I Interviewed 300 People Across Different Income Levels

let me take a wild guess of what's going through your mind right now you want a good salary but what defines a good salary you might be at a 3 LP offer right now and struggling to make ends me you might have crossed the 10 LPA Mark but you still want more savings more Investments and if you're among the lucky few who make more than 25 LPA you still feel like there's something missing somehow new problems keep appearing you see these people on the internet flexing 50 LPA offers or having a 150k remote job and you wonder what exactly is the difference between a 3 LP offer and a LP offer what do high earners do differently today we're breaking it all down in this video I'm sitting down with real people of various salary brackets trying to understand what problems they face on a day-to-day basis what separates a high earner from the rest and most importantly how can you move up the ladder because here's the hard truth most people plate you in their careers they stay stuck at a specific salary range and it's really hard to break out of it they don't know what exactly moves the needle so if you want to break out of the 3 LPA trap scale Beyond 10 LPA or even if you want a 50 LPA offer this video is for you let's get started I've mentored around 100 people to high paying remote jobs by high paying I mean right out of college around 10 LP as a remote offer or $11,000 a month I have seen what separates someone at a 3 LPA offer from someone at a 50 LPA offer usually the 3 LPA person is oblivious about what's happening all around thankfully there isn't a lot of accountability in what you're doing you're not an expensive resource to the company and hence there's a flywheel of you not getting valuable work which leads to being stagnated in this company forever the 10 to 12 LPA bracket is comfortable in this salary bracket people realize they're not at their full potential what they're looking for is Meaningful work that teaches them something new every day they're less worried about doubling their salary immediately they're more worried about learning new things because their bare minimum is sorted and at 50 LPA you really reap the rewards of this whole process up there's a very high probability you're going to stay in that range if not more companies value the work that you provide you have a lot of Leverage when you're interviewing and you also have a lot of accountability in your current team this leads to a fairly comfortable lifestyle and if you look at the Polar Opposites here 3 LPA versus 50 LPA or a CR there's a stark difference in interest towards computer science you'll see our pit talk very soon who makes 1. 3 crr from India you'll also see sidart who makes 1. 2 LPA or 10K a month notice the difference in their interest towards computer science and you'll have your answer right there how many people got selected just me oh oh very cool k got it makes sense so culture College how many people code from my class I would say around four four people code in a batch of and what do they teach what's your cabus okay oh boy 1.

3 you're the this guy here it's been your salary progression over the years and then in this company H so my salary program so I the salary that I got uh as a fresher was 2 lakhs an year so I started with 2 lakhs a year 20 20K a month and then it became 6 lakhs and then I joined a startup uh games op very it was a great startup I mean it was a career changing thing for me because again it was a startup we were a small team we had to raise rounds we had to build products from scratch and I was and a bunch of Engineers were responsible to deliver everything let's kick things off with the 3 to5 LPA bracket sidhant makes 1. 2 LPA he's currently in college so that's fine anel makes 6 LPA he's been working for around 3 years and he started at 4. 5 LPA 3 years ago the common challenges they mentioned were not being challenged every day extremely high notice periods a lot of uncertainty if they put in their notice and a lot of times if they do get a job they're not able to join because of a 3-month notice period they also lack exposure to high quality products up in the end a consult is going to make you 8 hours a day and rely will you get time for yourself every job leads to complacency but I think the complacency should be deferred until you have at least 10 to 20 LPA offer if you're currently stuck in a consult making 5 LPA even though they are working you to the Bone for 8 hours a day U it's a good idea to take out time you need this more than anyone else to build a lot of projects uh and high quality projects a lot of times your exposure is limited to a very Niche stack something like a Java or a PHP or esp.

