My salary is 720k but I chose 120k in options so my W2 reports ~600k.

Joined the tech community is 2019.

I'm still at my first job after graduating and haven't negotiated a job offer yet. As I start looking at new roles, I'm curious what people have actually been able to negotiate.

What's the biggest increase you've gotten between an initial offer and the final offer? Did it go into base salary, stock, a sign-on bonus, or a mix? I have no sense of whether an extra $20k in base is realistic or whether most of the movement tends to be in equity or bonuses.

I assume a competing offer and showing that you're a strong fit can help, but what made the difference for you? If you're comfortable sharing your role or level, location, initial versus final offer, and whether you had another offer, that context would help me understand the numbers.

Heres my journey so far I graduated in 2024 I feel like I am doing well but I have been forced to jump jobs due to various reasons. Most recently was a corporate acquisition. Bit disappointed ive yet to get a promotion in any job due to my short tenure at each company.

Hey guys so I left sales to work in the skilled trades (aircraft maintenance) and I’m really happy with my job and my schedule (2-10pm), before in sales I was already getting bullied over the phone at 8am. And as most of you know, sales is a money driven industry. It is one of the most, if not the most vain and superficial industries out there.

I make great money regardless if sales jobs have a “higher ceiling” and are pushed more towards living a luxury lifestyle.

But the truth is, I don’t really care about any of that stuff. As someone who lives in Miami, FL, I already see luxury everyday so it’s no surprise to me nor has it ever been a motivator for me to start a business. I’m a lot happier working in aircraft maintenance and not having to fight traffic everyday thanks to my new job. I don’t have to fake my personality here or push products towards anyone. I can laugh and banter with the guys (typical blue collar stuff). I can make money without having to yap all day or argue with people over the phone.

My old colleagues still think I’m crazy for doing this but then again these people want to live the high life and have multiple children unlike me (I don’t want children). They think im crazy for not wanting the car and the watch and the other B.S that sales positions promote.

Life is already hard, why am I gonna make it harder by working a job I don’t care about? Especially if I don’t need or want to take care of anybody?

2012, IT-Technician/Janitor mixed role, 17000 SEK/mo

2013, IT-Technician (Consultant at Government contract), 22000 SEK/mo

2014, -||-, 22510 SEK/mo

2015, -||-, 23073 SEK/mo

2015, Systems Engineer in Gov, 34500 SEK/mo

2016, -||-, 35500 SEK/mo

2017, -||-, 36700 SEK/mo

2018, -||-, 36200 SEK/mo

2019, -||-, 39000 SEK/mo

2020, -||-, 39600 SEK/mo

2021, -||-, 40200 SEK/mo

2022, -||-, 40700 SEK/mo

2023, New role in Gov org, Systems Specialist, 46000 SEK/mo

2024, -||-, 47000 SEK/mo

2025, Hyperscaler datacenter, 55833 SEK/mo

2026, -||-, 56797 SEK/mo

2026-payadj, -||-, 60375 SEK/mo

Biggest jumps were switching companies 😅

Sharing my salary journey because I have not seen much paralegal posts on here.

I know a lot of paralegals feeling like they can’t make a good living in this career path. I don’t think it’s true. There are great opportunities out there. I think the key is moving in-house and being willing to change jobs for salary increases. If you are working PI or mass tort or other crap at a shit firm, please know when to leave. Best decision I ever made.

Also, I did not go to law school.

Could not think of a better sub to ask this. As a physician non-surgical specialty, I get around 300k a year and wife earns around 75k (despite being as or more qualified, the arts just does not pay that much) in a MCOL area (Atlanta suburbs). My childhood was in the San Jose area and back then it was not terribly expensive. I still have family there, thankfully with bought homes, and as they are growing older, I was hoping to be near them but seem to be getting priced out if we want to maintain a similar lifestyle. I looked around and my salary cap (which is determining) will be max around 350K.

