TL;DR VERSION: Respect people, everyone is fighting a different battle, I hope you will come out on top. Here is my whole career progression. I started from the absolute bottom with my parents getting robbed and how I pulled my self out of it. Now Iโm the bread winner of the house with a beautiful wife and a dog + I retired my parents who also live with me from time to time ๐ฅฐ๐ฅฐ As promised: Here are my salary progression since 14 years old, I'm 30 now: Store Clerk (on/off about 10 years) - Grocery store with my parents - $20/day Sale Associates - G by Guess - $7.25/hour - cant remember how many months Meat cutter - Grocery store - $9.00 to $11.00 / hour - 5 years Office Associates - Statefarm - don't remember my hourly wage but ~$40k ish / year Rock Climbing instructor - ~$8/hour Starts studying CS ~5 years ago, here are my jobs and pay during those time: Server - Sushi chef 3 years - $2.50 - $13.00/hour + tips - 3 years Student IT tech - few months - $9.00/hour Mover on craiglist - few hundreds here and there Student research - few months - $10 to - $15 / hour Uber Driver - Goal $100/day after 12 hours shift (driving from 10pm til 2am) SWE/dev ops intern 6 months - $12 to $15/hour Begin full-time in the tech industry ~3 years ago: 1st job SWE: $60k TC 2nd job Consultant: $90k TC 3rd job SWE: $140k TC Current Google SWE: $250k TC LONG VERSION, EACH JOB WITH A STORY ATTACHED: Keep in mind that I worked some of these job together, sometimes I held 2/3 jobs during my college days. - Store Clerk (on/off about 10 years) - Grocery store with my parents - $20/day - My family owned a gas station/groceries store in north Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Imagine 14 years of age with barely any English seeing your parents getting dead threats on the daily by "customers" who were fueled with drugs and alcohol. I can't lie, we sells them their high, we were part of the problem, but we needed to survive. I learned early on that if I don't do the job, then my parents will. I learned to never complain about work to my superior. - Sale Associates - G by Guess - $7.25/hour - No story here, just trying to do something different, didn't last long - Meat cutter (~ 5 years) - Grocery store - $9.00 to $11.00 / hour - I work 12 hours shifts, get paid in cash every weekend. As a teenager I definitely have more cash then any of my peers. - Office Associates - Statefarm - don't remember my hourly wage but ~$40k ish / year - Started hourly wage but was promised to make about ~40k/year if I get licensed for selling insurance and be trained to be an agent. - Rock Climbing instructor - ~$8/hour - Another side job, just passions for climbing and work hours where my main job didn't need me. Graduated with a psychology degree, didn't want to sell insurance, quit Statefarm. Decided to study CS ~5-5.5 years ago, stopped partying and lose many friends. Also met my wife during this time and I wanted her to have the best version of me and I wanted to be a provider. - Server - Sushi chef 3 years - $2.50 - $13.00/hour + tips - I started as a server, this was a little before I started CS - Moved on to being a sushi chef, nice pay bump, could have worked at other places, met my wife here - Mover on craiglist - few hundreds here and there - Good friend of mine started the business but he moved away so he asked me to help move for him, we split the money. - Sometimes I ask my friends for help and we split the money, we could make a few hundred here and there - When I get my scholarship $3500/semester , I try to give my friend a few hundreds in a box with some adderal for studying engineering but they wouldn't accept the money. - Student IT tech - few months - $9.00/hour - Nothing much here, I really needed to get some types of xp in the IT field - I was excellent at my job, fixed a printer that's been broken for years at a residential hall that hated us because we can't fix their printer ๏ฟผ - Saved a school orientation because our DNS was down - Student research - few months - $10 to - $15 / hour - Ehh, nothing to brag here, mostly front end stuffs handed down by another RA who left - Uber Driver - Goal $100/day after 12 hours shift (driving from 10pm til 2am) - On and off, can't quite remember the time frame but this was the earlier year of Ubering and boyyy do we make money during game days. - When it's not football season, I try to drive only weekend, after work to make some extra bucks - SWE/dev ops intern 6 months - $12 to $15/hour - Right before getting this job, a student stole my HW that I uploaded on github causing me to lose my scholarship - This was my last semester and I have not had any internship before. At the age of 25 and I have accumulated about $60k in student loan, I thought I was doomed. Somehow this job came through and it began my job career in tech!!! Begin full-time in the tech industry ~3 years ago: - 1st job - SWE: $60k TC - Same local company that I worked for as an intern - We were basically an outsourced company that worked for a fintech frim in NYC where about makes half a million dollars a year while paying us dirt. - My senior left on the first week of me joining as a fulltime, leaving me to take over a huge project (although he helped me out a ton after I left) - Realized that the 9-5 isn't all sweet and I actually pray that my job gets better every night. - Took over all house hold responsibility and is not taking care of my parents and my wife (although my wife was still working as a server). - 2nd job - Consultant: $90k TC - HCL.... if you know, you know. - Moved to another city for the job. Although this is the city of my dream, things went down hill quick because I had left my parents back at home by themselves, just me and my wife (she started serving at a local restaurant). - I work downtown on a high rise building, with an office on the top floor looking over the beautiful Lake. Although I had no dedicated parking and ended up with several parking tickets. Eventually got a permanent spots for 200/month that's a 10 mins walk from the office. This make my commute about 1 hour every morning... - I had to pay the bills for my home back in Louisiana and bills where I live at the same time. - Bought my first house right in the beginning of Covid inflation (my home price went up around 200k now) - Moved my parents from Louisiana to live with me, my life began to get better and better each day since. - 3rd job - SWE: ~ $140k TC (125k base + bonus although I didn't stay long enough to get the bonus) - My friend convinced me to join his company but I didn't want to leave my other job so I became a consultant for both places for a few months before joining this one full-time. - Made lots of friends and it was fully remote. - Extremely flexible work schedule and I was able to took care of my parents (both of them have surgery during this time) - Current job - Google SWE: $250k TC - I studied days and nights for the interview - The rest is history, I want to be the best version of my self for both my family and my job and I want to be here for a long time. #engineering #software #swe #careerprogression #startedfromthebottomnowimhere
Commenting because this will end up in everyone's feed, and they will like this comment which will increase my blind points๐
Cheering for this comment, goodluck ๐๐
Thanks, and congratulations!
Inspiring story. Thanks for sharing! :)
Thanks!!
Glad to see you make more. Only our hard work can take us forward. Brilliant. ๐๐๐๐๐
Thank you!
Is your wife working? If she is not working, what does she do? Anyway congrats and remember to summarize your TLDR next time
She does! Sheโs a trainee analyst, not a super technical role but itโs a foot in the door for me to communicate tech with her ๐
Sure you do ๐
Awesome congrats , every struggle is real .
Except for Ananya Pandey's Struggle. Google it if you don't know๐
Haha lol desi here ๐
This is the longest post I have read on blind. Congrats OP, you are a survivor and winner!
Yeah, Iโve been trying to convert many friends to go the coding route
> โTL;DRโ version > proceeds to write 10 fucking paragraphs
๐๐ no easier way to list all
Handshake is the kind of guy that doesnt know how to share otherโs happiness..