How to Make One Million Dollars a Year as a Software Engineer as Fast as Possible
A step-by-step guide.
Do you want to make one million dollars a year? It’s easy to do in tech if that’s your main focus.
The good news? It’s an easier goal to achieve than other competing priorities like work/life balance, good corporate culture, or even steady mental health. There’s some twists and turns so let this serve as your very straightforward guide to getting there. I’ve seen countless engineers achieve this fairly easily. You don’t even need to be a great engineer to do it.
1. Begin Correctly
Just like in chess, your opening can shape the entire game. Everybody hires software engineers these days.
That’s good (there’s lots of jobs).
It’s also bad (most of the jobs can barely be called software engineering).
Before you’re even worried about what job you’re going to get, I’ll tell you the massive industry hack that nobody talks about.
Go to Stanford.
A disproportionate number of folks I know making the mythical million went to Stanford. When I say disproportionate, I know two guys who cracked it coming from tier 2 schools but they had a real uphill battle getting there!
Does Stanford provide some kind of arcane instruction on the magic of software engineering? No probably not! Like pretty much every other college these days it seems to be light on the academics and heavy on the politics. Stanford doesn’t make you a good engineer, it says “I’ve been verified.” It’s the Twitter blue checkmark of the software world. You’ll get preferential VIP treatment in the hiring process and other Stanford alum will give you a leg up every step of the way.
This might not hold much water on the east coast but the seat of tech power and most of the nice salaries are on the west coast where most of the innovation is happening (sorry fintech bros you know I’m right though).
So get into Stanford. You don’t need to do well, just don’t flunk out so you have the brand name.
2. Get the Right First Job
Get into a FAANG company. Do this on the west coast. Yes I know NYC is a cooler city but the tech scene there is still haunted by too many ghosts of the past. Traditionalism does not inspire innovation.
Work in the office 5 days a week. If you like working remote (I sure do) there’s a chance you’ll crack the mil but know which goal you want the most then make those tradeoffs.
Proximity bias is pretty much the deciding factor for promo at FAANG companies. As a lowly L3 nobody gives much of a shit about what you’re doing as long as you’re not fucking up production or bugging the staff engineers too much. If you made it in and have a pulse, you’ll probably get to L4 in a year or two.
Your two primary tasks to get promoted at FAANG are (in this order):
Be seen by your manager and ideally their manager working late. Don’t leave before them.
Modestly improve your skills.
Easy. L4 promo is near automatic if they see you working.
3. Moving to Senior
Now you’re at a fork in the road. You can leave and probably get in as an L4 at a similar company or you could just stay at current co. and shoot for senior. This is going to take at least a few years so if you really hate your first company now’s the time to hop but it will add 1-2 years to your timeline.
Senior at FAANG is about ownership and ~iMpAcT~. Get good at linking your code to business wins. “I coded x feature that forces mice to watch a small preroll ad before getting their cheese that made Macrohard a hundred bajillion dollars.”
Keep at it, take some more responsibly, keep being seen a lot and you’re golden.
4. Staff or Manager
If you’re optimizing for quick mil comp go staff. Stay IC track.
Senior is great for hopping since you’re now useful and less of a liability. Same advice as before applies but with an added caveat: if you haven’t established great relationships with your boss and boss’s boss as well as some other people around you with a modicum of power, go to a new spot.
The promo to staff and beyond is extremely political at FAANG. The mythical genius dev that hacks all day doesn’t really exist. There’s maybe a handful of those but most are like political appointees. The criteria is so fuzzy and indefinite at that level that it comes down to some strange, highly personalized loadout that’s probably not written down anywhere.
At FAANG you type your way to senior but you talk your way to staff.
5. Almost There!
If you’re staff at a FAANG company you’re about 3/4 of the way there with an average TC of about $750k. Not enough? Let’s continue!
Option A: Diversify
Staff is fucking cushy. It’s a great gig. You get to hack on things, you get to tell other engineers what to build, and you get to pass off most of the responsibility for whether something succeeded or failed onto your eng manager or director. Option A is to just start buying and renting out real estate and quickly get to a mil that way. This is probably the sane option. Have to make it all from work? Ok.
Option B: All-In
Moving to Senior Staff is entirely political at FAANG. You’re not supposed to say that but there really isn’t a shred of logic behind it. It’s mostly how well you can convince the powers that be that you are a Senior Staff engineer. Read up on negotiation. Become more charming. Associate your name with big company win projects even if you didn’t work much on them. This is how Senior Staff is “determined” at FAANG.
Congrats You Did It
You’re making $1 mil total comp a year. Wow that’s cool. Keep in mind, during that time you’ve either put off starting a family until you’re quite old. If you did start a family you just don’t see them very often. Your physical and mental health is probably in rough shape since work has kinda been your “one big thing”. Your identity has been so wrapped up in the job that it feels personally bad when a project fails.
But,
You can retire early, send your kids to the best private schools so that they can go to Stanford and start the cycle over again, want for nothing (nothing with a price tag at least), eat at the finest restaurants, and fly first class.
Is it worth it?
I don’t know. I made some tradeoffs but I was never optimizing for moneymaxxing at all costs. Some of the people I know stacking money at the $1mil/year level are really happy. Some are really fucking miserable. It’s just like anything else, only you can decide if the tradeoffs are worth it! All I can do is tell you how.