fresh out of college in 2018. two offers on the table.
₹25,000/month from a service company. stable, safe, known brand.
₹10,000/month from a small bangalore startup. unknown, risky, half the money.
i took the ₹10K one.
everyone around me thought i was making a mistake.
why i did it
the service company would put me in training for months before i touched production code.
the startup would throw me into real work from week one.
i figured the learning was worth more than the salary difference. turns out i was right but it took 7 years to fully play out.
the actual numbers, year by year
| year | salary | what changed |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | ₹10,000/mo | intern, debugging production crashes at 2am |
| 2019 | ₹25,000/mo | full-time, building features end to end |
| 2020 | ₹35,000/mo | full stack, making architectural decisions |
| 2021 | ₹45,000/mo | leading small projects |
| 2021 | ₹80,000/mo | switched to blockchain after 5 months of night learning |
| 2022 | ₹3,50,000/mo | remote role at a french startup |
| 2024+ | left to start my own company | — |
35x in 7 years.
the move that changed everything
in late 2020 i noticed something.
my salary was growing slowly. i was doing the same react + node work on repeat. comfortable but stagnant.
i started researching niches where:
- demand was high
- supply of developers was low
- remote companies were hiring
blockchain checked all three boxes in 2021.
so while still employed, i spent 4-5 months:
- doing cryptozombies (free solidity course)
- watching patrick collins' blockchain bootcamp on youtube
- building two side projects and putting them on github
- contributing to open source blockchain repos
applied to 15 companies. got callbacks from 6. offers from 2.
nearly doubled my salary without changing jobs first.
then the french startup
1.5 years into the blockchain role, a french startup called ternoa found me on linkedin.
three interview rounds. offered ₹3,50,000/month.
4x my previous salary. 35x my starting stipend.
why did they pay that much? because a blockchain specialist in france costs them €6,000–8,000/month. at ₹3.5L i was actually cheaper for them — and life-changing money for me.
that's the india remote arbitrage nobody talks about enough.
what i did with that salary
didn't lifestyle inflate.
used the next 1.5 years to quietly build teckas technologies on the side — nights and weekends. blockchain and AI projects for clients. small money at first. ₹50K here, ₹1L there.
saved 12+ months of expenses.
then left the ₹3.5L salary to go full time.
today teckas is 9 people, clients across india, europe and the us, 6 months of consecutive revenue growth.
mistakes i actually made
1. stayed comfortable too long in year 2.5
wasn't learning anything new. should have specialized 6 months earlier. probably cost me ₹10–15L in lost salary.
2. didn't document the journey
zero tweets, zero blogs, zero linkedin posts during those 7 years. wish i had built in public from day one. personal brand compounds — the earlier you start the more it's worth.
3. ignored financial literacy
taxes, contracts, invoicing — learned all of it the hard way when i started teckas. nobody teaches developers this stuff.
4. didn't network intentionally
every major opportunity in my career came through people. i should have invested in relationships much earlier instead of just focusing on code.
if i started over today
- take the low-paying startup over the safe service company job
- specialize by year 2, not year 3
- start applying to remote companies the moment you have 2+ years experience
- build in public from day one
- start the side business before quitting, not after
i wrote this because i spent years looking for honest breakdowns like this from indian developers and couldn't find them.
so i built developerstory — a place where developers share their real salary journeys with actual numbers.
this is my story. one new story every week.
if you're sitting at ₹20K–₹40K wondering if things will change — they will. but only if you make them change.
the one decision that mattered most: taking the ₹10K internship.
everything else was downstream of that.
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