AppAmaGooBookSoft are probably not what you're thinking of when you say "startups" and 5-10 years in any of them will make you quite wealthy indeed, by the standards of e.g. the American middle class.

Do some devs make north of $1 million a year? Yes, for a value of "some." (If you put a gun to my head, I'd say "Maybe 5% of the engineering workforce at AppAmaGooBookSoft. Possibly modestly higher than that in finance.") The shortest path to it is "significant contributions to a major revenue driver for a large company combined with aggressive negotiation."

Depending on where you draw the bar for "wealthy", there are a lot of dev-related businesses which can get you there. Consultancies with employees throw off a lot of money on a yearly basis and also build value which can be sold. Profits for a well-managed e.g. Rails consultancy are on the order of $2.5k~$10k per employee per month (math here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7155387), so if you run a 10-person consultancy, you do pretty well for yourself via distributions while also drawing the market salary you're paying all the employees.

There exist many product businesses which are primarily or largely software in character. There exist hundreds of software companies which toil in relative obscurity whose founders are (generally very quietly) millionaires even when one doesn't count the value of the company itself. I built a consulting career off of working for SaaS companies with, in the main, $10 to $50 million a year in revenue. There exist lots of them. The rough economics are often 10% COGS 10% marketing 10% G&A 50% salaries 20% "whatever the owner feels like."

Many of these paths will not involve you being primarily working on compilers and dev tools. (Compilers are a tough sell -- dev tools perhaps less so. There exist plenty of great small dev tools companies.) Even if that is what your business actually makes money on, you will probably have to a) get into business and b) spend the majority of your cycles on building the business rather than building the thing the business makes, unless you take the well-compensated employee route.

There are your answers. Here is my question: what do you want out of life? What does "wealthy" mean to you? What motivates your desire to retire early?

I once wanted to retire early, but that was a symptom of the underlying affliction "I hated what I was doing for a living." If you see wealth as an opportunity to choose to spend most of your cycles on something other than what you presently do for a living, you probably can achieve that without being sold-a-startup-now-I'm-loaded wealthy. Some of the happiest people I know run quiet little cottage industry software businesses on the Internet in preference to the day job. Most don't have seven figures in the bank, but their day-to-day lifestyle might resemble that of a "gentleman of means."

If you want to have sufficient free cycles to study something, consider as an option "Create some enduring source of value which solves the sustenance-for-myself-and-family problem with the minimum number of hours required per week; spend my freed-up-time studying rather than filing TPS reports."

Most folks I know in the bay area don't want to "retire" what they want is to work on what ever their passion leads them too without worrying that if it isn't paying them anything that they will have to stop or starve.

If you can save half your salary every year then you will get to a point where you have enough money in an account that it can pay you an equivalent to half your salary without working.

If you work at a large tech firm and participate in their employee stock purchase program and/or get stock options, then you are doubly leveraged as that can add a nice kicker to your salary.

Solving people's problems will keep you employed, and finding a solution space that you like to work in will keep you happy. Always remember that the end game is you just die, and that can come any time.

If you find happiness in owning a new car each year, I suggest you consider working for an automobile manufacturer.

Normally this is OK, but can be a concentration of risk if all your wealth is tied up in salary from your employer and stock from your employer. Ask Lehmans employees.

I was also unsure and searching for it basically only gave HN things.

i.e. the big tech players that employ a ton of people and pay high, predictable salaries.

- Selling enterprise software (you can make 10%-20% of an 8 or 9 figure deal)

- Selling securities in some form or another (you make ~5% of deals worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars)

- high leverage consulting (solving very hard tech problems for lots of people. for example: I have a friend who helps a whole bunch of computer vision companies and makes a ton. Another friend is an SEO expert.)

- Patenting core technologies and selling those patents (A buddy of mine sold his patent for $10M)

- "platform based land grabs". Think of the people who bought tons of domains early in the Web's history. Or the first guy to make an emoji app on iOS. These are different than "starting a company" as you really only need a product and can pull it all off on your own. I suspect there will be more of these in the future.

All of these require creatively navigating business as well as being an awesome dev.

Sales/Business Development executives are generally the best compensated in most companies. You may recoil at the thought of something smarmy like sales. However, there is an learned art to the process when done well. And leveraging your background on the software development side could prove a huge competitive advantage. Buyers will see you as the Real Deal.

The monetary wealth typically comes from stock options. Stock options are a promise that you can buy stocks at a certain price at some point in the future (when they become available, e.g. during an investment or IPO). Options are how you become an overnight millionaire. Startups aren't the only place where you can earn options.

You'll typically find that companies that aren't publicly traded have stock options (ask about them in your interview). It's not something that's exclusive to startups - I have options in a 10 year old company and have cashed in some of those options.

2. Yes.

3. Accrue wealth like anyone would. Developers earn relatively high salaries (whether they work for a startup or not) and hence have an easier time getting into the situation where money works for them.

