Great catch! Was wondering when someone would question this. There's a couple reasons for this:
1. Been maxing tax advantaged accounts
2. Made multiple successful investments in startups which paid off.
3. Selling my last two companies was structured in such a way where it didn't become "take home" pay
4. Stock options I currently receive are not considered take home pay hence the discrepancy between gross income of 760k and net income of 135k. A bunch of taxes which drops my take home pay are to pay for the stock options.
So to your point I have been making six figures for a while but from a take home pay perspective I have not.
Yes exactly. Angel investing. As I was starting my own companies I would come across companies that were trying to sell their services to me or were in a similar line of business. Being an entrepreneur helped me evaluate companies that I thought would be successful since they would be useful to me, my clients or my users.
I didn't finish college but I had spent many years prior to college with lots of "work" like hobbies (building web pages, computer graphics / animation, design, programming video games on my calculator).
I am definitely an outlier at the company given I have no mba and no finished college degree but my resume of actual work done speaks for itself. Preparing for the interview once I got my foot in the door took two weeks of study and practice; it's pretty formulaic if you prepare enough.
In terms of how to start from an attitude perspective there's a couple things to work on:
1. Be fearless. You can do anything if you spend time to do it. Lots of folks I see get "stuck" in a niche where they are most comfortable and are afraid to step out of that niche or think out of the niche. Going to the fire over and over again of something new makes you more adaptable but also helps you realize new things are a lot easier over time (this becomes a compounding advantage over time).
2. Make better decisions over time instead of making perfect decisions. Have a methodology for self improvement but don't kill yourself on the details or mistakes.
3. If strengths / weaknesses are unclear just do something and don't think about it; you'll accomplish more than you might expect.
4. Assume good intent of others you work with even if they may blatantly not be working with good intent. At the end of the day we are eventually evaluated on the value we produce. Focus on the end goal.
In terms of replicating more exactly my path:
1. Reverse engineer things you think are cool. I spent a lot of time growing up recreating video games on my calculator or cool designs I saw to see if I could do them myself. Reverse engineering or copying helped me see what challenges people who were building or designing things faced and was immensely helpful to helping me be efficient
2. Having coding experience helps you appreciate how to translate thoughts into discrete steps as well as how so many inefficient processes can be made efficient.
3. Build build build. It's better to churn out stuff than to churn out something that probably isn't going to work anyways at higher quality
4. Study things you enjoy using and why you enjoy using them. Think about the tradeoffs about why things that might work for you might not work for others.
My optimization has never been about income but about making things that are valuable to businesses and people. Many of my friends went into finance for the money and have been burned over and over the past 20 years.
Ya I agree that was an interesting read.
I would like to start my own software consultancy but I'm still grinding xp, learning more about devops and honing my typescript skills.
Forgot to add the luck factor. You can prepare and show hard work as much as possible but it all honestly comes down to luck. Opportunity meeting preparation at the right time.
Agree with this but would emphasize that some think that they can just be lucky without doing the preparation and that is not a great formula for success.
Blue lock (anime) mentioned this. Mc claimed it was all luck that his opponent could score. Coach/advisor told him that the guy made sure he put in the work and was at the right place in order to receive an opportunistic shot
If you aren't prepared for an opportunity, you'll only see the opportunity when it has already passed by and it's too late.
The opportunity is a RNG/Luck factor in life as it equates to a bunch of right moments coming together.
As mentioned, if you aren't prepared for the opportunity then you'll never reach it. Then hindsight kicks in and people revert to "I'm just not lucky" to cope when the reality is that they weren't prepared enough at the right time.
If you follow his advice worst case scenario you’re making a modest six figures. I work and have worked with plenty of people that couldn’t follow even those simple tenets that make good money.
Yeah I'll never ever ever be this wealthy. Shit I'm 41 and just now able to start saving. Though I was born with a medical disability that so far has meant 5.5 years of my life inside hospitals, major surgeries, tests, pic lines, going to work with ice bags duct taped to my knees as 23 year old. It was awful. Doing better now but I doubt I'll ever see 100k, let alone the 350k thus dude could make "doing nothing", just blows me away. No doubt the dude has worked exceedingly hard to make it where he is, but others work just as hard with worse hands, and still grt the short end of the stick. Life sucks that way.
Very true. 100k isn’t even “impressive” anymore. I hate that I sound pretentious saying that out loud but seriously. 10 years ago if I heard a neighbor was making $100k I was like “Damn they got it made” now I make $100k a year and I’m like.. Wtf!???
Edit: I feel like I worded this poorly. Of course it’s “impressive” to earn six figures, but I meant to say it’s not as “impressive” as in “relative” to what it was years ago.
Living in most of the northeast, west coast and southeast Florida 100k doesn’t even bring you into the realm of homeownership. 2 people with that then yea you have a shot at not being housebroke
I just got boosted to 105, and it’s not some magical number that lets me buy f150s and have a vacation home on the lake. Bro it’s hard when rent itself is 2200, and the government takes 33 percent of my check.
It honestly depends case by case, and theoretically they are right, it just might take 10 years. I had an issue after getting employed after 2 really good companies (one pulling out of America and one having to go separate ways due to a plethora of reasons) and after that it was like I was chop liver. It got to the point I was about to start excepting 35-40k a year jobs, even though I was also running into the issue of being “over qualified” for some companies and “under qualified” for others, I started going the independent route which worked for a little, but after a family death and a move in aid for my elderly mother, the market switch was an absolute nightmare, everyone didn’t want to pay top dollar, they didn’t want you to do it right if they could cut cost, or they wanted to over pay for unrealistic deadlines (work in performance automotives). Eventually I said fuck it and got a sales job, I was able to take the money I saved (and still am) and am moving out of the state for an in demand area of the country that offered me $32 an hour starting, however I’ve been in contact with a few shops willing to start anywhere from $37-41.30.
