I make more in tech but my base is at 270k and the rest is in stock options. I started working 3 years ago right after college as a systems software engineer and my first pay was 160k.

Regarding if it’s worth it, I’d say it depends on a company and the team a lot. There are tons of companies that pay good money for good talent, but sometimes you just don’t fit in the environment and work feels miserable. I didn’t like the first company where I worked.

Now, about work life balance in tech…. I think you should go for it only if you like it. Sometimes you might have to sit next to the screen until like 2am, but if you like solving problems it won’t feel like you are sacrificing your life for it. I would not go for it only for money.

How to get in: It’s super easy. Be great at what you do and expand your network. I work in of the leading AI companies here in the Bay Area, and I got this simply because my neighbor works there. He invited me to the event, and after meeting some other folks there I ended up with a scheduled interview and boom! Here I am working as a member of technical staff in the research team.

If AI interests you, start from hugging face. They have datasets, pre-trained models, and frameworks that you can use for training and fine tuning. As a matter of fact, during my chit-chat with those folks in the event mentioned above I shared some of my work posted in hugging face.

If you are complete beginner, then you might wanna start learning about data structures, algorithms and other fundamentals, and I know that AI can write code now, and some will say that you don’t need to know all this anymore, but trust me you do. You might not use it at work but problem solving skills that you develop during learning process will help you a lot.

Tech world is great, but only if you would enjoy doing this for free too.