However, even one of those developers who earns $1 000 000 can have no wealth if they waste it all. Someone who earns $75 000 can amass a fortune. It all comes down to how well you manage your money. If you do something to get rich quick chances are you are going to end up penniless. It takes time, discipline and a brain.

There is no quick road to material wealth.

Money does not make you happy, it merely multiplies what is already there. It's a catalyst. If you're already happy, money makes you happier. If you're already sad, money will make you miserable.

Ehhh. I jumped from research to the startup world, so maybe I have a high bar, but most startups are doing pretty boring, predictable variations on bog-standard systems work. You see this in the way that these "exciting" companies keep re-inventing the same wheels in different languages. How many javascript frameworks are there, again? How many different ways have people found to "replace" relational databases?

If you're right out of school, everything is challenging. Give it a few years. Eventually, it becomes downright boring to watch people needlessly re-solve problems that were solved in the late 1960s because they don't know history, and/or don't want to learn some boring old technology that their older brother used last week.

If you want interesting problems, go into research. If you want to do interesting problems and get paid, go to companies that are large enough to have the resources to fund things that aren't directly on the critical path to profit. Startups are a really bad place to go if you want tricky puzzles.

I realized a) that I was unlikely to get a tenure-track position, and b) that even if I were to get one, I didn't really enjoy the work of a tenure-track professor, which tends to be more about fundraising and having meetings, and less about doing research.

(More flippantly, I realized that the life of a modern, tenured academic looks a lot like the life of a small business owner. So why not just go into startups, where there's a chance of making real money for the lifetime of effort?)

Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40.

But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money.

I believe the same applies for startup founders too. As a dev in startup land you are at a disadvantage though - the fail or rise of the company is much more about sales and biz than tech.

I think as a dev big corps are the way better bet. Not much to loose, but possibly high payout. Startups very rarely pay out for devs.

Most people who are "exceptional at what they do" are putzing around at a corporation making a competitive, maybe above average salary. They are not on track to retire at 40.

I've also noticed that it's always people with money who say, "don't be motivated only by money". Easy to say. It's called "compensation" because it exists to compensate you for doing something you otherwise wouldn't be doing. Plenty of successful people are motivated by money, and there is nothing shameful about it.

Read Peter Thiel's Zero to One. He talks about competition vs. monopoly. You want to do things that other people aren't doing. He talks about the Harvard MBA grads who chase the last bubble, i.e. getting your timing exactly wrong.

People don't get rich by doing things other people told them to. And people don't get rich by doing "prestigious" things either. Read the parts here about prestige -- it's dead on:

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

(BTW this is also coming from someone who "got lucky" -- can retire in my 30's but never thought about money.)

I think of it this way: Suppose you don't have exceptional abilities. If you do what is prestigious, what "seems" like it will get you rich, what other people tell you to do -- then you have roughly a 0% chance of getting rich.

If you take a slightly unusual path, enjoy it, and get the flywheel/positive feedback loop going, you have maybe a 1-3% chance of getting rich.

So if you want to increase your chances of getting rich, I would do something that others aren't, and do it to the point past where others would give up, because it's not making them any money.

The thread is over if you want a repeatable way to get rich. There is something analogous to the "no arbitrage" principle for personal income. If there were an easy way to get rich, someone smarter/earlier/luckier than you has already taken it, and they didn't tell you about it until afterward. You have to find your own way.

Probably not repeatable ways to get extremely rich.

This post from Cal Newport elaborates further[1]. I highly recommend his book So Good They Can't Ignore You.

[1]http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the-sci...

That would have ruled out Google (AltaVista) and Facebook (MySpace).

Thiel's premise is to be the last search engine, the last social network, etc. It's not: don't enter competitive fields; it's: compete, best the competition, and become a monopoly. There's no such thing as avoiding competition, there is no scenario under which Google was going to not have to compete, and have the entire market handed to them. The question is: can you acquire market dominance or not?

If Google had wanted to compete, it would have gone for Yahoo, and become a portal, and tried to maximize user time on the site. The conventional wisdom was that Yahoo was far more worthy of competition than AltaVista. AltaVista wasn't even a company; it was almost shut down by its parent company IIRC. And it didn't make any money. Nobody wanted to compete with AltaVista. Search was viewed as a feature, not a company.

Facebook also avoided competition in its early years by being closed to the public and signing up one college at a time. They formed monopolies on social networks within specific colleges, and leveraged that position to expand to the rest of the world.

The idea is not to compete "head on". Don't just try to do same thing, but better. Do something different. It's hard to imagine what the world was like before Google or Facebook, but they were both doing something radically different early in their lives.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

A more useful answer would be something along the lines of: "Get N years of domain experience in X technology at one of A, B, or C firms, and learn sales."

There are thousands and thousands of very successful businesses that mimic other businesses. Burger chains are a trivial example.

