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I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We d

I'd also like to point out that...we're a largely remote company. We don't index our salaries to the most expensive time and place to hire developers ever. We don't have to support Bay Area rent, or duel it out with AppAmaMicroGoog to keep our people from getting poached. We hire people everywhere in the world and through that lens, we're competitive. I live like a king in Buffalo, NY.

POWERSTOMP 10y ago
What Punyon said. fwiw I live like a true Necromancer in the backwoods of Indiana.
- jachee 10y ago
  > Necromancer I misread that as "Neuromancer" and pictured you as Case-on-hiatus, jacking into your deck up in amongst the trees.
dpark 10y ago
SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in NYC?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- JasonPunyon 10y ago
  We have offices in NYC, London, and Denver. If I'm remembering correctly, I can count the number of developers who've left the company on one hand. We currently have ~20 engineering staff in the NYC office. Retention doesn't seem to be a huge problem.
  - dpark 10y ago
    Is there significant compensation not captured by this tool (bonus, equity, amazing benefits)? $132K for a "2" with 10 years experience just seems really low in NYC. $171K for a "5" seems really low, too, since that person would be principle at Google or Microsoft.
    - JasonPunyon 10y ago
      This is the standard stuff from our company page (http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow)... 20 days vacation (to start) Flextime No Copay Health Insurance Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo. Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here. $3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement In NYC and Denver we have in house chefs Unlimited sick time Fully Paid Parental Leave ...but our people team is pretty empowered to make you happy. And yeah, there's equity.
      - dpark 10y ago
        Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom end there is more like $250 with bonus and (tangible) equity grants. Good for you guys for managing high retention. Something is keeping your devs happy and it's not the money.
        JasonPunyon 10y ago
        Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.
        dpark 10y ago
        Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well. Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really want to work there either from what I've heard. Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.
- mwsherman 10y ago
  A majority of our technical team (around ⅔) are remote, so the HQ in NYC is not the center of gravity that one might assume. Also the NYC office has chefs, so. ;)
  - p4wnc6 10y ago
    Do you explain the dollar value of the food prepared by the chefs to new hires, and offer to make up their compensation by that dollar value if the chef services are ever terminated in the future? I've worked at and interviewed with companies that had fringe benefits like this before and always found it off-putting. I'm a grown human mammal -- getting food for myself is my job, not your job as my employer. If you want to be nice enough to do that because you think it makes me happy, or it is kind, or it boosts productivity, or it subtly manipulates me into staying at the office later or something, that's all fine -- but then it should have no bearing on what compensation I'm paid, and should not function as either an incentive nor a disincentive to work for you. But it tends to always be presented like this. It's asymmetric. The employee is asked to essentially forsake income they would have otherwise gotten for a short-term benefit that has no guarantee of continuing in the future nor converting into cash if it's discontinued. It just strikes me as paternalistic (good ol' papa company is taking care of you, heh heh heh) and a little inconsiderate -- masked with some veneer that actually it's supposed to be considerate. Totally as an aside to my points above, as a vegan whose primary hobby is cooking, I never much enjoy chef-prepared company food anyway, even when vegan options are available. I strongly prefer to cook everything I eat for myself, and so I would simply be paid less than other employees who are paid their salary and are paid via the food benefit that does work with their dietary choices. Of course, because of the low-status nature of being vegan and the one-sidedness of job interviews (e.g. you can't raise an ethical question like this with HR thinking uh oh this guy's some kind of ethical hard ass who won't be pliable, abort, abort), I unfortunately have to stay quiet about my true feelings about this kind of thing, even though it matters to me a lot.
    - tmp12151229 10y ago
      Tangentially: Google also hasn't upped their compensation to compensate for the quality and variety of their meals and snacks going off a cliff over the last few years. Their vegan options in particular have become abysmal. They pressure employees to work on the periphery of Mountain View where there are no other options within a reasonable distance, so if you're vegan you really need to prepare your own food at this point. The value of this benefit is approaching zero.
mahyarm 10y ago
If you move to somewhere mostly tax free $104k USD is like $160k pre-tax in california. They also have private offices, which can be a special perk for a bunch of people.
overcast 10y ago
Greeting from Rochester! I equally enjoy living like a king with the cost of living in Western,NY Looking at your CV, we may have partied at some point, I went to RIT and dated a Geneseo girl around your timeframe :)

POWERSTOMP 10y ago

What Punyon said. fwiw I live like a true Necromancer in the backwoods of Indiana.

jachee 10y ago
> Necromancer I misread that as "Neuromancer" and pictured you as Case-on-hiatus, jacking into your deck up in amongst the trees.