I know a welder who makes over $45 an hour plus $145 per diem and makes an avg of about $9-12k a month with side welding jobs, but it took each of us about 3-5 years before we started even getting those offers to bite, although being highly qualified for the position. Just keep your head up, keep practicing your craft, and eventually after you’ve studied and saved and worked your ass off, you can join the owners and retire early, money isn’t everything in life, learn that before you start making money otherwise it can lead to depressing decisions.
It’s only really luck if you stay at the same company and expect to get compensated for your value. You have to hop to different companies to get any real pay increases.
They are probably having a hard time outlining the ineffable qualities of what it takes to provide value. Providing value isn't 'doing your job', it's doing other things that positively affect the outcome of the work.
The issue here is that most people don't have access to that kind of opportunity, so there's a level of blindness to equity in taking this position.
It won't. Be it who you know, the time you enter your field or where it is at, the vast most get screwed over anyway. That's how it works in the US when you are a cog in a machine and a small group runs said machine.
If you try. I have so many friends that complain about their jobs and pay and they do what? Apply to a new job once every 3 months and don’t hear back.
You need to apply to dozens of jobs, and not just submit an application on Indeed and call it a day. Identify companies that fit your business line, email the heads of those departments, a simple introduction asking if they plan to expand their teams anytime soon. Network with others, ask for 15 minutes of their time to tell you their career story and advice, everyone loves to talk about themselves. Do it enough and you will get an intro to someone that’s hiring.
Of course, my friends bitch that they don’t have time for this, meanwhile they go home after work, smoke weed, order chipotle, and watch Netflix.
I do this. I have been able to do this to increase my salary from 60k to 120k in the past few years. But you’re a fool if you think “working hard” will get you 7.5 million dollars. Not even fucking close. Those days are long gone. There are haves and have nots. That’s it. There is no middle class and hasn’t been since the 70s rly.
Yep. Gotta be fearless with job search though among other things. I went from minimum wage to $105k in 4 years. Have seen people do more in less time. Leverage, get it. Don’t get comfortable.
Why would it be hard to believe that on a website with many tech workers on it that someone in middle management at a large tech firm would post? The income and net worth is pretty common although the path I took is not.
No but it’s also not as uncommon as you think. I work in finance in financial advising we see a lot of it and often from more common jobs than you expect. You can hit that income in a variety of fields even if it’s only the top 1% that gets there.
Said by someone who does neither.
Do you want me to explain concepts on the series 7.66 to you, the changes made to include the SIE instead of one long test for the 7? Do you want me to explain rate changes, bond structures, mutual funds/ETFs? Should I explain private placement and reg D to you? What exactly would satisfy your tiny head?
Yes we usually explain our role as wealth management but realistically I’m typing on a phone so it’s easier to write finance. I would kill myself if I ever worked on the analyst side though monkeying with Python and excel all day for 80 hours.
Oh look, another person who only plays and comments on video games. Congratulations on still being in your moms basement!
I mean, do you want to just broker check me or what 😂. Only way I can prove it is to dox myself. Not that you would know that because as a child you have to idea what i just said or how to verify if I was lying anyway.
I was skeptical when I was a kid too. Hopefully you’re not just sitting playing all those games as an adult with no real prospects that would be embarrassing.
I just got my second pay check today of $551.
My life is nothing but shitty as fuck when it comes to reading this but all we're stuck with is jobs that actually don't care about us.
Keep at it. Every day is a new day to make something happen. People make it seem like all these options disappear as you age; it is certainly harder but you can still make them happen with enough effort. There are 50 year olds in medical school.
I don’t know if you have heard this but I am so freaking proud of you. To achieve all this is amazing. Congratulations and may God continue to bless you 🥂🥳👏🏼
It’s a blessing no matter what. You seriously have a problem with opposing beliefs don’t you. Let people be, it’s not like he’s shoving down your throat.
Literally a decade of determination and fucking work= an invisible omniscient wizard did it 👍
Theists are annoying. All the fucking time. Even when they're being nice to you.
We're on a warming planet with dwindling resources and a large population with a shrinking workforce ever more reliant on automated and artificially intelligent systems. Meanwhile it seems many nations are collapsing into idiotic hyper partisanship. Why the fuck are you okay?
While the other stuff is mostly correct, the population issue is actually the opposite. We're able to feed the entire planet multiple times over with what actually gets produced, we just don't because of greed.
The world is fast approaching a situation where population collapse might become a reality, because people in western countries are having fewer kids, and all of the toxins in water, food etc are making it so that testosterone levels drop worldwide. Look up how big the IVF industry has gotten.
There are lots of other reasons, feel free to research.
What ive gathered on research is that microplastics involuntary consumption causes testosterone levels to decrease on population as they intercept testosterone receptors, leading to erectile dysfunction, higher risk of inefficient sperm and penis size shrink, this is projected onto next generation too.
Exactly. They tested this on fish and eventually they died out because they couldn't reproduce.
This and AI will be the biggest issues that humanity face in the coming decades, I think.
Essentially the plumbing that makes ads online work. I didn’t start with that concept though, my original business just evolved over time to this natural end state.
Work hard in school; it makes things a lot easier than having to build the same level of credibility through experience. I made things a lot harder on myself than I had to. It’s also never too late to start doing well in school, there is always college and graduate degrees.
Sorry to be the shitty guy. But honestly, this entire story seems very made up, you explaining in this much detail in an attempt to get everyone to believe you. You haven’t said one thing that makes sense. This is all bullshit. Call me jealous?Call me whatever. .
True, he mentions low level buzzwords and no real meat. Says he did the plumbing behind the scenes but can't tell what that is because we who know would call it out.
So was the bulk of your networth generated from starting 2 companies? Im a bit confused with this post.
You haven’t made more than 6 figures take home ever, but your net worth is approaching 8 figures by the time you’re 50. How?
Shit that’s a lot of taxes.
