Anyone making a 1 million+ tc here?

A. $1mm plus salary isn't the same as taking a significant amount of equity risk and reaping the rewards if it does pay off

B. If it's being thrown around on RFD, safe to say that it is no longer the strategy of the 'best and brightest' but has now filtered down to normal people and by that time, it's usually too late to ride a trend. That's not a knock on RFD'ers but not many visionary tech executives here, or on any message board

Correct title: Anyone making $1mil total compensation

Base salaries will be lower relative to incentives at these tech companies.

As for equity and incentives, typically it's heavy as these tech jobs have a direct impact on the success of the product/company. You as a worker want to see direct link between your effort and company's financial results. On the flip side, employers need to secure talent to secure success.
It's also one of the big reasons people leave FAANG's to start their own company, they have ideas they want to explore and succeed.

This is not something new, global economies are digitizing, businesses are transforming and internet infrastructure is expanding. At my company, 10-20 years ago IT/Technology was maybe a handful of people, now it accounts for a good 60% of the workforce and we're in financial services. We did not replace workers with technology but technology allowing workers to do more, faster, easier and better. All those companies you mentioned are companies building out the new digital world; cloud infrastructure, digital storefronts, collaboration/communication tools.

Startup tech companies are a fine balance of risk/reward, you might join a good one or you might go under, or might get bought out with a lowball offer, or worse...laid off before getting bought out.

TL;DR: Send your kids to Comp Sci/Comp Eng.

unowned wrote: ↑ This might seem like a troll post to those in Toronto, but hear me out.

The last few years have been a roller coaster ride for tech stocks. It seems like the new trend is to hop on a hypergrowth pre-ipo with heavy emphasis on options/rsu rather than raw cash compensation. I have ex-colleagues that joined the likes of snowflake, databricks, shop, mongo, twilio etc. Their sign up OTE was in the 200-300k range, usually with 10+% of that being stock based, but due to stock appreciation (many of the aforementioned companies have 10x'ed), suddenly the stock is worth more than their base+bonus. Absolutely incredible. Even the best and brightest from FAANG are leaving to go to risky startups like Bytedance for a chance to get 'golden handcuffed'.

There's a massive tech surge right now in Toronto, and I think there's a chance for those with great foresight and trend spotters to make a lot of money.

As someone who works in tech / Faang related companies as well, there's a heavy selection bias here. There are some that land into companies at the right time, ride it out and result in 10x. There is also the opposite, where the companies are thrown into the ground or terribly mismanaged. Tech as a whole has seen tremendous growth as companies are coming out every year. Within Canada alone, we've seen our highest Unicorn rates (10-11 companies this year). There is a massive surge in tech and Canada is slowly starting to adopt this trend, although mind you, as you've seen with your colleagues, Good Devs leave. Also to note, joining companies pre-ipo is no walk in the park and takes a lot of grit. There's a lot of pressure in these companies to perform and wear multiple hats, not for everyone. I'm personally glad we're seeing more tech companies expand into Canada as our tech compensation is terrible across the board. Case and point myself, I've been fortunate to aim for high end comp, but Canada cannot compete. I think over the next 5-10yrs we'll be seeing a lot bigger names move into the core tech hubs (Toronto, MTL, Vancouver). It's a great time to look for opportunities and increase your risk appetite, if that's what you're aiming for.

I know people who earn about 400K here in Toronto and Waterloo as programmer or engineer. One million is really a big dream.

But Canada is still not that open to Tech companies compared to Singapore or Hungry. I hope the government can give more immigration quota to tech companies, so more and more Tech companies can move from USA to Canada. Government should spend more money to protect IT companies, rather than subsidizing those ultra-useless manufacturing companies in Canada. Manufacturing must leave Canada!

I have friend who moved from Austin Texas to Toronto with a big tech company, and his salary even increased.

Toad99 wrote: ↑ As someone who works in tech / Faang related companies as well, there's a heavy selection bias here. There are some that land into companies at the right time, ride it out and result in 10x. There is also the opposite, where the companies are thrown into the ground or terribly mismanaged. Tech as a whole has seen tremendous growth as companies are coming out every year. Within Canada alone, we've seen our highest Unicorn rates (10-11 companies this year). There is a massive surge in tech and Canada is slowly starting to adopt this trend, although mind you, as you've seen with your colleagues, Good Devs leave. Also to note, joining companies pre-ipo is no walk in the park and takes a lot of grit. There's a lot of pressure in these companies to perform and wear multiple hats, not for everyone. I'm personally glad we're seeing more tech companies expand into Canada as our tech compensation is terrible across the board. Case and point myself, I've been fortunate to aim for high end comp, but Canada cannot compete. I think over the next 5-10yrs we'll be seeing a lot bigger names move into the core tech hubs (Toronto, MTL, Vancouver). It's a great time to look for opportunities and increase your risk appetite, if that's what you're aiming for.

