What salary did you start on?

Got out of High School at 18. Instead of doing STEM in College I went straight to work. Now making $40,000 as a software engineer at a small firm 8 years later.

Would you say this is good progression or did I goof by not doing STEM?

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I did the same.. dropped out of school.

Age 26, making $40,000 goofing around all day doing network/voip/system installations at small companies. Got comfy work place, my own office, no gf..

And honestly I'm happy with it, don't need anything more.

College costs you in two ways:
> Direct cost of college: Tuition+room and board
> Opportunity cost: Money you didn't make while in college
The upside is
> Make more out of college than if you didn't go
If you're here, you're probably smart enough to run a spreadsheet on the above. If you do this, you'll find out why ppl spend big $$$ on top-10-school MBAs and why majoring in literature is a bad investment.

I got an AAS and started working for a packaging machine manufacturer as an electrical assembler at $17/hr, then after 10 months moved and got a control panel building job at $21/hr. After 3 months there, I'm making 22/hr or ~$45k/yr.

I managed to get through school without debt (actually netted a profit) through various government grants.

>2014
Graduated, 6 months with no job then hired on at 42k with no benefits
>2015
52k, still no benefits
>2016
First big boy job, 75k salary + real corporate benefits
>2018
Accepted job offer with fewer hours and less stress for 86k

Relative to cost of living in my area, doing pretty well. Not having any internship/co-op experience put me 18 months behind but since then it has been breddy gud.

college master computer science with mediocre grades. live in 250k people town, commute is 20 min with bike.
30 days vacation, health ensurance (normal in germany)

starting salary 47k€, changed jobs after 5 months: 50k€ with incease to 56k€ after 6 months.

> Government paid for my college
> Worked through 4 of the 5 years on my CE degree (part-time, so low salary)
> Graduated last year, 4 years experience
> Immediately got job for 72k/year (no benefits, tho) working from home 4 days a week

Feels comfy

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>$40,000 = ~£31,000
Sounds good, especially coming from just HS, though being across the pond I have no idea how that translates to take-home after taxes or what living costs are.

For myself:
>went to Uni for 4years (mix of compsci, computer networking and AD administration)
>2009 no fucking jobs anywherefor grads. Join an IT contractor grad scheme, 6months unpaid training in London (bye bye savings)
>2.5 year hopping aorund UK in various contracts for £20k rising to £24k in final year
>reject staying on contracting even though pay would jump to £32k and the 20k training fees hanging over my head were now gone
>Move to Scotland, get full-time 3rd line engineer position at 21k, this rises to 25k over 4years

It's not great money compared to most people, but I'm not struggling and even have a mortgage on 3-bed house. I just can't see how people making double my wage are amassing huge debt
pic unrelated, just felt like posting something

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I got a $110k salary as a software engineer straight out of college.
Up to $130k now, a year later.

>poor my entire childhood
>get first job at age 15
>data entry technician
>$10/hr
>go start an LLC under my name so i can legally make bank doing freelance shit while i do my main job
>make around $50k/yr
>turn 18, quit current data entry job
>work as a dairy stocker for ingles
>worst job ever, i worked at the most underpaid ingles at $7.50/hr
>quit within three months
>under my LLC, i do contract work
>make about $80k/yr at it
>turn 19
>now work at an antitrust firm as lead digital forensics tech
>$100k/yr
>currently 20
>same setup
>raking in about $120k/yr
>rags to riches
>feels good man

Currency in my third world shithole converted is around $12k/yr. For a fresh graduate that's a lot and puts me square in the middle class income bracket.

85k

>$130k
Fucking developers always seem to be rolling in money, while most of my job is spent teaching them why pouring coffee on their shiny new laptops is bad and keeping the company from going under when they spin up umpteen 5-figure/month databases in Azure and neglect to scale them down or even set any limit at all.

> 2009, first job as web designer £22k
> 2011, second job as front-end developer £35k
> 2013, third job as ux/ui/frontend £45k

No college, completely self taught.

you fucked up, by the time I was still in middle school I was pulling 80K salary, bought real state, now I don’t have to work while netting 150k from doing absolutely nothing but advertise on airbnb

And yes, I have a vagina. What’s your excuse?

