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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2365 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Suppose you are a 40 year old software engineer making 120k/year, and you somehow magically get banned for life from practicing the profession. You have decent savings to live off of for a bit and to supplement a smaller income for a while. What would you do? If you're so inclined, be specific and like narrate out a life plan.

Silly question, but why are you only making 120k/year? How long have you been in the industry? That's like entry-level for software engineers these days.

Has your time in the industry taught you anything about management at all? If I were you, I'd try to leverage your experience to become a tech lead. But maybe you could tell us more about why you don't want to be in the software industry anymore?

I have no idea where these insane SWE salaries reported by everybody are, outside of a few specific cities. Never seen it anywhere near me, if it's here there must be some secret to finding it that I'm not aware of.

Hah, I feel the same way, people online with half my YOE who are ostensibly near me are reporting that they getting my salary! But still, from all my experience, your salary seems really low for someone who's not entry level. Location could have to do with it, how big your tech company is could have to do with it, whether or not you're pushing for higher salaries could have to do with it, and also sub-field and specialization could have to do with it.

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