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My Software Engineer Salary (self taught)
3K views
Feb 6, 2024
"My Software Engineer Salary (self-taught)" is a personal and informative video where the creator shares their experiences and insights into their salary as a self-taught software engineer. The video likely covers topics such as the creator's journey into software engineering, including their educational background and learning experiences. It may also discuss the job market, the application process, and the negotiation tactics used to secure their current salary. Additionally, the video might touch upon factors influencing salary, such as location, industry, experience level, and the specific technologies or programming languages the creator works with. By sharing their salary journey, the video aims to provide transparency and inspiration to aspiring self-taught software engineers who are curious about potential earning opportunities in the field.
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0:00
This is super uncomfortable for me
0:01
I've intentionally not talked about how much I make as a self-taught software engineer
0:05
And I believe this is probably the first time that I'm even going to say where I work. I just haven't really wanted to come off as flexing
0:12
That's not really how I roll. Anyways, I'm giving in and making this video because I just keep getting comments like
0:18
this one on becoming a front end developer. The comment is both right and wrong and I'm just going to try to be really
0:23
transparent here and tell you how it is when it comes to front end developer
0:26
pay, as well as talk about some of the things that you'll need to know. If you want to get paid, how much you're worth. And in a minute
0:33
I will share with you how my pay has increased over the last eight or so years as
0:37
a self-taught front end software engineer. So here's the skinny. In a lot of areas, front end development is a race to the bottom. I mean
0:45
think about like website mills or Fiverr, WordPress templates, website builders like Squarespace. These are just a few of them
0:52
but they're low paying because it's just super easy for someone living in an
0:55
inexpensive country where there's a really low cost of living to just come in
0:59
and do just as good a job as you for a few dollars. Making simple websites for people is dying
1:05
There'll be a few people out there who want custom work and are going to be willing to pay for it
1:09
But most of the people looking for these smaller, simpler websites are just wanting cheap websites. I mean
1:15
it's gotten so bad that it's not even worth me spending my time to build my own
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personal websites. And I talk about that more in another video. And I'll leave that link in the description below
1:24
So to make a lot of money as a developer, you are probably going to need to build applications
1:28
but not all apps are the same without good marketing apps in the app store
1:33
Probably aren't going to make you much money. They're kind of becoming the next race to the bottom
1:37
If you're going to make a ton of money, you're really going to need to build applications that solve complex problems
1:42
Now this usually means that you're going to end up having to work at a startup or at a larger enterprise company. But even then at those kinds of companies
1:50
the developer salaries are going to vary from company to company. Some just don't understand the market
1:55
And then there are other companies who intentionally try to take advantage of new software engineers
2:00
You may end up having to work at some of these in order to get that initial experience. But as soon as possible, and once you have that experience
2:07
you just want to stay away from these companies. You really want to try to get a job at a tech company that pays well
2:12
But even if you get in the different areas of the company are actually going to
2:16
pay differently. If you work on a project that is needed, but that doesn't really directly relate to making money
2:23
you're probably going to get paid less. This type of project is called a cost center. However
2:27
if you end up working on a project that brings in a ton of money from customers, then you're likely going to get paid more because you're working in what's
2:34
called a profit center. Now cost centers try to squeeze you with high expectations and low pay
2:39
but usually profit centers, they want to keep you happy and productive. So they give you financial incentives to stay and keep working because if they
2:46
lose you, then they lose that knowledge of the things that you're working on and it can
2:50
actually hurt the profits that they have to get better jobs. You have to specialize in in demand skills
2:56
and then you have to become good at those skills. And then you also have to be a good culture fit
3:01
And that's just another way of saying someone who's able to take criticism and
3:05
not be an arrogant jerk. You need to be someone who will just jump in and solve problems rather than the
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kind of developer that has to be told everything to do. You need to be able to work independently and be an effective contributor
3:17
All right, now for the not so juicy juice, and maybe I'll even get fewer of these dumb comments going forward
3:23
which is not super common because most of you leave great comments and ask
3:27
awesome questions. So thank you. Let's jump back 11 years ago when I was working construction for my father's
3:32
underwater construction company. I do go into how I transitioned from construction to web developer in another
3:38
video. So I'm going to keep that part short here, but I started doing web stuff part time when I was making around $45,000 a year
3:47
And keep in mind that I do live in the United States. Now where I live
3:50
we do have a growing tech hub, but I do not live in Silicon Valley
3:55
And so the salary and cost of living here is lower than it is in some place
4:00
like San Jose or New York. When I look back at the first couple of years working for my father's company
4:05
when I had started doing the web development, it's kind of hard for me to say exactly how much time I'm spending doing that
4:11
versus doing other stuff. So usually when I say that I've been doing software engineering for eight years
4:17
I'm only counting the last year of time working for my father's company when I
4:23
was heavily doing front end development, building applications and marketing websites. Though my experience is a little bit longer than that. I don't know if it's just me
4:33
but sometimes I feel like I got to discount those first years of experience
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because I was new and I was also working for my father's company
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But I did end up getting some pay raises along the way, but I got a decent pay bump when I got my first enterprise front end software
4:49
engineering job at the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was building applications for their missionary department and it was a
4:56
contract position, so I didn't get any health benefits, but I was making around 85 or $87,000 a year
5:01
And this was a crash course in new programming frameworks, tools and complex systems
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things that I just hadn't worked with when I was on my own working for my father's company