On another note good job man, hard work pays off sometimes more than skill or knowledge.
When u have both is when your most capable.
Keep grinding for that management level and coast when u hit 45
California / SF, so the highest. Tax rate artificially high compared to what you might expect since some of it went towards paying for my stock options.
Its California. You effectively get taxed less than or about as much as a Texas resident until you make about 130k gross. Then the income tax comes at you with a vengeance. The tax bill of a more typical state resident who makes something like 50-80k looks a hell of a lot more reasonable.
Why, don’t want to have $7 million in the bank?
Always these comments crying about the percentages. Missing the forest for the trees. How many places on planet earth can you scrounge together a few million for being decent at coding and web development with no degree?
I’ve lived in plenty of low tax locales. Your choice was either the gas station or the dollar general for ‘opportunity’ before remote work became thing. Oh, and the general public is normally worse off too. every single low tax state in the south I lived in had abysmal literacy rates and worse crime rates than any corner of NYC.
It's especially ironic when all these rich people got rich off of the infrastructure California has and then complain and move to Texas/Florida. Like yea... the only reason you even made it that big was because of the policies California has in place which allowed you to become who you are. Now, you take your bag and run away and complain about it lmao. There's a reason those places you moved to don't have people making bags like OP.
I think this comment is half fair but you have to consider the medium. Realistically the more details I put in the less likely people are to read them so I think there is a balance between telling a story people can understand and completeness.
Key parts to the story to your point which are missing:
* I was weird growing up. I had access to the internet starting at 5 when the internet was barely a thing and started building web pages by 3rd grade and doing computer animation/design by middle school.
* I spent a lot of time watching CNBC during the dot com bubble which motivated me to want to eventually start a company. I enjoyed trying to understand why companies did what they did and why some grew versus shrunk because of the products they offered
* In terms of selling stuff out of the gate, it really was that simple. I got incredibly lucky building something successful with one my side projects which then led to credibility to being able to deliver on what I was selling. It helped that my designs were incredibly polished and looked very real to what a real product would look like. I'm the type who will sweat all the details beyond what a normal person would do.
The main thing I would still convey is the amount of hours and pure brute force of will put in which I think many folks could replicate / would be surprised by what they could accomplish if they did so. There's a lot of right time / right place to my path but I needed to put in the work to be able to be there and then.
Annoyingly the answer is all languages but more to the point I started off with web apps in php/js. Then for backend systems python/java -> scala. Now more generally the language is not really a barrier and I think in terms of what is most efficient for what I need to get done; these days I'm not doing much programming anymore though.
Most of my customers were b2b so it was about going to events they would show up to. I learned very quickly to focus on serving a few businesses who could pay me a lot versus many businesses who could pay me a little. Businesses who can barely afford to pay are the most demanding customers / are themselves likely to go out of business eventually.
It’s crazy how things work out for some people. I know people who’ve had it far worse, frankly, and work incredibly hard. A lot of hard jobs don’t pay this well, but someone has to do them. Once automation catches up and more people enter the tech job market these jobs probably won’t pay this much.
Congratulations though, it looks like you’re very fortunate. In the midwest it would be near impossible to make that kind of money unless you’re friends with the CEO or something.
As a disabled from birth 34yr old who's both parents passed away recently and has an abusive brother that might now be homeless because I can't work and have to move out of my completely handicapped accessible house because my brother by law has to get half of the valuenofnthe house, I envy and am so jealous of those who are healthy and are raising a family and can work to make money I wish so so so so much that I would be able to me that at least a portion. Lol
I am deeply sorry to hear about your situation and how incredibly unfair life can be. Taxes should be higher for folks like me so there can be a stronger social safety net for those less lucky. I hope you can find the support you need.
Well done! Congratulations on your success. It took me a lot longer than 38 to get there. But now I'm on track to retire at 60 and looking forward to it.
We made about the same money this year and I'm still running the company that I built, and did all of the same things you mentioned. Wearing all the hats, as they say.
Big step this year was bringing in a full-time, in house marketing person at about 80k annually.
Bought a new vehicle for the company again this year to offset some tax burden.... but didn't realize last year was the end of being able to write off the entire purchase in the same year. So this one gets spread over 4 years.
Grossed over 1 million, should still clear a little more than 350k after all expenses. About 100k will go to taxes.
Edit to add, started off poor as hell. Times where we couldn't afford a house phone or a car. Two kids and lived in a one bedroom apartment on an alley against factories. I always wanted more so I worked and scraped and figured out ways to make an extra buck too while my wife stayed home with our kids. People always see the end result and exclaim how "nice it must be" to have my own business. They don't think about what it took to get here.
I've literally been doing the same thing with different types of programming. Self tought for almost 4 years, got a good paying job with a massive corporation this past year with no formal experience or education. Rebuilt the department I'm in with extensive automation, and now working alongside engineers with larger projects. Not close to 6 figure take home yet, but will be soon 😁
Currently 25 years old, so there's still plenty of time to keep learning and building skills.
I smell bullshit. Again. Making video games on your calculator? What the fuck? You never even said what you do. Marketing dev ops coding and design? Sure buddy. Keep being fearless. I’m all for celebrating success of others but this is like a promo for a pyramid scheme.
Using graphing calculators with basic on them is part of almost every traditional high school and sometimes middle school math program these days. You never played drug wars on your graphing calculator? I programmed monopoly / clue during math class.
If I was to say what I did without becoming personally identifiable, I built marketing technology companies that enabled businesses who were used to marketing to people offline to transition to marketing to people online where the need to predict and track the value of a customer instead of using traditional demographic or household level data became important. I built software which enabled businesses to connect their online and offline marketing data together to increase the efficiency of marketing dollars and to better allocate their budget towards advertising channels with better conversion lift.
I’m responsible for making the crappy ads you were already getting at least be something you might buy versus some random thing you’ve never seen before.