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>that face
>has a vagina
waste desu

pretty similar to me so far

I'm a uni dropout and started at £16k in 2016, up to £30k by now
self taught as well, it's the way to go

>go to really shit college
>barely better than community college
>CS
>get good grades
>get a cyber security internship senior year
>get job offer
>making ~$120k right out of school

Why don’t people do this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Started on $CA45,000 as an intern. Moved on to 60K when I went full time. I moved on to a startup for 30K and some shares. After the funding round it will go up, or if the funding round fails or we don't find a revenue stream I will leave. The last company I was at offered me anything I want to come back, which probably means at least average pay for the area for a software engineer (80K). I'm still new, but the company seems to think I'm senior so I'd probably ask for at least 90.

In Ameribux: I am making 22+K for the chance to profit from a small startup, I could be making 70+K at a slightly larger company.

Oh, and I have 2.5 years experience.

I have lower than average salaries because I live in Wales
>Age 19/20, internship at a web firm as part of my uni degree. £15k
>Age 21, graduate job, £20k
>Age 23, move to corporate company, £28k with benefits
What's good is that I now have experience + family in London. Which means I can look for a remote job (who might ask me to visit their office in London maybe once a week) and get at least a £10k salary increase

This is bull unless you live in LA, and if you live in LA then lol

Because you're LARPing

>I just can't see how people making double my wage are amassing huge debt
Because they are retards who spend more than they can afford.

I live in SF

Talk to me about your freelance shit my dude.
Was it just you? What kind of work did you do? And most importantly, how did you go about promoting yourself?

>what salary did you start on
3k ZAR / month, full time job. That's about 140 GBP / month equivalent. Earning a lot more now.

I'm not fully employed yet but my last internship paid 75k a year which is pretty average for a bachelors degree as far as I know.

Getting other ppl to pay for your education is always best. Parents and I paid for my undergrad with no loans. Govn't paid for master engineering, company paid for my MBA.
Nice work. I should have done same but didn't see a path forward. I'm doing this now starting much later... I'd have retired by now if I'd just done my own thing, but probably wouldn't have seen as much of the world.

it was just me, doing IT and tech support. i targeted people aged 40+ and printed off business cards, promoting myself at real estate offices, law firms, and hospitals.
not even kidding, my life improved drastically after dropping out of college. if you can find a niche market that you can make bank at, go balls deep, no lube.

adding to my answer for , i'd also like to mention that i overtook the clients of surrounding computer companies in the area, and pretty much held an IT monopoly for the quad-county area

>Now making $40,000 as a software engineer at a small firm 8 years later
kek it took you 8 years to make a livable wage

Graduated in 2013, started at 56k, 4 promotions in last 5 years, at 123k + 401K + PPO

Not everyone has connections.

That's awesome. How much knowledge did you have going in and about what?
Freelancing seems kinda comfy. Lots of work but comfy

>8 years of work and only making $40k
That's $320k lifetime savings max (I assume you started below $40k).
If you had gone to even a state college and spent approximately $15k/yr for 4 years ($60k) you could have come out of it making around $80k if you played your cards right.
That would still come out to $320k total with debt from college, but you will move up the ladder MUCH faster, especially with a starting salary that was high.

i've been using computers in-depth since i was 5. by age 14 i started seriously branching out my knowledge to things like hardware breaching, modding, and satellite shit. got into linux around age 13 and mained gentoo at 15. i also did business classes and 99% of everything is just self-taught. my advice: don't waste time on anything, but rather learn everything you can on your own. try learning a new skill a day.

Great advice my dude thanks a lot. I try to learn as much as I can. It's about all I can do while I look for jobs anyway

Im 23, not graduated yet, no work experience.
Im trying desperately to get an internship but all companies in the career im interested in are extremely demanding when hiring and i think i fucked up for not getting more experiences in college.

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Damn that pay sucks, but at least college was free for you. How much do you get after taxes? 30k euroes?

finished college last year, moved to LA for a 95k dream job, then got laid off after about 14 months
unemployed & depressed rn; gibe job pls

First programming job was £12 per hour, summer job, Python
Second was half time, I don't remember but I think like 20 bux an hour, Haskell
Graduated, first fulltime was 50k USD first year then 55k. Got my contract changed to newly opened UK office at £50k a year nearing end of third year but then I changed job. Also Haskell.
Now 150k USD a year with like 150k-300k bonus depends on how well we do (may be 0 fwiw). Also Haskell.

