I think for many, money isn’t why they became an engineer but it is why they remain one.
You would have to have an incredible grindset to become a decent engineer without actually enjoying any of it. You could become a shitty one just by passing tests, I guess. (And probably many people do)
My job is also tough and more recently I felt despair because of pressure. But I remind myself that I chose my career because of good pay, which could improve once I leave my shithole company.
If money isn’t an issue, I would pick a more relaxed job. There is plenty of snobbery against blue collar jobs, but they are the most relaxed jobs I have ever had.
I think it depends on the type of blue color job and company as well. Some of them, you’re basically breaking your body to get some money and it could really hurt you in future.
I think having your own, or working for a small local business is great. Specially if you have a paid off house and aren’t struggling otherwise.
I’m different; none of my software projects bring me any money…
Engineering as a whole is now diluted with a bunch of money-hungry STEM’s who were never even that good at engineering. Their parents probably pushed them into the degree. It’s sad.
god forbid well-off parents want their kids to be financially secure…
It entirely depends on if the parents being well-off allowed their kid to get a degree they aren’t really qualified for because they could use money as a crutch.
parents money has nothing to do with if they get a degree… you have to complete the coursework regardless.
colleges will prefer to admit kids who can pay full tuition over kids who need financial assistance… if that is what you are complaining about?
diluted with a bunch of money-hungry STEM’s who were never even that good at engineering.
That’s all the STEMs now. The actual competent ones are on Wall Street.
Yep. why struggle doing research when you can make 500K a year writing stock trading algorithms.
i had a roommate who was a physics PhD. He quit after 4 years and went to work for a Wall St and his starting salary was 400K, this was 2009, after the crisis. had he completed his PhD he’d have been lucky to make 60K a year and then after decades of work he might have made close to 200K. I would guess today he’s probably making well over a million a year.
Yep. why struggle doing research when you can make 500K a year writing stock trading algorithms.
…because research contributes to make a better society for everyone compared to scamming people with overhyped stocks?
But yes, in reality, the trend seems to be finance first, if you can get in.
only a tiny minority of researchers get to do that.
most research is lots of work with poor pay, often to the point where are per hour making less than working at a fast food job.
very few researchers are lucky enough to get rewarding work, and hardly anyone gets to do rewarding work that is well-paid.
and most well-paid research even in industry is working for corporations that are seeking to enrich themselves rather than better society. most pharma research goes towards high profit highly specialized drugs, for example, that will mostly only benefit the small slice of society that can afford them.
And AI is going to put that into overdrive.
For a little while, I helped with some intern and recent grad interviews and holy shit some people didn’t have a clue. Had one guy on a remote interview that had a friend there helping him answer questions. It was obvious because he didn’t even mute his mic and we could hear them. And it was extra pathetic because his friend wasn’t even feeding him anything useful, like Bevis was helping Butthead with a software engineering interview.
We had a short break and when we resumed, he had at least figured out to mute his mic between questions (not that that helped, as muting yourself frequently when you’re one of the main speakers in the meeting alone is a red flag without some reason that should be obvious when it isn’t muted). Only resumed because I was fairly new to interviewing, if I got one of those today (and still did interviews), I would have ended it early.
Tell them to bring in the friend, then hire the friend on the spot and when they spin out of control say you were only kidding and end the meeting.
Engineering is just alternating between existential dread and direct deposit therapy.
So I should be a therapist because they are the ones selling the shovels?
That reminds me, I need a raise
Why should you get a raise? You’re terrible at your job!
Not a single downvote, and you call yourself a downvote hunter smh
He already killed all the downvotes in his region
Yeah.
downvote_hunter: “Do you SEE any downvotes?”
Ignotum: “No…”
downvote_hunter: “You’re WELCOME.”
Oh really? I just downvoted my own comment, and downvote_hunter did nothing to stop this from happening!
Give derry a raise!
Same I’ve been getting scammed for too long
Don’t tell me employer but it would still work for free. Software engineering is an absolute privilege and I can’t relate to this meme at all.
