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Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
- brainary 10y agoUS only?
- cookiecaper 10y agoI'm pretty sure the data is coming from the self-reported salary spreadsheet that was posted on here about a month ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223). There's a lot of valuable information in it and there were no geographical restrictions on participation. However, it's all self-reported and unverified, and there are some values that are obvious fakes.
- stepny 10y agoIt's possible that some of the data came from that spreadsheet. The sources of the data are cited at the bottom of the post. You're right that it is all self-reported and unverified. We tried to clean and standardize the data as best we could. The biggest source of error for us in the process might have been the level, particularly because some of the reported bonuses and stock compensation seemed out of line with the stated level. But we took the Level as it was in almost all cases. It may very well be that companies overpay in certain circumstances.
- stepny 10y agoYes, it's all US I believe. If you click the link to look at the raw data, you can see the google doc which has a column for City/State
- overcast 10y agoIs it a case of only people making the most money are more apt to report their earnings?
- smeyer 10y agoThere's obviously going to be a bias of some sort, but it would probably be worth looking at the distribution of the reported salaries to get a better sense of that. (The author may have already looked at the spread of salaries, I haven't read through the whole thing yet). You could also try comparing with visadoor.com or another source of H1B data for the same companies to try to see where they fit in. There may be a systematic difference between H1B salaries and the larger employee base at these companies, but at least you're not limited by self-reporting.
- khare_ashwini 10y agoThe data you see on such sites is only the base salary component as they parse through LCA disclosure data. As highlighted above, much of the compensation comes from bonuses / stocks etc. I did some analysis on the above data as well: http://ashwinikhare.in/tech-firms-guest-visa/ http://ashwinikhare.in/tech-firms-guest-visa/
- smeyer 10y agoYeah, sorry if I came across as implying it to be an equivalent data set. I just meant that if someone is wondering how the distribution of salaries compares to everyone with a specific title at a specific company, they might want to compare the base salaries being collated here with the base salaries for H1Bs with the same title.
- khare_ashwini 10y agoThat would be a fair comparison, but a challenging given the data available by OFLC. Most of the companies just mention the "Software Engineer" title, and don't mention the level when applying for LCA, whose data is disclosed. Some companies do, but don't everyone. FWIW, I'm pretty sure it should be around the same number.
- stepny 10y agoWe actually suspect that people who are paid less or are underpaid are more likely to report their salaries. For example, it seems like Glassdoor data skews low.
- mtgx 10y agoSo Microsoft offers half the salaries for levels 3 and 4? That's interesting.
- loeg 10y agoPossibly a Bay area vs Seattle compensation thing.
- Boss_TiVo 10y agohow frequently will you update this report?
- stepny 10y agoAiming for once a week, but depends on how much more data we're able to get.
- cdnsteve 10y agoWhat about retirement/pension plans? This also has cash value and should be part of the comparison.
- stepny 10y agoUnfortunately, we don't have that information right now. We could try to find out. It just wasn't part of the compensation data that the people on Hacker News had posted.
- drewg123 10y agoI'd be surprised if any of the big companies didn't provide at least 401K and as much matching as the law will allow. There really isn't a lot of freedom to innovate in this space that I'm aware of. With that said, Google did have this odd thing where you could do an in-plan Roth conversion, and put post-tax dollars into your 401K. I did this in 2013 or 2014, and I think Google was one of the few companies to offer this at the time. One interesting area of differentiation is health care. When I left Google in 2015, they were cutting health benefits to avoid Cadillac plan taxes. Lots of people were saying that Facebook had better plans.
- tamana 10y agoAll except Amazon, you mean! Frugal FTW
- ones_and_zeros 10y agoWasn't there already a spreadsheet floating around HN with many thousands of entries? Why a new one?
- stepny 10y agoThere are a bunch of spreadsheets. We consolidated and standardized the data on a few of them, but we still have more to do. We clean the data, and then we try to see what type of synthesized info we can provide back.
- eulji 10y agoI would be more interested in data that shows how much money an engineer takes back home (net income) compared to the rest of the world. eg Software Engineer from Atlantis earns 100 000 USD but pays 55% of tax so takes home only 45000 Software Engineer from Middle-Earth earns 60 000 USD but pays 10% tax and takes home 54000 etc
- aioprisan 10y agoYou also have to take into account things like quality of life in the city vs a long commute if living in the suburb.
- sliverstorm 10y agoYou're not wrong, but tax is certainly one of the easier first steps as part of trying to compare salaries.
- Tloewald 10y agoRight, but easier doesn't mean useful. E.g. One of the easiest steps in comparing salaries across countries is exchange rate, but it's not nearly as useful as a list of local prices for commonly needed stuff. E.g. In Singapore when I last visited (quite a while back) car registration cost about $30,000 per year.