25 currently

74kcad starting at amd.

I got payed 40 AUD per hour to work on some shitty web app nobody ever used

Started at 50k€ now at 85k€, doing embedded dev.
It's been pretty hard finding a job which pays better that isn't management.

Internship was $32/hr, hired as a junior after that for $65k/yr salary (the same really, but with benefits, insurance coverage, bonuses, 401k. etc), then promoted to mid after 7 months for $80k/yr. At my current point with bonuses I make around $105k/yr give or take (before taxes). 401k match is 6%, I do 12% and generally they give us a 20% EOY 401k bonus which is pretty good. Before all of this I worked at a help desk for $7.25/hr, then some restaurants making/delivering pizza.

If you're happy with where you are then sure, it was the right move. I for a time thought my degree was useless as no company seemed interested in taking a chance on a junior level guy with initiative. Then I got the internship and it took off and now I make more in a day then I would make some months at the help desk.

My degree I think was worth it, but only because the paper matters, what I did in my off time helped more and made me valuable.

Haha whatever you say, I’m not sure what type of proof is acceptable. I left out the part where I studied hard got great grades and interviewed like crazy but that was literally all I did

$40,000 is basically starvation wages

Average per capita income in the US is less than that. It's not good, but it's not really starvation either.

28, self taught, started a few months ago, $45k a year app developer.

you got fucked op. rip.

>40k as a software engineer 8 YEARS LATER
Yikes. I got out of uni at 22 and started off with 70k and I'm a mediocre codemonkey.

You fucked up.

Australian here. I finished uni last year and landed a job in February. Started on $70k/year before tax, which works out to be roughly $55k after tax. Not sure what kind of salary increases I'll get though.

To the anons who've started at the bottom (particularly those without degrees) and are now making bank with nice jobs; what advice would you give to someone starting out who wants to be good enough at their job to be well paid and trusted to work flexibly/remotely? I've nearly finished my portfolio (age 24, no degree) and will apply for jobs soon. Making good money while travelling the world is my absolute dream. Thanks

For all you self taught devs out there, why not get a degree from something like WGU? From what I understand they can be done pretty quickly if you have industry experience.

fuck, I'm about to graduate in about a year in I.T.
What should I do to get a job? I also have no experience.

Because they're full of shit and nowhere near as good as they claim or think they are

Enlisted in the military out of high school.
3 years later, I make what would be $45k at a normal job.
We have all kinds of weird non-taxed pay, so you gotta work backwards from your take-home pay to figure what the equivalent gross pay is.

In January I'll be getting a promotion and transfer to the UK, where I'll then be pulling like $70k.

highschool dropout
win 50+ million dollar lottery
age 18
inb4 larp LOL

I think about this a lot.
How are your funds allocated? Gotta ensure the wealth of future generations.
You could live lavishly off of just a small fraction of the returns that would net you annually.

I've got no coding knowledge or any such skills, I just browse Jow Forums because it's interesting.

>No job greater than mowing lawns until after I dropout of nuclear medicine technology program at college
>Take on summer jobs with local municipality, paint road signals on the blacktop, landscaping at City cemetery, clean and paint fire hydrants
>Start associate's degree program for "chemical process industry" to try to get in with local large chemical company
>Graduate and move to 2nd largest city in my state, begin working at a glue/adhesives factory for 35k/yr.
>Working with dangerous chemicals and solvents
>Finally get raise (2 at once) 1.5 years later, 45k
>Apply at much larger chemical company back in my hometown, get accepted and move in with my grandmother to help her out and get mostly free housing... Before I even get first paycheck with above raises.
>Entry level position at this company, almost double previous company's entry pay.
>Stuck in this position until May 2019, after contract change.
>May get pushed back down to 45k before I can get into a better position
>Mother is trying to push me out of Grandma's home as fast as possible, despite knowing I might be taking a significant pay cut in the near future.

Started at 60k, 4 years later now at 85k, trying to go for 100k next time reviews come up.