Where tf did you get that pay lmao, maybe its regional, but I need a raise like that, I’m a BE Dev 2, awaiting performance review for 3 (Senior) and sadly not as close to that as I’d like.
Could be a monthly payment, or a monthly contractor payment (so before subtracting taxes and insurance and whatnot) which would fit for a mid-level role being around 80k/year
If you’re not senior yet, thats why. This looks like a senior 2 - principal 1 level salary
Check levels.fyi. 400-500k+ isn’t unusual for senior and above positions in US HCOL areas at competitive tech companies. Often this includes RSUs which can have downsides but are usually ok
have a degree from a top 10 school, 10 years of experience, and work for a large corporation.
and learn to brown nose and play politics with your bosses
I’m a bit over 6 figures and if I didn’t pay Healthcare and 100% of our dual income household taxes I’d get ~$5k twice a month.
Yeah im like half that haha
god dam where they getting that
Maybe that’s the monthly pay
If do contract work that’s not even that much
True, then insurance and no time off or other benefits would suck.
It’s only “no time off” if that’s what you want. It’s time off whenever you want (and sometimes when you don’t want).
Accurate. Source: 20 years solo.
Contract work is rarely direct deposit, though?
US banking is weird. How would it be paid instead?
I’ve never hired a software consultant, but most of the time when I hire a company or person to do contract work like roofing, gardening or similar they prefer to be paid by check. Sometimes they accept credit cards, but usually not when the bill is over a certain amount, due to the cut going to the card company.
Furthermore, “Direct Deposit” is basically a special term used for people getting their wages or salary paid to their bank account, as opposed to receiving it by check or cash. Other types of bank-to-bank transfers have different names, like “wire transfer” or “ACH transfer”.
Americans love overcomplicating things in general, and particularly love using overly specific and technical names for stuff. There’s acronyms everywhere, and things are named after weird technicalities. Like nobody says “retirement account”, they call it “401(k)”, named after the paragraph in the law which defines it.
You find stuff like that everywhere if you look. Some of their coins don’t even have a value printed on them, you just have to memorize how much they’re worth.
In Europe (maybe also elsewhere outside the US?) nearly all transactions are simply direct bank transactions. Occasionally facilitated through some app, but usually it’s just your own bank’s app. Nobody has used checks for decades, and the only reason we’re using credit cards is because the US keeps forcing them on us.
You just have to memorize the coins
Plus they are not even logically ordered by size or anything.
Americans love overcomplicating things in general, and particularly love using overly specific and technical names for stuff. There’s acronyms everywhere, and things are named after weird technicalities. Like nobody says “retirement account”, they call it “401(k)”, named after the paragraph in the law which defines it.
As a plus, I can greatly confuse and terrify an Irish person by telling them about the thousands I send “to the old IRA” every year. 😂
Depends on how you do ur billing but yeah it varies
A month!? I know it’s regional but that’s low for a monthly deposit for a contractor!
You’re not accounting for taxes and insurance. You lose way more to both as a self employed individual (at least here in the states)
If you’re a self employed contractor, you’re taking taxes and insurance out yourself, not from what you’d be paid.
Exactly. When I was self employed, my monthly invoice was almost always in the 5 figures. From that you pay your VAT every quarter, save up for income taxes, pay all sorts of insurances, and what you’ve got left is a lot less, but the initial transfer looks very good.
I’m not really sure what your point is. If I bill my guy 8k for the hours I did last month he sends me 8k. I then personally have to buy my own insurance and do my quarterly taxes
Right, which would happen after the direct deposit, so your entire tangent about taxes and insurance seems irrelevant to the meme and conversation involving the amount in the meme.
Nah, that’s a normal paycheck for a medium level engineer in any American big city.