- eulji 10y agoRight. But a country as a whole is what I am interested in. I mean iphone costs about the same anywhere in the world ( okay it's sometimes more usually not less (Brazil?)) so there's that...
- sjwright 10y agoiPhone-like items are a very small part of anyone's annual budget. What matters are housing costs, transport costs, healthcare costs and quality of life. All of which are highly variable depending on location.
- dev1n 10y agoWhy only the big four?
- dsmithatx 10y agoAmazon keeps asking me to interview and everyone tells me it's a terrible place to work. After seeing this compensation via equity I'm thinking it might be worth it. Anyone work at Amazon and loves it or think it's really worth it?
- umanwizard 10y agoAre we looking at the same data? SDE3 is a quite senior role at Amazon. I don't know very many of them, and almost all of the ones I know are extremely bright. Seems like they're getting ripped off.
- debacle 10y agoI know a few people who have worked at Amazon for 3-4 years and they've never let on that their job is awful. That said, one of them is the kind of person that I would expect to do really well in an Amazonian environment, and the other now works at Nintendo.
- yannickt 10y agoOne of the tables has this important piece of information at the bottom: "Amazon's vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, and 40% over the 4 years" This is a significant deviation from the industry standard, which is to have a one year cliff, and have stock vest month-to-month afterwards. What happens if you leave in the middle of year 3?
- jpatel3 10y agoHere is the interactive version, explore and filter data to get more insight - https://tuvalabs.com/jpatel3/datasets/0df9f660770247d4a96313c372b23758/ https://tuvalabs.com/jpatel3/datasets/0df9f660770247d4a96313...
- xbryanx 10y agoIt would be very interesting to include technology workers in non-profit organizations alongside for-profit corps and startups.
- stepny 10y agoDefinitely. We have a few data points on tech roles at non-profits, but not enough to draw any meaningful conclusions yet. Hopefully, we can get some more data around this to be able to post the same type of analysis. We'll also be doing it for smaller companies too, to see how compensation compares across company size.
- kevindeasis 10y agoWhere do I put mine if I'm a recent grad who makes $0 and buried in crippling debt?
- vonmoltke 10y agoI would like to see one of these analysis break down base salary versus total compensation. I have never received less than 95% of my total compensation in base salary. Neither has my non-technical wife. I have no idea what is "normal" in that respect. I'd also like to see a breakdown by market, as I have been led to believe that my salary is only slightly below market for Dallas, but the median compensation numbers posted in this article for my experience level are three times what I make now, and it's depressing.
- loeg 10y agoBase salary vs total comp data from the research can be eyeballed from the first graphic in the article. For anecdote, approximately 66% of my total compensation is in base salary. When I first started working 5 years ago, it was 92%. These numbers are probably skewed somewhat by Bayarea salaries, which have to compensate a little for the high cost of living (compare for example Facebook/Google to Microsoft/Amazon, which are primarily Seattle-area employers). In general, I've found the Bayarea salary bump doesn't overcome the Bayarea cost-of-living bump. So these salaries are only higher on paper.
- vonmoltke 10y agoWell, for the past four years my total compensation has been 100% base salary, and I'm the equivalent of a low-end SDEIII so my total would double in salary alone. That leads me to believe I am underpaid even by Dallas standards, but I really have no idea how to gauge my market value.
- tamana 10y agoInterview for a job, learn market value.
- stepny 10y agoThe second chart should show the compensation breakdown across salary, cash bonus and equity. In NYC and SF, there's high demand for and short supply of developers, which drives up compensation. Companies in these cities will recruit from across the country to get talent. Cities like Dallas though also have a much lower cost of living, so that should be taken into account. There was a Hacker News thread about this at one point. We don't yet have enough data on each market, but we plan on breaking out the analysis by city once we get that data.
- javajosh 10y agoWould like to see a discussion of possible systematic bias. The "hacker" group generally prides itself on a) creatively messing systems up, and b) anticipating (and preventing) creative system mess-ups, I have to wonder how accurate this data is. Sure, there's little incentive to lie - but there is a small incentive, which is simply to mess with people. (And there might even be another, which is to exaggerate income to encourage others to ask for more money, which might eventually positively affect you.) I wonder if there is any way to measure this effect, or eliminate it.
- shivsta 10y agoHoly crap, I didn't realize that starting salary at Google was $175K. That seems a bit high for new college hires, but I suppose I'm comparing that to my salary as a freshie sdet.
- cornstalks 10y agoRead the chart again. It says the median starting salary is $110,000. $172,000 is the median total annual compensation, which includes bonuses (and stock typically won't vest during the first year, which means total compensation for the first year is actually closer to $123,000).
