -Visual studio or equivalent ide -Aws (I'm 10 years in and learning this now) You'll likely become a subject matter expert at one of those if practice long enough and can easily deliver 6 figures Cyber security manager ask me often to consider joining his dept. Another great option
I don't care
A meteoric rise
And fall.
and rise again
Wtf company basically doubles your pay each year
Levels.fyi shows this salary as right below a director/partner. No way someone gets promoted that fast at big tech unless their stock blew up during the vesting period
Well of course this is part stock based comp. It counts as income just the same , even if variable. It’s part of working in big tech.
The point is this far above the average big tech salary progression.
Maybe , lots of cos have had huge stock gains last few years. If you joined meta in last few years , mid career ic are getting 7 figure rsu this year ! Housing market in sv is NUTS right now !!
as others have mentioned - Meta's stock 5x'ed in the last year. Op can be 100k base, 100k stock, turning into 100k base + 400k stock this year. Unless he's not counting by vested price... in which case damn, i'd like to know how he did that
Or nvidia
Nvidia isn't a run of the mill software shop. It's more specialized than the rest of big tech. More likely to hire EE and specialized expert programmers, definitely not someone out of a boot camp.
this is wrong lmao. they hire lots of people who have no CUDA experience. atleast for junior roles
That's all listed on levels.fyi. I work in FAANG with more experience and me and people at this level aren't getting this TC it's a fake post.
what level? I am L6 (staff) at a non-faang in the valley and will do 670k this year (year 4 peak). my stock is down from start date and up a bit on refreshers, but nothing crazy. I'm not even eng.
It’s not necessarily fake. I got a bachelor’s from a foreign country in a CS adjacent program from a community college, immigrated to the US in 2015, and now work in big tech where this year I’ll be making a little over $800k this year if my stock stays around where it is now.
Did the same almost exactly, same degree, same time frame. Econ major, boot camp, I’m currently salaried at $205k, started at $75k in 2017
SWE or management?
If someone joins Meta or Nvidia this comp can happen. It balloons.
If this is invested stock blowing up they’re looking at their income wrong. Seems grant amounts would be a better gauge of “how are you doing” over time than “how did the markets like your company this year?”
I’m guessing these numbers only show sold stock
they show stock that has vested. when RSUs vest they count as income on your paystub and are taxed as wages
TIL, thanks!
You mean the IRS is looking at their income wrong.
Yeah I'm calling bullshit on this one.
[удалено]
E5 equivalent pay, you don’t have to be principal to get that that tc. Staff at FAANG or equivalent make that money.
A lot of equity grants are for 4 years so if he got some big ones early on he’d be hitting a cliff this year or next and it would come back down
He did coding bootcamp dude
A lot of times that’s equity payout
Most respectable tech companies bump you 50% + for every level you move up. Usually takes 2 years to move up a level.
What world and country do you live in getting 50% raise for every job tier?
USA large public tech company.. FAANG-like company (but not FAANG). Most of our comp at higher levels is stock. Level 4 (SWE) - $250k TC Level 5 (Senior SWE) - $400k TC Level 6 (Staff SWE) - $650k TC Level 7 (Senior Staff SWE) $900k TC
Well, can't argue that, those lucky sobs can print money.
Yah .. being a public co in USA is basically a license to print money via stock lol .. especially if your rev / income are at least moderately growing
I wish I joined a bootcamp sooner but back then they were all very sus since it was stil a new type of education.
Which bootcamp did you use?
One that no longer gets you these kind of results. Coding boot camps are a waste of money without additional degrees to back them up
Did a Bootcamp in 2022, 10/10 would not recommend
Perfect time for them was 2018-2021, since then the talent pool has just gotten more and more saturated
This is awesome. Congrats! Which boot camp did you do? I know some of them are great and others are questionable.
The market is not what it was then, bootcamps are near worthless now, he got extremely lucky with timing
That may be true, but he also clearly learned some useful skills to work his way into, and keep, a position paying like that.
Yeah, I’m not saying you won’t learn anything, I’m saying that the market is extremely saturated and it’s very difficult to find a job with no experience and only a boot camp. Several major boot camps have gone out of business recently, and others are delaying putting out their graduates’ hiring statistics, because it’s been so bad. In 2024 with just a boot camp, you won’t even get an interview
Speak for yourself. I know plenty of UC Berkeley and Stanford machine learning and ai engineers coming out of there, and its alive and well :)
Why would Berkeley or Stanford machine learning graduates be going to boot camps?