Yeah that’s a very big monthly pay
$150,000/yr (yes big, less than median for software engineers in the US) is $2k/week, $8k/month
8k/month is 96k/year. Just multiply by 12
How dare you question his math?! He gets paid 96k /150k for that!
this is about a deposit so it’s take home
401k etc makes this fuzzy
They said the US. Ao mathing is hard.
less than median for software engineers in the US
What
I’m moving there the second the orange guy gets thrown out of the White House
$2k/month is considered a very good salary in my country
Btw how does 8k/ month make 150k/year? Do you get bonuses or shares or whatever? I heard that they give shares to employees in the US
If it’s direct deposit, the $6k is probably for a two week pay period. That’s the standard for most corporations in the US. Withholdings, including taxes and retirement accounts and health insurance, is going to take roughly 1/3, so this guy is making $9k x 26 = ~$235k (probably more like $250k/yr).
As far as I know, $150K isn’t less than the median for software engineers in the entire US . It is less than the median for Senior/Lead Software Engineers though, so maybe that still works for you. In a HCOL city, you likely get far more than this amount, but it wouldn’t go nearly as far obviously.
no it’s not. at least where i live, it’s considered poor.
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Nay, daily.
That’s not that outrageous as a higher-level IC in a big tech company in a big city. But if you’re that senior you’re not questioning why you became an engineer.
There’s a reason the typical dev career pipeline ends at farmer. People get tired of all the bs and leave never to be seen again.
I’d say it is more accurate to say that the typical dev dreams about it ending as a farmer. I only know of a single guy that made it happen, proud of him though!
What is a farmer as a dev?
Literal farmer. In the dirt.
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I mean, you definitely do. I know numerous people that dropped the field entirely (including me) even though the pay is ridiculous.
Oh, you definitely wonder how long you can keep up with the corpo bullshit, but that wasn’t the vibe I was getting from the first panel. That was giving me more of a “junior engineer who can’t get something to work” vibe.
I’ve traded half my pay for more fulfilling work and less corpo bullshit before, but I didn’t quit engineering. I see some people dreaming about leaving it all behind and buying a farm, but what they all had in common was zero farming experience. The grass is always greener and all that.
Already farming?
Woodworking, close enough?
Same ballpark yeah
Mr Offerman?
I approve of this.
Sometimes it is just a really intense garden.
I also left, the industry is toxic right now. Circus for me
Eh, that looks like typical take home for a staff level engineer in a big city.
Edit: Assuming they get paid every two weeks, that’s an annual take home of $161,122. Depending on state taxes, insurance coverage, 401k contributions, dependents, etc, that’s a base salary of $200-250k. Which, yeah, that’s what I budget for a staff salary.
I think for a SF based company 200 - 250k salary is typical for even a senior engineer.
$161,122
Heck, I’d be pulling more than that if I were a self-employed consultant rather than under a consulting firm, in our small city in northern Scandinavia.
Now I’m raking in a little below that, and I’m taking out like a third of it as actual salary and saving the rest, to avoid high taxes, and to to pay for a leased car, pension saving, extra insurance etc, before taxes. But after all that I’m probably saving $3k every month tax free, and maybe $1,5k in my bank account.
Engineering life is pretty okay. Still can’t afford a house yet though. Thanks boomers.
Key phrase is “big city”. I’m a staff and there’s a mid on my team that moved to Seattle. His cost of living adjustment when he moved allows him to make more than I do.
Did he move to a new company site in Seattle or is he working remote now?
If they gave a cost of living increase for moving and allow him to do remote work, please tell me who you work for 😅
I know if I were moving, my company would offer me the option to go remote, because I’m the top performer on my team. But there’s no way they’d give me a cost of living increase to go remote, they don’t even want me to wfh a couple days a week…
Monthly it’s about what I’d expect for a low-medium experience engineer. But I’m an industrial engineer not software.
If that’s monthly pay, that’s at or below average.
If that’s bi-weekly…fuck I need to up my engineering game.
In the US…
Different in other parts of the world, even in Europe this is a high salary (but it reminds me to still ask for a raise…)
That’s because in Europe you have basic human rights like healthcare or the ability to not work while you’re sick.
Lockheed Martin
Lol they are not
Mechanical Engineer (union) with 20 years experience, slightly underpaid at $76.33/hr in (just north of the) Seattle area.
It doesn’t say it’s salary. A lot of companies pay out bonuses right around now.
