Software engineer’s $200K move ends at Mexico cabins

Mexico cabin – Carlos Santana Roldán, a 38-year-old software engineer in California, has built a path from $800–$1,500 monthly earnings in Mexico to more than $200,000 a year in the US. After a high-stakes stretch with Snap that paid him roughly $225,000 in stock and then co

When you’ve spent “almost 20 years” coding and your “eyes are burning all the time. ” the next paycheck starts to feel less like victory and more like an earned pause. Carlos Santana Roldán. 38. has been living that reality in California—working as a contractor and earning “just over $200. 000 a year. ” even as he expects this role may be his last job as an employee.

“I think my current software engineer job will probably be my last job as an employee,” he said. The reason isn’t just fatigue. It’s timing. Santana Roldán has a cabin business in Mexico that he started about five years ago. and he expects that by building “one more cabin. ” he can retire from coding after “three or four more years.”.

In his account, his income has never been a straight line. It’s been shaped by visas, corporate moves, stock-market swings, and a job market that he describes as unstable—especially for people hired on work authorizations.

In Mexico. he began by working for “around five years” for companies that contracted for US firms. earning the equivalent of “around $800 to $1. 500 a month.” Then came the jump that changed everything: in October 2013. he moved to the US as a contractor with Globant on a TN visa and started working for Disney in Seattle. His initial salary was $90,000 per year.

That $90,000 mattered immediately. He used it to “pay off my car in Mexico” and cover “my wedding expenses” about a year later. He also pointed to the tax environment in Washington, saying it helped him because Washington has “no state income taxes.”

In 2015, he moved to California while continuing with Disney, still making $90,000 a year—but his monthly paycheck shrank because of state taxes.

From Disney to Beachbody brought another lift. In 2016, he moved to Beachbody, earning about $120,000 a year. There he learned React. a coding framework he says was “more trending and paid more than other coding frameworks.” React also turned into something beyond a job: he wrote “five books about React” and earns “small royalties.”.

In 2017, he returned to Globant—this time as a tech lead at Disney within ABC News—earning $127,000 a year. The pay was only a “small jump,” he said, but the title and responsibilities mattered.

The next year, that stability vanished. He said he lost his job “only a couple of weeks before my visa expired.” He explained that on the TN visa there is “a 60-day grace period” after being laid off, but because the timing was tied to his visa expiration, he “had to return to Mexico.”

Even from Mexico, he tried to keep moving forward, applying for jobs directly. He said most companies wanted “in-person interviews,” which made the search harder.

Then came a startup—and a new kind of momentum. Santana Roldán said he got a job with a startup that was acquired by MindBody, relocating to San Francisco with $10,000 provided for relocation. His salary was around $145,000.

The move didn’t land evenly in his household. He said his wife had been working, but when they moved to San Francisco, she lost her job. With no success finding work in San Francisco, she went to LA, and for eight months they lived separately.

He described a routine that stretched weekend travel into a constant test: “Every weekend. I traveled to LA or she traveled to San Francisco.” He said living in San Francisco offered an experience worth trying. but he emphasized costs—rent. food. and the difficulty of transportation. especially if you need to take the train into the city.

By 2020, he tried to time a job change carefully. He took a week of vacation and went to LA “right before the pandemic hit” to look for work. He said he got an offer from Snap.

He had applied for a manager position, which he believed would have paid “around $185,000,” but Snap offered him a developer role instead—$140,000. After “eight months of instability,” he said he didn’t care about the lower salary because his priority was to move to LA to be with his wife.

The contract details became a surprise later. He signed without reading it closely, he admitted, because he assumed it was “the $140,000 salary” and nothing more. Only after did he realize the offer also included “restricted stock units (RSUs).”

Those RSUs turned into an extraordinary year. He said he received $225. 000 worth of Snap stocks. split across four years. when they were “around $12.50 a unit.” At the time. he was building cabins in Mexico for his rental business. so he didn’t mind waiting for the stock to rise. Each month. when he received stock. he said he sold it and sent the money to Mexico to build more cabins.

