4 ms·

Thanks for sharing your numbers. You must admit that $40k bonus after tax is a huge, atypical amount of money. It makes your effective yearly income to be abo

Thanks for sharing your numbers. You must admit that $40k bonus after tax is a huge, atypical amount of money. It makes your effective yearly income to be about $156k. It reminds me of the mrmoneymustache.com guy, saying "anyone can retire early! Just look at me, all I had to do was get $1M in stock from Cisco!" No disrespect intended for you; I'm sure compared to some of your friends you lived frugally. The point I'm making is that to duplicate your living standard today, very few comparable developers would be able approach your level of savings.

nostrademons 10y ago
It's over 2 years. $20K or so after tax per year. A bit over $30K pre-tax. Not sure what typical bonuses are these days, but I don't think that's out of line for a big tech company. Certainly stock grants can be much more than that, but it usually takes more than 18 months for them to amount to anything.
- user5994461 10y ago
  It's out of line for people who are not at big tech companies with publicly traded stock or bonus.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing numbers. Wow, that's an amazing bonus, and you should feel fortunate! This is coming from someone who does work for a big tech company. I've never seen anything remotely close to that.
  - ohwello 10y ago
    These are completely normal numbers for the Bay Area. I got substantially higher offers when switching jobs recently, so these numbers from 2010 are not surprising. I am not a rockstar or anything. I just applied to a lot of companies to get multiple offers, and negotiated aggressively. Lots of people are being paid less than this because they don't know they should be asking for more. Check paysa.com for user-reported total compensation in recent offers. If you don't believe them, check http://h1bdata.info http://h1bdata.info for lawyer-reported salaries of h1b employees (base salary only and probably biased downward by h1b abuse). The h1b data is mind blowing in the huge disparities within the same company. Let me tell you: the people getting paid 50% more with the same title are not 50% better. I increased offers by 50% by telling the recruiters that's what I would need to accept an offer.
shawndumas 10y ago
not for the bay area; and really, that's the point...
- linkregister 10y ago
  I will unequivocally state that a total comp of $150k+ for a new grad is at the very least, the top 5% of software development salaries for that level of experience.
  - shawndumas 10y ago
    was the op a new grad? sorry, I missed that. yes, $150k for a ncg in the first year is high. but honestly not that high, and for a 2nd year... doable from my experience [1]. [1: I am an engineering manager at Google]
    - linkregister 10y ago
      Yes, doable at Google, a company known for being at the top of the market in compensation. The whole point of the original statement was "I made $X and saved $Y, it's not that hard." But when you examine the X and the Y, they are not representative at all! It has similar merit to a lottery winner saying, "why can't you win the lottery too? All I did was buy a lottery ticket."
      - ohwello 10y ago
        Google pays substantially more than that - matching that number does not put you at the top of the market. Companies paying that much include many of the largest tech employers in the area. Compensation for job switchers has been increasing rapidly since the no-poaching ring was busted, but you have to know to ask for it. Lots of people are anchored from that period and don't know what they are missing.

nostrademons 10y ago

It's over 2 years. $20K or so after tax per year. A bit over $30K pre-tax. Not sure what typical bonuses are these days, but I don't think that's out of line for a big tech company. Certainly stock grants can be much more than that, but it usually takes more than 18 months for them to amount to anything.

user5994461 10y ago
It's out of line for people who are not at big tech companies with publicly traded stock or bonus.
ryandrake 10y ago
Thanks for sharing numbers. Wow, that's an amazing bonus, and you should feel fortunate! This is coming from someone who does work for a big tech company. I've never seen anything remotely close to that.
- ohwello 10y ago
  These are completely normal numbers for the Bay Area. I got substantially higher offers when switching jobs recently, so these numbers from 2010 are not surprising. I am not a rockstar or anything. I just applied to a lot of companies to get multiple offers, and negotiated aggressively. Lots of people are being paid less than this because they don't know they should be asking for more. Check paysa.com for user-reported total compensation in recent offers. If you don't believe them, check http://h1bdata.info http://h1bdata.info for lawyer-reported salaries of h1b employees (base salary only and probably biased downward by h1b abuse). The h1b data is mind blowing in the huge disparities within the same company. Let me tell you: the people getting paid 50% more with the same title are not 50% better. I increased offers by 50% by telling the recruiters that's what I would need to accept an offer.

shawndumas 10y ago

not for the bay area; and really, that's the point...

linkregister 10y ago
I will unequivocally state that a total comp of $150k+ for a new grad is at the very least, the top 5% of software development salaries for that level of experience.
- shawndumas 10y ago
  was the op a new grad? sorry, I missed that. yes, $150k for a ncg in the first year is high. but honestly not that high, and for a 2nd year... doable from my experience [1]. [1: I am an engineering manager at Google]
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Yes, doable at Google, a company known for being at the top of the market in compensation. The whole point of the original statement was "I made $X and saved $Y, it's not that hard." But when you examine the X and the Y, they are not representative at all! It has similar merit to a lottery winner saying, "why can't you win the lottery too? All I did was buy a lottery ticket."
    - ohwello 10y ago
      Google pays substantially more than that - matching that number does not put you at the top of the market. Companies paying that much include many of the largest tech employers in the area. Compensation for job switchers has been increasing rapidly since the no-poaching ring was busted, but you have to know to ask for it. Lots of people are anchored from that period and don't know what they are missing.