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Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

433 points by compumike 9y ago

jxramos 9y ago
I want to say these distributions are shifted to the right compared to StackOverflow, Dice.com, and Glassdoor salary estimates if I recall. Does that jibe with other's impressions? Maybe this is just more up to date in the year.
bgentry 9y ago
I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Even the salary figures themselves look low and are probably heavily skewed by an overrepresentation of underpaying startups. My base salary ~4 years ago was in the 90th percentile according to this. It’s unlikely I was among the 10% highest paid Bay Area engineers at that time. Don’t settle for a mediocre salary in an area with absurdly high cost of living. Don’t be satisfied with these averages. Funded startups will pay more if they need to.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  Yes, your analysis is correct. This is why the transparency is important. Check out www.h1bdata.info for what h1b holders are getting paid. The US Department of Labor forces this disclosure and is pretty up to date. Your tiny startup's cheap workers are probably in there too and you can deduce exactly who they are even though the names aren't in the disclosures.
  - cairo140 9y ago
    H-1B applications often exclude expected value of bonus and RSUs (mine does) and can understate comp at bigtech by ~60k (entry level) to ~150k (mid level) to ~300k+ (senior+).
    - klipt 9y ago
      Yeah the salary listed on the Labor Condition Application is a minimum the company must meet or exceed. When I was on H1-B it was lower than my actual salary.
    - grad_ml 9y ago
      Always.
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  > RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there really a significant number of engineers at Oracle or Cisco getting that much non-salary compensation?
  - bgentry 9y ago
    I haven’t heard about how those two companies pay. It’s definitely a common occurrence at Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, & Salesforce. Bonuses are often structured as a % of your base salary based upon your rank. More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. This is separate from RSUs, which vary a lot more widely. Their value is especially dependent upon company stock performance.
    - Domenic_S 9y ago
      Add eBay and Paypal.
    - vonmoltke 9y ago
      Those are in the top subset I was referring to. Most engineers working for established companies are not working for that subset. I'm not aware of Oracle, Cisco, or similar-tier companies giving stock grants to engineers. Cash bonuses are a different animal. I agree with your range (at least if you exclude defense contractors). Those alone are well short of doubling compensation, though.
      - lostboys67 9y ago
        Many FTSE 100 companies in the UK do have share save schemes available to all employees
    - onion2k 9y ago
      More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. The reason part of your salary is a bonus rather than the base is so that it can be withheld if necessary, eg in a bad year. Believing that bonus is an automatic extra 10% will, one day, leave you 10% short of your expectations.
- whataretensors 9y ago
  Look at how little equity in startups engineers get. Don't settle for common stock, it's 95% of the time worthless. And if it isn't you should be a millionaire for your risk, definitely not less than RSU compensation at megacorp #3.
  - JonFish85 9y ago
    "Don't settle for common stock" Unless you're a C-level employee, you're not going to have the choice. And even then you're probably still not going to have a choice except in very rare cases (e.g. Uber's new CEO might have some decent protections). If you're "just" an employee, you're going to get laughed at if you demand anything besides common stock.
    - regulation_d 9y ago
      Honestly, I'd be surprised if any employees, C-level or not, get preferred stock. Unless you're putting skin in the game, you're probably stuck with common stock.
      - vkou 9y ago
        Working for below market rates is putting skin in the game.
        angersock 9y ago
        "B-but but but muh founder status!" </s> It's a scam.
        csallen 9y ago
        The reality of the situation is that it's not about what you do, but about how hard it is to find someone else to do what you do. If it's easy to find programmers who will work for below-market rates, but hard to find investors who will contribute millions of dollars, then you can expect programmers to have much less negotiating power.
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  > I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. I agree with your overall message, but base salary itself is very important. That's what puts a roof over your family's head and food on the table. Bonuses and RSUs might accelerate retirement, but I wouldn't put them into the overall household budget.
  - bgentry 9y ago
    Completely agree! Even a substantial portion of your base salary should go into savings & retirement rather than being spent. Easier said than done in the Bay Area without 2 good salaries, especially for those with kids.
  - pm24601 9y ago
    I would go even further. Too often devs overvalue RSUs / options, etc. Such things are great - but even at Apple, the return on RSUs is going to level off or become less reliable. RSU / options are lottery tickets not a reliable income stream.
    - bgentry 9y ago
      RSUs and options are very different. RSUs are shares that the company gives to you, and for a public company you can sell them almost immediately to convert them to real cash. Their value fluctuates as does the company’s stock, but it is still real income. The rational thing to do is usually to sell all or most of the shares as soon as they vest and not to gamble on future returns. Options at startups are basically worth nothing, unless/until the company becomes a breakout success. Even then you generally can’t sell them unless there is an IPO or you do a second market deal. These really are a lot like a lottery ticket. I won’t get into all the ways options can be worthless even if the company does well enough to IPO, and you actually managed to exercise / keep the shares you vested. Also, some later stage non-public startups issue RSUs instead of options. These too are closer to a lottery ticket.