H.S grad (2002), Some college (CCNA classes), Few Certs (2002/2003) (2012-2014)
Right now I'm a State Worker. Benefits set in stone; pension check/401K + medical coverage coming to me in 15 more years. I'll be 50 yrs old. 50 and fully retired. Currently make just under $27k a year (before taxes) but I have no debt other than house payment. My wife brings home decent check and we don't have kids. Got two cats though. Cars are both paid off. Cost of living here ain't bad. I save around $400 each month, depending. Wife, she saves a decent pile as well, so all in all it ain't bad. Job itself is zero stress or bullshit. Just go in, do what needs doing, then leave. Really only way to get fired is if you cheat on your working time.

Started at $100k base, 4 years later I'm at $150k. In addition to that I got around $120k in stock and around $30k in bonus last year, so really I'm making around $300k.

Started off making about 125k, got promoted 2 years later and got a raise to about 175k. Switched jobs another year later and making 225k now.

Buy a small factory and manufacture ThinkPad Clones and sell them to Jow Forums, its what I would do, desu

failed final test, havnt gotten a job since then lmao neet lyfe senpai

I want sub-millionaires to get off my board.

>says his salary
>doesn't say where he lives
40K in India, you own a town.
40K in SV, you're homeless.

30k€ in france near paris.

Got paid in 5grams a weed first now about 25a month
Being tyrones little cuck Jew pays out well

>tfw have a phone screen scheduled for today
wish me luck lads. i've been a neet for a month now and am ready to hop into the wageslave world

I started at 28,000€ beginner Linux embedded developer with a master's degree in France
Now at 14 years experience I make 42,000€

dropped out of uni to be a neet
£27.5k gov job

Master of Engineering in EE, became software dev for a small company (~70 employees) in rural Eastern Germany.

Making 3500 € / month before tax for the first 6 months (about 2k after tax). I get to renegotiate the terms after my trial period ends and I'll aim for around 4k / month then. All for 40 h / week, of course. 27 days of vacation (increases with age), flexible hours.
This may sound like little money to Burgers but
>rent (including all recurring costs like internet, electricity, water etc) is less than 500 € per month
>eat + drink for ~150 € per month
>car insurance ~300 € p.a.
Fuel is pretty expensive (costs me between 65 and 120 € per month depending on how often I visit family and whether I take the car or bike) but still not that bad. I have about 1-2k disposable income every month, that's pretty neat.

You smart fuck. If only I could've told myself college was a black hole of time and money. I make $200 a month tops. You're living my dream OP

70k (w/ benefits) working at a Help Desk. The work sucks, but the meme about gov't workers being overpaid is real.

> be me
> knock up gf last year of college
> proceed to struggle to find work even though i have degrees in comp sci and econ
> find job in middle of nowhere paying 55k per year
> dick around on job doing open source projects
> leave job to pursue dream
> go down career path
> be currently making 6 figures in mid 20s.
> be prepared for inevitability of it all going to shit.

Lol so you're actually losing money

Not who you replied to but what state/city my man? I'm a senior rn tryna do the same thing or go into data science if not cyber

How's your kid

A lot of Jow Forums are claiming to make $10k a day, CEO money.

You're not going to get $70k a year unless you live in a major metropolitan area and have a four leaf clover attached to you. Python, Java and any codemonkey claiming to only use CLI grow on trees nowadays, and the prospects aren't as good as 5+ years ago.

We just finished our hiring round for Python devs here in Seattle. We had 1,658 people apply. 1,658 PEOPLE. We hired few at $36k a year + 401k and some other company benefits. I'm management and make $205k after 6 years at the company.

I don't believe for a fact any of you recent grads make more than $30k base after graduating. Most of the time, you won't be making anything decent for few years unless the company expands or you go elsewhere. My partner works at Google in SC and they have tens of thousands of people apply a month. I don't believe for a second a company would give $76k to an intern when there are Master's/PhD students begging for a free internship spot here.

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This is probably the most real answer here. Am I missing something about people getting $75k a year jobs out of college? Sounds like everyone here is LARPing hard.

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Self taught programmer
I make fuck all but I enjoy what I do and I like the company I work for.

I used to make ~50k working for a large financial company but had no benefits and was depressed as all hell.

