Immigrant Engineer Income Journey

A story about Dharmesh Shah's journey from immigrant worker to highly paid engineer, and how it shaped his perspective on the value of time.

"I started at $3.65 in my first job when I came over as an immigrant. I worked all the way through school - took me 7 years to get my 4-year degree, working full time the whole way through. At that wage, nothing was delegatable.

Then I started making $10, $20, $50 an hour as an engineer. The pivotal moment came in my early 20s when I got this bump to $125 an hour working as an engineer in Birmingham, Alabama in the 90s - that was ungodly money back then.

I made a decision that if there's anything I've been doing with my time that could be done by spending less than $125 an hour, I'm being an idiot by actually doing it. Unless I enjoy it, it's just stupid. So I started thinking about what value I'd place on my time and what I could delegate.

I recently did the math - working on average 60 hours a week for about 30 years of my professional career, my average hourly rate across the 30 years would be like $10,000 an hour. Now I won't spend even an hour on anything that isn't worth at least that amount. I'd actually pay a premium above that - $50,000 or $100,000 if there's some option value on that time.

The short message is most people don't value their time enough and don't think about it objectively enough. Put a number on it and ask yourself what things you're doing with your time that are not worth that."