He described a first year of rapid gains: the stock “skyrocketed from $12 to $80,” and he used the money to build two cabins in Mexico. Then, in 2021, he said he made around $420,000 because the stock surged.

But fortune reversed with speed. He said he worked for Snap for “around two years and three months,” and then “the stocks started going down,” dropping to “below $30 a unit.” He also said he lost his job “a week before my daughter was born.”

He tied the job loss to a painful insurance-driven reality: for insurance reasons, they had to delay the birth of their daughter by one day. “Thank God everything went well,” he said, adding that there were “no major issues,” but he described how the job loss still felt personal.

After Snap, he landed a new role at APM Music as a principal engineer through someone he knew from a previous job. Principal engineer, he said, is “one of the highest positions you can get as an engineer.”

His initial pay was $175,000 a year plus a 10% annual bonus—about $192,000 total. After two and a half years and some salary bumps, his compensation increased to $190,000 base salary plus a 12% annual bonus, totaling around $213,000.

He said he worked there for about three years. But once the project was completed and the company entered maintenance mode, he became “too expensive for them to keep.” He praised the way it ended: they gave him “three months to look for a new job.”

Still, the job hunt didn’t come easily. He described the market as “crazy,” shaped by AI and widespread layoffs, and he added that many companies didn’t want to hire people on visas. He said he was searching everywhere, “even in Mexico,” and that he only got “two or three interviews.”

During unemployment, his cabin business kept cash moving. He said because of his cabin rental business in Mexico. he was able to draw money from his Mexican bank account while unemployed. He said he was surviving on “around $900 per month.” His wife was paying the rent. and with the Mexican income he said he was buying food and paying for basic stuff in cash. He noted the cost of survival came with ATM transaction fees.

After weeks of applying, he tried a change that surprised him. He said he removed the “Open to Work” badge on his LinkedIn profile and changed his position as if he started a new startup—explaining that he had developed software to manage reservations for his Mexico cabin rental business. with a plan to extend it to handle hotel reservations and turn it into a SaaS.

He said the effect came quickly: after changing his profile, he started getting emails from recruiters “within two weeks,” and instead of him looking for work, “recruiters started reaching out to me.”

That led to contract offers. He said one opportunity would have involved working in Mexico, but after living in the US for more than 10 years, moving back would have been a big change.

Today, his current role is a contractor job with “a large music corporation,” where he has been working for about a year. He makes “just over $200,000 a year.” It is less than what he was getting before, he said, but he described it as his “best choice” given “how bad the market is right now.”

His view of risk is shaped by immigration realities. He said his visa status affects what he can realistically expect in a tight labor market. “At this point, especially with my visa status, I feel like I’m reaching my limit in the current market.”

He is also clear-eyed about how income changes behavior. As his money rose, he said he also spent more—describing a psychological shift: “There is a moment when your mind is like, OK, I want more, and more, and more.”

In Mexico, he said, the pattern was different. Even when he earned far less, he saved or spent less than he made. In the US. he said. it feels like the system pushes people toward bigger spending. and he singled out rent. saying it has grown more expensive over time. “At this point, I’m more balanced,” he said. He still has debt, but not too much.

He also described a practical range of income that makes his plan feel feasible. He said he can live with “$400. 000. ” or “$200. 000. ” or even “with $50. 000.” His expectation that his visa isn’t permanent drives the strategy. “That’s why I’ve invested basically all of my money in Mexico. ” he said. explaining that if something happens—or if he gets tired—he’ll still have something built there.

For Santana Roldán. the story is less about climbing a ladder and more about building a safety net while the ground beneath work authorization. company budgets. and stock prices keeps shifting. He expects his last job as an employee to come with an end date he can plan around: three or four years from now. once his cabin project reaches its next milestone—and he can trade coding time for family time.

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