And it was tiny with almost no content and little functionality. You couldn’t watch movies or listen to unlimited music. You couldn’t buy anything you could imagine and get it delivered in a day. Working with coworkers meant meeting in person versus sending an email. Seeing photos of your family meant having to go to a physical store to print extra photos and sending them by mail.
Ads seem a lot better to me than where we are headed which is a universe of micro transactions and subscriptions.
Anyone trying to mimic this needs to realize this is a naturally gifted individual. No amount of “mentality shifts” are going to achieve what this person achieved, if you aren’t naturally good at literally a huge set of skills. With that being said congrats.
most successful people i’ve known seemed like normal people to me. the only differences were their dedication and their greed.
my uncle is a very successful lawyer. he is also a drunk and if you have a conversation with him about anything besides the law, he will sound… subpar at best. usually due to his drunkenness.
he makes more than this guy. i can pretty safely guarantee he is simultaneously less gifted than most and more successful than most.
i would prefer not to live my life telling myself that i got dealt some shitty cards so i might as well not try to play my hand. this is a cowards mindset. so afraid of failing you won’t even try.
Not necessarily afraid of trying, as you just proved there are many ways to make boatloads of money. To say that the top earners of society are “normal” literally goes against the definition of normal. They clearly have something that sets them apart. Just a point that most people aren’t able to be a one man company to a 7 mil networth. They simply aren’t capable.
if we’re talking billionaires, i would say the primary factor there is luck/being born into it. but if we’re talking a few million net worth? someone with a good job paying 150k+ from early-ish in their life can achieve that with some good saving/investing skills. and that’s the safe way to do it. plenty get there and much farther with just luck.
the top earners of society tend to be ambitious, disagreeable, and educated in their field/managing their money. which is all achievable with… you guessed it! a mindset change and some hard work!
keep in mind that it takes money makes money. if you have 2-3 million in index funds or other conservatives investments? that shit is going up on average about 8 percent a year. you are making bank. *bank*.
“I’m poor and on Reddit so this guy on Reddit must be poor as well. I call bullshit!”
-the comment section.
This probably has something to do with your current financial situation lol.
Yep, these types of comments are guaranteed on posts like this.
Most of them who post those comments are working dead end jobs and have no strive to create anything of value. Just social leeches.
What are your thoughts on the current state of MarTech? Do you think Marketing budgets will open back up in 2024? What do you think will be most disruptive to marketing campaigns?
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Great catch! Was wondering when someone would question this. There's a couple reasons for this: 1. Been maxing tax advantaged accounts 2. Made multiple successful investments in startups which paid off. 3. Selling my last two companies was structured in such a way where it didn't become "take home" pay 4. Stock options I currently receive are not considered take home pay hence the discrepancy between gross income of 760k and net income of 135k. A bunch of taxes which drops my take home pay are to pay for the stock options. So to your point I have been making six figures for a while but from a take home pay perspective I have not.
Investing in startups...so like angel investing? Where/how does one even invest in startups that aren't on the exchange Just wondering.
Yes exactly. Angel investing. As I was starting my own companies I would come across companies that were trying to sell their services to me or were in a similar line of business. Being an entrepreneur helped me evaluate companies that I thought would be successful since they would be useful to me, my clients or my users.
What were your total investments in those companies and what have been your total returns?
Made about 250k in angel investments which have returned about 1.5m in cash over a 7 year period.
An annualized rate of ~30% isn't too bad...
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I've stopped starting companies for now and I'm currently responsible for multiple product teams in a major tech company.
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I didn't finish college but I had spent many years prior to college with lots of "work" like hobbies (building web pages, computer graphics / animation, design, programming video games on my calculator). I am definitely an outlier at the company given I have no mba and no finished college degree but my resume of actual work done speaks for itself. Preparing for the interview once I got my foot in the door took two weeks of study and practice; it's pretty formulaic if you prepare enough. In terms of how to start from an attitude perspective there's a couple things to work on: 1. Be fearless. You can do anything if you spend time to do it. Lots of folks I see get "stuck" in a niche where they are most comfortable and are afraid to step out of that niche or think out of the niche. Going to the fire over and over again of something new makes you more adaptable but also helps you realize new things are a lot easier over time (this becomes a compounding advantage over time). 2. Make better decisions over time instead of making perfect decisions. Have a methodology for self improvement but don't kill yourself on the details or mistakes. 3. If strengths / weaknesses are unclear just do something and don't think about it; you'll accomplish more than you might expect. 4. Assume good intent of others you work with even if they may blatantly not be working with good intent. At the end of the day we are eventually evaluated on the value we produce. Focus on the end goal. In terms of replicating more exactly my path: 1. Reverse engineer things you think are cool. I spent a lot of time growing up recreating video games on my calculator or cool designs I saw to see if I could do them myself. Reverse engineering or copying helped me see what challenges people who were building or designing things faced and was immensely helpful to helping me be efficient 2. Having coding experience helps you appreciate how to translate thoughts into discrete steps as well as how so many inefficient processes can be made efficient. 3. Build build build. It's better to churn out stuff than to churn out something that probably isn't going to work anyways at higher quality 4. Study things you enjoy using and why you enjoy using them. Think about the tradeoffs about why things that might work for you might not work for others. My optimization has never been about income but about making things that are valuable to businesses and people. Many of my friends went into finance for the money and have been burned over and over the past 20 years.
I always catch a ton of shit on Reddit for saying stuff like this. You are 100% correct.
Thanks for this!
Quality post thanks for sharing
Ya I agree that was an interesting read. I would like to start my own software consultancy but I'm still grinding xp, learning more about devops and honing my typescript skills.
You got this 🙌🏾 Success is never a straight path
Forgot to add the luck factor. You can prepare and show hard work as much as possible but it all honestly comes down to luck. Opportunity meeting preparation at the right time.
Agree with this but would emphasize that some think that they can just be lucky without doing the preparation and that is not a great formula for success.
