Software engineering is one of the best paid fields to work in. It's definitely possible for Software Engineers to become millionaires. Let's go over the many ways this is possible.
Join a Big Tech company and get a high salary
One of the safest ways to becoming a millionaire as a Software Engineer is to climb the ranks of a big tech company. The FAANG companies (Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) traditionally pay the highest salaries in tech. There are obviously lots of other high paying companies like Microsoft, IBM and newer companies like Coinbase.
A Principal Engineer at Google earns $1.2m whereas the equivalent position at Facebook pays $1.4m. Over the course of it's lifetime, Microsoft is reputed to have made 12,000 people millionaires.
Join an early stage startup and get equity
A more risky strategy to become a millionaire as a software engineer is to work at a small but fast growing startup and get equity. For instance, the payment processing company Stripe is the most valued private company in the world at over $100bn. Software engineers at Stripe who joined early and gained equity will certainly become millionaires once the company goes public on the stock market with an IPO.
When Apple went public, 40 employees became millionaires over night. MoPub, a startup which sold to Twitter in 2013 for $350m, made 36 employees into millionaires according to the EliteSavvy blog.
Obviously, being an entrepreneur is a lucrative option. You don't even need to have venture capital funding to get started these days. The most expensive hire for a software company is usually the programmer so if you can code already you have taken away the biggest expense on day one.
As there is an abundance of cheap software, it's a lot easier to start a business than it once was. You can use Stripe Checkout instead of coding your own payment systems. You can use Heroku or AWS for hosting your website in the cloud instead of the bad old days of having a physical server.
Jason Grishkoff created SubmitHub in order to help musicians share their demos more easily with record companies and get genuine feedback. The founder is a self taught software engineer and as of 2019 the company was making 7 figures in annual revenue. You can check out how Jason learned to code in his exclusive interview here.
Pieter Levels is a self-taught developer who has created the successful websites Nomad List and RemoteOK. As someone who has rode the wave of digital nomadism and remote work, Pieter has grown rich in the process. All this has also been accomplished with no outside funding from investors and no traditional advertising. You can read how Pieter taught himself to code in this article.
The founders of Mailchimp last year sold their business for $10bn and that was also a company that hadn't taken outside investment. So with entrepreneurship, the sky is the limit.
You don't need a degree
The best part of all of this is that you don't even need a degree let alone a CS degree to become a software engineer. You can either learn coding on your own or learn at a coding bootcamp. You can read hundreds of interviews with self-taught developers and people who have learned at coding bootcamps.
Becoming a millionaire with a job in software is just a matter of money management. For example, on my salary and with my savings, I could easily move into a house well over a million dollars and go buy a Ferrari off the lot. Like right now, nothing stopping me.
And if you look at the wealthiest people in the world, many hold engineering degrees, notably: Bernard Arnault, holder of US$211 billion in fortune, oversees the LVMH empire of 75 fashion and cosmetics brands. Jeff Bezos, who has US$155.9 billion in net worth, is the chairman and founder of e-commerce giant Amazon.
As an example, a junior engineer fresh out of college even with an unrelated diploma like physics, math, or industrial engineering can score a $100K compensation in Silicon Valley, while a senior engineer with a successful decade long career will get $500K and upwards.
Coding is a vast prospect and depends on the people's skills as to whether it will fetch you a lot of money. However, a career in coding indeed opens the doors to excellent salaries and high-paying jobs worldwide. With the right attitude and mindset, making money in the coding world is not at all problematic.
Tech has the power to make you a millionaire in a short time, depending on your interest and your work performance. I can show you a lot of examples of those people who, before technology was zero, were still millionaires or billionaires.
While ZipRecruiter is seeing annual salaries as high as $205,500 and as low as $63,500, the majority of Software Engineer 300K salaries currently range between $120,000 (25th percentile) to $173,000 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $205,000 annually across the United States.
The highest-paid engineers are computer hardware engineers, petroleum engineers, and aerospace engineers. Data on average earnings and number of jobs comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We are showing the latest available data, which is for May 2022.
According to Forbes, Ramesh Kunhikannan, Founder and Managing Director of Kaynes Technology, became a billionaire because of Chandrayaan-3's successful launch. Kaynes Technology's shares reportedly soared by 40% after the company's role in India's Moon Mission success became public.
Software engineers typically enjoy much higher than average salaries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for a software developer in the United States is $110,000.
In the US, engineers make more on average than any other four-year degree graduate. Doctors go to school another four years, and then go through another 3-year internship. Only then do their incomes rise above an engineer.
It's definitely possible to make $200k as a Software Engineer. Salaries are very high, especially in the US, because venture capital puts so much money into startups. Investors are eager to find the next unicorn e.g. a company worth more than $1bn. So tech companies have a lot of money to spend on Software Engineers.
In the entire software field, 200k base salary is pretty uncommon until the later part of a career. It is also employer, specialization, and region dependent. Outliers you can find with few years of experience include and are not limited to: profitable / well funded startups (cash heavy compensation over equity)
Software engineers typically enjoy much higher than average salaries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for a software developer in the United States is $110,000. This number is higher in cities with higher costs of living. Was this answer helpful?
How much does a software engineer make? The salary range for a software engineer is $65K-$325K. The average salary for a Software Engineer in US is $136,274.
Let's look at a few inspiring examples of engineers who worked their way into the executive ranks: Sundar Pichai: Sundar Pichai earned his degree in engineering before joining Google in 2004. After working on products like Chrome and Android, he became Google's CEO in 2015.
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