If you're interested in making 1m+/yr it's going to be a lot easier to do that owning businesses or stocks unless you are really good at throwing a baseball or can dunk from the free throw line. Otherwise, I can't imagine what you'd have to do to earn that much, but I'd imagine your employer would own you and it would lead to burnout or divorce.

To reliably make the kind of money you are talking about you have to decouple your effort from the making of the money. Best way to do that is to either buy stock regularly from a young age and let compounding do the heavy lifting or work on a product or series of products that provide recurring income and sell them or keep the income. Even something as simple as a blog can be sold as long as it makes money.

Can I ask why 1m/yr is your goal? Is the plan to retire in a year or two of hard work? The reason I ask is that there is a point whereby more money and more things will not improve your life. I was able to have my wife stay at home with the kids, own a detached home, vacations, two cars and activities for the kids with enough left over that I can to causes that are important to me on a fraction of that number.

ilovetoyota wrote: ↑ I know people who earn about 400K here in Toronto and Waterloo as programmer or engineer. One million is really a big dream.

But Canada is still not that open to Tech companies compared to Singapore or Hungry. I hope the government can give more immigration quota to tech companies, so more and more Tech companies can move from USA to Canada. Government should spend more money to protect IT companies, rather than subsidizing those ultra-useless manufacturing companies in Canada. Manufacturing must leave Canada!

I have friend who moved from Austin Texas to Toronto with a big tech company, and his salary even increased.

It's a really difficult proposition for government because on one hand, giving tax breaks, grants, incentives to tech companies means less money for someone else. On another hand, why should we give tax breaks, grants, incentives to billion/trillionaire tech companies? Unfortunately that's what other countries are doing and look at the evil giants we have created that don't pay their fair share of corporate taxes. Not sure as a taxpayer I would be keen on my money going there, but as an investor it all sounds golden to me.

The other positive trend are Canadian based unicorns that are STAYING in Canada and remain Canadian owned/operated. It's slow but steady, however Shopify is that shining beacon for us. Unfortunately Wattpad was bought out by a Korean company, however it was for great global growth and a huge step up for Wattpad. We do need more heroes like John Ruffolo (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-financier-john-ruffolo-maverix-accused-of-deception-by-former-partner/) to champion Canadian startup tech.

Good ideas need incubators, seed money and more money.

Gungnir wrote: ↑ If you're interested in making 1m+/yr it's going to be a lot easier to do that owning businesses or stocks unless you are really good at throwing a baseball or can dunk from the free throw line. Otherwise, I can't imagine what you'd have to do to earn that much, but I'd imagine your employer would own you and it would lead to burnout or divorce.

To reliably make the kind of money you are talking about you have to decouple your effort from the making of the money. Best way to do that is to either buy stock regularly from a young age and let compounding do the heavy lifting or work on a product or series of products that provide recurring income and sell them or keep the income. Even something as simple as a blog can be sold as long as it makes money.

Can I ask why 1m/yr is your goal? Is the plan to retire in a year or two of hard work? The reason I ask is that there is a point whereby more money and more things will not improve your life. I was able to have my wife stay at home with the kids, own a detached home, vacations, two cars and activities for the kids with enough left over that I can to causes that are important to me on a fraction of that number.

Let's set aside the money argument for a moment. It's now becoming more common for established firms to experience brain-drain. For that reason alone, would you rather be with a legacy enterprise company such as rogers, cibc, ibm or oracle, or would you rather work where the talent is. I still have colleagues at some of these places that I know are capable or smart, but theyre there for a reason - to chill out. I suppose this is a matter of ambition and what life stage you're at.

Going back to the money side of things, the shopify/twilio/snowflake millionaires that I know of, theyre smart and driven, but are hardly the types that are exceptional. Again, much of this is relative.

Going back to my case, let's say I'm working my ass off and making a respectable salary with no stock increase - there's steady revenue but no growth . All things equal, why wouldn't i consider leaving for something that has growth upside? Many large firms such as IBM have mandatory layoffs annually - ie, the idea of job security is fleeting anyways.

Much of this is speculative, as the last few years, focus has been shifted to high growth companies vs revenue. But I'm just saying, I'm seeing far more opportunities to join high growth companies now, especially since the appetite for them on wall street has been so great. Who knows, we might face a second dotcom nuclear winter and the markets might end up favoring revenue once again.

I never said that I was willing to break my back for the money, all i said was there's never been a better time to be in tech. It will be especially rewarding to those who capitalize, pay attention, are disciplined, and can leetcode/manage/design/strategize/sell.