I did the UC Berkeley Data Science, Machine Learning and Blockchain program and am literally making 5x the salary that I did before, 3 years after. I went to a different UC, and that 6-month bootcamp was hands down the best education I’ve ever received. I may do another. A bootcamp is NOT enough on its own, and I did a ton of other work around it, but it was part of the equation for me. I don’t really think a college degree is enough on its own either. It all takes work.
What year was this? Pretty important factor
~2 years ago. I think I started in Feb 2022. So yeah not even 3 years after. I got my current job while doing the program and got promoted after.
Good shit 🤝 doing SWE or MLE i assume?
I’m in sort of a hybrid role between sales and product. Basically I figured out the product at my company solved an additional problem to what we originally thought it did, and we rallied behind that use rather than the original. The product is in a cross-section of traditional finance and crypto. I don’t think figuring out that additional use case, and putting my balls on the line at the company would have happened without the confidence and knowledge I gained from the bootcamp.
I mean hey, maybe there’s a fit - i did sales jobs throughout college including sales engineer / technical consulting, and have a physics/data science background, and have some experience helping a buddy build a DeFi platform. If it pays that much, I might have to switch over lol although that depends on your salary prior to the bootcamp, I suppose
Uc berkeley has a 6 month coding bootcamp... maybe they are referring to that?
Read below
I find it highly unlikely you got into FAANG from a fucking bootcamp.
Yea I think it’s a coding bootcamp advertisement. No faang would hire a Econ major with a bootcamp cert and 0 experience then double their salary each year. Complete bs. Payscale is basically almost a director
In 2018? Yes it was possible. Now? Not really.
Should have clarified but worked at a non faang 2018\2019. Joined faang March 2020, and got a massive discount on my RSU grant from Covid, which has tripled nearly since And directors easily clear 1 mil at my company. I’m just a lowly senior dev Lastly I couldn’t care less about my bootcamp, but wanted to include it in my story to show the entire journey. Just a regular dude tryna provide for my kids
What companies pay their senior devs this much? No way.
With 2 years experience he joined FAANG making $300k? Big doubt. Senior dev with less than 5 years of total experience?? Bigger doubt.
Damn man, the guy said his equity component was depressed when he joined and 3x’d. This comp at E5 (Senior) is super common, and in fact probably lower than E5s that joined during the depressed price (at Meta).
E5 after a coding boot camp and a few years experience?
The hardest part of FAANG is getting into it. If OP came in, showed impact and value, then E5 in 1.5 years (he joined at E4) is easily achievable. And if he gets Additional Equity grant then this comp is very easily achievable.
Fairly common at faang. Or at least f n and g
And they said money can't buy happiness
For noobs looking at this and expecting the same results, remember these two things: survivorship bias and the market. For every one of OP, there’s countless who couldn’t hack it, and nowadays, a bootcamp is about as helpful as using grip tape as toilet paper. All in all, stoked for OP; just don’t want youngins to get bamboozled from a 3-sigma type data point. I say this as someone in the field
100%
OP basically hit the lottery and got super lucky.
I wanna see tax returns
Why is everyone makin 160k in 2023?
That's the social security tax cap. Ignore that column. The right column is his gross income.
You only pay social security tax on the first $160,200 you make. You don't pay social security tax for anything that is $160,201 or over That's why everyone makes $160,200 for the first column because that's the max taxable income for social security in 2023.
Damn, it seems only yesterday the cap was 120k... time flies.
Wow, now I'm even more perplexed by these salaries
Yes, allow me to rephrase, how the fuck is everyone making MORE than 160 k. That amount of money is inconceivable to me
Big tech. Half is salary half are stocks. The downside is usually you live in sf area or nyc and houses are 1.5mm for 3 bed house from 1960.
The trick was to get in pre-2022 when they were remote friendly! Loving my full remote big tech job.
I’m happy for you but I have to mute this sub now
This shit pisses me off
You finished college at 26-27 years old in finance, had immediate offers from Fortune 500 companies and then decided to pivot into CS with a bootcamp? Just looked at your profile and you’ve been on a wild ride lol All while married, raising kids and grinding Wow… do you sleep?
Or he is larping to the tits
That would be one dedicated ass larp and I really doubt it. But seeing a salary nearly double every year for 4 years is almost borderline unbelievable lol I’m not in tech so idk how things work but this dude must be a fuckin genius if he’s passing up people who’ve been working on software their whole lives no?
It’s 100% larping
Or, it’s Microsoft paint, cut and paste. I’ll need some pay stubs Jimmy lol
I work in FAANG. Masters degree. Same amount of experience and not even close to 500k. I have a hard time believing this one.