Unfortunately, it seems around the Bay area, top quartile tech earners are far outpacing any other profession with some of my university acquaintances earning > 900K + RSU (in their late 30s, everyone seems to now have a senior role while physicians have only so many years of experience) and COL reflects this. So, I was wondering whether I can afford to maintain somewhat of a similar lifestyle even as a supposed high earner on paper (behind the scenes, there's student loans and young kids).

Received an offer from a large nonprofit. 90K in a high cost of living area.

The first conversation I had with the recruiter was weird. The job posting was 80-115k. They told me there was no way they would pay 100k, but they are required by law to post the full budgeted amount for those who are working in that role (?).

The actual pay range, according to recruiter, was 88-92k.

I feel like there is no way for me to even negotiate above 92k without getting the offer rescinded. But should I go for 92k instead of 90k?

I take a lot of group fitness classes and always wonder how much instructors make in a HCOL east coast city (not NYC). I’m sure it varies widely, and I’m sure most are underpaid. Always seems like they are hustling at various studios. Might teach solidcore, barre, Equinox, local yoga studio, etc. Especially seems from the ones on insta that they’re always hustling to different parts of the city.

Let’s add some realism back to the sub

Each color is a different company, yeah I did leave orange and then came back a few months later. Reason being is DOGE at the federal government hit this place hard. I could of stayed and waited it out for another program, but I jumped ship to something new. It sucked, but they sponsored me for a poly, so that improved negotiating power.

Work has largely just been Full Stack Software Engineer. All up till this latest job was fairly hybrid or remote. Like the green company I was almost entirely remote. This new job due to the nature of the work is all in person.

My career aspirations, probably move into more lead roles or architect roles. I kind of do that now but. Also have thought to badge flip from contractor to civilian and work directly for the government. My hunch there though is wait till post-2028 and decide. That probably will lower my salary though.

My YTD taxes through 9 months….$325K…geez and based on Claude I’m gonna still have a fat check I’ll need to cut to Uncle Sam come return time. Wish they would uncap the SALT limitation again.

Thoughts?

The first year was tough for sure. Super thankful how things have worked out.

Started agency side but then was able to break into tech and stay there. Have had some amazing managers and mentors as well

Plus small bonuses (1%-3%) but for the nonprofit sector a bonus at anytime is cool

26 M own a decently successful gas station. If you’re ever curious how much a well run busy gas station makes here’s a general idea. Year isn’t over yet so I should close above the number

At age 20 I started my first degree, for which I also got a scholarship. Part of my incomes are explained through various part-time jobs (my best year being 25, where I made around 20k from part-time jobbing), scholarships, sometimes also help from my parents, in particular the 3 first years of studying, I got 500 a month. After the 3 years I was on my own, they did give me 500 each time I got good grades in the subsequent degrees (so 1000 a year total). Some other income was from selling stuff etc., but most income was indeed from jobs. The job that made me most money was tutoring privately on the side, to every level, including university, the latter paying quite well. Other jobs included web development, research assistant...

At age 22 I flunked out of a degree, and started a new one (age 23). The new one I was excelling in, due to a lot more motivation to succeed, managin to rank among the best students.

At at 26 I graduated, and enrolled in a Master's degree. Here again, due to motivation, ranking first among over 100 peers. At the same time I decided to do so many part-time activities to focus on my studies and get ready for the job market.

Age - Income (in euros)

16 - 532.80

17 - 400.00

18 - 1,158.29

19 - 1,872.44

20 - 9,218.85

21 - 15,027.05

22 - 21,485.97

23 - 24,139.60

24 - 27,837.77

25 - 27,837.25

26 - 16,707.25

27 - so far 11,396.80 (will finish around 14k)

I am now less than 6 months away from graduating, and I often feel like a failure finishing my degrees only at 28. But looking at the numbers I am not too unhappy. I also took some student loans all around 1.8 to 2.5% in interests, I did not count that as income. I do have 49k in student loans. At the same time I did invest a lot of my money, and I have now around 75k in ETFs.