If you know a dozen people making 500k, it doesn't seem that uncommon to make 500k.

And yet 40% of Americans earn under 20k.

40%! http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2012

Lots of developer salaries are around 60k, some lower, some higher, almost none exceed 100k if you actually look into percentages.

HN is a strange echo chamber with regards to money, it feels like everyone is making a killing, and really, almost no one is.

I work for small tech companies (generally under 50 devs) though. I can believe it's more common in big tech companies, where I just don't know.

Why do you thing "dev big corps" are better? What does that mean to you? I think of Microsoft, Google, IBM, Apple, but even after you get in there moving up to exceptional in a room of exceptional people is even a more meteoric task.

That makes makes for a good living with many luxuries Germany standard's but those guys are the ones who have to dance in front of the local CEO every week and can't enjoy weekends and work in the afternoon. They can afford sometimes low level luxury cars but for sure they can't stop working and just retire.

For them work developing or implement something is a hobby they can do after a whole day full of meetings.

Not a dream dev life, not a way to become actually rich. And I'd add: not a way to enjoy life (if you hate meetings and empty technical discussions which are not about the technical topic but about a political reason which usually sucks).

Then I switched to management path, I found out that although I do only a very limited amount of coding at work right now, I'm enjoying it much more. As an added benefit, I am not mentally tired anymore when I come back home, since at work I only do blah-blah social, blah-blah report, blah-blah management. This leaves me with enough time and energy in the evening to work on really interesting projects for an excellent hourly rate, or on my own hobby stuff. The drawback? I don't watch TV anymore.

As someone else who works with people with self-proclaimed great ideas but are strangely reluctant to put any of these ideas on paper, it's comforting to know there are others out there who have to work amongst such nonsense.

Edit: I'm curious....do you find now that you've made the move to management, have you had to adopt this same "less than honest" culture in order to be accepted within the middle management ranks?

That's the reason. Europe is not really the place for making a fortune. It has the "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" mindset, which leads to the fact that starting salaries for software devs (even after a PhD, as in my case), in the country where that motto is official, are within a standard deviation from bus drivers. Magnitude of this varies, but unless you're a no-life breathing for the bonus in a hedge fund, you're not going to earn 10x.

BTW, typically you don't need an accident to know what others are earning. I easily got samples of different pay grades, in different companies in two European countries, just by asking them directly. People are surprisingly open about that.

As to why big dev corps are better he didn't give any reasons for his belief, no examples. Person y makes $1 million a year at company x, but they aquihired their startup to get there. If I started at big dev corp as a senior developer and made $100k, what path does it take to get $600k, which company offers those incentives? I really just want some more detail.

For Q2, I "think" he's saying that CorpDev > StartupDev in terms of expected wealth creation. In your example, you don't appear to be accounting for the volatility of your future CF's of $1M (StartupDev) and $100K (CorpDev) figures. Startups are risky bets compared to stable increases with CorpDev.

If it's in the form of options, you'll forgive me if I treat that as pretend money until it's transformed into real wealth.

And you're getting, on average, what, 400-500k a year in RSUs vesting?

Am I wrong is that basically bonkers as far as compensation goes? That feels at least a few standard deviations outside the mean... Which is great for you, and congratulations!

But "win the lottery" doesn't make for very compelling early retirement advice. :)

I've significantly increased my salary, job happiness, and working conditions by actively trying to shape my life and my job(Changing jobs as necessary). I've significantly cut down expenses. Resulting in me being fairly well off.

Being fairly passive about may work, or may not work. I know plenty of brilliant people who love their work but get paid terribly for it.

My strategy is actually fairly reproducible, instead of relying on luck.

I've also found that all else being equal(same industry etc) salary is the number 1 indicator of respect on the job.

I think you are a little dismissive of the value of tech in start-ups though. Start-ups will typically need both better tech and better distribution to displace an incumbent. In my experience, the technology side of this is especially critical. Consumer start-ups, for example, often don't have sales teams at all.

That said, budgetary constraints and optimism towards equity grants keep salaries well below 600k at start-ups :)

I disagree. These days the founders are devs more and more often. However, usually you have to get out of your comfort zone and do also other than dev work in a startup. Meaning also learning the business stuff. It isn't rocket science, but for many devs it can be quite uncomfortable.

Someone making 6 figures asking how to get more wealth probably doesn't care they are in the top 10%. They are looking up, not down. Saving half their salary isn't realistic for a single income family, and would even be tough for a dual income family.

They probably don't care to listen to the "money isn't everything" advice from the rich. Yes, everyone knows that money isn't everything, and everyone knows that money isn't everything when you've already got it. I have relatives making choices between feeding themselves or their pet for the day, money means a great deal up to a point, and then there is a big gap where it doesn't make much difference. Then after that gap is breached is starts to make a huge difference again.

