Salary & Income

As the son of a CFO and the brother of a financial advisor, money was always an open topic for me growing up, and I think I’m better for it. The tech industry is notorious for massive pay disparities by gender, race, and other seemingly unrelated factors, and yet they exist. I think good way to start changing this for the better is to make it less taboo by talking about it. In order to talk about money, we have to talk about money. (I wrote a book about pricing services for this very reason.)

I’ve had wildly varied experiences with money working in tech. I’ve been blessed to experience several times in my life where I’ve earned more money than I ever thought possible. I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine I’ve probably earned more than the average designer over my career so far. That doesn’t mean I don’t have financial hardship at times. I’ve also had times where I wasn’t making as much as I wanted or as much as I needed. Earning is one part of the equation; spending, saving, investing, and other factors are involved in turning high-earning into true wealth, something I’m still learning—and often failing—to do.

What I can share, though, is what I’ve earned at different points in my career, along with some context around it. (Talking about money is often difficult because it’s so contextual, so we can’t leave that part out.) I’m nervous to share any of this, for all the reasons you might expect:

• Talking about money is taboo, so it feels wrong even though I know it’s not.
• I’m putting private information into a public space. Is that dangerous for me? Is it real danger or perceived danger?
• Am I somehow putting my family at risk? It’s one thing to share my own personal information, but money also represents things about my family. Am I somehow putting them in harm’s way?
• If someone thinks I make too much money, will they think I’m bragging? Will they think twice about things like purchasing my products like courses and workbooks and workshops or hiring me as a consultant?
• If someone thinks I make too little money, will they think less of me, like I’m a worse designer or business person than they thought?

While I do think and feel those kinds of things, I’m choosing to share anyway. I’ve long admired the way that Matthew Smith has shared a look at his salaries over the years. It’s not just that he’s sharing numbers openly—something that most are reticent to do—but he shares context around the numbers: his level of experience, what factors in and outside of his control led to a change, and much more. It’s a model standard for how conversations about money can happen. Thanks for the inspiration and example, Matthew.

Here’s my version.

So far, my career experience and salary had come from working at other companies. My first daughter was born in New York, and my wife and I decided to move back to Philly to be closer to family. This seemed like the right time to try full-time freelancing, so I started my own studio.

Because of the structure of SuperFriendly, it’s a little difficult to describe my total compensation. I mean that in a few ways:

1. I was the only full-time employee of SuperFriendly for 9 of its 10 years in business with everyone else being contractors, so some years, my salary was pretty synonymous with total profit and other years it was very different.
2. SuperFriendly was structured as an S-corporation, so my compensation was a combination of regular payroll and profit distributions.
3. Because of the S-corporation status, there are some profit and taxation benefits that are still financial but hard to see in the same way as you might look at salary, bonuses, or equity.

All to say, even though these numbers seem pretty exact, assume that they’re actually a little bit lower than my total compensation that year.

I’ll also add the total annual revenue SuperFriendly made that year next to my annual salary for additional context.

* January – July

I shut down SuperFriendly in 2022. The way I earn money now is… complicated.

I own a few separate businesses that each contribute a little to my income. I sell design system courses and a monthly community membership through Design System University. I do consulting, corporate education, and sponsorships and have other products through Dan Mall Teaches. Both companies are LLCs “owned” by a corporation I own called Malleable Corp, which is probably the only time you’ll ever hear that name. It’s kinda what Alphabet is to Google and Waymo or Meta is to Facebook and Instagram. I have a few other business ideas that I think will all go through Malleable Corp over the next few years. I’m looking into turning Malleable Corp into a trust, but I’m probably getting too tangential here.

I started all of them this year, and none of them makes enough individually yet to make up the salaries I was previously making. But together, they’re getting closer.