- MacsHeadroom 10y ago>which means total compensation for the first year is actually closer to $123,000 No, $172,000 is the median for year 1. Even $200k+ total comp at year 1 is typical for Google in the bay. The significant increases in bonus pay for higher levels reflect stock vesting for year 2/3/4/5 employees. Edit: "Google" in the bay
- ryandrake 10y agoThis "fact" keeps getting repeated here. While it may be typical for Google, it is in no way typical for "the bay". Median salary is around $110K for sw developers, and I highly doubt people are getting 100% of their salary in RSUs and bonuses their first year.
- MacsHeadroom 10y agoTypical for _Google_ in the bay, is what I meant. At any rate, I've received more than my fair share of $200k+ 1st year total comp offers for _start ups_ in SF for positions that only wanted 2-3 years experience. So, I wouldn't be so surprised.
- Bahamut 10y agoHuh? $110k is low. $90k is the starting salary at a lot of companies in the Bay Area for an entry level software engineer. Myself, I make $160k base salary at a small company in Palo Alto (was offered that at 2.5 years of experience), and know I could've gotten a lot more elsewhere.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- xulith 10y agoSo much money. Do people really need to be paid that much?!
- qihqi 10y agohalf of those go to tax.
- mercutio2 10y agoThis is a common fallacy. Even for a married couple earning 500k in high-income-tax California, effective tax rate (as opposed to marginal tax rate) is only 30-35%, and that includes the employee portion of Medicare/social security (the latter of which cuts out around 110k). The exact effective tax rate will vary mostly with your mortgage interest deduction.
- donretag 10y ago"The exact effective tax rate will vary mostly with your mortgage interest deduction." Massive assumption you are making regarding home ownership.
- pyrrhotech 10y agoquick calculation comes to about a 45% tax rate for single in CA and 42.4% for married. So 50% is a small exaggeration, but it's definitely closer to reality than 30-35% underestimate.
- dsp1234 10y agoNote that these numbers are likely the marginal tax rate, the tax rate that the very last dollar was taxed at. However, all of the income is not taxed at that rate. That is why the commenter above mentioned effective tax rate, which is the calculation of (total tax paid / total income).
- minwcnt5 10y ago
- lazyant 10y agoNeeds a bit of definition for levels, I take Level 1 is straight out of college, L2 is some (3-5 years) experience, kind of default, L3 "senior" (internal promotion, really good experienced candidates) and L4 super-senior?
- stepny 10y agoThanks for the feedback :). L1 is right out of college, but the others are based on different criteria. Quora has a pretty good post that describes the levels at Amazon, which you can translate into our levels that we created to compare across the companies. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-different-levels-of-software-engineers-at-Amazon-com https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-different-levels-of-softw...
- mahyarm 10y agoThis needs apple to round out the comparisons. I've found their offers tend to be lower than the others in general unless you have specialized skills.
- lolidaisuki 10y agoTwo things. 1) No developer is worth this much. 2) Only a fool would obsess over money this much. E: People here on HN are the greediest I know.
- electriclove 10y agoKudos, great job! Keep it up!
- stepny 10y agoThank you!
- arrty88 10y agoWhere is apple employee data?
- chatmasta 10y agoGoogle engineers would certainly like to think that. In reality, Google's hiring process selects for people who can follow instructions and are happy trading self-sufficiency and independence for the social validation that comes with working for such an "elite" company. Google engineers are some of the most sheep-like creatures on the planet.
- jboggan 10y agoI would disagree with your last sentence in particular.
- kp1234321 10y agoThis is a sweeping generalization without even anecdotal evidence to substantiate it, and sounds downright vindictive.
- pm90 10y agoAny big company has massive variations in employee skill levels. I get the feeling that Google tries to get a certain minimum standard for the people they hire (even if that standard may be high).
- dang 10y agoThis sort of attack on people isn't ok here. If you want to make a careful criticism about hiring practices, you're welcome to do that, but not this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535180 and marked it off-topic.
- blubb-fish 10y agogo f' yourself with your income porn ...
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post like this here.
- pareci 10y agoA given company should pay everyone the same. But, ego.
- wyldfire 10y agoThat seems like an interesting viewpoint. I don't think ego is really the only thing that drives pay distinction. I think that many people consider that different individuals contribute differently and that those who contribute more value should get more pay. Isn't that realization independent of ego?
- pareci 10y agoNope. Ego is behind the whole thing. Remember "from those according to their ability, to those according to their need"? The problem was always ego.