Unfortunately, for the number of times this question is asked, the number of times I've asked it of myself, there are no silver bullets or proven paths. I have to stop ranting now it is late, I am tired. (^_^)b

But I don't make enough money to build a spaceship. So I need more.

Really? And why do they have a pet? If they are disabled (e.g. blind) then I understand the inherent value of a pet (a god that helps you walk through). If not, then I think owning a pet is a poor choice for someone who can't feed himself.

why would they have a pet if they can't afford to feed it?

1. sell/give the pet away

or

2. eat the pet

2. Yes.

3. Respect the people you want to help you. For instance, let's say you want a bunch of people to take the time to read and answer difficult, open-ended questions for free in a way that could lead to vast personal wealth for you. You could demonstrate your respect for them by showing them the courtesy of proof-reading your post. As the questions are so broad, you also could show respect by sharing what you've learned in the research you've done so far to help educate them and to narrow down what you're looking for. You could demonstrate even more respect by thanking the authors of particularly good contributions.

Money can buy you happiness, but it's an inefficient exchange mechanism - unless you roll two sixes, the amount of work and bullshit that goes hand in hand with growing your "worth" usually exceeds the reward - and that reward for most is tantalisingly close but always "a year or two" away.

Monetary wealth is a means - it is "gas in the tank" - but it isn't the end. The end is your own happiness and wellbeing, and there are much easier ways to secure this than through wealth.

If I'd known what I know now, I would have moved to a hut up a mountain a decade ago rather than going into business. Now I am responsible for the livelihood of dozens directly, thousands indirectly, and while I may have made myself a very comfortable gilded cage, it is a cage, and the cost of my wealth has been my freedom.

Money itself does not buy happiness.

A lack of money, though, makes it a heck of a lot harder to find it.

The goal should be to reach a point where you don't have to actively worry about money, and that includes some buffer to allow for luxury expenses... travel, eating out, entertainment, that sort of thing.

Beyond that, additional money will, at best, provide an increment in terms of overall life satisfaction.

Less than that, and money has a major impact on happiness, and anyone who says otherwise has clearly never experienced the stress of living paycheck-to-paycheck. That is a cage, and trust me, it ain't gilded.

> If I'd known what I know now, I would have moved to a hut up a mountain a decade ago rather than going into business. Now I am responsible for the livelihood of dozens directly, thousands indirectly, and while I may have made myself a very comfortable gilded cage, it is a cage, and the cost of my wealth has been my freedom.

Doesn't sound like continuing is what he wants.

For instance I've made a couple of decently popular jailbreak iOS apps, which is nice passive income, and a good niche, but I don't really know where to find clients... through friends, on a website, or what?

Basically as soon as you go over the edge of creating your company, you can start searching. The same "meat traders" who want to recruit you for a permanent job on a service company, they will be willing to hire you as a contractor. Rates go in Lyon from 270€ per day to 550€ for the same mission as a perm job, and upnorth of 600€ in Paris, for very basic Java skills, like the guy who doesn't know Maven.

The same recruiters. They just try not to tell you about contacting when they think they can hire you as a perm for half the price. It's ok to take a commitment on a few months for the first mission, so you get some credentials. Then you can follow patio11's advice ;)

Coincidentally, I am also a jailbreak "app" dev (tweaks only) and I did that almost full time for over a year, almost 1.5 I think. It is indeed a nice little niche. Hard to make real money though, unless you get something really hyped up.

1. Respond to public RFPs. Most government contracts are bid this way, as are many private contracts. Be prepared to be undercut by the competition. It's pretty cutthroat.

2. Agencies. I know a number of successful contractors who work through headhunting agencies. Downside is the overhead they add to the contract.

3. Networking networking networking.

In the case of the latter, in the beginning it'll be networking through your peers. Join user groups, industry trade groups, local entrepreneurial meetups, that sort of thing. And make sure you stay in touch with your colleagues... you'll never know when some company they're working for puts a project out for tender.

Once you have a few contracts under your belt, if you're good they'll lead to more thanks to referrals, and that can pretty quickly snowball.

If you go this path the best advice you can probably get isn't what you'd expect: be prepared to say no! The quickest way to fail as a contractor is to take on too much work too quickly. At the beginning folks are usually paranoid and take on anything that comes their way, but trust me, that way lies madness!

Edit: As an aside, it's worth noting there's different types of contracting, and you should decide what, exactly, you want to do. A few examples I can think of:

1. Discrete project contracts. You bid to produce a solution, after which you offer some sort of support or maintenance contract. You probably give up the IP in this case, as it's work-for-hire.

2. Contract positions. You're brought in as labour on a new or existing project. Oftentimes specialized skills are valuable, here, as you're often brought in to fill a gap in the existing skillset, whether that's project management, design or architecture experience, or specific technical skills.