net and and the the gap between you and a skilled engineer will keep on widening as the years go by and at some point you will not be able to justify 3 years of experience with the skills that you have another thing I saw was a very unclear road map of what to learn where to apply a lot of times lack of motivation to apply which again I think will pull you down a de spiral that you don't want make friends in product companies move out of the consultancy bubble um to understand what's happening what are the kind of interviews that are there and start preparing that's the easiest way to escape this trap is to somehow a product company or a fan [Music] um that let's move to the next salary bracket the 12 lbaa salary bracket 1 lakh a month this is where most people in super 30 landed as well there are two ways to reach here either you're a fresher and in which case this is a decent offer to start with and if you're not a fresher then a lot of times after four five 6 years of experience in a consult or otherwise you reach this specific stage take a few names sanjie who's in super 30 got into Quick SAS at a 15 LPA offer and he's currently in College he hasn't even graduated and ARF who has 2 years of experience joined drop station for a 12 LP offer both of them now have similar types of challenges that I'm going to talk about now a lot of times when you're in this salary bracket it's not necessary you know much more than someone who's making 5 LPA it's just that you reach the right company at the right time so one common challenge I saw was people were themselves not very confident about themselves they weren't actively interviewing for that sd2 Ro sd3 role in their company as well they were doing a bunch of mundane tasks that was making them a little cribby this is the level at which complacency hits because you're making mildly more than average none of your non- Tech friends are making this much and you have a very cushy job so beyond this luck will not favor you too much if you want to break out of the salary bracket you need to get your fundamentals right one solid thing you can do over here is take a lot of accountability now you're being paid a fairly handsome salary to code that is something people yearn for for the longest time I underpaid myself slash took very long oping projects because I wanted to learn a new technology you now have the opportunity to have a mildly cushy lifestyle yet code on a Day-Day basis for 8 to 10 hours use that effectively provide a lot of value to your company one of two things will happen from there either you will grow up the ranks of your company very quickly that happened with arpit who started at 2 LPA then moved over to 26 LPA in an India based company sure he makes one CR right now but his 2 LPA to 26 LPA transition happened in an India based company because he was providing a lot of value boy 1. 3 CR this guy here the salary that I got uh as a fresher was 2 lakhs an year and then it became 6 lakhs and then I joined a startup so in that startup I started with 6 lakhs and then I moved on to a package of 26 in a span of 3 years but what steps are you taking to you know increase your pay further from here so for the past one year I was not doing anything I was just enjoying just doing focusing on my b as you can see behind the that I have a bunch of things that I have written that I need to do so basically you can write a prompt and you can get an app out of the AI right but in order to do that you need to have a very very very good understanding of the fundamentals so I'm revisiting all the fundamentals focusing on system designs so a lot of times you don't need a fancy remote job you don't need a Fang you just need to make sure you're being accountable growing up the ranks leading teams eventually and that will help you break out of this 10 to 12 LPA Mark anything beyond this is usually either inflation help you reach there or your skills and accountability the first one is out of your control but the second one isn't if you are looking for that 50 LP offer it's just putting in the hours every day um and thankfully now you're getting paid for it um of course there's one thing I heard a lot of people say which was unfortunately I'm constrained to a specific text stack I'm not able to spend time learning anything outside it and this is one place unfortunately you have to put in efforts if your company is not letting you grow um you have to find some peers some code base that you can contribute to that's outside of your scope of work and learn through that or just spend a lot of time on open source code basis the minimum requirement SL expectation I have at this scale is you do like to code you can read through code bases you're not just writing your own code um but reviewing code looking at other people's code so if that has happened why not showcase your skills at a global level why not contribute to a library that a lot of people are using that'll give you enough leverage that'll give you one a lot of Leverage to maybe that company only hires you but but much more than that you will understand where you stand a lot of people are in this 10 to 12 LPS scale up but who's better than the other you can Define that by showcasing your skills in open source so one strong suggestion to everyone not just in this salary bracket would be to Showcase your skills in open source it'll humble you if you're not good or it'll make you super proud if you [Music] are right the last salary bracket the cushy one 25 LPA plus we have F who makes 1. 3 CR a year the common challenges here are I'm earning well but what next usually when you're making this much U you don't really need advice from someone on the internet you know what you're doing but the common traes I saw were some level of burnout U which is expected considering you're being valued as such an expensive resource I didn't see a lot of challenges for people in this specific salary range um the challenges were very first world for example I'm making you know one how do I reach two or there is this other friend of mine who is currently at two what am I missing why can't I reach there and a very focused um road map to reach there like everyone Was preparing for interviews here which is expected like like a lot of people in this salary range are also preparing you would expect them to be complient but they're not um they're very happy with their work their compan is very chill usually there's a lot of ownership and you're usually the one hiring other engineers and interviewing constantly but other than their day-to-day work u i saw a lot of them focusing on system design because that's probably what's going to be asked in their next interview they usually have a lot of Leverage um whenever you're joining a company at this specific salary bracket um company has vetted you enough U to make sure you're providing more value and if you're providing value of 30 40 50 LPA or a CR um you're very ingrained into the system very quickly in a year or two uh any other engineer of the same skill set if they join they will not be able to provide as much value as you even if they work there for 6 months it will take them a ramp up period of at least 6 months up to reach your level of productivity so at this point the company really wants to retain you that leads to pretty solid salary bumps for example arpit when he started in this company he started at 70 lakhs but currently makes almost twice of that um in a span of 3 years you wouldn't expect such level of growth um in a standard startup or a startup that hired you by mistake um and you know you weren't providing as much value to them it is at this stage that the rich just keep on becoming richer you reach the top of the pyramid where there isn't enough crowd and hence the supply demand Arbitrage kicks in and you know you keep renegotiating better and better either with the same company or others um it's the kushy pyramid top that you want to reach um does it involve luck a little bit but not too much if you're good if you have experience if youve worked for a few years and during these years you've provided value to a company that has led to you having a lot of experiential learning um which is underrated experiential learning is much better than theoretical course YouTube clone learning um everything else will just be an outcome it's usually a lot of fun talking to these people as well and this isn't super experience related uh you could have less experience I know 19y olds who make similar amounts U it's more about a lot of Cs intellect like they are 19 year olds but they've been coding for four 5 years so yes the coding experience does matter U but the number of experience you've spent in the industry or how many years ago you graduated doesn't matter as much generally if you are in this third category if you're in the lower end of it which means 25 LPA or 20 LPA U I would suggest starting to at least freelance um it's a whole different world out there which you don't really see if you're in a in a very specific on-site job in a product company or otherwise um you could totally be happy with what you're doing but I would just urge you to try it once U the kind of options you might be able to get because of PPP U that stands for purchasing power parity U would just be something you might not have imagined and you'll see the work life might be Chiller the number of hours you might have to put in would be less uh you can work from home remotely you can save a lot of money in taxes and all of this just happens like this um you aren't really providing any more value you aren't any more skilled it's just purchasing power parity that's helping you so for everyone who's stuck in this stage um of 20 to 50 LP and wants to move beyond that um a manager role is one um a leadership role is one or the third one is getting a remote job all three of these would help you break across the stage and after that even I am unsure how do you make more than 1.