My journey in the tech industry began with a tiny salary at my first programming job where I was barely making rent. When I left, I found a job that tripled my salary.
I moved to Silicon Valley, where my salary increased 50-100% each time I changed jobs, depending on whether I moved up a level.
During my Silicon Valley years, I was promoted once. It was a brutal process, and my salary increased 25%.
Job hopping, especially in tech, is the single best way to improve your salary.
Why not job hop?
There are a lot of good reasons to stay at a company for a long time. It’s rewarding to build deep, long-lasting relationships with your team and see the impact your work long-term. Just don’t do it as a financial choice.
How do you job hop effectively?
Learn how to interview and negotiate well.
Both skills are learnable; here's what I found most valuable:
1. Interviewing
Tech interviews are truly terrible. Most of them don’t test you on anything remotely related to your day-to-day. Preparing for them takes a long time and typically doesn’t make you a better engineer.
Many of my peers refused to learn how to interview because interviews are so stupid. I agree in principle, but this stance is costly.
For self-taught programmers like me, I found 3 resources particularly helpful:
- a 2-part data structures course on Coursera (part 1 and part 2) — helpful for learning fundamentals if you went straight to the practical
- Cracking the Coding Interview — widely considered the bible of tech interview prep
- Leetcode — platform for practicing technical challenges
2. Negotiating
For a long time, I never negotiated. I took the first offer I got. Good enough, I thought, better than my current salary. I never even knew how much I was leaving on the table.
There are a whole host of tactics you can use (e.g. using market data, negotiating other perks), but the two I needed to hear most when I was younger are:
- Get comfortable doing it. It's not rude. Most recruiters and hiring managers expect you to negotiate.
- Interview at multiple places simultaneously. With Big Tech, all negotiation tactics pale in comparison to having multiple offers in hand and igniting a bidding war. I’ve had initial offers increase 30-60% by the time the dust settled.
Note: #2 applies even if you’re asking your current company to increase your salary. Many tech companies only believe you’re more worth more than your salary if another company tells them.
Wrap-up
At this point, you may think all I care about is money. In reality, I always left my job for non-financial reasons. I just left in a way that maximized my salary bump.
Ultimately, this one of the most frustrating aspects of the industry and contributed to me leaving Big Tech. I wish companies rewarded loyal, skilled employees more freely than they do new recruits who interview well, and that I wouldn't have to write posts like this.
But everyone should get the most out of their time working, and I hope these tips help you do just that.