5 ms·

Your numbers are way off. Salary doesn't paint the entire picture. Median total comp for a fresh out of college (L3) at Google is ~165k. L4 is ~215k. L5 (Seni

by p7919 11y ago

Your numbers are way off. Salary doesn't paint the entire picture. Median total comp for a fresh out of college (L3) at Google is ~165k. L4 is ~215k. L5 (Senior) is ~265k. Factor in free breakfast/lunch/dinner, free gym, free laundry, generous 401k matching, other perks and discounts, and the gap widens even more.

vonmoltke 11y ago
And those scenarios represent a small fraction of the total number of engineers in the Valley. There is a reason Google is so selective in its hiring. Throwing those out as typical is disingenuous.
ryandrake 11y ago
Google is a huge outlier when it comes to salary. There are thousands of tech companies in the bay area, and median salary is around $100K.
- zippergz 11y ago
  Do you have a source of this data? I have tons of friends in the Bay Area who work at a wide variety of tech companies, and none of them are making $100k or less. I guess maybe they really are "all above average" but I find it hard to believe that the median salary for software engineers in the bay area is really $100k.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Sure. [1] [2] Of course, this is just "a couple minutes of google research"--I am not a subject matter expert, as someone on HN kindly pointed out last time I posted these here. Also, they are based on self-reported surveys and don't include sellable equity, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't know where better data would be published. I'm intuitively not too surprised by these figures--I think the HN demographic is probably pretty skewed towards the higher end, judging by all those threads where people toss around $150K and $200K salaries as "normal". 1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,31.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en... 2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary/a5e48575/San-Francisco-CA http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...
flurben 11y ago
$140k is what we're discussing in this thread. You're welcome to join us.

by p7919 11y ago

vonmoltke 11y ago

And those scenarios represent a small fraction of the total number of engineers in the Valley. There is a reason Google is so selective in its hiring. Throwing those out as typical is disingenuous.

ryandrake 11y ago

Google is a huge outlier when it comes to salary. There are thousands of tech companies in the bay area, and median salary is around $100K.

zippergz 11y ago
Do you have a source of this data? I have tons of friends in the Bay Area who work at a wide variety of tech companies, and none of them are making $100k or less. I guess maybe they really are "all above average" but I find it hard to believe that the median salary for software engineers in the bay area is really $100k.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Sure. [1] [2] Of course, this is just "a couple minutes of google research"--I am not a subject matter expert, as someone on HN kindly pointed out last time I posted these here. Also, they are based on self-reported surveys and don't include sellable equity, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't know where better data would be published. I'm intuitively not too surprised by these figures--I think the HN demographic is probably pretty skewed towards the higher end, judging by all those threads where people toss around $150K and $200K salaries as "normal". 1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,31.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en... 2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary/a5e48575/San-Francisco-CA http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

flurben 11y ago

$140k is what we're discussing in this thread. You're welcome to join us.