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>>Since I left, I've helped multiple other friends/colleagues detach emotionally from the need for approval, practice for interviews and get job offers from App
by enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Since I left, I've helped multiple other friends/colleagues detach emotionally from the need for approval, practice for interviews and get job offers from Apple/FB/Google for substantial (> %75) raises.
Is that 75% number normalized for the area's cost-of-living? Seattle isn't nearly as expensive as the Bay Area (which is where those other companies you mentioned are located), so of course the nominal salaries will be substantially lower.
- jvolkman 11y agoAll three have offices in Seattle.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nemtaro 11y agoAll of the friends whom I helped, and myself included have transferred from Amazon to Facebook/Google/Apple located in Seattle. I went from ~$150 total comp to ~$260 after a couple of rounds of negotiations with the companies who gave me offers. This was a couple of years ago, and I was happy to see another friend who left Amazon for Google get offered over $300k recently at the same SDE II level.
- whitenoice 11y agocurious to know how many years of experience do you have?
- compostor42 11y agoDamn, 260k and 300k? Why are these so high? Do you and your friend have some valuable speciality?
- seiji 11y agoWhen one bedroom apartments cost $5,000 per month, you need a minimum salary of $200,000 to even qualify at the low end, but then over half your take home pay goes towards rent. A safer salary is easily $250k to $300k. Those levels of salary get you above the line of working just to pay for your overpriced apartment.
- delecti 11y agoI live in Seattle, as does the person who mentioned the salaries, and I would be hard pressed to even find a 1BR that cost $5,000/mo. I recently lived in a very large 2BR for $2200, full of amenities. Even if you want a really nice place in a great location I'd have no trouble finding a 1BR that was absolutely fantastic for $2000. This ain't SF.
- seiji 11y agodoh. It didn't occur to me people would stay in Seattle after getting Google jobs. Perhaps Google should COL-adjust SF employees up to about $500k/year. There's a weird life trap where you're making what most people would consider "a lot," but over half your take home pay is eaten by rent and food that costs 3x what it would somewhere else. So your "a lot" turns into "can't afford a car" or "can't save up enough to get out of the cycle" without moving to less desirable places. Better to serve in hell (SF/NYC) than reign in flyover country?
- jsolson 11y ago> It didn't occur to me people would stay in Seattle after getting Google jobs. It's actually pretty fantastic.
- aianus 11y agoFood in SF is cheap. So are car costs. Actually everything except rent was considerably cheaper when I lived in SF vs Toronto.
- mahyarm 11y agoBe glad you don't live in Vancouver, where the average house cost is the same as the bay area, but the average income is the same as reno nv. Rent although seems to be almost half the price of a house mortgage, so there is strange business going on in vancouver.
- dclowd9901 11y agoTotal comp, I assume, includes presumed vested stock payout. Even as a FE developer (sr level) these numbers aren't unfathomable when they include stocks.
- rifung 11y agoWhy are FE devs paid lower? I'm not a FE dev but I don't see why they deserve any less..
- dclowd9901 11y agoThat's nice of you to say, but I think a few things play into it: 1) I've found most FE devs are not classically trained software engineers (most don't have CS degrees) 2) There's still a stigma that all FE is is writing HTML, CSS and JS (when, in fact, there's now entire build management layers, and the frontend stack is as complicated and nuanced as that of any OS' SDK). This is a holdover idea that is starting to diminish. 3) Because of 1, the market likely has more FE developers available to it. I'd be curious to see what your typical self-taught Java, C#, Python, Ruby or DBA makes. 4) I've also noticed a trend of BE engineers showing interest in front-end work, given its new challenges and such, further saturating the market. This is completely anecdotal though.
- wilsynet 11y agoLet's say you make $150K salary, plus 15% bonus and $75K per year of FB/Google/Apple RSUs. That gets you to $247K. At these very successful companies they almost always pay out your full annual bonus and the stocks are outright grants, not stock options. This is not captured by salary surveys, which only ever talk about base salaries.
- serge2k 11y agoI think I probably should have done more negotiating.
- lawnchair_larry 11y agoDon't quote total comp. Everyone has a different formula for total comp, with recruiters and HR departments being the masters of padding that number, so it's useless. Just quote salary.
- eitally 11y agoI normally agree with this, but I think it's ok to make an exception when bonuses are paid out in full each year and stock is grants, not options.