Now I make ~30k working for a small ass printing company as a web dev/app dev/tech but have full benefits, no deadlines, and little to no stress. It's pretty chill and I work harder for them since they actually respect their employees.

I'm only 23 and I'm sure with more experience under my belt things can only move forward from here.

Six months... I graduated three weeks ago and can feel the pressure already. At least fifty applications sent out so far. Only three or four emails back letting me know I'm not a candidate.

I studied Spanish.

I’m making 140k working remote. Been out of college for 3 years.

I work for Jet.com

Make around $77,000 but that's after 10+ years of full stack web development. Anyone claiming to be making this amount straight out of college or who have below at least 5-6 years of experience in the specific field are full of shit.

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>work for discount Walmart
>thinks he knows what the actual market rates are

Well, 46 more chances to get a job. Good luck user

Out of highschool I got a job at Tacobell, I went to school part time while there, in the summers I found a second job and worked as close to fulltime as I could. Made about 15k a year

Eventually started weighting tables, this was better money in less time, I made about $300 in 3 days, so I worked Friday - Sunday and spent the rest of time going to school / studying, sometimes I would pick up extra shifts if I really needed something, made around 20k a year.

Eventually I got an internship doing electrical engineering for an aerospace firm and they paid me fucking $22 an hour full time in the summers, and 10 hours a week in the school year (this was by my choice and I could always work more if I had time). Did this for about a year while I finished school. About 25k a year still but I was hardly working at all during the year and still making it easily.

Got hired on fulltime once I graduated for $61k a year,
Year two they promoted me to level two engineer and bumped my pay up to 66k a year.
Last year I got the exceptional performer award and bumped my pay to 72k a year,
Im on track this year to do the same as well as being called a subject matter expert in what I do. Im expecting to make close to $80k at the end of this year.

I have a wife and 2 kids, with a third on the way, my wife is finishing her masters this year in accounting. We should be living pretty well by this time next year! It has been a long, hard road to this point but I have to tell you, if I can do it, anyone can.

Pic related, my state.

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Eurofag here. Why do burgers make so much $? I could only dream of $72,000 per annum.

I've graduated 5 years ago and am lead engineer but so far only make $37,000 if translated to lettuce for the burgers.

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>graduate high school with some scholarships
>spend them all on IT certs at a local community college
>get job at a PC repair shop at 18 making slightly above minimum wage
>leave that after a year and work as a field tech
>leave that after a year and work as a network admin
>$60k at 21 with no degree
Could be better, could be worse. I'm happy with it though.

>Would you say this is good progression or did I goof by not doing STEM?
I was talking to an engineer from SGI back in the day. She was saying that 4 years of experience was as good if not better then a college degree. So basically you got paid to learn programming rather paying to learn programming. I'd say that's a win.

>why majoring in literature is a bad investment.

Depends. If you go to somewhere like Oxbridge any degree is a good investment (i assume it is similar in american if you go to one of the most prestigious schools)

I started at 45k and make 85k comming on 4 years later. Im ready for a raise

We get free healthcare and pensions (lol, right) though

At-will employment means that you don't take on as much of a risk when hiring a new person.

Your company is straight-up cucking you and the other devs. Google starting offer for new grads is 175k TC (and matched my friend's other offer to 200k TC). Facebook has similar offers. Microsoft in Seattle does 120k TC but will bump up stock to match. Even the national lab I interned at offers 105k for new grads.

Don't believe me? You can check offer numbers at levels.fyi.

Astounding. Dropped out of engineering school to work as a technician. Started at 32k. After 5 years I was making 50k, 58k with regular overtime.

Effort gets rewarded

What does "at-will" employment mean exactly?

Usually here in EU you get a probationary period, where they can fire you within a certain period of time if they wish to do so.

But we still don't have nowhere near the salaries you guys get for just being systems admins.

I was working as a Java dev at €27k per year, a systems admin was making around €30k just to jerk off. In US I would of probably made 3x the amount.

EU devs are the one's who should be rioting not these feminazi's.

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I'm 19. I did 1.5 years of CS and got a co-op job as a sysadmin working with supercomputers and making $42500. I'll probably drop out and look for a permanent position after this term.