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Comment by peapicker | Hacker News Reader

I’ve stayed at my current job 24 years. I was hired at a Senior level above my experience with better pay than I probably deserved as I was 18 month out of uni. Still, my total increase is 278%. I had a 7 year span in the middle with almost no increase - about 7%. I wonder if those seven years coincide and were during an economic downturn?

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That's less than 5% compounded annually. I'm not sure if your underlying message was agreeing with OP or not, but 278% over 24 years is atrocious compared to how insane the market has been this last decade. Hell, inflation alone has been 73% between 1998 and now.

Edited to indicate I was hired at a salary above my experience. Took me 5 years to grow into being Senior when I was really a Junior. But was still payed as a Senior the whole time. I do make well above market for my years in my geographic region.

you cannot compare the market gains with job raises - the market gains have a risk element that job raises do not.

a 5% risk free return is not bad. I would actually say that if your job did not change over those decades, it might not make sense to get paid more than just matching inflation!

By "the market" I meant "the market for software engineering jobs."

My pay from 2012-now has gone from $15/hr to $60/hr. ~400% increase or 40%/year staying at jobs for roughly 3 years.

The biggest jump came in 2017-2018 when I moved to Washington, from $25/hr to $35/hr to $48/hr in 18 months and it increased again in 2020 when I moved to my current job.

Idk if I am extremely lucky or if I don't recognize the value my skills as well as my employers do. All I know if I am not averse to negotiating a little and that I keep my resume up to date and I test the waters from time to time just to see what's out there.

You are back justifying a linear reality of "only upward".

I've never really understood this line of thinking. Of course in retrospect now that all information is known, we can linearly quantify a per year rate of return as "non ideal".

But what is the point of that I wonder. This company took a chance on OP and they feel gratitude. This is enough imo.

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