Hey folks! This is the sixth part of my “story so far” series where I tell the story of how I learned about FIRE and all the jobs, school and relevant details that take us up to the current day. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you can do that here! Let’s head back to 2022 and see what I was up to.
2022
I started the year with $188,903.78, and it turned out that I wasn’t going to see a net worth that high in a while. That’s because with the turn of the year, stocks started taking a beating. Some folks thought we might be entering a recession. I just kept buying more.
As the year began, I got some good news. The consultant CTO, aka boss #4, had managed to secure my promotion to senior developer. This came with a raise to $130k. There was a catch: I was going to lead a brand new project that was critical to the company. So critical I couldn’t believe they were even giving it to me. So of course, I accepted.
I’d been in over my head many times before, but this took the cake. I only just started on the project properly in February, and they basically wanted it code complete at the end of March ahead of some investor briefings. Like the rest of the organization, this project was run poorly. But I made the best of it.
In the meantime, my semester started, and taking three classes was proving challenging. I tried to get things done in an efficient manner. And by efficient I mean slacking off in courses I knew would curve and working harder for the one that wouldn’t.
And so began the long road to the retention bonus at the end of June. In the meantime, my old boss, the one from pre-layoff, was at a new company and wanted me to join. I told him I had to wait until I got that bonus. He told me he’d be in touch.
The project at work ended up working out, somehow. Though I was told I’d be leading a team, it ended up really just being me working on it. And without really working any more than 40 hours, I managed to pull off what they’d wanted. I was pretty proud of the work that I’d done.
Eventually I did get a couple of engineers to join me in working on it, basically giving me a team. I started to consider the fact that I was basically a “lead software engineer”, which was the title of that guy they’d hired last year, who was continuing to be bad at the job. I toyed with the idea of trying to get promoted again, largely just because I thought it’d be really funny, but then figured there was no point, since I was just going to quit after the retention hit anyways, or that first stock hit later in the year at the latest.
For a period of time, I was, somehow, doing about half of the work for the entire team of ten engineers. We hadn’t split my team off from the main team yet, so we were all just one big team. It made no sense to me how I could be working the normal amount of hours and doing so much more.
And then in May, as my old boss promised, his job reached out to me. It honestly sounded like it could be a good place to work. Certainly better than where I was. Considering I was now at $130k, which was really high for my area and amount of experience, I figured they wouldn’t be able to pay me enough. I also figured I wouldn’t pass the interview. Somehow, I did pass the interview. And then they offered me $140k. I accepted the offer and intended to quit right after I got the retention bonus. I told them that, pushing my start date out to early August.
Then I started planning on a move out west. After having been in the midwest for a long time, but having grown up on the coast, I decided I wanted to go back. Conveniently my lease ended at in August, after all this had wrapped up and my new job would start.
Right around this same time I managed to pull off all three grad school classes. That included getting exactly a 72.51% in the hardest class. 72 was a C- and I needed at least a C, so I really pulled it off by the narrowest of margins. But I did it! I now had a masters in computer science! I still wasn’t sure how much that was going to help me, but it was cheap, and I didn’t lose any experience at work while doing it. It was a win in my book.
In the meantime, we’d hired a new VP of engineering at work, who was now boss #5 for me. Towards the end of June, when quitting time was approaching, we had an interesting conversation. He asked me where I wanted to go in my career, more a managerial path or staying a software engineer, moving towards staff and principal engineer. I said probably the latter. I also mentioned to him that the company seems to love having me work at one level above the title they’ll give me. Sure, I was a senior dev now, but I was leading a project and a team. When they had meetings with all the leads, I was included and the only person present without the title.
My boss said “you’re definitely on the list of people who could lead the second team”. As I’d mentioned before, the team was too big and needed to split in two. Now my new boss was basically saying perhaps I could officially lead it. This was essentially that idea I’d kicked around earlier in the year, now being potentially handed to me. Overall though, he was pretty noncommittal and in a further conversation the following week he seemed to be rethinking.
So I started thinking maybe, on July 1st, the day after my retention money hit, I could essentially use that other job offer to put pressure on him. I had nothing to lose. I could still take the other job anyways, and I probably would. It was way too funny to pass up the opportunity.
