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Staff engineer at Google, most likely, but possibly Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft. In any case, somebody who thinks this represents a significant slice of the Si
by freyr 9y ago
Staff engineer at Google, most likely, but possibly Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.
In any case, somebody who thinks this represents a significant slice of the Silicon Valley workforce is living in a bubble. For every engineer making >$500k, there are many thousands making <$200k, at the thousands of other tech companies in the Bay Area that aren't Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple. While the $500k engineer has every incentive to stay in SV, that has no bearing on the vast majority of engineers.
- lawnchair_larry 9y agoI have seen offers or been given exact numbers from 3 of the 4 companies in your list at the "staff engineer" level or equivalent ("principal" at both amazon and microsoft), and they are nowhere near $500k/year. I have heard that at FB and Google, a very small percentage of engineers got special stock awards a couple years ago that could put them in that range. But most top performers at these places at the senior/staff level are more in the 175-350 range. Other than that, the only engineers making that kind of money got lucky in a startup lottery.
- freyr 9y agoI wouldn't rule out $500k for Google. It's not a super reliable source, but Glassdoor lists the average total compensation for a Google staff engineer at $420k. I doubt Apple, Amazon, or even Facebook pay that much on any regular basis, but I wouldn't rule out someone getting an outsized offer during a machine learning (or other flavor of the month) hiring frenzy. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E9079_D_KO7,30.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engin...