3. Really a variant of the first, and is what I think of as contract-to-product. You bid on an initial contract to build a product, after which you provide follow-up services to expand that product on some regular basis. This could be done by billing out on a line item basis, or via a retainer of some kind. It's possible in some cases to retain rights to the IP for a job like this.

So think carefully about what you want to do. Each model has pros and cons and may effect how you bid, what skills you develop, etc.

Product could be SaaS, software, consulting, contracting.

2. Yes, I have heard about a small number of exceptionally highly paid developers too. However, I suspect this is incredibly rare, perhaps with a similar or even lower probability than making your fortune at a startup. Unless you have some extraordinarily talent and are aware of this and in a position to able to exploit this (but I doubt you would be asking the question if this was the case).

3. I would have thought your best chance of making enough money to reach financial independence is the usual unexciting advice: (i) work hard to get an above average salary, (ii) live frugally and save as much as you can, (iii) invest what you save carefully, (iv) continue this process for many years. If there was a sure-fire quick and easy way of getting rich, I'm sure more people would be doing it, or you wouldn't be reading about it here.

Understand that by making $100k+ you're basically in the top 10-15% of earners in the U.S. [1]. Make $180k/yr and you're in the top 4%.

And realize that plenty of people who make >$150k spend like crazy trying to keep up with the Jones. Plenty of people who make $80k/yr spend wisely end up having more "wealth" in the end.

[1] - http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-in...

Mostly it seems pretty sensible.

After all, there's no guarantee there will be a tomorrow, and the prospect of retiring "early" 10 years from now does remarkably little to make you happy today.

Form a software developer union.

Lawyers, as of the last 15 years or so, are not doing so well - the median figure I found for 2013 is $114K. Doctors are doing better, at median $190K.

That's a far cry from "each of us" - even with these two professions, 50-80% of the people earn less than $200k.

And, they both manage it through strict licensing, which effectively requires 6-8 year studies in an accredited institute - which carry hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in most cases.

Which union and setting exactly did you have in mind when you wrote this?

Just because no union has successfully produced wages of 200k plus doesn't mean it can't happen. Software Engineering is a highly skilled occupation that generates a great deal of wealth. If all software developers demanded 200k then companies would pay that price because our work generates well north of that. The reason we don't get a fair share of the pie, like all other laborers, is a lack of organized negotiation. In short, 200k+ union salary has never happened, but is well within the means of the industry to support such an endeavor. It CAN happen and it will make wages MORE fair.

Don't argue against unions. It's the stupidest thing to do, because even if you can't negotiate your salary up to 200k you got nothing to lose by making/joining one or even raising your salary by 10k. That is unless, you're an executive/major shareholder... then we'd be opponents from a negotiation standpoint.

Its not all about the money after all. We're not talking about poor sweatshop guys trying to feed a family or go on public assistance. We're talking about folks paid quite a bit for sitting on their butts and typing.

Sure we have value. Learn to negotiate, become a contractor or consultant if you like, switch jobs as needed to get what you think you're worth. But don't imagine you'll sign me up for a club where you decide what I'm worth, and make me pay for the privilege.

A corporation is a group of organized individuals negotiating against you. A union puts you on equal ground. That's it. If a union doesn't work this way, then it needs to be changed.

short answer: It depends on the union. It does happen in this country.

These days I reside in a country which has unions everywhere - including in engineering disciplines. And everyone who wants to increase their salary runs away from union and unionized workplaces as far away and as quickly away as possible.

It CAN happen? Why hasn't it, except for guilds (which you rightfully group with business owners)? I can tell you why it didn't happen in unions I'm familiar with: The union representatives who negotiate on behalf of the employees and the people who can score a >$200k salary are mutually exclusive groups. In fact, they negotiators are usually those who wouldn't score more than the prevailing average in an industry. At which point, they are happy to sign an agreement for just 5% than the prevailing average - and they do so in the name of the more capable employees as well.

Other things that happen is stuff like management requesting the union to agree that "no employee will be paid higher than their manager". Which union officials always agree to (for various reasons), and which causes your most productive employees - those who are at the top of their fields but not anywhere near the top of the managerial ladder - to abandon ship.

The unionized software professionals are among the least capable and worst paid software professionals around here. And it's not a fluke - it basically converges the same way in every unionized industry where capabilities (and earning potential) have large variances.

It's excellent for retail employees, public school teachers, bus drivers, port workers - but all my observations lead me to believe it is horrible for programmers, engineers, actors and even lawyers.

Makes perfect sense. Unions negotiate lower salaries for everyone. sarcasm

>It CAN happen? Why hasn't it, except for guilds (which you rightfully group with business owners)? I can tell you why it didn't happen in unions I'm familiar with: The union representatives who negotiate on behalf of the employees and the people who can score a >$200k salary are mutually exclusive groups. In fact, they negotiators are usually those who wouldn't score more than the prevailing average in an industry.