That’s on the high end, but not so high it’s uncommon, for a salary paid biweekly to a senior engineer.
I know, and I mentioned that in another thread. The first panel in the comic was giving junior engineer vibes, though.
California. It goes with high cost of living.
That’s a salary of about $200k assuming twice monthly paychecks and a 75% tax rate. This is not at all unusual for tech software engineers, though probably not at the entry level. The entry level is a mess right now in general.
Here’s a job posting w base salary of $190k, seeking 3 YOE.
If you can add AI to your title somehow, that might even be midrange. I was talking to someone who has not been doing this long pushing pretty close to a half million dollar salary and then bonuses on top.
After taxes that’s like 300k salary.
Closer to $200-$250K depending on how much you withhold for 401k.
I guess I’m getting scammed then.
Or comparing European vs US wages
At least we don’t have to deduct 45% of our wages for the eventuality of needing a doctor and also walking 10km with a broken leg to avoid an ambulance ride.As an American, I take offense to this. We would never use kilometers
In Germany we get deducted around 40% directly, before the money even reaches us q.q Tbf that includes health care as well as taxes already and also we are a smidge farther away from fascism.
Yeah don’t Americans get paid taxes included? Here in Italy I get my wage with income tax, welfare costs etc already deducted.
I know right. It’s so weird here. People should just negotiate after tax salary and calculate everything after tax. But I guess everyone likes saying big numbers and then get angry government is taking a portion.
Honestly you should just have business pay tax like: x% for profits + y% (less than x) for employees’ salaries. That way they’ve incentives to pay salary over keeping profits (growing company is better long term). And employees don’t have to pay any tax themselves. And they negotiate amd work for after tax salary, no need to feel like gov is taking their money.
So here in Italy it’s advisable to use “RAL” when discussing employment contracts, which is yearly GROSS pay, but it’s also rather easy to translate that amount to net pay, and it’s what people usually do
I am.in the US, taxes come out of the paycheck before its paid.
On my check, before Inget it it pays
Taxes
Social security
401k
Health insurance premium
Dental insurance premium
Union dues
I think a few other small misc things.
Okay so a lot of people are telling you incorrectly, most people do get paid with their taxes taken out already and there are penalties for not doing so but technically it is optional.
Yes, we still get taxed and then we have to pay out of pocket for health insurance. Luckily my company has some good, cheap insurance. I also take advantage of the high deductible program so I can save tax free money in my health savings account.
The high deductible is the insurance company taking advantage of you. The fact that you can save for that tax free does not offset that you shouldn’t have to pay for it in the first place.
I’m not saying it does, but that it does have a silver lining at least.
Apples and oranges.
Contractors get paid directly with no taxes taken out. They must deduct it from their pay themselves.
Employees get taxes deducted before they are paid.
Ok but the meme doesn’t mention the type of employment
It was mentioned in other comments.
Can’t assume I’ve read anything but the comments upstream to me
cries in helpdesk technician
I truly went into the wrong part of tech.
Man, fuck the helpdesk shit. That was the worst thing I’ve ever done. Fucking strapped to a phone all day was brutal. Thank fuck I’m outta there
I mean, I enjoy the work a lot. It’s the people I don’t like. The worst part is that I’m really damn good at this job, the users adore me, and I am somehow very productive. So now I’m dealing with being important on top of everything else.
I’m not internal IT either. I work at an MSP, so every day I am guaranteed to see a new horror and interact with some of the worst specimens of humankind.
Think the worst thing I’ve experienced at this job was the time I called a dude and he spent the whole 45 min call sexually harassing and fetishizing me and begging me to marry him. I fixed his computer, threw up because I was so disgusted, then told my boss. My boss reviewed the call, which the user knew was recorded because I told him so when he answered. My boss was like “what the fuck. I’m so sorry he did that” And sent the recording to the big boss, who responded to me in the same way before sending it to HR of that dude’s company. Dude was fired immediately. I got to deactivate his stuff and HR of that company personally apologized to me.