Money matters because its relative - if your neighbors are making 500k+ or whatever amount you deem astronomical, suddenly you're the poor one.

Now, you mentioned something about 'making that type of money reliably'. Yes, I agree thats hard to do, the golden handcuffs are usually in intervals of four years. After which, there is a cliff period, as the company will not refresh your RSUs at what they had previously appreciated to. So you do your market research and look for the next big thing to join.

angrybanker wrote: ↑ B. If it's being thrown around on RFD, safe to say that it is no longer the strategy of the 'best and brightest' but has now filtered down to normal people and by that time, it's usually too late to ride a trend. That's not a knock on RFD'ers but not many visionary tech executives here, or on any message board

This.

If someone wrote a book about it, it's because selling the book is now more lucrative than the exploit itself has become.

unowned wrote: ↑ Money matters because its relative - if your neighbors are making 500k+ or whatever amount you deem astronomical, suddenly you're the poor one.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

SusanM6112 wrote: ↑ Comparison is the thief of joy.

Read my opening topic carefully, does it seem like im jealous, or just trying to inform the folks here of what I'm observing in the industry?

This is the most ugly part of Canada. Canada is too unfriendly with foreigners.

If a foreign company can make Canadians more wealthy, why NOT let them open a branch here?

In Singapore, 98% of tech company are foreign company, and they still thrive! If we can sell Blackberry to Korean or Chinese owner 10 years ago, everyone who works in Blackberry before would be a millionaire now.

bhrm wrote: ↑ It's a really difficult proposition for government because on one hand, giving tax breaks, grants, incentives to tech companies means less money for someone else. On another hand, why should we give tax breaks, grants, incentives to billion/trillionaire tech companies? Unfortunately that's what other countries are doing and look at the evil giants we have created that don't pay their fair share of corporate taxes. Not sure as a taxpayer I would be keen on my money going there, but as an investor it all sounds golden to me.

The other positive trend are Canadian based unicorns that are STAYING in Canada and remain Canadian owned/operated. It's slow but steady, however Shopify is that shining beacon for us. Unfortunately Wattpad was bought out by a Korean company, however it was for great global growth and a huge step up for Wattpad. We do need more heroes like John Ruffolo (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-financier-john-ruffolo-maverix-accused-of-deception-by-former-partner/) to champion Canadian startup tech.

Good ideas need incubators, seed money and more money.

unowned wrote: ↑ Money matters because its relative - if your neighbors are making 500k+ or whatever amount you deem astronomical, suddenly you're the poor one.

Now, you mentioned something about 'making that type of money reliably'. Yes, I agree thats hard to do, the golden handcuffs are usually in intervals of four years. After which, there is a cliff period, as the company will not refresh your RSUs at what they had previously appreciated to. So you do your market research and look for the next big thing to join.

Someone already said comparison is the thief of joy which is very true, but then again I march to the beat of my own drum so I don't really care what others think but my mortgage is mostly paid and I have no great need for flash cars or other baubles to impress people. I do my hobbies, have my friends, enjoy my vacations and write great code for my employer and study a lot of psychology. If you do care about what your neighbors think, and they signal to you that 500k per year means you're poor, then yes you are now locked in to a work where you must earn far in excess of 500k each year AND to spend it in a way that reflects that (IE: give your cash away to consumer goods companies, not keep it for your family). If there is a hell in a Sisyphean sense, could this be it? As well, you are no longer in control of your life's satisfaction your neighbors are now in control of that.

I work for the government, which means that my pension is OMERS and I have a lot of vacation. There are hard workers and motivated people here and slackers, life is what you make of it. I am one of the hardest working and hardest driving, but I don't rely on my wage as much as I used to, I'm working diligently to change my income source from wages to investments, as I realize that a company can never pay it's workers as much as it's owners. I rose quickly through the ranks when I was younger which allowed me to buy bank stock throughout the 2008 depression, and those seeds produce the income that I need and then some to live how I want to live, and give how I want to give. As well around this time I worked with a company to develop a SaaS that I still receive a residual from.

To your case, have you considered building or have built something outside of work? You seem motivated and talented, you can keep the full value of your work in this manner - and this is I'm talking about when I say to make the money reliably, doing so in a way where you're in control and not the owners of the enterprise you work for. When I'm at work people always tell me that this is "my" job and this is "my" office, but one call from HR and your job is gone, what you build for yourself you get to keep and can build income for you while you sleep

ilovetoyota wrote: ↑ This is the most ugly part of Canada. Canada is too unfriendly with foreigners.

If a foreign company can make Canadians more wealthy, why NOT let them open a branch here?

In Singapore, 98% of tech company are foreign company, and they still thrive! If we can sell Blackberry to Korean or Chinese owner 10 years ago, everyone who works in Blackberry before would be a millionaire now.