Why are union members usually people with low salaries? Simple. Only the least skilled are desperate enough to form unions. They have to do it in a sense. Software engineers are complacent with their super high salaries, not knowing that their 120k annual salary is based off work that generates 1 million in monthly revenue. Thanks to the lack of unions, if you try to negotiate a more than fair 500k annual salary the company will shoot you down. Due to another idiot SE in the world who thinks he's only worth 120k, you're easily replaced without a union backing you up.

>At which point, they are happy to sign an agreement for just 5% than the prevailing average - and they do so in the name of the more capable employees as well.

There's no need to negotiate upper limits on pay. There also should be no need to end individual negotiations. If unions aren't currently structured in a way that benefits the employee then the structure of what we consider to be a union should be changed.

>Other things that happen is stuff like management requesting the union to agree that "no employee will be paid higher than their manager". Which union officials always agree to (for various reasons), and which causes your most productive employees - those who are at the top of their fields but not anywhere near the top of the managerial ladder - to abandon ship.

why does this need to be agreed too? There's no need for this to be agreed to at all. No upper limits to salary. Who wants that? Union members should vote for what they want. Union officials should be held accountable every decision they make. Only lower limits on salary should be negotiated with the union and employer. The actual salary should be a separate negotiation between employee and employer.

IF unions aren't structured that way then they should be. The government shouldn't decide on some arbitrary hierarchy for a union that ends up not benefiting people. People acting together in organized groups generally don't want to fuck themselves over with stupid things like upper limits to salary and ending all individual negotiations with the employer.

> Makes perfect sense. Unions negotiate lower salaries for everyone. sarcasm

No, but they do negotiate higher salaries for people who can't find a better job, at the expense of lower salaries for the top earners.

> There's no need to negotiate upper limits on pay. There also should be no need to end individual negotiations. If unions aren't currently structured in a way that benefits the employee then the structure of what we consider to be a union should be changed.

Oh, but there is a need - the corporate's need, of course - which the corporate demands and enforces, and the union representatives usually agree one way or the other - often legally bribed. You imply that all the bargaining power is with the employees, and that is simply not the case.

> IF unions aren't structured that way then they should be. The government shouldn't decide on some arbitrary hierarchy for a union that ends up not benefiting people. People acting together in organized groups generally don't want to fuck themselves over with stupid things like upper limits to salary and ending all individual negotiations with the employer.

Try to reconcile this statement with all the things your government does that fuck you over, which surely yourself (and a large group, some of it well organized) does not want. When you've reconciled it, you might have some insight about why you are wrong, or about how to set the right kind of union/government -- if it's the latter, I'll vote for you. But the former is overwhelmingly more likely.

So you agree, but you think this is an ideal not worth fighting for because the probability of success is way to low. I can't argue with that since that's an opinion.

From my perspective though, we have a better chance making these "ideal" unions happen then we have of stopping the polar ice caps from completely melting. Higher pay is something we all want. And by "all" I mean the 99%. If 99% of people can't fight for something they want then we can't do anything.

I think that without another very significant shift in the status quo (one I can't really anticipate, and it seems neither do you), it CANNOT work.

Take your idea ad absurdum - the world needs laptops - why don't all the [currently chinese] laptop manufacturers unionize and charge 5 times as much? I mean, we can definitely afford them, they provide most people with enough benefit to support that price. Exactly the same arguments apply, and similar reasons why it won't work. Programmers are not special snowflakes - they (we) are much closer to being a commodity.

Also, I think you are delusional in thinking all programmers deliver >$300k of value (which is needed for a $200k salary, all things considered - don't forget payroll taxes, healthcare, and other expenses, as well as minimal profit). Some only deliver $50k in value, and are well paid at the $80k they earn.

You're the one that's delusional. 50k? that's a loaded number. A more realistic number is at least half a million per head, and that's the LEAST. Many times it can be much MORE. Take the annual revenues of google and divide it by the number of their engineering employees, then come back to me.

>but the last 80 years of politics in the US indicate it will take a miracle or catastrophy for the US to do the right thing. I bet on the latter.

The probability is in the favor of the rich. There's no doubt about that. I disagree with you in thinking that the probability is so low that it's impossible. In the past decade I've seen entire industries go extinct, literally within a couple years. Taxis and television to name a few. If you asked me in the early 2000s whether TV would be around in 10 years I would've said definitely.

Which one sounds more unrealistic to you? Bringing down the entire television empire or forming one goddamn union for one company that fits my ideal?

If there's one thing that's unpredictable it's the movements of the mob. The status quo was and never is with the people at the top of the power structure. The power is with the 99%, and it's a thin line stopping us from acting on it.

You from canada or something?