- cpprototypes 10y agoIt's unfortunate that this practice of giving almost the entire base salary amount as additional stock (RSU) has not spread outside the bay area. In other regions (such as LA, NY, Seattle, etc.) engineers only get base salary and sometimes a very small bonus. These base salaries are often competitive with the bay area, but the lack of the enormous RSU makes the total comp often 2x or more worse. EDIT: After writing this, I was curious how the BLS calculates wages. Here is the answer from their FAQ: http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview The following are excluded from the collection of OES wage data: Attendance bonuses Back pay Clothing allowances Discount Draw Holiday bonus Holiday premium pay Jury duty pay Meal and lodging payments Merchandise discounts Non-production bonuses On-call pay Overtime pay Perquisites Profit-sharing payments Relocation allowances Severance pay Shift differentials Stock bonuses Tool/equipment allowances Tuition repayment Uniform allowance Weekend premium pay Year-end bonuses This means that BLS data is basically garbage for software engineers. And it's somewhat harmful, because companies probably use this trusted government data to check market rates. Even if a company has good intentions and wants to pay market rate, if they use this data they won't realize just how little that is compared to the true market rate.
- pyrrhotech 10y agoIt's strategic because they know that most candidates barely know what an RSU is and salary is the main factor they will take into consideration. So companies can get by with paying the workers half what they'd make at Google and still make it seem competitive because the salary may be the same.
- cpprototypes 10y agoI think another factor is the salary sites such as salary.com, payscale, glassdoor, etc. These sites often don't include RSU in comparisons among companies. If it was included, many could see just how underpaid they are and there would be more pressure on companies.
- 10y ago
- pakled_engineer 10y agoWould be interesting to see hours worked too, are those $200k+ bonus salaries 84hr work weeks with 3 weeks vacation you can never take or normal hours.
- ninjakeyboard 10y agoIgnores geography a bit I think. In Canada a good salary is 80-100k a year imo (CANADIAN!).
- FmrAMZN_TA 10y ago<Former Amazon> I won't go on about the work quality at Amazon, there are plenty of other places to read about that. It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year. Therefore, these comparisons should really take that into account. Amazon MAY look higher than Microsoft (for example) but because you only see 20% of your total vest the first two years, and everyone in the company makes a max of $160k with anything else bringing you up to market rate being a yearly "bonus", you likely won't see the majority of your earnings. </Former Amazon>
- beamatronic 10y agoJust to clarify - do you mean the expected year-over-year retention is 50% meaning that if 100 people are hired in a year, then 365 days later, only about 50 of them will still be there? How much of that is because they are leaving or being let go?
- FmrAMZN_TA 10y agoWhen I was there, managers were guided to PIP (performance improvement plan) to make these numbers. Whether that meant grinding people into the ground, natural attrition, or making up excuses to out people - I saw all of them happen.
- aluskuiuc 10y agoAt least when I started there the first two years had cash bonuses to make up the target-comp difference before the larger stock vests came in, so it was fairly even.
- FmrAMZN_TA 10y agoAbsolutely, if you stayed, the numbers definitely add up to what you see here. However, because the attrition was so high, you were not likely to stick around to get a bonus to make up for it.
- ucha 10y ago
- rajathagasthya 10y agoHoly cow! Facebook's median signing bonus for Level 1 (new grad) engineers is $75K! Why is that higher than for experienced engineers? How can the other companies compete with that?
- beamatronic 10y agoIs that stock or cash?
- karangoeluw 10y agoIt's all cash contingent on employee staying for 1 year (I think).
- rajathagasthya 10y agoThat isn't specified. But isn't signing bonus usually cash? There's separate section for stock bonus in that table.
- felixhandte 10y agoCash.
- felixhandte 10y agoThe expectation, I've heard from recruiters, is that as a new grad you have a higher need for cash immediately (to buy furniture for your first apartment, e.g.). As an industry hire, you are probably already established and don't have a particular need for a lump sum right out of the gate (especially since relocation is provided for separately).
- karangoeluw 10y agoIf you are buying $75K worth of furniture, you're doing it wrong.
- razorunreal 10y agoIt looks like the last graph has Google and Facebook mixed up.
- manibatra 10y agoWould be interesting to see it correlated with average working hours per week.
- shekhar101 10y agoSigning Bonus offered by FB for level 1 is $75,000, disproportionately high compared to other companies, in all the levels. Why is that?
- stepny 10y agoGood question. We checked the raw data again, and the signing bonuses are all consistently high for Facebook Level 1. We also know a couple of people at Facebook who have received signing bonuses in line with the $75K. But we don't yet know why it's so high compared with the other companies.
- jefe_ 10y agoA moldable mind is a valuable thing.
- Jaruzel 10y agoI would love to see something similar for Finance IT (i.e. the Global Banks and Insurance Firms). It would also be nice if there was a country breakdown as well, but from reading the comments I see that data is not available in your current analysis.
- namelezz 10y agoWhy does MS pay their engineers less than other tech companies when most of their services are not free? It's like getting paid at tight budget startups. Despite of the reported salary here, I admire the engineers there. Is it because MS has great work culture and excellent benefits?
- tamana 10y agoLook at profit (excluding cost of investing in new business) per engineer.
- markc 10y agoI see 2 base salaries of $420420. Ha ha.