Recently I published a post on the Ladder blog talking about the "Harrison Ford Effect": how successful people often have low salaries and demeaning jobs early on. 

As part of that post I layed out my own salary diary, which I'm sharing below. If you're interested in a longer form version check out the original post.

I know as an Indie Hacker you're short on time and just want to cut to the good stuff, so I'm posting the TL;DR version here just for you. 

My Salary Diary

We value transparency at Ladder. So, inspired by Noah Kagan and others, like Buffer and Nathan Barry, I decided to share my own salary diary.

I’m a lot further behind in my career than the examples I linked to above. There would be a lot of luck involved for me to get to their level or beyond. 

But that’s what I want. 

I’m pushing hard to build something big at Ladder; our team of 25 is growing fast and I’m excited about the opportunity we have to disrupt the marketing industry.

Nobody talks about this stuff, so there's a lot of misinformation out there. 

I'm sharing my personal data because if I had this knowledge earlier in my career, I would have made better decisions.

Here it is:

Check out my LinkedIn profile for more detail on each job.

Here are a few things to take away:

  • I quit (and got fired from) jobs a lot. My average tenure was just 1 year.
  • University in England is way cheaper (and shorter) than it is in the States.
  • Until the last two years at Ladder most of my friends earned more than me.
  • The last 2 years were responsible for almost 40% of my entire lifetime earnings.
  • That's despite being below market rate (I could earn $140k as a VP of Marketing).
  • I still earn less than a graduate level software developer does at Facebook.

If you're interested in the full story, you can read more here.

I hope seeing real data on how much I've earned over more than a decade gives you an idea of what to expect. At least maybe you'll find it interesting.

I haven't made my fortune yet (I'm betting on my Ladder equity), but I definitely noticed that once I went past $75k, more money didn't really impact my happiness.

My salary used to be a measure of my worth; now I barely think about it. What I care more about is making an impact, and I wish I had focused on that earlier on.

So if you're early in your career and frustrated that you earn less than you think you should, relax. Focus on adding value first: you get to cash it in later.