Hey random Internet stranger. Don't feel terrible. I have a CS PhD, work in AI, have a fancy job title and decent resume ..yet, I am not making anywhere close to these crazy numbers. I painted myself into a bad corner and am somehow stuck. I work crazy hours to keep myself up to date so I can get myself unstuck. I think most engineers are not making 300K-500K .. it is a bit like social media .. you just hear about the winners and not the losers. Also, the stock market was up like crazy in the last 2 years .. I think this accounts for some of the insane numbers we are seeing, people retiring, etc. The biggest mistake I made is my job doesn't give me shares/RSUs, etc. It was somewhat obvious that this was a problem but it wasn't terrible until most major tech companies did a x3 in 1 year. This was a 1 time lottery I missed (and I suspect many others did too). Things could have gone the other way too (I graduated from my PhD in 2008 and recall how terrible those days were).
I make... nowhere near 300k-500k. But I got decently lucky with a startup earlier in my career. And a bit later I got some hefty bonuses at another company.
But that hasn't really happened the last, say, 8 years. If I kept hitting that luck, I could have been around 500k/year average total comp. But I didn't and I'm not in the 300k+ club.
this. AI is such a hot market, with a phd you may double your comp in one move, or, absolutely get your current employer to give a significant raise every 6 months to keep you.
I got about a 4.5% effective pay cut this year. I'm 10 years in with an MS and I'm only a midlevel making under $100k. I don't think those excuses apply.