So June 30th, the retention money hit my account. After taxes, that meant I got about $26k. Certainly the most I’d ever gotten at once and it certainly helped to fight the ever dropping stock market. My net worth was pretty well even with where I’d started the year despite saving tons of money.
On July 1st, I told my boss we needed to talk. I was, much like at the last job, mostly honest. Again, instead of telling him I’d already accepted the job, I just told him it was an option for me. I told him I felt this new job was more of a step up in responsibility, and that the company continued to not recognize what I was doing for them. Leading the team would give me that, and I wanted the promotion and title to match. I referenced how much work I was getting done, and how I was doing more than the only other person who actually had the title. We discussed specifics, and I told him I’d be happy with $150k. He said he’d see what he could do.
A week later, I was promoted to lead software engineer, with a salary of $142k. Sure, it was short of my ask, but I couldn’t believe I’d just pulled that off. I was still only 22, turning 23 later that month. I felt like I was finally getting even with this company for laying me off. The best part is, I was still quitting in a couple weeks after I took a two week vacation. I just wanted to take a little bit of extra money while I could.
But then there was a bit of a problem. The new job wasn’t set up to allow for remote work where I wanted to move to out west, and I knew I had enough leverage at my current job to make that happen. Now there wasn’t a salary difference to tempt me, and if I stayed I could keep that title on my resume for a little longer. The two-week vacation was actually to the same state I was planning to move to, and it only affirmed how badly I wanted to be there.
I emailed the new job and told them I’d changed my mind. I explained that the inability to move was really what made the decision for me, which was pretty much true. Sure, I wanted out of my current company badly, but I was once again willing to hold my nose to try to get where I wanted. I was also nervous with the economy that the company would do well. They were in e-commerce, and had done mass layoffs before.
While still on vacation I found an apartment, signed a lease, and had a move in date of August 7th. I went home, packed up, and drove west in the same car I’d had since I was 16 – I truly wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I managed to pull it off, moved in to my new place, and started preparing for the job hunt. A big reason for the move was to get into a better job market with higher pay. It was time to finally escape.
When September rolled around, I was affirmed in my decision to stay at my current job, when the previous job laid tons of folks off, including the person who would’ve been my boss. Luckily the guy who was trying to pull me over there kept his job, but there’s no way I would have.
By October I was interviewing for a handful of companies, and hoping to get a substantial raise to make up for the apartment I was paying $2,150 a month for, a huge difference from even the $720 I was paying in the midwest. I also finally got my first hit of the company’s stock, though by now it had dropped a lot, so I only ended up with something like $10k after taxes. I decided to hold on for now in the hopes it would go up.
In November, I found a new job. A local startup paying $170k with some stock options, which I valued at exactly $0. It was similar work to what I was doing at my current company, but hopefully in a more sane environment. I told them I could start in mid January, since I wanted to get one more two week vacation out of my old job. I know, I’m truly the model employee.
Ironically the same day this happened, my current job gave me a bonus of $14k, 10% of my salary, for doing such a great job that year. That news was delivered by boss #6 who’d started recently. For those keeping track at home, that means that, despite starting the year at $115k, with the quick raise to $130k and a mid-year raise to $142k (averaging out to $136k), plus the retention bonus of $40k, the stock hit of $10k and the new bonus of $14k, I managed to get that company to pay me an eye-watering $200k over the course of the year. And to think, they could’ve just kept paying me $78k! With that, I felt I could finally take a bow and exit stage right. I’d won.
All that money came in handy too, because the stock market was down about 20% for the year. Ouch! I managed to pull my net worth to $255,527.52, finally crossing the quarter million mark. I moved to the place I wanted to me, was seeing the end of this job, and had finished my graduate degree. Things were looking up! Right before I headed on vacation, boss #6 decided to become and engineer instead of managing, meaning boss #7 would be starting my first day back. My two weeks would already be in by then. Seven bosses in 15 months. You can’t make that up! Find out next time, in the final part, part seven, how the new job goes, what new schemes I devise and pretty much finish the story of how we got to where we are today. Thanks for reading!