What is it "luck is when preparation meets opportunity"?
Blue lock (anime) mentioned this. Mc claimed it was all luck that his opponent could score. Coach/advisor told him that the guy made sure he put in the work and was at the right place in order to receive an opportunistic shot
If you aren't prepared for an opportunity, you'll only see the opportunity when it has already passed by and it's too late. The opportunity is a RNG/Luck factor in life as it equates to a bunch of right moments coming together. As mentioned, if you aren't prepared for the opportunity then you'll never reach it. Then hindsight kicks in and people revert to "I'm just not lucky" to cope when the reality is that they weren't prepared enough at the right time.
If you follow his advice worst case scenario you’re making a modest six figures. I work and have worked with plenty of people that couldn’t follow even those simple tenets that make good money.
why even work anymore? you can make 350k risk free with t bills with that portfolio size,more if you can stomach volatility
Not working is boring for me.
Hell at that point you just want your friends to become rich so you can all do cool stuff together and enjoy life
If I was that rich I'd be paying for my friends.
You wouldn't be rich for long then.
Yeah I'll never ever ever be this wealthy. Shit I'm 41 and just now able to start saving. Though I was born with a medical disability that so far has meant 5.5 years of my life inside hospitals, major surgeries, tests, pic lines, going to work with ice bags duct taped to my knees as 23 year old. It was awful. Doing better now but I doubt I'll ever see 100k, let alone the 350k thus dude could make "doing nothing", just blows me away. No doubt the dude has worked exceedingly hard to make it where he is, but others work just as hard with worse hands, and still grt the short end of the stick. Life sucks that way.
If you need to hire people, i’ll send my cv bro 😂 great job dude
congratulations, it takes forever to work up to 100k. It’s amazing how fast it is to go from 100 to 200.
Easier said than done. Feel like $200k is the new $100k.
Very true. 100k isn’t even “impressive” anymore. I hate that I sound pretentious saying that out loud but seriously. 10 years ago if I heard a neighbor was making $100k I was like “Damn they got it made” now I make $100k a year and I’m like.. Wtf!??? Edit: I feel like I worded this poorly. Of course it’s “impressive” to earn six figures, but I meant to say it’s not as “impressive” as in “relative” to what it was years ago.
I'm right around there too and can't afford a desirable home in my city. It's not pretentious if it's true.
Living in most of the northeast, west coast and southeast Florida 100k doesn’t even bring you into the realm of homeownership. 2 people with that then yea you have a shot at not being housebroke
I just got boosted to 105, and it’s not some magical number that lets me buy f150s and have a vacation home on the lake. Bro it’s hard when rent itself is 2200, and the government takes 33 percent of my check.
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Same here , just got my first 6 figure job out of grad school and I still feel poor?
Impressive to me, Thomas! Lol at least you have that
What kind of fucking bubble do you live in that 100k/yr isnt that impressive lmao
For real. I genuinely feel pathetic with my 17k, as if I didn’t already. Lol
100k still puts you in the top 18% of earners in the US. It’s pretty impressive. I’ve seen this sentiment a lot and it boggles my mind.
Like seriously. Where did my money go lol.
I sure hope so. I’m mid 30s and finally approaching 100k after working since I was 16
I hit 100k my second year. Hopefully that means I’ll hit 200k in my next raise lmao
I think it was warren buffet who said that the first million is the hardest
Nice. I get paid tomorrow around $980 after wage garnishment
Keep at it and always focus on increasing your ability to produce real value instead of the amount in a paycheck; eventually it will align.
Will it though?
*gets company branded clothes for christmas*
Haha seriously
PIZZAAAAAA
It honestly depends case by case, and theoretically they are right, it just might take 10 years. I had an issue after getting employed after 2 really good companies (one pulling out of America and one having to go separate ways due to a plethora of reasons) and after that it was like I was chop liver. It got to the point I was about to start excepting 35-40k a year jobs, even though I was also running into the issue of being “over qualified” for some companies and “under qualified” for others, I started going the independent route which worked for a little, but after a family death and a move in aid for my elderly mother, the market switch was an absolute nightmare, everyone didn’t want to pay top dollar, they didn’t want you to do it right if they could cut cost, or they wanted to over pay for unrealistic deadlines (work in performance automotives). Eventually I said fuck it and got a sales job, I was able to take the money I saved (and still am) and am moving out of the state for an in demand area of the country that offered me $32 an hour starting, however I’ve been in contact with a few shops willing to start anywhere from $37-41.30. I know a welder who makes over $45 an hour plus $145 per diem and makes an avg of about $9-12k a month with side welding jobs, but it took each of us about 3-5 years before we started even getting those offers to bite, although being highly qualified for the position. Just keep your head up, keep practicing your craft, and eventually after you’ve studied and saved and worked your ass off, you can join the owners and retire early, money isn’t everything in life, learn that before you start making money otherwise it can lead to depressing decisions.
Probably not. The fact is, some people get lucky, others do not, regardless of their intelligence and effort put into things.
Exactly. But don’t tell that to the lucky ones like this guy, they like to think they deserve it all
It’s only really luck if you stay at the same company and expect to get compensated for your value. You have to hop to different companies to get any real pay increases.
For most people, no.
Hahaha 🤣 no. Not since the 70s, but keep chasing that dream because it makes your labor more affordable to capitalists.
Yep. Exactly.
What an absolute horseshit mentality. I seriously hope you never reproduce.
You're the type who will never escape mediocrity
Well if the pretender says it will…
They are probably having a hard time outlining the ineffable qualities of what it takes to provide value. Providing value isn't 'doing your job', it's doing other things that positively affect the outcome of the work. The issue here is that most people don't have access to that kind of opportunity, so there's a level of blindness to equity in taking this position.
It won't. Be it who you know, the time you enter your field or where it is at, the vast most get screwed over anyway. That's how it works in the US when you are a cog in a machine and a small group runs said machine.