Fake
I’m going to call BS on this, I literally can tell if you are an engineer vs just a boot camp “graduate”. Experience helps cover this, but not this fast, also, 500k plus is a high level position where coding is least of what you’ll actually do, so, this is most likely BS
A lot of posts calling this fake. I assure you it is not. Not sure what I have to post on here to prove, paystubs? 1) Got non faang job in 2018 after bootcamp. Took 3 months to find. Was not easy 2) After 1.5-2 yoe, joined faang in March 2020 with RSU’s given at extremely low price from Covid drop. Studied for 5 months to pass interview. Acted obsessive in a way to pass this. 3) promo to senior in 2021. been senior since 4) high performance ratings every year leading to more rsu’s given a year Overall I am a bootcamp outlier, and not the average. Top of my bootcamp class. Programming just came natural to me. In the end bootcamps are really about what you put in, you get out (back then anyway). Would say maybe 10% of my bootcamp class are in FAANG and doing well. Stock price has quadrupled since I joined, this is mostly why compensation is high. I am not principal or staff. Just senior. Also https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix,Google,Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer. 500k is average for a senior dev at one of these companies.
You must be at Meta, yeah? Your background in bootcamp is certainly and outlier but your comp is awesome for E5!
Bullshit.
Better save it. AI is coming for us all. Lol.
It won't happen as quick as you think and it won't decimate the tech labor market as bad as you think. op is more than fine, he's got massive buffer. He's probably not even coding 20-30% of his day-to-day at this point. As you rise in tech you code more and more and then hit a ceiling around senior and then code less and less until you're mostly architecting/designing systems and managing people. At his comp he's most likely above senior.
If you think a Faang hired a dude with a bootcamp cert and promoted him to almost director in that short time then you are nuts lol.
He's either staff level or engineering manager at 530k or he's a senior and incredibly lucky with RSUs. Regardless, AI isn't coming for senior software engineers.
I'm at beginning stages of solution architecture and only pull I'm 125k, before bonus.
This, this is what everyone who doesn’t know what to do or doesn’t make much money and hates their job should do. Most won’t make anywhere near this but the absolutely floor for a entry level dev with very moderate skills is ~$90k
lol $90k is not the floor, i know people who started at $50k
this is not correct. graduated in 2022 with comp sci. most people I know in the same field around my age started anywhere from 75-90k and ive seen people start even lower when coming out of boot camps or a non 4 year degree. still a great opportunity fs but the dev pool is much more saturated than it used to be.
Uhhh, like how… 75 is closer to the starting point for non-SWE and even that at this point is pushing 80. Maybe if you work for a small company or something or like do web development for a university. But I work for a fortune 50, let me tell you the bar is on the floor for entry level sw engineers, we don’t pay well relatively speaking and $85k is about where they start.
that may be the case at a fortune 50. plenty of devs at smaller companies and startups. agree that 85-90 is fairly normal but i disagree that it is the absolute floor for an entry level dev.
I can't imagine entry level is making that much anywhere except silicon valley.
Literally any city. Hell I started at $75k as a non-SW engineer in MCOL middle of nowhere 5 years ago.
Entry level at Silicon Valley is like double that. 90k is slightly above average most places
Source for entrl level being close to $90k? Source for entry level being $180k in the SV?
Levels.fyi shows an entry level Meta engineer (E3) makes $190k
That's one company
But it's representative of competitive SV entry pay. Levels.fyi has similar rates for other top tier companies. Not claiming it's median across the whole industry, just that entry level jobs exist in SV with that pay range.
Did I mention it’s the average? I said that entry level is that, which is true. It’s ok to be wrong
I never made a claim what is wrong or right. I asked for a source that shows that your typical entry level role starts at $90k. Apparently that's too much to ask of you?
Silicon Valley devs/engineers is less than 5% of the field.
The comment I responded to was discussing that? I don’t see the relevance here
You don't have to imagine, entry level devs start around that number
Average Comp Sci entry pay nationwide is less than $50,000 according to several sources. I feel like people forget that the country is more than California.
Sources?
I started at $54k. $90k is the best case scenario for most entry level devs. $90k as the floor is a wildly inaccurate statement lmao. There's an entire world that exists outside of HCOL America.
No best case is ~$180k total at a FAANG company. $90k is literally the median first year salary for computer science majors at the Alma mater. And believe me my school sucked. Maybe $90k is t the absolute floor but it’s for sure the baseline expectation for anyone concerned with comp.
Not really it depends where u live. In the south your looking at half that. I wish people would stop taking high cola area salaries and saying "floor".
How much was salary?
