Ask HN: How stressful are high paying engineer roles?

3 points by mcraenich 2 years ago | 6 comments

A little pre-amble, I make a good but moderate salary at a company with a great culture. For the most part I don't experience much stress day to day, and don't bring work home with me. I'm much more technically competent than the job requires, and don't find much of what I do hard to complete.

I could see myself getting a bit bored of it down the road, though, and I'm curious about the lived experience of software engineers in high-paying roles. Looking at remote roles across the United States, for example, there are some astronomical salaries available. But I'm wondering to what extent I'd pay for salaries like these in stress, and high pressure environments.

In your estimation is there a correlation between above-average pay and stress? Have you found making a high salary worth it?

gregjor 2 years ago |

Stress describes a person’s reaction to and perception of a situation. It doesn’t describe an inherent property of a job or salary.

Some people experience stress from minor everyday annoyances. Other people don’t skip a beat in their high-paying and high-responsibility jobs. No one can answer your question meaningfully because no one can know whatever stress you might experience in any given situation.

endisneigh 2 years ago |

You should remove from your mind that there’s some meaningful correlation between income and stress.

re-thc 2 years ago | |

I wouldn't say it's 0 but it's definitely less than what some might imagine.

Roles higher up the chain e.g. senior vs junior that do pay more should be a bit more "stressful".

lusus_naturae 2 years ago | | |

Stress is just relative to talent, though; you can expect more stuggle in any type of role if you lack it.

WheelsAtLarge 2 years ago |

I dealt with a ,highly paid, Unix network engineer. It seemed like he just strolled thru his day. He was as calmed as they come. My believe is that if you can control your environment, network in this case, then the job does not have to be stressful but that has to do a lot on the person doing the job. Their experience, knowledge and ability to do the job.