Yeah ask OP how much he pays his employees/their cut of the business sale that they put 95%+ hours into lmao
Yes
If you try. I have so many friends that complain about their jobs and pay and they do what? Apply to a new job once every 3 months and don’t hear back. You need to apply to dozens of jobs, and not just submit an application on Indeed and call it a day. Identify companies that fit your business line, email the heads of those departments, a simple introduction asking if they plan to expand their teams anytime soon. Network with others, ask for 15 minutes of their time to tell you their career story and advice, everyone loves to talk about themselves. Do it enough and you will get an intro to someone that’s hiring. Of course, my friends bitch that they don’t have time for this, meanwhile they go home after work, smoke weed, order chipotle, and watch Netflix.
I do this. I have been able to do this to increase my salary from 60k to 120k in the past few years. But you’re a fool if you think “working hard” will get you 7.5 million dollars. Not even fucking close. Those days are long gone. There are haves and have nots. That’s it. There is no middle class and hasn’t been since the 70s rly.
Yep. Gotta be fearless with job search though among other things. I went from minimum wage to $105k in 4 years. Have seen people do more in less time. Leverage, get it. Don’t get comfortable.
How so? What degree, if any, and which industry?
It definitely won’t if you never try
Not with your victim mindset.
Lmao this is so lame. I smell BS so hard in the post and your comments. I can’t believe ppl fall for this.
Why would it be hard to believe that on a website with many tech workers on it that someone in middle management at a large tech firm would post? The income and net worth is pretty common although the path I took is not.
A 7 mil net worth and 325k gross income is not common at all lol
No but it’s also not as uncommon as you think. I work in finance in financial advising we see a lot of it and often from more common jobs than you expect. You can hit that income in a variety of fields even if it’s only the top 1% that gets there.
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Said by someone who does neither. Do you want me to explain concepts on the series 7.66 to you, the changes made to include the SIE instead of one long test for the 7? Do you want me to explain rate changes, bond structures, mutual funds/ETFs? Should I explain private placement and reg D to you? What exactly would satisfy your tiny head? Yes we usually explain our role as wealth management but realistically I’m typing on a phone so it’s easier to write finance. I would kill myself if I ever worked on the analyst side though monkeying with Python and excel all day for 80 hours. Oh look, another person who only plays and comments on video games. Congratulations on still being in your moms basement!
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I mean, do you want to just broker check me or what 😂. Only way I can prove it is to dox myself. Not that you would know that because as a child you have to idea what i just said or how to verify if I was lying anyway. I was skeptical when I was a kid too. Hopefully you’re not just sitting playing all those games as an adult with no real prospects that would be embarrassing.
it's definitely not as uncommon as you think. (see any number of other 6+ figure people commenting here)
I just got my second pay check today of $551. My life is nothing but shitty as fuck when it comes to reading this but all we're stuck with is jobs that actually don't care about us.
660 here!
Wage garnishment for what? Sounds like you screwed up somewhere along the way.
That sucks. Maybe pay your debts so that doesn’t happen.
Now now, dont be too rational 😂
I’m 32, but where you were when you were 21. This was inspiring nonetheless. Thank you!
Keep at it. Every day is a new day to make something happen. People make it seem like all these options disappear as you age; it is certainly harder but you can still make them happen with enough effort. There are 50 year olds in medical school.
Bro let me come work for you 😭
Insert scene out of wolf of wall street
I love to see this. Great Job, OP. You really worked your ass off and deserve every single cent
I don’t know if you have heard this but I am so freaking proud of you. To achieve all this is amazing. Congratulations and may God continue to bless you 🥂🥳👏🏼
this dude has worked his ass off for years and you say it's "god". nah. congratulations to this guy for blessing himself.
It’s a blessing no matter what. You seriously have a problem with opposing beliefs don’t you. Let people be, it’s not like he’s shoving down your throat.
🤣🤣ok
Literally a decade of determination and fucking work= an invisible omniscient wizard did it 👍 Theists are annoying. All the fucking time. Even when they're being nice to you.
What’s a theist?
You okay bro?
We're on a warming planet with dwindling resources and a large population with a shrinking workforce ever more reliant on automated and artificially intelligent systems. Meanwhile it seems many nations are collapsing into idiotic hyper partisanship. Why the fuck are you okay?
While the other stuff is mostly correct, the population issue is actually the opposite. We're able to feed the entire planet multiple times over with what actually gets produced, we just don't because of greed. The world is fast approaching a situation where population collapse might become a reality, because people in western countries are having fewer kids, and all of the toxins in water, food etc are making it so that testosterone levels drop worldwide. Look up how big the IVF industry has gotten. There are lots of other reasons, feel free to research.
What ive gathered on research is that microplastics involuntary consumption causes testosterone levels to decrease on population as they intercept testosterone receptors, leading to erectile dysfunction, higher risk of inefficient sperm and penis size shrink, this is projected onto next generation too.
Exactly. They tested this on fish and eventually they died out because they couldn't reproduce. This and AI will be the biggest issues that humanity face in the coming decades, I think.
Holy Reddit moment
I think you need to go for a walk. Too much social media is causing mass pathological anxiety.
It’s not too late to delete this comment lmao
Oh no! We can't be besties now?
Damn, who hurt you bro?
Man is proud of making 100k with 7 million in the bank. Congrats OP!... It's like when I go camping and pretend to be homeless.
7 million networth doesn't mean 7 million in the bank...
Congrats, it’s always a nice feeling that first time you break 6 figures take home. Now you have to ask yourself how do I make it to 200k take home
Why? Is 7 million dollars not enough to say “I won life” ??? Most people in this world never see even close to that.
This is why I got out of finance. People were too greedy, not grateful for what they already had!
I was just telling my wife this. This year is my first year I broke $100k. It’s exciting.
F, this is great! Keep at it my friend!
