So I'll give my general experience. I'm a RoR developer making 450k a year. It took about 3 years of non stop pushing myself (80/hr a week or more) to get here. I'm fairly unknown as a developer, so I'm not one of the bigger names. I work for a consulting company like Accenture or IBM global services. How I got here:
Basically I was a Java dev and pretty much knew RoR would be big, and knew there were guys making 100k+ at it (this was 2008). At the time I was making 75k as a Java guy and I just wanted to see if I could become one of the best. So i worked at it night and weekends, virtually non-stop till I got a Ruby position for 85k. That let me spent all my time on Ruby which was helpful. I tried for find every little scrap of info that would help, and overtime I got better.
I got a job for 130k 6 months later and my mind was blown. It was so much money to me it was just unreal. I didn't take it for granted though, I went in and worked my butt off to try and tackle every big problem there was and tried to pre-emt and issues that I saw, so I had a solution as soon as the problem came up. That went on for about a year.
All this time the main thing is that I kept working on all my skills, everything big and complex I could get my hands on that is. So I knew how to troubleshoot any performance issue that came up, etc. I also relentless kept it touch with recruiters. I know a lot of people on HN and Reddit aren't too fond of them but I love them.
I did whatever I could to help them out when they were looking for people, and made good connections because of that. When they emailed me I would just quote a ridiculous rate like $200/hr and be polite about it.
Eventually I formed a contact with a large consulting company and they said they could offer me something good but not what I wanted. I did the interview and go the highest tech score in the country (a lot of that due to the fact that there were slim pickings). They made the offer but I turned them down. They said okay.
A few months later they got desperate and gave me the rate I wanted. I was more than blown away, it didn't seem real at all.
I went to the client location and yeah, it wasn't glorious work but the pay was insane, so I've kept at it. I live pretty frugally, more or less just stocking the money away so when the gravy train ends I won't have to work as much.
What do I attribute it to?
1) Work insanely hard. 40 hour work weeks are good and healthy, but I think it's harder to become super successful without working a lot. As an employee when I was getting paid that 130k I worked 65/hr a week even though I was only getting paid for about 45 of those hours, just because I wanted them to know I was insanely aggressive.
2) Find people's problems and solve them. I always tried to befriend high level people and solve their problems to the point that they see me as invaluable. When I got the 450k job I made friends with all the project directors, found out their problems (like performance) and would fix it and surprise them with it. This helped me to cement my place at the company to the point that I was able to have a lot of control and influence within it.
3) Be nice to people even when they are mean. I get insulted by the client company often. Their developers tell me I'm an idiot. That's sort of the nature of being a consultant. The big thing is that I'm always polite even if I don't think it's warranted. So I'll say "Hmm, interesting, why do you say that". And then politely explain why they are wrong and then make them not feel too bad about it by saying "Actually it's easy to be confused over those things because of..."
That is probably more of a book report than is needed but that's about it. The one thing I will say is that the money, while very good and nice to have, wasn't the end all be all that I thought it would be. I figured I'd easily meet the right woman with all the money I have, but I haven't, in fact the women I have mentioned it to on dates didn't even care (or believe me, or both). I don't really get treated any differently either, other than by the developers who know that I know what I'm doing. I also realized that I don't care about material things all that much. The most fun I get is out of achieving new things, rather than things the money can buy.
In the end I'd say the success was a result of hard work, a lot of luck and aggressively marketing myself.
I think it was very important that you mentioned the sacrifies you made such as dating. Success comes at a price.
At my graduation, we had a tremendous speaker. The biggest take away from her speech was (I think she said she got it from a book), life is about juggling balls. Your career ball is like a rubber ball and if you drop it, it will bounce back. The other balls are made out of glass, and it shatters when you drop it. You may be able to rebuild the ball, but it'll never be the same.
That really made me re-think about my focuses. Since I am a recent graduate, I thought being successful was everything, but I was sitting there hearing someone who was successful and very influential in the industry telling me that it's not all that. Balance your life, and make time for the people in your life. When you think back one day, you won't remember that week where you worked that extra 10 hours, you'll remember the time you had with the people you made time for.
I think the women liking money thing is more about social status, power and strength than actual money. A girl I date found it hot that I interview and had a vote in the hiring process for example.
