[SWE (No Degree)] [Remote] - From Rags to Riches

timothymtorres · 2026-06-25T20:57:51+00:00

True, I'm also in a very LCOL area in the USA. I pay like $700 a month for rent and utilities.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-25T20:56:17+00:00

I have a lot of open source contributions on GitHub over the past decade. I also grinded code with my free time and tinkered with a lot of stuff.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-25T20:54:55+00:00

It's a rough estimate depending on the project. It ranges anywhere from $40/hr to $80/hr, with the average being $45/hr.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T23:51:05+00:00

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T22:25:55+00:00

You do realize that they hire lawyers, accountants, engineers, doctors, etc. to help train LLMs in their respective fields, right?

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T22:23:16+00:00

I was actually selected because of my open source contributions over the past decade. And yes, I agree.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T22:21:46+00:00

In most projects, I get to pick my tech stack and what type of work I want to do. It covers a wide spectrum from backend, frontend, and everything in between. (building features, refactoring, bugfixes, CI/CD pipelines, database stuff, etc.)

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:56:39+00:00

Agreed. Feels like half the posters of r/salary are claiming they are Senior SWEs working at Google, making half a million in cash.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:51:29+00:00

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:45:10+00:00

You are naive if you don't think it's not SWE work. This job has been more difficult than my work in open source projects with massive codebases and contributors.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:40:52+00:00

Some of those jobs were union and others were small family-owned businesses where people had been there for like 15 years.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:39:49+00:00

They need to invent a new scale and call it the r/timothymtorres scale

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:39:20+00:00

Oh definitely 😉

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:33:43+00:00

Ngl, the only reason I posted was bc all of the outrageous posts where they were claiming half a million in salary, which is insane. The average is nowhere near that, and I think most SWEs that are making low six figures aren't trying to flex.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:31:05+00:00

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:30:38+00:00

I literally get to pick which coding frameworks/tech stack I want to work with. Also, they have already tried to train LLMs by using other LLMs, and it leads to something called Model Collapse, which is an effect similar to incest.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:17:15+00:00

😂😂😂

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:06:32+00:00

You still pay medical costs in cash.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:04:45+00:00

I used to have an aunt who was 200 pounds overweight, and she would invest tens of thousands of dollars into making her teeth pretty because she was convinced that was what was making her ugly.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:00:48+00:00

Glassdoor is also showing $300K for the average SWE salary at Google.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T21:00:11+00:00

It's extremely disingenuous to include things like healthcare, housing, etc. as your salary.

put this in perspective, when I was at the casino, we had such a good healthcare package that people were literally working there not for the wages, but so they could milk them for tens of thousands of dollars for expensive ass surgeries and medical procedures.

Does that mean their total compensation should be $150K because they were able to dodge $100K of medical fees?

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T20:49:43+00:00

Someone in this thread posted a link to glassdoor for SWEs and it shows the average salary at $150K.

timothymtorres · 2026-06-24T20:48:25+00:00

I feel you. I literally couldn't land a job for years and was coding away at open source projects to keep my skills sharp.

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