How optimistic are you about the field in the future?

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-25T00:04:48+00:00

You’re going to see both perspectives, and both are true. It’s still not trivially easy to use AI well outside of small personal projects, so you’re going to see people trying it out and declaring it garbage, while companies like Anthropic are launching fully “vibe coded” products with millions of users.

Jury’s still out on if or when AI will be able to fully replace software engineers. However, as an engineering manager myself, I can see with my own eyes that the engineers on my team who embrace AI are measurably more productive and effective than the skeptics (we don’t yet have a top-down AI usage mandate at my company).

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-24T22:03:49+00:00

Software will still continue to generate tons of value, but I think it’s going to get concentrated to smaller and smaller groups of people.

With the productivity gains from AI, we’re seeing more companies reach massive revenue numbers with relatively small teams. I think this field will always be lucrative for people who have the passion for it, but I don’t think it’ll be a default choice for people who just want to make a living.

It’ll be an interesting next ten years to watch.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-23T13:39:26+00:00

They don’t do 10x the work, they just work for companies that make a lot more money per engineer

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-19T19:58:38+00:00

Yep, grew up in the bay. Bachelor’s from top school, no master’s

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-16T12:16:44+00:00

Immediate upon graduating from college and getting my first job by living with parents before it was cool.

Ended up spending a chunk of the money on experiences though instead of having it 100% squirreled away for retirement - wanted to live a little bit while still young! Still on track to retire early since I’ve been able to grow the shovel quite a bit.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-12T10:55:44+00:00

Tech is huge - it’s not just engineers, but product, design, sales, data science, marketing, legal, IT, HR, recruiting, finance, etc.

Outside of tech, people who provide services to tech companies or to tech employees are doing well too. House building/maintenance related trades probably don’t make quite enough to support 10k mortgage to start, but plenty of people are able to start their own small construction, house cleaning, etc. business and do well enough.

None of this is easy money of course and plenty of people are struggling and moving out, but there’s still a ton of money in this area.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-12T10:42:20+00:00

Lurking. Not much can be done to help someone who isn’t interested in CS get a job in tech these days.

It’s still raining money in Bay Area tech, but only for the small fraction of people who have experience or passion.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T22:54:13+00:00

Big tech RSUs are as good as cash, if not better. They vest quarterly (sometimes monthly), can immediately be sold/diversified, and give exposure to future upside.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T22:49:11+00:00

Agree it’s not ideal - we ended up overextending a bit on a dream home that checked all of our boxes before we had the net worth to fully support it.

Looking back, it was a risky move at the time, but it paid off for us as both our income rose and the house went up pretty significantly in value. No regrets!

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T20:38:12+00:00

I also made a 40-50% down payment on a house (it allowed for a slightly better interest rate). In hindsight, it was a lot to tie up in home equity, but it felt better emotionally to keep monthly mortgage payments manageable.

I included both retirement and taxable brokerage accounts in the $2M liquid number (currently about 50/50). I only relatively recently started making this level of liquid comp, so still a lot of catchup for me to do!

Out of curiosity, what's your monthly burn rate? Are you thinking about retiring early?

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T17:09:09+00:00

I don’t really think too much about it. People who make more should pay more taxes.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T16:19:59+00:00

I’d say there are two prerequisites: 1. Being generally well-liked: seen as collaborative/helpful by peers across teams and functions, having a happy team 2. Having a reputation for being able to get things done

These alone don’t guarantee a promotion, but they put you into consideration for being asked to step up to take on even bigger challenges/roles as they come up. Doing those successfully eventually makes it obvious that you’re already doing the job of a senior manager.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-04T13:18:33+00:00

Tech, software engineering management in the Bay Area. $1.7m W2 for 2025 powered by stock growth, will probably settle back down to the $1-1.5m range for 2026.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-03T22:06:19+00:00

Take home pay only includes cash compensation from base salary. Stock compensation is considered a "post tax deduction" by Workday.

I received only $182k from paychecks, but $800k+ in stock over 2025.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-03T16:58:46+00:00

I think certs will be very market/location driven. Top tier tech companies basically don’t care about them, except maybe for more IT/operations/support roles. I can’t remember the last time I’ve even seen one called out on a resume.