I doubt you'll ever get to this, but if you do, could you shoot me an email? josh[at]josh.mn -- I would kill to run some questions by you. My little about me follows:
I'm 22 and from what it sounds like, I' on the route that you were on -- was a PHP dev, got a Rails gig where they'd pay me to learn, and now I'm doing 75 hours a week (60 with my employer, 15 of learning on my own time.) I'm rewriting some of my recent client's projects and a new side project every month in Rails.
But good on you, especially for living frugally. I know a lot of people couldn't do it.
They see recruiter contacts as spam and resent that recruiters are paid to make placements with money that they presume would otherwise go to the developer. Additionally they detest people who cannot program but work in the technology industry.
I prefer to take the same approach as the $450k Rails dev and always provide a recruiter with good leads if I have them. I have placed friends in good positions because of this and have the option to do the same for myself when I am ready to do something different.
I think the typical argument is that they send you non personal emails that seem to not know about your unique and talented gifts. Of course these people don't seem realize they're only contacting you to try and give you money.
Basically I was a Java dev and pretty much knew RoR would be big, and knew there were guys making 100k+ at it (this was 2008). At the time I was making 75k as a Java guy and I just wanted to see if I could become one of the best. So i worked at it night and weekends, virtually non-stop till I got a Ruby position for 85k. That let me spent all my time on Ruby which was helpful. I tried for find every little scrap of info that would help, and overtime I got better.
I got a job for 130k 6 months later and my mind was blown. It was so much money to me it was just unreal. I didn't take it for granted though, I went in and worked my butt off to try and tackle every big problem there was and tried to pre-emt and issues that I saw, so I had a solution as soon as the problem came up. That went on for about a year.
All this time the main thing is that I kept working on all my skills, everything big and complex I could get my hands on that is. So I knew how to troubleshoot any performance issue that came up, etc. I also relentless kept it touch with recruiters. I know a lot of people on HN and Reddit aren't too fond of them but I love them.
I did whatever I could to help them out when they were looking for people, and made good connections because of that. When they emailed me I would just quote a ridiculous rate like $200/hr and be polite about it.
Eventually I formed a contact with a large consulting company and they said they could offer me something good but not what I wanted. I did the interview and go the highest tech score in the country (a lot of that due to the fact that there were slim pickings). They made the offer but I turned them down. They said okay.
A few months later they got desperate and gave me the rate I wanted. I was more than blown away, it didn't seem real at all.
I went to the client location and yeah, it wasn't glorious work but the pay was insane, so I've kept at it. I live pretty frugally, more or less just stocking the money away so when the gravy train ends I won't have to work as much.
What do I attribute it to?
1) Work insanely hard. 40 hour work weeks are good and healthy, but I think it's harder to become super successful without working a lot. As an employee when I was getting paid that 130k I worked 65/hr a week even though I was only getting paid for about 45 of those hours, just because I wanted them to know I was insanely aggressive.
2) Find people's problems and solve them. I always tried to befriend high level people and solve their problems to the point that they see me as invaluable. When I got the 450k job I made friends with all the project directors, found out their problems (like performance) and would fix it and surprise them with it. This helped me to cement my place at the company to the point that I was able to have a lot of control and influence within it.
3) Be nice to people even when they are mean. I get insulted by the client company often. Their developers tell me I'm an idiot. That's sort of the nature of being a consultant. The big thing is that I'm always polite even if I don't think it's warranted. So I'll say "Hmm, interesting, why do you say that". And then politely explain why they are wrong and then make them not feel too bad about it by saying "Actually it's easy to be confused over those things because of..."
That is probably more of a book report than is needed but that's about it. The one thing I will say is that the money, while very good and nice to have, wasn't the end all be all that I thought it would be. I figured I'd easily meet the right woman with all the money I have, but I haven't, in fact the women I have mentioned it to on dates didn't even care (or believe me, or both). I don't really get treated any differently either, other than by the developers who know that I know what I'm doing. I also realized that I don't care about material things all that much. The most fun I get is out of achieving new things, rather than things the money can buy.
In the end I'd say the success was a result of hard work, a lot of luck and aggressively marketing myself.