I'm posting this because I love my job and I wish more people knew about this path. I obviously did not expect to be reaching this compensation at this age (or ever, frankly, in my lifetime) and just wanted to share my story. Of course, not every product designer has this compensation, especially in the current market.

Current Job: Product Designer, Tech

Current location: VHCOL **(**San Francisco)

Current salary, including bonus, benefits, & perks:

• $200k base

• $60k RSU/year

• $12k 401K match, wfh stipend, etc.

Age and/or years in the workforce: 2-3 years

Brief description of your current position: I'm an employee at a large (non-FAANG) tech company doing digital product design

Degrees/certifications: Bachelors at top school. I paid $0 due to financial aid, but these are of course really expensive degrees that are very inaccessible.

A complete history of jobs leading up to your current position.

• School: various unrelated internships: $0/h, then $18/h, then $60/h

  • I started in engineering, realized I was horrible at it and would never be able to hold a job, and followed my gut and anxiety to design

  • I explored various adjacent design fields like marketing/architecture/fashion, hated them all, and then found myself really enjoying product design

• 2020: Product Designer (Full-time job while doing school): $75k at startup

  • I worked full time while in school to get "experience" and standout. Not only was this invaluable for my resume, but I think it also taught me really important skills that have helped me fast track my career growth/promotion rate. It was really hard and unrewarding work, and I vowed to never work at someone else's startup again.

• 2021: Product Designer (Upon graduation): $160k TC

  • My biggest learning here is that some of the cool companies that everyone wants to work at don't pay the best, because they don't need to. Design agencies are a great example of this, but it's also true in tech. It's the slightly smaller companies that don't attract talent with "prestige" that need to dish out a little more compensation to attract good talent.

• 2023: Product Designer (Same role, promoted many times): $270k TC

  • I started at level 1 like any new grad, but I actually did have some experience under my belt. I feel like this helped me fast track my growth due to the confidence and practice I had already existing in these types of spaces that are honestly a real struggle for anyone fresh out of school.

Things that helped me:

• Everyone says go into engineering, but I never liked it and wasn't good at it. Understanding this about myself early on was key in freeing me to invest in a field I could actually excel in and enjoy. I am so glad I didn't listen to others (and the inner voice of comparison) that tried to make me stick course with something I would suck at and hate.

• Seek out mentors and managers that care about you and want to see you succeed. Tell them exactly where you want to be in a few years and ask them how to get there. Easier said than done, I know. Most of your early career isn't in your hands. You need allies in every area of your work. To make the corporate game more palatable, try to think of it more as just a better way to go about your career: make friends, build trust, and do everything you can to avoid people that don't care about you as a person.

• You are valued at the average of the room. I'm somewhat infamous for inviting people to my meetings that are way above my pay grade. This makes my work visible to people who have outweighed power to help me. Others outside the room see your work as more important because there are important people in your room. The corporate ladder is funny like that. Lean into it and leverage it.

• Prepare for rainy days and always zoom out. The startup I was at shutdown out of nowhere during COVID. This really opened my eyes to how volatile jobs can be early on, how important macro trends in the economy are, and how much is not in your control. This really affected how I went about choosing a place to start my career after college, as well as what team, what projects, what skills, etc. to minimize instability/risks and maximize the value of my work. I think that these small adjustments have allowed me to really optimize my career so far, but I don't really know for sure.