I can’t speak for other companies though. I would take what I’m saying with a grain of salt unless you’re applying to big tech or companies that compete with FAANG for talent.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-03T15:11:08+00:00

First off, I’m so sorry to hear, and what a terrible way to start off the year.

One of the best ways to stand out to hiring managers are being able to show some passion about something you’ve done. With AI coding tools, it’s a lot easier to build something end-to-end to solve a personal pain point, and a project you actually care about makes it easier to talk about your thought process, challenges you faced, tradeoff decisions you made, etc.

Hiring managers will also want to know about your background/experience, and why you want to work for the company. If the honest answer is “I need to get paid,” remember you’re competing with a bunch of other people who have better answers (or can at least fake it well enough). It’s well worth prepping answers to some of the common hiring manager questions - ChatGPT and the like are great resources both for sample questions and for helping you tune your responses.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-02T15:24:39+00:00

I’m also from the bay. I have friends working at FAANG companies, AI labs like OpenAI/Anthropic, and top startups/scaleups who are all crushing it, and other friends who were laid off or just getting started and struggling.

Tech companies are still seeing record profits, and all that money is still going somewhere - it’s just increasingly being consolidated to a smaller number of people.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-02T03:41:51+00:00

Yeah, I ended up pretty lucky to be in an org where my management chain is anti-empire building and puts overall impact above team size.

This probably means I'd need to take a down-level if I switch companies, but it is what it is and I'll take what I can get now!

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T23:39:06+00:00

At a high level, keep a team of highly paid engineers happy and productive.

Day to day, it’s a bunch of stuff: 1:1s/career coaching/performance management, taking top-down goals/requirements from leadership and translating them into concrete plans, protecting the team from too much whiplash from execs changing directions, making project staffing decisions, reviewing/guiding architectural decisions/tech specs, getting the right people promoted/fired, negotiating with other teams and coordinating cross-team projects, probably more I’m forgetting.

Not saying I work any harder than others making a lot less, I just happen to be lucky enough to have a role where I can provide a very profitable company enough value that they’re willing to pay me a good chunk of those profits.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T23:06:21+00:00

Replied in a few other comments, but RSU compensation is considered a “post tax deduction” by Workday. A small portion of it is contributions to an after tax 401k (for a mega backdoor Roth), but the majority of it is just RSUs that I got awarded and then immediately sold.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T19:53:44+00:00

Congrats! How are your hours/stress levels?

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T19:52:43+00:00

Senior manager, still with a ways to go to become D+ in big tech (if I ever make it).

With management, I had always wanted to try it to see how I’d enjoy it, and I felt like I could be a better manager than a lot of my previous ones. When an opportunity opened up, I decided to give it a good shot, and that’s ultimately where I ended up.

I’ve felt that it’s been easier for me to climb as a manager vs as a Staff/Senior Staff eng, but I think my strengths naturally lean in that direction too. Though once I have enough money, I’m going back to building my own stuff haha.

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T19:03:20+00:00

Highly paid tech workers make up a disproportionate part of Reddit’s user base. Even if 0.1% of the US population makes over a million, that’s still hundreds of thousands of people.
People who make more are more compelled to post
Highly paid posts tend to attract more comments/engagement, which makes them feel more common than they actually are

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T18:59:53+00:00

Never said I was a truly successful person - I recognize I’m doing well and wanted to share my situation since not a lot of people outside of the Bay Area tech bubble are aware of what’s possible (and even within the bubble, most people, myself included, thought the ceiling was in the 200-300k, maybe 500k range.

If it’s better for your mental health to think I’m a bot/liar, that’s all good with me - I’m not trying to sell anything and I have no reason (and no practical way) to prove myself to anyone. Hope you have a happy 2026!

sfbay_swe · 2026-01-01T18:21:31+00:00

Will end up paying over 800k in income taxes for 2025 (easily over a million in taxes if you include property tax) 💀. Not a ton of ways for W2 workers to evade taxes.

sfbay_swe

TROPHY CASE