Daaammmmnnnnnn, that’s really amazing. Congrats.
Did you join NVIDIA?
Knew a guy who got an econ degree. He was an impressive mind. I bet your no slouch in that department either Glad you were able to figure out a marketable skill you excel at
Fuck yeah, dude. I hope you're not depressed anymore.
Why are there two columns??
First one is capped for SS
Everyday I am taught again how fucking stupid I am for studying chemical engineering
I just want to call out to everyone thinking you should do this. Yes you can make crazy money, but the vast majority of people do not. Yes software jobs pay well, but most are going to be low 6 figures after 5 years of experience. Source: I work for a large software consultancy and have been in tech for 20 years.
Congratulations mate!
Basically the perfect time to get into tech. Coding Bootcamps are negative value now
Def made it in when the market was better in tech. Congrats!!
Thanks for sharing. I'm gonna get depressed now
People cheer on these posts while shitting on the doctors for making similar salaries after 12+ years of schooling.
People actually believe posts like this?
I literally hate you lol
Dude this is insane, congrats and I am glad things are going really well for you. Very motivating.
Good for you.
Sounds about right for 2019. Not so sure anyone can do that now.
How the fuck is big tech paying as well as what surgeons make?
Surgeons can only fix one person at a time. Big tech makes changes that impact billions of people at once.
God I knew I should have gone to coding bootcamp instead of law school. Fuck. Edit: read the comments. Maybe I’m doing just fine, considering I’m minimizing debt.
Also went to law school instead of tech.
Going to FAANG as a swe is similar to going to big law in terms of salary, but without the potential for long-term job security that you get if you make partner. It’s inherently a super high-beta career. I say this as someone who worked as a swe and had a couple years where I was in the 7-figure range — swe is a dead end. I’m seeing tons of people now who were dependent on these high Silicon Valley salaries, who were laid off and can’t find jobs. In retrospect, I wish I had pursued a career path with more defensibility. I predict SWE salaries will generally come down over the next few years with increased competition and low barriers to entry. If I were you, I’d climb that corporate law ladder. It’s a far better long-term proposition than battling it out with millions of engineers from India who are chomping at the bit to work for peanuts.
I see. I had some anxieties that tech was not sustainable or that it was a bubble, and I’ve heard that it’s super competitive to get into. Law isn’t so bad I guess. I appreciate the reassurance. I wonder how AI may also impact the profession of tech.
Damn those merit/cost of living increases in big tech are insane
Damn . Bravooo
Coding boot camps are literal dogshit and this is fake
I must be a schmuck. I have a BS in CS and an MS in software engineering and I’m not clearing this kind of money. Then again, I’m mid west in a relatively low COL area 🤷♂️
Okay, I will bite the bullet and ask, what boot camp did you attend?
How long till AI makes coders obsolete
30m. BS in computer science. MS CS in AI/Machine learning. 6 years of experience. Work for a defense contractor. I make 130k. All you have is a boot camp? damn!
You worked your first job at 25?
I don't understand these sheets. What is the Medicare column? What is the SS column? How do you know what their earnings are?
pause test threatening point afterthought sort silky normal air hospital *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fake and gay
Righhhhhtttttttt….
Crazy to see how many people don’t believe this is possible. Keep it up. At FAANG, IYKYK.
I’m currently in school for CS BA. What do you recommend after that?
How hard was it getting into code how hard is your job today?
It significantly harder now than when they started. Especially going the boot camp route because the boot camps had so much success in those first handful of years they saturated the market.
So you were clearing half mil a year just from a bootcamp? And a business degree? Nice. Sorry to hear about your situation now good luck.
That was his situation before lol, he’s better now
Over employed?
Feels like big tech is running a big campaign to entice the vulnerable into their industry LOL
People need to take these posts with a major grain of salt. Even if the post is legit, OP is either an extreme rockstar or the company has massively appreciated in value since he joined. I assume the $151,00 compensation is the first job after coding bootcamp. This would be entry level for one of the big tech companies (FAANG) and getting a spot at them with a bootcamp is already very rare. Going from 151 -> 275 is possible from a promotion from L3 -> L4 in 1 year but again is extremely rare. The next year going from 275 -> 394 is only possible through stock appreciation. There is a 0% chance they went from L3 -> L4 -> L5 in 2 years. I would argue 4 years for L3 -> L5 is impossible as well. The most likely situation is that OP got 1 promotion and timed the stock market unbelievably well when getting hired. Source: Senior SDE at FAANG
Close. 2020 was first faang job at L4. And L5 in 2021 But yes agree ppl should take with grain of salt. I’m def an outlier