Money.

I wish I had a more philosophical answer like building cool shit, but this is real life, so I've made it as a dev when I make at least ₹20 lakh per year.

@yellow-dog not cool

€1 is about ₹84 right now. How much is 1 lakh again? Sorry but I don't use the Indian numbering system in real life.

While that comment was kinda uncalled for, if you're writing to a global audience in English, it's definitely better to use globally understandable numbers lol
That's $26.5k, what's around $510/week.

But back on the original matter, I totally see the point and it's really legit.
But once you arrive on that target, what happens? You get stuck on whatever job that pays you that, until the end of your life?

That target isn't really hard, once you start working for foreign companies. My previous math sums that to $12/h, which is quite a low bar for international freelancing, I think.

You already know English, which is the barrier for most great Brazilian developers I find in my circles. So I'd say you can expand your thoughts on this #wk211 :)

@igorsantos07 I appreciate the sentiment but let's not make that many assumptions. In my country, this salary would be in the top 1 percentile of programmers. While it isn't unachievable, it isn't as simple as you imply it is.

It also makes absolutely zero sense for me to convert my money into dollars or euros because every aspect of life in my country is tied to my local currency.

A pack of milk here costs ₹10, which is less than 0.05€. So a blank currency conversion doesn't make any sense.

I also resent the implication that I need to open my mind. The amount of money I make is simply a method for me to gauge if I've made it as a programmer, which is what the question asked. I never said or implied that was the only thing I cared about. I would still be programming at least as a hobby even if I didn't get paid for it at all because I enjoy the culture attached to it too much. But that wasn't part of the question.

@hashedram the conversion really doesn't mean much for you, but on that same rationale, you could very well be writing in your mother language here as well. It's what most ties to your culture, right?
I meant the conversion as a rough "translation" of the value - but the main problem was actually the number system you used - something that, from what I understood, doesn't tie to your local market prices, but only to the way you speak and are understood.

This is sort of the same irk I get when I hear a podcast that's already international speaking of miles or Fahrenheit without saying the equivalent in metric units. You simply can't grasp a tiny bit of the meaning if you don't actually understand that numeric system.

@hashedram on the main topic, indeed, I overstretched :) "you made it" doesn't mean "end of career", so you're totally correct there, my bad.

On the other hand, I think you didn't get what I actually meant when I did the math into dollars/hour. I specifically said "That target isn't really hard, **once you start working for foreign companies**". A huge salary isn't feasible at all here in Brazil too, but I started freelancing through a great platform and I earn almost double of what more experienced friends do - because I'm working with foreign companies, from home

The only assumptions I made were:
- you're a great programmer, or on the path to;
- you're fluent in English.

Bottom-line: it's definitely achievable :)

@igorsantos07 It takes a couple of seconds to look up what lakh means. This isn't local, it's used across the entire eastern world.

I'm not going to feel bad for using my own number system any more than an American is going to feel bad for using Fahrenheit. Comparing this to typing in non English is silly. That's a completely different scale of expectation.

I will not westernize my words to make it more comfortable. International doesn't automatically translate to western. Anyone without a slight xenophobic bias should be perfectly comfortable to look up what these small words mean and be happy they learnt something new.

Look, when I wrote my response to this thread, I didn't feel like looking up 'lakh' (I did in the past but I forgot what I learned), so I politely (IMHO) pointed out that I don't know what it means. If you take offense to that, I dare say that is your problem. Given that dR is used by people from all over the world, including many regions where 'lakh' is not a term of general use, I dare say there is nothing to be offended about.