Ex-Google techie tripled her income after divorce. She now earns ₹8.7 crore a year

A Google techie has revealed that getting divorced worked as a “wake-up call" for her and she ended up tripling her earnings after her separation, now earning over $1 million ( ₹8.73 crore) a year, CNBC reported.

37-year-old Venus Wang had moved from China to US in 2013 and landed a six-figure job as a sourcing manager for a tech company. Wang left her job to move with her husband and planned to take a year off to raise her daughter before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Left with no other option, she became a full-time stay-at-home mom and soon her marriage came to an end.

Rebuilding career

When the dust settled, she realised all she had $10,000 (about ₹8.7 lakh) in savings and now she was a single mom.

“I remember the personal identity shift was a very big thing for me — to transform from someone else’s wife to a single mom. When we were splitting up, I took a really hard look at my personal finances. I had less than $10,000 in cash... I started to realise that up until that point, I had managed my personal finances really terribly. I had to make a really drastic change in terms of my mindset. This is not only just about me anymore. This is also about me taking care of my daughter’s future as well," she told CNBC.

Determined to rebuild her career and her financial future, she moved to San Francisco and began working for Google. Wang oversaw software quality and operations at Google for products such as Gmail and Google Drive and earned $300,000 a year, which she said helped her realign her future goal.

Tripled her salary

But after a year at the job, she decided it was time to step up. She set her sights on artificial intelligence and took on different AI roles till she quit Google to join a startup. The moves helped her triple her annual income from $300,000 to $970,000, including equity and bonuses, in just three years. Now, Wang makes $1 million (about ₹8.7 crore) a year working in the AI division of a major tech firm.

But despite earning $1 million per year, she keeps her expenses low. She rents a 2-bedroom apartment rather than buying her own home, choosing to put the money toward investments instead.

She chooses to shop secondhand and frequently resells items and rarely indulges in luxury purchases. “I try to live frugally because I know that long-term financial security matters more than short-term luxuries,” she said.

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