I have total 7 years of dev+DS experience and have ambitions to break into 100k+ salary range in coming year. Should I must move into management role for this?
Plenty of contracting roles paying £500-600/day in London, a few even up to £800 (and 'Head of'/CTO level consulting gigs hovering around £1k/day although very rare as most of those positions are perm).
I know some rather mediocre developers on £550 day rates.
For perm positions, such roles aren't too uncommon for senior/lead level devs in finance, tech consultancy (doing SAP/Salesforce work at some place like Accenture, etc) or the top tech firms - though you'll want to avoid the underpaying Shoreditch start-ups.
Does mean living in London though, where a £100k salary still barely gets you a mortgage for a 3 bed semi. Plus, £100k will soon be worth about €27 but right now it's about 1:1.
I suspect that the only companies with this kind of salary in the EU are Palantir and trading companies (e.g. Jane Street).
So, it kind of depends on what you're willing to do for money. I'm personally not quite enthusiastic at the idea of working for either.
That level of salary... well I'd say you gotta sell your soul and head off into banking or into a role as consultant somewhere, but no way for ordinary devs, even in Germany. For what it's worth I know directors of 300+ employee companies that don't crack the 100k.
Alternatively try to land a remote job for some Valley-based or other VC backed company, but beware of the tax and legal implications of doing so.
Not sure about a salary, but contracting can comfortably let you earn that based on a daily rate. I've even seen Qlikview or Excel roles at banks in the UK that pay 600+ per day! The trick is to have a niche - look at what's hot in contracting job ads and read up about it. Get confident with the tech/software they ask for and go for a few interviews. Getting a contracting role is generally a lot easier than a permanent position, and in my experience, a contracting job can be just as secure as a perm job.
You've asked how you can get 100k EUR per year. But you have not mentioned anything about the value you can offer for this money (unless DS means something there, I have no idea what DS is).
In many companies, low-level managers don't earn that much (especially green ones, which it sounds like you would be during the time frame you specified). Companies wouldn't want to distract all their employees by offering a huge pay bump just to switch fields.
When you ask for money you should first talk about what you can contribute. Which is?
Working remotely for a Silicon Valley company seems the easiest way.
Work remotely for silicon valley companies.
If the salary is all you are after and do not mind the culture shock, did you look into relocating to Switzerland?
Look at contracting and London. There’s tons of £500+ per day rates dev contracts around. https://www.jobserve.com/gb/en/JobSearch.aspx?shid=E1AD4AE0F...
As others said, it is very difficult, a few devs earn that in EU.
Options are :
- CTO but not early stage
- freelancing : 7 years of experience could be more than 500€ per day. And if you are in a niche, could be much more
- Remote for an american company
- I know some startups in Paris which hire at more than 100k euro but you need to be outstanding.
Though technically not salary but revenue freelancing or rather self-employed consulting is a realistic option for reaching that kind of annual income.
One piece of advice though: Don't do it for the money (or the money alone, at least). If you want to run a sustainable consulting practice you have to be passionate about what you're doing and constantly deliver high-quality work.
Confidently marketing your services is essential. If you're good at solving important problems for your customers that should be reflected in your rates. Speaking of which, if possible adopt value-based pricing instead of time-based, i.e. daily or hourly, rates.
> Should I must move into management role for this?
Do you want to be a manager? If not, you will be trading a life of misery for a modest pay raise.
I know several engineers making over 100k in the EU. You just have to be really good at what you do and pick a company which pays well.
I know banking offers that kind of salary, in the Netherlands. But it's the higher tier of the bucket though.
Migrate to Switzerland :) Salaries there are much higher than rest of the Europe but living there is more expensive too.
> So what makes you feel you deserve to earn more than 99.93% of the world's population?
Looks like you hit a nerve (perhaps a somewhat guilty one) with some users.
But I was wondering similar - why does the OP feel the need to earn this much money? I suspect psychological rather than financial insecurity, given that they're already likely to be a relatively high earner.
Management makes less than devs in my experience.
Switzerland.
Sorry mate, but if you'd like some good advice from this crowd, you should spend more than 20 seconds to describe your issue and the type of suggestions you are looking for. That's probably lesson #1 in how to get to a 100k salary :)
You don't mention: where you are located; what current job you have; what's DS; what kind of dev work have you done.
Also, any github / stack overflow link, so that we can get a better sense of your skills?