How to get a package of 65 LPA?

Important note: Even though I present my story here, I would recommend you all to not to emulate or copy my career path just because I had success with it. Because what worked for me might not work for you.

Before we begin, I would like to clear a common misunderstanding amongst many people that getting a 50LPA package is something impossible. Trust me its not and anyone who has just a little discipline can do it.

There are many of my friends/ classmates who are a better programmer than me but still they only make a fraction of what I do, while this might surprise you but trust me you will get what I am trying to say by the end of the answer.

So lets begin:

1. Programming skills does not equal money.

If you become an excellent programmer that does not guarantee you will make good money. Thats because you don't get paid for your code. Instead you get paid for what you develop.

If you want to make a ton of money then programming is by far the worst choice you will make.

In reality this is how it all works:

People have a problem -> You can build them a solution using technology -> People pay you for the solution.

The more bigger the problem the more are the customers willing to pay for it.

They don’t give a shit about which programming language you know or how good are you with data structures or algorithms.

Understanding this thing has made all the difference in my life.

Now here comes my story:

When I completed my engineering, I was a graduate with no job or work experience. I refused to sit in campus interviews just because most of the companies were service based companies and I never liked the idea of working for them. Also the pay scale of 3–5 lpa were not upto my expectations.

I had no interest in appearing for an interview where they just recruit a bunch of people and everyone gets paid the same. I had high standards for myself and I always believed in myself that I could do better.

Not only me but also I personally felt that some of my classmates are selling themselves short by applying for such mediocre jobs.

Finally after college I immediately started my own business. I planned to sell websites to local business owners for a very attractive price. Do keep in mind that I had zero capital and my parents weren't supporting me financially in this journey.

I was excited, I made a plan of how I can sell web designing service and make upto 30,000 per day. However my dreams were shattered in a few days. About a month passed and I didn't even sell a single site. Forget about making 30,000 a day, I didn't even make 3000 for the entire month.

I was losing all hope and I had even drained my travelling expense and didn't even had money for fuel. In that entire month. Luckily, I got one customer who agreed to pay me 22,000 INR for a website.

Even though this gave me a little capital to survive, I was still freaked out as selling sites was tough. I had to do something to make money the next month. I immediately started to work on his site and also planned to search for freelancing jobs online.

The very next day I setup an account on one of the sites and started bidding on projects. I was hustling so hard, I was writing elegant proposals for hours trying to get a job. From about 7 am in the morning to 2 in the afternoon I submitted proposals on a ton of jobs, and guess what,I was contacted by two clients one who paid me $10 for an animated explainer video and the other guy wanted to interview me for a web development project which was about $300.

This was an achievement for me as I almost got two jobs in a single day. This created a sense of hope inside me.

I immediately started working on those projects. It was a very warm summer night, we didn't had air conditioners that time. I was all sweating and the heat from my laptop just made it worse. I worked till 2 am in the midnight as the excitement didn't allowed me to sleep.

When I woke up the next day I tried to switch on my laptop (it was an old compact presario with core 2 duo processor) the monitor screen was all blank.I tried some hacks to make it work but it just didn't. The motherboard was all fried up as I was working in extremely hot conditions without giving it a break. I was again back to the ground. I had no money in hand at the moment(as I was about to get paid once the project was completed).

Somehow I gathered strength and went to the local guy who was willing to give me 22k for a site. I requested him to pay me at least 50% upfront, at first he didn't agree but after convincing him he was ready to pay me 10k. I still had to get 20k to get a decent laptop which would cost about 30k so that I can continue woking on my projects.

If I had explained my situation to my parents they would have given me the money. However I decided not to do so because I promised them that I will not ask a single penny once I complete my graduation.

I approached my uncle who is a real estate developer, I explained him my situation and he was kind enough to give me the remaining amount. I promised him to return the amount in a month.

This was the very first day of my life where I literally begged for money. Although I didn't cry but deep inside I felt extremely sad and helpless and that was the day I realised the value of money.

The reason why I am writing this in such detail is because this was the day which made all the difference in my life. It was that day I decided I would never look back and would never have a money problem in my life.

From the next day, I was back to work in full swing. Along with completing existing projects I also started bidding on some other projects. Within the same month I worked on about 5 small projects in total and made close to 75,000 INR a month which was quite satisfactory.

The next months I enhanced my skills along with working on small projects and after a few days I started working on bigger projects. I made new connections with clients and they were continually providing me with more projects so I no longer had to bid on jobs. I also met one of my clients who is now my employer who agreed to give me a job at their company.

After a few months I had so many clients and projects that I have to decline/ postpone some. I was working as a freelancer plus had a job and along with it I was continually enhancing my skills, it was a lot of work but I was enjoying it.

After a few months I quit my freelancing career and started making my own software products and sell them online. I can't disclose much about what these products are but they are related to the stock market domain. Selling it was quite a tough job, I had to try and test a lot of things to make it work but finally it was a success.

This is how it continues to the present day and I am happy with what I do.

Hope you enjoyed reading this.

Answered by quora expert Saurav Sharma