I know brehs are going to call cap and im careful with what i reveal because im an executive at a tech company. but i went from 55k to 260k (base + salary bonus) in 9 years this past June. ive never done the math on what my TC (total compensation) is but I got crazy health insurance, some 401k matching, few other things, half a million in options (unfortunately, wish they were RSUs) so it has to be somewhere in the 300s. If you ask me, I'm still technically underpaid.
OP if you want my opinion and not the story then just skip to the bottom to the two bolded parts.
Maybe this will give a little game or give hope to some of my hopeless Brehs reading this. I switched careers right at the 31 mark (this is why I laugh at 20 year olds in here ready to give up) which netted me a 15k jump to $70k (from 55). It was at a tech company in a customer facing role. I naively applied for a product manager position thinking that I had a chance (Product Management was popular but not as sexy a decade ago as it is now with the TikTok crowd) and got a call from another manager in another department who was interested and got my foot in the door.
At a year at that company, they were hiring their first ux designer. I wanted to apply but didn't because imposter syndrome is real. and the first attempt ended with an offer to someone who turned it down and went somewhere else. they reposted the job and a co-worker encouraged me to apply. I got the role but it was contingent on it being 'lateral move'. Same salary. Now I was a severely underpaid UX designer.
Fast forward 5 years. I'm UX manager and have a team now. Every year I had to fight to be brought to 'market' salary for the area I was in which was around 110-140. Every year I lost that fight. I wasn't even on the low end. I was around 92k at this point. The most frustrating thing is that everyone brought in new was 'market'. So at one point I hired a Sr. Designer and offered them more money than I was making at the time.
I was frustrated as shyt. And that's when I got the realest advice I had ever gotten in my life. If I wasn't ready to walk out that door right at the moment they say 'NO'. Then don't bother asking.
I got myself 'ready to leave'. Found another job, got an offer (thank god I didn't take it because COVID decimated the company). Went back to the person I was reporting to. And straight up put my cards on the table (against what everyone advises). Told her that's where I wanted to be, they needed to bring me to market or I was resigning. They offered me $135k to stay and a plan to get to Director. Ironically when I got to Director, I was again not at market, and again they weren't voluntarily going to give it to me. And when I asked they hedged. After a few years I saw others on the product team get Sr. Director and probably the salaries to match. So this time I got ready to leave for real. One of the C-suite execs spent an hour on the phone with me, offered me $170k, 20% salary bonus, and a Sr. Director title to stay. He even through in a bi-weekly check in with the CEO. I left the company on good terms and got a job with a VP title, where I am now. My old job checked to see if I'd be willing to go back a few weeks ago and I said Nahhhhhhh. The numbers up above are after a 5% raise this year.
Be ready to leave. If you're worth it, they'll do what it takes to keep you. Make sure you get it right though because being back behind the pay scale the 2nd time assures that you actually have to leave. If they don't pay you..you'll get a nice salary and maybe title bump from the jump elsewhere.
My story is obviously not typical, as I went to a vocational school for some basic ass programming and web design. wasted my time getting a bachelors in something completely unrelated . then fell back on my high school learning and fukking around on the computer to freelance in things adjacent to my eventual career in UX and some luck was involved (i started ux at the company I was at). so when i got my chance i was passionate and ready.
if i could change anything I probably wouldn't have pushed for the director track that quickly. while it catches the attention of recruiters some also think its title bloat. but i was actually performing director level responsibilities. so being at this point in my reasonably young career and having few years of corporate experience than other people competing for jobs puts me at a disadvantage. and the pressure to stay at the VP level and not take a director or IC strategy position is real.
The money? I wish I could say I'm stacking crazy money now. I have a 401k and savings. But honestly your expenses just go up with your salary and now you just have nicer expenses (car note+mortgage only debt). And I've been driving crazy cars even when i was making $60k. That hasn't changed. The next step is to definitely get better about that because this shyt don't last forever.
Hope that's motivation for some of ya'll.