May I ask how many years of real world experience running a business you have under your belt? Do you really believe that none of the non-engineering google employees contribute to the profit? Do you really believe all Google employees contribute equally? All the Google Plus employees create negative value; Paying them $200K guarantees someone gets LESS than they could have been paid -- and that assumes google actually gives in and pays everyone the maximum they can, which is unlikely cause they have cheaper talent pools to draw on. They pay less in London than they do in Mountain View.

> If you asked me in the early 2000s whether TV would be around in 10 years I would've said definitely.

It is 2015, and TV is still around and profiting nicely. Or, are you living in 2030?

> Which one sounds more unrealistic to you? Bringing down the entire television empire or forming one goddamn union for one company that fits my ideal?

Ah, but that one company will just shutter their R&D. It has happened before, and it will happen again.

> The power is with the 99%, and it's a thin line stopping us from acting on it.

Yes, but as a software engineer you are part of the 1%, not the 99% (literally - the "1%" Occupy talks about are actually the 0.01%). If the real 99% applied the same rule, you effectively get communism. <s>And that worked very well as an incentive for talented people</s>

> You from canada or something?

I left the US and I live in Israel these days. Where Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel and various other companies you have heard of have their largest most prolific campuses outside the US. They do this because the talent pool is large, and is cheaper than the US. The unions already exist; joining them is as simple as declaring "I want to join" and paying a small percentage of your salary (1%-2%, I think) as union fees; There are, in fact, multiple competing unions. And yet, over 90% of software engineers are not union members - and those that are make much lower salaries (correlation, not causation of course - but it definitely isn't random).

Not where I live it's not.

>May I ask how many years of real world experience running a business you have under your belt? Do you really believe that none of the non-engineering google employees contribute to the profit? Do you really believe all Google employees contribute equally? All the Google Plus employees create negative value; Paying them $200K guarantees someone gets LESS than they could have been paid -- and that assumes google actually gives in and pays everyone the maximum they can, which is unlikely cause they have cheaper talent pools to draw on. They pay less in London than they do in Mountain View.

All ventures are a gamble. But all the losing gambles need to be made in order to find the successful one. Therefore the profits need to be split evenly. Additionally google engineers can move between projects.

>Yes, but as a software engineer you are part of the 1%, not the 99% (literally - the "1%" Occupy talks about are actually the 0.01%). If the real 99% applied the same rule, you effectively get communism. <s>And that worked very well as an incentive for talented people</s>

90k average sw salary in america is at the 95%-tile. Please note that the 1% control half of the worlds' wealth. Also, who says we need communism? I'm still talking about capitalism just with a greater balance of power.

> The unions already exist; joining them is as simple as declaring "I want to join" and paying a small percentage of your salary (1%-2%, I think) as union fees; There are, in fact, multiple competing unions. And yet, over 90% of software engineers are not union members

If there was a union that negotiated 200k. Over 90% of those engineers would join. You guys just aren't desperate enough to form one.

Robert Kiyosaki and other wealthy people state that wealth is measured in time. Can you not work for x weeks, months, years and still make money or at least maintain status quo? If you can, you're probably already wealthy and doing better than the vast majority of people out there.

We all love to read success stories of startup founders where it escalated quickly and they got out with a huge amount of money. These people however are not a good representation of what's out there. Most wealthy people I've met over the course of my life do things that not a lot of people think about and take for granted. They're sometimes rather boring, not glamorous, not innovative things like selling sausages, web hosting, web development services, selling plain white shirts, toilet paper, pipe fittings, cleaning businesses, restaurants and so on. These people then invest their proceeds in other "boring" assets like real estate, other businesses, fonds etc. with a long term view.

A lot of these people moved from being a specialist (consultants, chefs, programmers, contractors) to business owners. Not working in but on the business. Hiring other specialists, people who do the grunt work, the sales, the programming and so on. They then invest their proceeds into assets that will continue to generate money at different percentages even after they completely stop working.

In your particular case that could mean that you could start with very specialized consulting work. Then slowly transition into providing tooling for a monthly fee. Then slowly removing yourself from the business as much as you can. The beauty of it is that monthly recurring revenue is compounding. Also have a look into SWaS (Software With a Service) http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/.

Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. Would that make you wealthy in your books?

So, 15 years and you'll have almost enough to buy a _starter home_ in Palo Alto...

/snark

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[0]: https://www.moulin.nl/en/realestate/castle-with-old-tower-an...

Definitely not. You get 'wealthy' when an event clears you a million. Anything other than that is just being 'well off'

What if you started a company as an LLP with some smart colleagues and you shared in the growth of each other's talents? What if you created a co-operative?

Come to think of it, what's your goal? To be rich, or to be able to go back to school without worrying about money? The two are not the same. I doubt that most of the open source developers you've heard of can rock around in a Ferrari but they are doing what they love and are happy: haven't they effectively got to the point you wanted to, but without the need to slog out to the point of having piles of money?

I'd also as an addendum suggest diving into the [/r/financialindependence](http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence) community - lots of ideas there.