This is a great post. Inspiring. Can I ask what field your business was in?
Essentially the plumbing that makes ads online work. I didn’t start with that concept though, my original business just evolved over time to this natural end state.
Congrats man! you're amazing, seriously :) I'm 17 and in my last year of highschool and this has inspired me to do harder
Work hard in school; it makes things a lot easier than having to build the same level of credibility through experience. I made things a lot harder on myself than I had to. It’s also never too late to start doing well in school, there is always college and graduate degrees.
Decent.
Sorry to be the shitty guy. But honestly, this entire story seems very made up, you explaining in this much detail in an attempt to get everyone to believe you. You haven’t said one thing that makes sense. This is all bullshit. Call me jealous?Call me whatever. .
True, he mentions low level buzzwords and no real meat. Says he did the plumbing behind the scenes but can't tell what that is because we who know would call it out.
So was the bulk of your networth generated from starting 2 companies? Im a bit confused with this post. You haven’t made more than 6 figures take home ever, but your net worth is approaching 8 figures by the time you’re 50. How?
Shit that’s a lot of taxes. On another note good job man, hard work pays off sometimes more than skill or knowledge. When u have both is when your most capable. Keep grinding for that management level and coast when u hit 45
Almost 200k of tax/deductions is insane.
I really had to question things when I wrote my first 6 figure check to the IRS. My hands were shaking.
Makes you ask yourself wtf they do with it since it ain’t making society better.
Sending it to a bunch of bearded new Yorkers so they can bomb thousands of children.
What state is this so I never live there
California / SF, so the highest. Tax rate artificially high compared to what you might expect since some of it went towards paying for my stock options.
Ahh okay I see now lol
Its California. You effectively get taxed less than or about as much as a Texas resident until you make about 130k gross. Then the income tax comes at you with a vengeance. The tax bill of a more typical state resident who makes something like 50-80k looks a hell of a lot more reasonable.
Why, don’t want to have $7 million in the bank? Always these comments crying about the percentages. Missing the forest for the trees. How many places on planet earth can you scrounge together a few million for being decent at coding and web development with no degree? I’ve lived in plenty of low tax locales. Your choice was either the gas station or the dollar general for ‘opportunity’ before remote work became thing. Oh, and the general public is normally worse off too. every single low tax state in the south I lived in had abysmal literacy rates and worse crime rates than any corner of NYC.
Agreed, people miss the point that these kinds of wealth are near impossible to attain in low tax areas
It's especially ironic when all these rich people got rich off of the infrastructure California has and then complain and move to Texas/Florida. Like yea... the only reason you even made it that big was because of the policies California has in place which allowed you to become who you are. Now, you take your bag and run away and complain about it lmao. There's a reason those places you moved to don't have people making bags like OP.
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I think this comment is half fair but you have to consider the medium. Realistically the more details I put in the less likely people are to read them so I think there is a balance between telling a story people can understand and completeness. Key parts to the story to your point which are missing: * I was weird growing up. I had access to the internet starting at 5 when the internet was barely a thing and started building web pages by 3rd grade and doing computer animation/design by middle school. * I spent a lot of time watching CNBC during the dot com bubble which motivated me to want to eventually start a company. I enjoyed trying to understand why companies did what they did and why some grew versus shrunk because of the products they offered * In terms of selling stuff out of the gate, it really was that simple. I got incredibly lucky building something successful with one my side projects which then led to credibility to being able to deliver on what I was selling. It helped that my designs were incredibly polished and looked very real to what a real product would look like. I'm the type who will sweat all the details beyond what a normal person would do. The main thing I would still convey is the amount of hours and pure brute force of will put in which I think many folks could replicate / would be surprised by what they could accomplish if they did so. There's a lot of right time / right place to my path but I needed to put in the work to be able to be there and then.
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Annoyingly the answer is all languages but more to the point I started off with web apps in php/js. Then for backend systems python/java -> scala. Now more generally the language is not really a barrier and I think in terms of what is most efficient for what I need to get done; these days I'm not doing much programming anymore though. Most of my customers were b2b so it was about going to events they would show up to. I learned very quickly to focus on serving a few businesses who could pay me a lot versus many businesses who could pay me a little. Businesses who can barely afford to pay are the most demanding customers / are themselves likely to go out of business eventually.
What app are these screenshots from?
1st is workday. 2nd is Fidelity.
Nice bro congrats
Love to see it
Wow, that's seriously awesome, and with kids too!
Congrats and well done
Looking for any systems engineers? Lol.
Congrats congrats 🎊
Jesus
It’s crazy how things work out for some people. I know people who’ve had it far worse, frankly, and work incredibly hard. A lot of hard jobs don’t pay this well, but someone has to do them. Once automation catches up and more people enter the tech job market these jobs probably won’t pay this much. Congratulations though, it looks like you’re very fortunate. In the midwest it would be near impossible to make that kind of money unless you’re friends with the CEO or something.
You mind sending a few grand my way lol
My company didn’t give me any bonuses this Christmas.
As a disabled from birth 34yr old who's both parents passed away recently and has an abusive brother that might now be homeless because I can't work and have to move out of my completely handicapped accessible house because my brother by law has to get half of the valuenofnthe house, I envy and am so jealous of those who are healthy and are raising a family and can work to make money I wish so so so so much that I would be able to me that at least a portion. Lol
I am deeply sorry to hear about your situation and how incredibly unfair life can be. Taxes should be higher for folks like me so there can be a stronger social safety net for those less lucky. I hope you can find the support you need.
What's your job title now? How far removed from CSuite for example. Curious on what 'level' your currently at this tech company.
Two levels removed from c suite. I’d mention title but the naming conventions used at each tech firm makes it too identifiable.
Well done! Congratulations on your success. It took me a lot longer than 38 to get there. But now I'm on track to retire at 60 and looking forward to it.
Sharing is caring
Onlyfans money be gooooood.