Politics.

How about we remind people that Wynne's Liberals gave Huawei incentives to build and expand their R&D lab here in Markham? On one hand, it created over 300 new jobs over 2 years, and eventually 1000 over 5 years (my numbers might be off). Those jobs were highly skilled R&D roles that average salaries were at $120-180k. Tax revenues galore and Ontario made their money back 100 times over as those researchers pay taxes, bought homes, started families, spend money! Also most of those R&D researchers would have gone to the states, or EU as similar jobs don't exist in Canada. However the optics and politics....like a smelly pile of poo no one wants to touch. As a taxpayer, how does it sound that your tax dollars went into incentives to a billion dollar Chinese company. Forget the math, how does that sound!

It sounds terrible as we have housing problems, rising poverty and income inequity, while we hand out money to big companies.....but people don't understand the ripple effect tech jobs have on local economies. Those high tech jobs are taxpayers, contribute to their communities in positive ways, highly educated and spend their money on local shopping and entertainment.

but hey, pipelines! Maybe oil will come back! Let's throw a billion dollars there! /sarcasm

TL;DR: Canada produced amazing tech talent for past 40 years, we struggled to keep them but getting slowly better. So slow.

unowned wrote: ↑ Read my opening topic carefully, does it seem like im jealous, or just trying to inform the folks here of what I'm observing in the industry?

Pretty sure they were replying to, you know, the other message they quoted from another user instead of implying you're jealous. I appreciate the irony of you telling them to read carefully, though

angrybanker wrote: ↑ Pretty sure they were replying to, you know, the other message they quoted from another user instead of implying you're jealous. I appreciate the irony of you telling them to read carefully, though

getting a little pedantic here, as neither of my posts really inferred said statement.

Anyways, if I'm going to get downvoted for making an observation, then so be it.

Gungnir wrote: ↑ Someone already said comparison is the thief of joy which is very true, but then again I march to the beat of my own drum so I don't really care what others think but my mortgage is mostly paid and I have no great need for flash cars or other baubles to impress people. I do my hobbies, have my friends, enjoy my vacations and write great code for my employer and study a lot of psychology. If you do care about what your neighbors think, and they signal to you that 500k per year means you're poor, then yes you are now locked in to a work where you must earn far in excess of 500k each year AND to spend it in a way that reflects that (IE: give your cash away to consumer goods companies, not keep it for your family). If there is a hell in a Sisyphean sense, could this be it? As well, you are no longer in control of your life's satisfaction your neighbors are now in control of that.

I work for the government, which means that my pension is OMERS and I have a lot of vacation. There are hard workers and motivated people here and slackers, life is what you make of it. I am one of the hardest working and hardest driving, but I don't rely on my wage as much as I used to, I'm working diligently to change my income source from wages to investments, as I realize that a company can never pay it's workers as much as it's owners. I rose quickly through the ranks when I was younger which allowed me to buy bank stock throughout the 2008 depression, and those seeds produce the income that I need and then some to live how I want to live, and give how I want to give. As well around this time I worked with a company to develop a SaaS that I still receive a residual from.

To your case, have you considered building or have built something outside of work? You seem motivated and talented, you can keep the full value of your work in this manner - and this is I'm talking about when I say to make the money reliably, doing so in a way where you're in control and not the owners of the enterprise you work for. When I'm at work people always tell me that this is "my" job and this is "my" office, but one call from HR and your job is gone, what you build for yourself you get to keep and can build income for you while you sleep

I have the typical lines of passive income. I neither have the entrepreneurship nor innovator mentality, but i was poached by a late stage rocketship - I'm just a normal dude with slightly above average ambitions who saw working at a bank with a flat comp structure as an opportunity cost. I still enjoy a relatively routine work schedule, and have my hobbies outside of work.

I get what you're saying. Self employment/running a dynamic business isnt my jam though. That's why this is the career's sub after all, not the entrepreneurship sub.

I know several people who make over $1 million dollars per year.
None of them are working for someone.
They run their own businesses and are the boss.

Extremely hard to make over $1 million / year being a salaryman working for someone.

unowned wrote: ↑ getting a little pedantic here, as neither of my posts really inferred said statement.

Anyways, if I'm going to get downvoted for making an observation, then so be it.

Not to go too deep into one comment, In the post in question, I only see your quote. So I think they were referring to you.

But I'm not sure it was meant as a shot, or to say you're jealous. Just saying we can get caught up in what others make.

I would say I don't share your feelings, if my neighbors make tons, its not really gonna have me reflect on what my hh makes. No more than how much I'd reflect if they made much less than us. Exception would be if they had the same role.

Sales.

High end, high touch, long life cycle, sales.