I would leave this kinda job, but I have insanely good benefits, make more money than I should at this stage in my career, and I am full time remote. It’s kinda hard to top this shit, esp with how the US is right now. I’ve accepted that I’m here for the long haul.
Hey good the news is that MSP experience gets you a ton of good experience very quickly for moving into internal IT positions once the job market normalizes. I wouldn’t be planning on changing roles right now (but that doesn’t mean don’t try!) but from what you’ve described it sounds like you’ve got a brilliant skill set, plus of you can get on the good side of some higher ups at some of the larger clients you can sometimes turn that into a job offer with them directly
Also holy fucking shit I’m always floored by the level of sexism my feminine-presenting colleagues are forced into wading through. It’s completely unacceptable and I don’t understand how people go through life thinking this behavior could possibly be even remotely okay
What a fucking jackass. I’m so sorry you had to deal with this shit. Thankfully, I was internal and all my calls were from our employees. Didn’t stay long there. 8 months and got another role. I’m now a software developer and don’t even come near the phones and I make double what I made on the phones. I, too, was good at it, but I still hated it and went into depression because of it. I just can’t do phones at all.
Thank you. It felt good to deactivate all of his shit lol.
I’m glad you got out of the helpdesk trenches. Being a tech support grunt is harrowing. I have a mild breakdown about once a quarter, but that’s been a thing since my college days (yes I’m in therapy lol)
I don’t mind talking on the phone because I make a lot of calls outside of work. I just hate people being absolute idiots and being proud of not knowing how to do the most basic shit. Got a ticket from a client asking to help a different user connect her new mouse to her computer. It was just a wired mouse. That was the start of 2025’s Q3 breakdown.
You got a job?
Omg, this is so true
Don’t forget those sweet RSUs too!
Yes, there’s nothing like an imaginary number that keeps growing and never materialises.
RSUs aren’t imaginary. They can be sold for cash once vested.
Well it depends on how the RSU is set up of course. All the equity I’ve apparently received in my time is still waiting on “defined liquidity event” before I can do anything at all.
You got RSUs(restricted stock units) from a startup?
For startups those will usually be options (not RSUs) which do not materialize until an exit event. There can be liquidity events before exit as well if the company is doing well.
RSUs are usually offered by publicly traded companies and basically as good (or better) than cash.
No, not from a startup. It might be worth mentioning that I’m in the U.K. so the terms and lingo may differ from yours.
I’ve had RSUs from series D scale ups. I’ve had options from start ups. Typically in the UK they’re wrapped as an investment you make on entry (using a loan the company offers you) to only pay capital gains tax (25% in the UK). And I’ve had RSUs from big, established enterprises.
What’s common to them all, for me, is that they’ve broadly not paid out what they were advertised to, either because the stock falls (Unity springs to mind), you leave before anything material vests (and the hiring company matches your RSUs) or there’s no liquidity event.
I trust cash, paid into my bank account. The rest, IMHO, is just trumps (US: farts) in the wind.
Oof Unity is just bad luck. Most other tech stocks have done well.
Most big tech will vest monthly/quarterly and you can setup an auto sell when your stock has vested. This is literally cash in your bank account every vesting period.
I wish every company would adopt quarterly vesting. Yearly vesting schedules are obnoxious and can really screw people over.
Monopoly money is the best kind of money
Depends. I have worked at publicly traded large tech companies and RSUs have been very lucrative for me. Some years my total compensation has been 60-80% from RSUs.
sign me the fuck up for $6k per pay period.
Hope you’re willing to relocate to SF and still spend 50+% of your income on housing you will never own.
There are lower COL places that a senior or principle engineer/architect can earn $200k+
The math still works out. $40,000/year on rent, 50% tax rate at $600k/year total comp for a mid/high level engineer (if you’ve been working for a while). So after rent you’re taking in $240k/year. Let’s say your other expenses are another $40k.
That’s $200k saved per year. In some places that’s your entire annual salary!
So you’ve saved $1m after working 5 years.
Realistically the equity is worth a lot more over time due to tech stocks generally performing well and long term capital gains.
