r/financialindependence • u/fidgit86 • 9d ago

What do you do that you earn six figures?

It seems like a lot of people make a lot of money and it seems like I’m missing out on something. So those of you that do, whats your occupation that pays so well?

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Current full time reddit commenter / self-sleep specialist.

Former AWS Senior Systems Engineer.

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u/allybearound 9d ago

Ugh I work in SaaS, we’re looking for a good AWS Systems Engineer right now. Market is so tough, most applicants have several offers to choose from.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Ironically, I wouldn't be a good fit for that - I worked for AWS as a Systems Engineer, mostly building their host provisioning stack. While I'm sure I could learn debugging stuff like S3 and DDB from an external role quickly enough, I'm just taking some time off for now. Hopefully I'll be one of these mythical in-demand engineers once I decide to end my impromptu summer vacation.

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u/allybearound 9d ago

My husband took 9 months off after leaving a high paying, high stress job. Best choice we ever made. He now makes only 50% of what he did before, but wow what a huge QOL improvement. Now I make more than double what he does, I work in SaaS (but not a dev. I still only make 60% of what the junior devs make, despite having 10 years of experience. Ugh)

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Well, I'm hoping for a bit more than 50% when I get back to the grind, but yeah, I'm totally down to make less money and not be expected to respond to emails and Slacks within an hour from 8am to 1am every day. Including weekends.

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u/JacobianKitten 9d ago

I really wish it was more common/accepted to take breaks from high stress jobs or trade quality of life for less money. I was a dev for Azure and it just burnt me out. My mental health was trash, my blood pressure was at stroke risk levels, I had horrible migraines. I've been taking a break from the industry for about 6mo now, first medical leave then just leaving, and it's completely saved my health and happiness. But I feel like so many people don't get it.

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u/wytrych00 9d ago

Look for a job at Spotify. The life-work balance is amazing. Can strongly recommend. Source: currently employed there

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u/RoguePlanet1 9d ago

How does one become a SE for AWS? Sounds SaaSsy.

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u/kaitaeomate 9d ago

Just talk to Jassy....

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u/TrueHalfCrack 9d ago

I'm a senior AE at a large-ish SaaS company, but a buddy of mine is an SE manager at one of the larger tech hardware companies in the world (you know them for sure). Is it worth it trying to move to be am SE? I've always been jealous of my buddies' career, even though I'm doing well in mine...

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

I can't go into full details because I signed an NDA when I left, but it 100% depends on the team and the manager. I was on my team for over 4 years and it was basically a dream job for me; my manager left the company abruptly and I was inherited by somebody new. I lasted 6 months from that point.

Some of the teams I worked with had people who were happily with those teams for well over a decade, even across many managers. Some of them had a 75%+ YoY attrition rate. It really depends on the manager, how passionate you are about the team's goals, and - and this is obviously huge - the work/life balance.

At certain unnamed huge tech companies, there isn't really a monolithic culture across teams beyond some basic mandated underpinnings. Some managers will refuse to have their engineers work more than 45 hours in a week; others will actively work to push engineers out of the company for refusing to work more than 60.

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u/Deep-Arrival-217 9d ago

If you last 4 years at that accursed company, you've been there longer than 90% of it. Even at 1 year, you've been there longer than most.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

That was just the last team. I was there for over 10 in total. There's a tool some internal engineer created that calculates how long you've been there relative to everybody else based off of the creation date timestamps of usernames in LDAP.

I was at 99.86%.

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u/Deep-Arrival-217 9d ago

You really are an old fart, huh.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Ah, I see I speak to a fellow masochist.

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u/as_it_was_written 9d ago

I know this is nitpicking, but I can't help myself, so I upvoted your comment to try and make up for it: LDAP is the protocol used to access the data, not the place it's stored.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Right - via* LDAP. My bad. I still haven't slept. I'm basically on summer vacation right now.

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u/cyrusthemarginal 9d ago

5 years in, 130k ahead of me, 1.2 million hired after me lol

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u/iamever777 9d ago

This is accurate. My team has 5 red badges and a ton of yellows. Watching attrition on other teams is interesting.

