Ask HN: How can I make $500k/year?
2 phendrenad2 3 5/25/2025, 11:49:40 AM
What is the niche of the future that can amp my salary up to $500,000? (which is about where we should all be due to inflation, by the way, I'm just trying to get to the front of the line)
Start your own business, even if on the side. Follow due diligence of taxes and a ledger and learn the commoditized value of time.
It isn’t that it cannot be done, it is that the path must be forged by you alone, until you develop the resources and leadership skills to make a gang out of it. People are more problems, yet we need them to really make it.
I’ll tell you how the “everyone else does it.” You work your ass off as an independent.
Independent contractors who are their own agency bill for 2 to 4 times more than the hourly.
Hourly bills twice that of salary.
So what you get $35/hr for salary, another guy gets $50-$75 as independent contractor.
And the industry will actually pay $100-$200/hr wholesale for the work to get done without the pain in the ass an hourly/salary employee requires.
Just think, you can bill at four times the rate companies would pay you, if only you knew how to coddle them and perform to expectations.
Not only for you friend. They need a junior? You supply the junior, who you pay $35 and bill them at $140/hr. This scales.
Just make sure you and he do the damn work. And remember, you’re getting more because you’re not the pain on the ass, and the work gets done exactly as required.
All those smarts others say you need are those required to navigate and close such common place opportunities. This usually requires ten years of inside experience to really know and “fit into” the field.
Either way, “salary” is not a good expectation. Income maybe, though you have to be the boss to get there.
Look at people who make that much now — the people already at the front of the line ahead of you. That might give you some ideas.
If you don’t have family money and connections and don’t want to break the law or defraud people you will probably need years at a name-brand university, quite a few more years climbing the ladder, good connections, and lots of luck.