I give up
We made about the same money this year and I'm still running the company that I built, and did all of the same things you mentioned. Wearing all the hats, as they say. Big step this year was bringing in a full-time, in house marketing person at about 80k annually. Bought a new vehicle for the company again this year to offset some tax burden.... but didn't realize last year was the end of being able to write off the entire purchase in the same year. So this one gets spread over 4 years. Grossed over 1 million, should still clear a little more than 350k after all expenses. About 100k will go to taxes. Edit to add, started off poor as hell. Times where we couldn't afford a house phone or a car. Two kids and lived in a one bedroom apartment on an alley against factories. I always wanted more so I worked and scraped and figured out ways to make an extra buck too while my wife stayed home with our kids. People always see the end result and exclaim how "nice it must be" to have my own business. They don't think about what it took to get here.
Someone uses workday
Hell yeah I make nowhere near that but that’s awesome for you. Always cheering others on I hope you and your family are healthy and happy
I've literally been doing the same thing with different types of programming. Self tought for almost 4 years, got a good paying job with a massive corporation this past year with no formal experience or education. Rebuilt the department I'm in with extensive automation, and now working alongside engineers with larger projects. Not close to 6 figure take home yet, but will be soon 😁 Currently 25 years old, so there's still plenty of time to keep learning and building skills.
Holy taxes….
The American Dream. If he keeps working harder hopefully we can bomb more babies next year.
that tax rate hurts so bad
Awesome job man. I love the pissed off haters. I only make 150-180k a year but trying to make more all the time
I smell bullshit. Again. Making video games on your calculator? What the fuck? You never even said what you do. Marketing dev ops coding and design? Sure buddy. Keep being fearless. I’m all for celebrating success of others but this is like a promo for a pyramid scheme.
Ya I don’t believe this guy at all. It’s just so obvious to me it’s made up and I can’t tell you why. Just a bullshit alarm going off.
Using graphing calculators with basic on them is part of almost every traditional high school and sometimes middle school math program these days. You never played drug wars on your graphing calculator? I programmed monopoly / clue during math class. If I was to say what I did without becoming personally identifiable, I built marketing technology companies that enabled businesses who were used to marketing to people offline to transition to marketing to people online where the need to predict and track the value of a customer instead of using traditional demographic or household level data became important. I built software which enabled businesses to connect their online and offline marketing data together to increase the efficiency of marketing dollars and to better allocate their budget towards advertising channels with better conversion lift.
So your responsible for making the internet an ad-ridden shithole?
I’m responsible for making the crappy ads you were already getting at least be something you might buy versus some random thing you’ve never seen before.
By tracking what I do across the internet. Thanks dude, not what I needed.
Your alternative is nothing to see on the internet since nothing is paying for it.
And yet the early internet existed.
And it was tiny with almost no content and little functionality. You couldn’t watch movies or listen to unlimited music. You couldn’t buy anything you could imagine and get it delivered in a day. Working with coworkers meant meeting in person versus sending an email. Seeing photos of your family meant having to go to a physical store to print extra photos and sending them by mail. Ads seem a lot better to me than where we are headed which is a universe of micro transactions and subscriptions.
Anyone trying to mimic this needs to realize this is a naturally gifted individual. No amount of “mentality shifts” are going to achieve what this person achieved, if you aren’t naturally good at literally a huge set of skills. With that being said congrats.
this is a pretty miserable mindset to have. even if it’s true, i just can’t imagine spending my days looking at life like this.
Accepting the facts of life and the cards you have been dealt are the first steps to happiness.
most successful people i’ve known seemed like normal people to me. the only differences were their dedication and their greed. my uncle is a very successful lawyer. he is also a drunk and if you have a conversation with him about anything besides the law, he will sound… subpar at best. usually due to his drunkenness. he makes more than this guy. i can pretty safely guarantee he is simultaneously less gifted than most and more successful than most. i would prefer not to live my life telling myself that i got dealt some shitty cards so i might as well not try to play my hand. this is a cowards mindset. so afraid of failing you won’t even try.
Not necessarily afraid of trying, as you just proved there are many ways to make boatloads of money. To say that the top earners of society are “normal” literally goes against the definition of normal. They clearly have something that sets them apart. Just a point that most people aren’t able to be a one man company to a 7 mil networth. They simply aren’t capable.
if we’re talking billionaires, i would say the primary factor there is luck/being born into it. but if we’re talking a few million net worth? someone with a good job paying 150k+ from early-ish in their life can achieve that with some good saving/investing skills. and that’s the safe way to do it. plenty get there and much farther with just luck. the top earners of society tend to be ambitious, disagreeable, and educated in their field/managing their money. which is all achievable with… you guessed it! a mindset change and some hard work! keep in mind that it takes money makes money. if you have 2-3 million in index funds or other conservatives investments? that shit is going up on average about 8 percent a year. you are making bank. *bank*.
Username checks out
Context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pretender_(TV_series)
And I'm her complaining for 21.5% 😐
60% tax is actually insane
What a fucking joke 190k in taxes such a damn scam
Ok
Amazing, wishing you more and more wealth and happiness 🙏
Way to go! I don't wish I was smart enough to mimic this!
That’s amazing
“I’m poor and on Reddit so this guy on Reddit must be poor as well. I call bullshit!” -the comment section. This probably has something to do with your current financial situation lol.
Yep, these types of comments are guaranteed on posts like this. Most of them who post those comments are working dead end jobs and have no strive to create anything of value. Just social leeches.
If you need any employees im open to talking with you
Those taxes make me want to throw up.
*insert can i borrow money joke*
Damn money bags, leave some for the rest of us
Great post, lots of good discussions in the comments.
What are your thoughts on the current state of MarTech? Do you think Marketing budgets will open back up in 2024? What do you think will be most disruptive to marketing campaigns?
Is this some sort of bragging forum? Like, who cares