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So I ended up spending a lot of time in the evenings on my own just learning
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stuff in so that I could try to really up my skills as fast as possible
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About a year later, ended up taking a front end job at Western Governors University for $95,000
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And after being there a year, I got a 3% raise. And then when the second year came around and I was to get my yearly raise
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I only got a partial raise because I actually ended up hitting the ceiling on my
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job salary banding. And basically what that means is that when you hit the top of your band
5:43
you can't get any more raises unless you actually get a promotion. Fortunately
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I've been leading the UI development of a really important application that was going to save the university a ton of money
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And so after jumping through a bunch of stupid hoops, I was able to get that promotion and my pay was raised to $110,000
5:59
I believed in WGU's vision to make higher education more affordable for people
6:04
And so I knew I was working on something worthwhile, but by this point I had already helped WGU make the move from AngularJS to
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Angular on the project that we were working on and kind of setting that pace for
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future migrations of older applications from AngularJS to Angular. And I was really wanting to work on projects in react and combine that with the
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fact that it did leave a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth
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having to jump through all those hoops for the promotion that I decided to put
6:36
out my fillers and see what would happen. And I wasn't in a super huge rush because I did like what I was working on
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And that's an important fact that if you want to get good offers
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it really pays to be patient and not in a rush. If you're rushed
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you're likely to accept an offer that's just not going to be that good. During this time, I interviewed at four or five companies
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including HireVue that I mentioned in a recent video. That was the only sucky interview of the bunch. And before that interview ended
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I already knew that I just wasn't interested in working for that company
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I received a couple of offers in the $120,000 to $130,000 range plus startup
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equity. And that's basically means that you're getting shares of a company
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but you aren't able to sell those unless the company actually goes public or the
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company is bought out by another company. And these companies were all right
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but I just wasn't really feeling it. And this was really fortunate because one of them actually ended up laying off
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like 60% of their employees within that next year. I'm so glad that I missed that. I decided to write it out longer at WGU
7:38
but eventually I was told about an opening at Adobe. And so I interviewed there and the team was really cool and the project sounded
7:45
really cool. But then I just didn't hear back from them, which was really a disappointment because Adobe was on my list of cool places
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to work. Two months later, my friend told me about an opening at the company he worked for
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And it was an angular position, but it seemed like a good company
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So I interviewed there. I ended up getting an accepting an offer from them that was somewhere in the mid
8:09
to high one twenties plus equity if I remember right. So this is where it really starts to get awkward. You see
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I had accepted that offer and I put in my two week notice at WGU and that a
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couple of days before I was supposed to start at this other company, I ended up hearing back from Adobe and it was a good offer and the salary was
8:29
similar to the other offers that I had received. But this one also came with a sign on bonus and then there was the RSU grants
8:36
and these are restricted stock units. So basically it's like what I talked about with getting the equity and a startup
8:44
company only with the stocks that are publicly traded. Once those vest
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I own them and I can immediately sell them. I do not have to wait for a company to go public or for a company to be bought out
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So it's almost as good as cash as long as you work for the company long enough
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for them to vest. I felt super guilty withdrawing my acceptance from the other company
9:04
but an offer from Adobe was just too good to refuse. And I'm really glad that I was patient and waited because in addition to the
9:10
good pay fun to build cool stuff with cool peeps. Now this may seem like a lot
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but keep in mind that salaries are adjusted to where you live
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So I would not be surprised if junior devs who live in San Jose or New York
9:26
actually make more than I do. A couple of annual salary raises later and I'm now in the mid hundred thousands
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salary wise. But when you actually include in the yearly bonus as well as the RSUs from a
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solid growing company that keeps going up in value as well as the employee stock
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purchase plan that actually puts my total compensation to over $200,000 a year
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I also know some software engineers with similar front end experience and similar
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skills who make $70,000 a year. I even interviewed at one place that considered $85,000 high to be paying a dev
10:08
who has 10 to 15 years experience. Pay is really just all over the place and despite the rat race to the bottom in
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some areas of front end development overall, I think that the future is still really bright for front end developers and that
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the market will continue to be strong for people who are going to be working on complex applications
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But where you live and the companies you work for really matter
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