dpark 10y ago

SO is based in NYC, right? Do you not have trouble retaining local devs there on these salaries? Or do you just have no one who actually lives and works in NYC?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
JasonPunyon 10y ago
We have offices in NYC, London, and Denver. If I'm remembering correctly, I can count the number of developers who've left the company on one hand. We currently have ~20 engineering staff in the NYC office. Retention doesn't seem to be a huge problem.
- dpark 10y ago
  Is there significant compensation not captured by this tool (bonus, equity, amazing benefits)? $132K for a "2" with 10 years experience just seems really low in NYC. $171K for a "5" seems really low, too, since that person would be principle at Google or Microsoft.
  - JasonPunyon 10y ago
    This is the standard stuff from our company page (http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow)... 20 days vacation (to start) Flextime No Copay Health Insurance Whatever workstation you want (PC/MAC/Build Your Own), Monitors out the wazoo. Seriously, I have 128GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, we don't skimp here. $3,500 a year + 3 days conference budget Gym Reimbursement Tuition Reimbursement In NYC and Denver we have in house chefs Unlimited sick time Fully Paid Parental Leave ...but our people team is pretty empowered to make you happy. And yeah, there's equity.
    - dpark 10y ago
      Interesting. So you have good benefits, good vacation, and some equity (of questionable value, since it's not publicly traded), but nothing that adds another 30k in value to the package over your competitors. If the numbers from the calculator are accurate, I don't know how places like Google aren't vacuuming up all your senior+ devs. A principle dev at Google in NYC must get paid at least $200k. I'd bet the bottom end there is more like $250 with bonus and (tangible) equity grants. Good for you guys for managing high retention. Something is keeping your devs happy and it's not the money.
      - JasonPunyon 10y ago
        Not everyone wants to work at Google. I know I don't.
        dpark 10y ago
        Google was just a proxy for software engineering employers who pay well. Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon all pay similarly. So do a number of other companies. The finance corps in NYC probably do too, but I wouldn't really want to work there either from what I've heard. Regardless, I certainly would not encourage you or anyone else to leave a job they love if it pays them an amount they are happy with. Going to Google or anyone else for a 20% pay bump is a bad deal if you end up less happy overall.
mwsherman 10y ago
A majority of our technical team (around ⅔) are remote, so the HQ in NYC is not the center of gravity that one might assume. Also the NYC office has chefs, so. ;)
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  Do you explain the dollar value of the food prepared by the chefs to new hires, and offer to make up their compensation by that dollar value if the chef services are ever terminated in the future? I've worked at and interviewed with companies that had fringe benefits like this before and always found it off-putting. I'm a grown human mammal -- getting food for myself is my job, not your job as my employer. If you want to be nice enough to do that because you think it makes me happy, or it is kind, or it boosts productivity, or it subtly manipulates me into staying at the office later or something, that's all fine -- but then it should have no bearing on what compensation I'm paid, and should not function as either an incentive nor a disincentive to work for you. But it tends to always be presented like this. It's asymmetric. The employee is asked to essentially forsake income they would have otherwise gotten for a short-term benefit that has no guarantee of continuing in the future nor converting into cash if it's discontinued. It just strikes me as paternalistic (good ol' papa company is taking care of you, heh heh heh) and a little inconsiderate -- masked with some veneer that actually it's supposed to be considerate. Totally as an aside to my points above, as a vegan whose primary hobby is cooking, I never much enjoy chef-prepared company food anyway, even when vegan options are available. I strongly prefer to cook everything I eat for myself, and so I would simply be paid less than other employees who are paid their salary and are paid via the food benefit that does work with their dietary choices. Of course, because of the low-status nature of being vegan and the one-sidedness of job interviews (e.g. you can't raise an ethical question like this with HR thinking uh oh this guy's some kind of ethical hard ass who won't be pliable, abort, abort), I unfortunately have to stay quiet about my true feelings about this kind of thing, even though it matters to me a lot.
  - tmp12151229 10y ago
    Tangentially: Google also hasn't upped their compensation to compensate for the quality and variety of their meals and snacks going off a cliff over the last few years. Their vegan options in particular have become abysmal. They pressure employees to work on the periphery of Mountain View where there are no other options within a reasonable distance, so if you're vegan you really need to prepare your own food at this point. The value of this benefit is approaching zero.

mahyarm 10y ago

If you move to somewhere mostly tax free $104k USD is like $160k pre-tax in california. They also have private offices, which can be a special perk for a bunch of people.

overcast 10y ago

Greeting from Rochester! I equally enjoy living like a king with the cost of living in Western,NY Looking at your CV, we may have partied at some point, I went to RIT and dated a Geneseo girl around your timeframe :)