I'm sorry to be the grumpy old man in this thread, but asking how to turn your developer job into $1MM/year is like a high school kid planning to play pro basketball.

I also see processor startups popping up all the time that need compiler/tools engineers badly.

Overall, I'd repeat what others have said: "save a lot and invest your savings wisely."

"Besides a startup, what are some other reliable (close to risk-free) ways to retire at any age with $20 million net worth and $1 million a year in passive income--that a motivated and skilled software developer can achieve starting in his twenties?"

Practical step-by-step advice only, no general platitudes like "just love what you do!" and "don't be in it for the money!" My guess is it's impossible without rolling the dice on business ownership, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Now, how much would you need in your nest egg to feel comfortable about being picky about where you work and what you work on, trading in some of your income for mission/learning/location/people etc.?

Once you have these numbers (which depends on your life stage and costs of living), then you can start backtracking and figure out what kind of money you'd need to make and whether it makes sense for you. That will leave you with the universe of options available, which may be wider than what you're considering right now.

I've also seen wealth generated with mailing lists. This is another affiliate marketing play that can be done without feeling too spammy and can still add value to the user.

Similar to a mailing list, a forum can be easy to set up and maintain. Also like a mailing list, if you create a large enough user base, advertising can pay off.

One of the better earners is a subscription model for just about anything. Software provided for free with a "premium" set of features for $x per month is a good way to generate a user base more easily.

A couple things to keep in mind: 1. You will almost always have more success when you're passionate about the subject matter. 2. It will take time. Most overnight successes are preceded by years of ramp-up.

Ideally find clients who are willing to work with remote contractors. Emigrate to a "poorer" country and save money. For example, people in Thailand earn on average around 500 EUR a month (from what I've read). If you can manage to work for western clients who perhaps pay you 10.000 EUR a month (40 hour work weeks), you will be able to retire extremely quickly.

- ~800 EUR for a nice 1-br condo in a central location - ~100 EUR el./internet/tv/3g - ~100 EUR for transport (these motorbike taxis and bts rides are adding up). - ~150 EUR for co-work membership.

= 1150 EUR fix per month.

Now with the rest you can go eat and drink. 100 EUR = big nightout, 50 EUR dinner and drinks, 20 EUR low-key dinner with drinks, 4-10 EUR just dinner outside.

Add another few 100 EUR for a visa run every once in a while.

Also don't forget that you're likely still paying for some stuff back home, insurances, etc.

On the other hand, if you want a beachfront villa in Phuket, you can quite easily blow 10.000 EUR a week on renting it.

I think a better question is how do non-computer people create wealth? Devs as a group are already predisposed to having higher income. For my family it has been to work really, really hard, live frugally and invest all disposable income. I'd venture to guess that most wealth creation happens this way - call it the long tail of wealth.

I get paid (well) to do stuff I love so it is possible and possibly easier than becoming wealthy. I think loving your "work" will put a lot more happiness "under the curve" than waiting until you retire to be happy - even if you retire early.

1 - Why do i want money (or why do i want a lot if it :)) : I am not interested in a luxurious or grandiose life style. For me money is to buy freedom and safety booth for me and the peole i care about. I want myself and them to be able to afford the best of the health care systems, to be able to focus on exactly what we do, etc...etc...

2 - How much is "significant wealth" 10M+

3 - Money shouldn't be the focus, the craft is: I think they both should be. I don't think getting wealthy should be though as a direct consequences of great work. Great work might be correlated or even necessary to building wealth but i don't the former always implies the latter. To get wealth i believe i will have to learn how, much in the same wayi had to learn to be a software dev.

4 - There is no quick fix. stop looking for it.

I am not looking for a quick fix. I am willing to put the hours (hell i am looking forward to it). But i also want to capture and leverage some of the value i will be creating (in a way that's is both legal and ecological)

So again a lot of great idea i didn't though of and i am already reading on all those venues. The idea i am particular interested is consulting : Is there a demand out there for consulting to startup say 30/week for 6 month for some equity in the company ?

Any body in the fanancial market want to share his experience ?

Again thanks for all the great answers

https://adtmag.com/articles/2011/07/29/why-hft-programmers-e...

The trick is, you need to figure out what "wisely" is. IMO, if your strategy involves holding on to your stocks, it is probably speculation (=gambling) rather than investing wisely.

Holding onto your stocks is the opposite of speculation, isn't it? Most sensible investment advice, e.g. Bogle, recommends index funds that are held basically forever.

Just make sure to negotiate your benefits to include the ability to take classes (both the time during your days to attend, and reducing the costs -- preferably to zero -- of attending)

If you're really good at maths you could become a "quant". Most of the really high paying developer jobs are unsurprisingly in the financial services industry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642526

Alternatively make friends with rich people and make them richer. You get a cut.

Your probability of success is way higher.

Or steal bitcoin.

Is this yahoo answers?