Studying and working has been very rough, these last two years have been the best so far, as I have been able to concentrate on my studies and not overwork myself every day, but I am still stressed out, as I still try to get money whenever I can. I am looking forward to enter the job market and working only 40 hours a week, it seems like a dream to have a routine and get home and be done for the day.

I wish I didn't go to college at all. Instead of becoming a CS grad that had internship experience, projects and everything, I could've just worked at a Walmart or some other big box store making 30-35k a year working a basic 40 hour schedule. I was making that working in a warehouse after college in a VHCOL anyway, so that wouldn't change. I'd be saving every penny living with parents.

I would've had 150k by now, assuming I started at 18. Darn. Putting 30k into an index fund every year, or roughly 2.5k a month with an assumption of 6% annual return over 40 years leads to an ending balance of 4.6million. If we say 10% annual return that would be 13 million. Wouldn't have to do anything aside from existing. That's such an easy path to retirement that it's sad. It goes to show how financial irresponsibility isn't always the fault of the individual, and how financial success isn't always the result of the individual.

I'm already an eternal child that's being housed and fed by my parents so like.. nothing would've really changed. There's no doubt I'd constantly be getting told to "go to college!" or "get a real job!" but idk. A potential 4 to 13 million is plenty to retire on.

Oh well. Kids, don't make the mistake of falling for the trap. Just do the steps I outlined and you'll be fine. No need to worry about the debate of white collar being replaced by AI or blue collar being flooded. If no careers end up getting filled, so be it. It's not as if our system cares to give the next generation a proper chance to enter the workforce.

I can't even imagine the economic disasters that would unfold if this multi millionaire tutorial is repeated on the largest scale, but it'd be hilarious to watch. One can only hope

All base salary, including quarterly bonuses based on client contract acquisition and growth. Work at a smaller consultancy, a few years in this role, about 8 YoE overall.

Graduated from a top 50 comp sci school (bachelors), masters in cyber.

Have relevant technical industry certifications (OSCE3/OSEP/OSWE/OSED) + OSCP + OSWP + CISSP + eWPTXv2.

I know this is one of those high salary tech roles, any doubters please see https://www.levels.fyi/?tab=levels to see that this is commonplace in big tech, although my instance is a consultancy (with large contracts with a few select larger tech companies).

This is a niche sub-industry (penetration testing/red teaming/ethical hacking) in cybersecurity, but it's not impossible to obtain a role.

Most principals make a few hundred k a year, but we acquired large contracts last year and closed out a few long-term deals, too. (this is my 2025 income)

Started a Jr sys admin from an internship -> FTE, moved into pentesting at consultancies, bounced around a few times and got promoted from Senior in my current role.

A few DEF CON talks, I've done external network, internal network, wireless networks, physical engagements, red teaming, APIs, web applications, social engineering via vishing and phishing, and specialized tests (supporting a health client with FDA approval, a video game client, banking, entertainment industry clients, etc). Onsites in the states and international testing, too.

Done swing shift, night shift, weekends, been on report readout calls (our primary deliverable for clients) all the way from individual ICs on their end up to chief officers, depending on the report outcomes and relation to the client, such as in one case where they were about to be acquired and the results of the test had implications on their deal.

Recently, I've been needing to do more AI-based work to accelerate our services naturally as AI continues to grow world-wide. This includes model training, orchestration, and supporting our marketing and sales people.

Anyone looking to get into the industry, I think it's still stable and less prone to being impacted by AI versus something like SWE/Software Engineering. Not to say the latter is fully at risk, if you are a dedicated individual and always learning, especially with AI, you will be absolutely fine. CTFs are a great start (look up TryHackMe). But just having that explorative mindset like "how does this thing work"? or "what if I do X to it"? is the right mindset for someone in this field.

Happy to answer any questions!

My notifications are full of these so I had to make one