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u/jdsizzle1 9d ago

You can make more as an tenured AE but you're on the front line and your accountability is higher. SEs make a pretty penny, but usually not as much as their AE counterparts. That of course depends on the comp structure and compan though. I've seen it both ways. SEs I know traveled a lot more than AEs. In my opinion, becoming an SE is better for your career path if you want to get out of sales one day without a giant paycut and move into something more stable/technical.

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u/TrueHalfCrack 9d ago

And how does one make the move you think?

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u/jdsizzle1 9d ago

To an SE? Update your resume to highlight the technical aspects of your sales motions. Highlight any deals you carried on your own using the technical knowledge you know and didn't need an SE for. Highlight any specific technical skills you have, or that you can get certified in. Apply for those roles. Heck, talk to any of your SEs for advice on what they'd look for. AE to SE is a pretty natural movement depending on the field.

Out of sales though? Same thing. Bit harder if you've only ever done sales but you eventually find something. Just have to highlight the hard non-sales-only transferable skills. I moved from tech sales to software partner management to technical architecture. My negotiation history and partner management skills I got from sales helped a ton.

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u/Imanarirolls 9d ago

What did you make as a senior AWS engineer? I’m breaking into senior myself and am having a hard time pricing myself. Been asking 150, but someone threw out 170 the other day on a call and now I’m wondering if I went too low.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

170 isn't out of the question for a tenured L5. For L6 it would likely be on the extreme low end, as long as you're expecting that from total compensation, not base pay.

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u/Imanarirolls 9d ago

Gotchya - I was talking base so maybe 150 isn’t actually crazy. I’ve never heard of L5 or L6, but I doubt I’m an L6. 4.5 years experience.

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u/kampfy3 9d ago

Ah, so you're external to AWS; got it. Amazon does pay differently from most companies because they never offer any bonuses for any reason, but a huge part of your pay is stock awards based off of your performance for the year. Base pay + stock = total compensation. If you don't receive stock as part of your compensation at your company, disregard that part.

The 5 and 6 are job levels within Amazon. For Systems Engineer, 4-7 are the relevant job levels, with entry-level being 4 and Principal being 7. L4s are told what to do and instructed how best to do it by either the manager or senior engineers on the team. L5s are told what to do but trusted to figure out how best to do it on their own, L6s dream up and help guide implementation of large-scale initiatives within the team, and L7s do the same thing as L6s but across multiple organizations.

You would probably be an L5 at Amazon. If your manager likes you a bunch and you're a solid performer nobody would blink an eye about you asking for 170 at that company. They may not be able to actually give it to you, but you won't be laughed out of the room. Worst thing they can say is no.

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u/Imanarirolls 4d ago

Update in case you’re curious… I just got a 160 base offer 😄😄😄😄😄

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u/kampfy3 4d ago

Hey, congrats! Sounds like it was a better offer than you were expecting!

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u/Imanarirolls 4d ago

Heck yeah man. Never thought I’d be making that much money in my life. It feels like I’m finally taking steps toward what this sub is about.

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u/kampfy3 4d ago

If I could offer some pointers to that end, that I didn't realize until a few years after I started making that amount of money because I had no financial guidance growing up:

1) Max out your 401k contributions to the best of your ability. Especially if your employer matches (and many/most employers who can pay $160k/yr for mid-level Systems Engineers do). You don't need to aim for a 20% contribution per paycheck if it's not feasible, but 401k contributions are pre-tax; not only are you increasing your retirement savings, you're also reducing your taxable income. I have no clue how big of a jump your new raise is, but your tax return next year is likely to surprise you in a not-so-great way.

2) Always be planning for your next move, career-wise. Nobody who's content in their job should be living in fear of being downsized or laid off, but at the same time, be prepared for unexpected events.

I was kinda caught offguard on both of these and paid the price.

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u/Imanarirolls 3d ago

Thank you for the advice! I haven’t received a tax return since I was under 100, unfortunately, and I doubt that I’ll be getting anything back from now on. Is that what you mean by “surprises” with my tax return? Or do you mean actually owing?

Besides that, yeah I haven’t ever contributed more than 4%. I might do so now that I can afford it.

Mind if I ask what happened that lead to you being surprised by losing your job? To be honest I don’t think I would mind that much. I’ve been wanting a several month break, and without having to worry about work applying would be a hell of a lot easier.

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