I don’t think your math does work out. If your take-home every two weeks is $6197 (after tax), then your annual take-home pay is $161,122. if your rent is 50% of your income that’s $80, 561, not unheard of if you live in a tech hub and have kids that want their own bedroom. Knock off your $40k for other expenses and you’re saving $40,561 per year. That’s assuming that all your other expenses (car, gas, groceries, utilities, childcare, healthcare, insurance, i could go on) all come out under $40,000, which I think is optimistic.
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Ok if you’re considering a single income family then the numbers change since you’re paying more for housing but less in taxes. Say instead of 50% tax rate it’s now 45%, which is $330k take home.
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Cash is only a portion of the total comp. You have to either consider publicly tradable RSUs or equity pre IPO. This can be 50+% of the cash salary. At staff or higher levels, this grows to 100+%. My assumption of $600k TC is a $300k cash and $300k stock, which is reasonable for a staff engineer.
$330k - $80k (housing) - $50k (expenses) = $200k
So with these numbers you’re still saving $200+k a year.
Note that if we’re talking dual income families, the numbers are even more in your favor.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your $330k take home figure from. If your paycheck direct deposit is $6197 and you get paid every 2 weeks, that’s 26 paychecks per year, or
26 * $6197 = $161,122. if your take home pay was $330k annually, your direct deposit would be$330,000 / 26 ~= $12,692.Also not sure why total compensation is relevant. Of course if you’re getting more money you can save more money but we’re talking about being a software engineer and getting $6k checks deposited. Some engineers get equity, but many don’t, and of those that do get options many don’t stick around long enough for their options to mature, and of those that do, only some of them have matured options that have actually appreciated enough to make them worth exercising. I’m not saying equity can’t be very valuable, there are engineers out there who’ve made serious bank with equity, but it is more often than not a carrot dangled in front of engineers to entice them to tolerate their shitty job a little longer. I don’t think assuming a $161k/yr check translates to a $600k/yr return is a sound or accurate assumption. It is, however, a common one. Junior engineers fresh out of college are good at math, and they calculate out what their equity should be worth and get dollar signs in their eyes and sign up. A few of them get that, most do not.
Are we talking about the big tech companies or a SWE at a non tech company?
Because ALL the big tech firms will have similar levels of TC. For example a staff SWE at Google in SF will make $267k cash and $292k stock according to levels.fyi. This cash amount can reasonably be $6000 after taxes. Note that the stock vests monthly. You can literally auto-sell the stock for an extra 100+% cash every month.
Meta vests quarterly which is still sufficiently often and they pay even more stock.
Netflix is known not to grant stock but they will pay the equivalent in cash.
Amazon has a graduated vesting policy but the annual TC is still normalized.
If $6197 is your only form of compensation per two weeks, then that’s not a big tech salary. you can go make that outside a high CoL area. But if you live in SF, it’s a reasonable cash deposit for a staff SWE (except Netflix).
I’m talking about this image
And this comment:
sign me the fuck up for $6k per pay period.
Something to keep in mind here is that senior and super-senior engineers (staff, principal, distinguished, whatever honorifics they’re using now) are a minority within the engineering population, by design. Of engineers with those titles, only a minority of them work at the megatech companies that sit at the top of the stock market. They are huge corporations, but they aren’t the majority of the market. And there’s nothing to suggest that someone getting that paycheck is making over half a million a year in total comp.
And speaking of “Total Compensation”, a general PSA for anyone in tech (especially new devs): don’t consider equity as compensation until you can and do cash it out. If it’s not money in your bank account, it’s not compensation, it’s a lottery ticket. If you are offered options, especially if you’re early in your career, you’re very likely to exit the company (either voluntarily or via a layoff) before any of your options mature, much less all of them. Most options plans start vesting after 12 months, and don’t fully vest until 4 years. the median tenure for tech workers with a college degree in the US aged 25-34 is 2.8 years, so the majority of them would be leaving before a significant percentage of their options mature. It might still be a good gamble in some cases, and even bad gambles sometimes pay off, but don’t make the mistake of equating equity with cash, they aren’t the same.
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