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- turtles 9y ago
  Had been thinking of moving to CA, but might as well stay in Sydney by the sounds of it.
  - mceoin 9y ago
    Perhaps, but you might learn more in CA; bigger market, moves faster, more experienced co-workers, stronger culture of entrepreneurship, generally bigger thinkers. Worst case scenario is that after earning USD for 2 years on an E3 visa, you return home more experienced than your peers with "Silicon Valley Startup Experience" in your resume, if that is something that appeals to you. Stronger startup ecosystem on the small scale, bigger problem sets on the large scale. Don't get me wrong, the startup and tech scene in Sydney has grown into a solid network over the last 5 years, but you have to weigh that against the certain knowledge the Bay Area accounts for 40% of U.S. venture funding and even that pales in comparison to the tech giants who are either based or have sizable offices here. In terms of lifestyle, Sydney will always win. I suspect this is why there is such a strong loop back home after Aussies spending some time here.
- firstplacelast 9y ago
  Software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot. When you live in a society built around greed, it is imperative that you push to collect as much of the value you create. Unions can be extremely helpful. SWE would be the perfect people to build new custom solutions for unions to get around many of the negative externalities caused by unions. However, people don't want to unionize while they still have leverage. When software engineers are finally ready to unionize, they're going to have way less leverage and get much worse deals.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    I'd be more interested in a guild or craft association than a union. I don't find collective bargaining, closed shops, standardized pay schedules, and some other features of unions to be compelling.
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      Agree. I'd much rather we organize the same way lawyers with their Bar Associations operate.
      - wils1245 9y ago
        Kind of an ironic example, lawyers have terrible working conditions. Pay is great, but the partner system of advancement is dehumanizing, and encourages cutthroat behavior and insane working hours.
        voidfunc 9y ago
        I'm not looking to model the law firm model. That's a different system and much closer to a Consulting/Professional Services outfit. The bar is an accreditation and verification system as well as a means for upholding ethical standards across the membership.
        favorited 9y ago
        Even lawyer pay isn't as great as it may appear. See: "Lawyer Salaries Are Weird" http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/ http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-cu...
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  > I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. Are you kidding me? I go and check salaries on Glassdoor and find out that about $85k/year is still the standard here in Boston for junior and mid-level engineers. And you're telling me that a median of $134k/year in the Bay Area is low?
  - skj 9y ago
    Yes. In NYC too.
  - logicfiction 9y ago
    I think there is a growing dichotomy of companies. The ecosystem I'm exposed to, 6 figures for mid-level seems normal. I'd only imagine the very early stage startups would fall outside that. This is in Boston proper and Cambridge. I do think median ranges start to fall outside the main metro area as you get to the 128 belt though.
  - skgoa 9y ago
    Yes. Salaries in the SF bay area and NYC are ridiculous. Unfortunately cost of living expenses in those areas are ridiculous as well, which makes it far less worth it to move there for the average person than one would think.
- shmerl 9y ago
  They don't look low to me.
- oppositelock 9y ago
  Only use these statistics as a guideline, and negotiate the hell out of your compensation, even at a startup. You would be shocked at how much leeway companies have in compensation if they need your skill set. I've worked at preeminent silicon valley companies, middle of the road ones, and startups (been doing this way too long I guess). I've managed to sign for almost 50% over their initial offer a couple of times. The hardest place to negotiate turned out to be the mid-size companies which aren't floating in money like Google, or aren't pissing away money like a startup. When they ask, "how much are you currently making", just politely say that you would rather not go down that route, and please make me an offer you feel is fair for my skill set, and start from there. Hiring managers and departments do this a lot, and know all the numbers, and you, who change jobs infrequently don't have up to date info. What's shocking is how fast silicon valley salaries are increasing. When I started this software engineering gig in the mid 1990's, a great offer for a fresh grad out of school was $45,000. Inflation adjusted, that's around $75,000 today. When my small company hires today, I get the special joy of making counter-offers against Facebook and Google, these two companies are simply nuts. Recently lost a fresh grad from a first tier CS school to an offer of $150k annual with $100k starting bonus from Facebook, not to mention RSU. Effectively $350k for the first year for a student with a bachelor of science. It's nuts. This guy was really good, but more realistic offers only lack that starting bonus.
  - mceoin 9y ago
    It is now illegal for employers to ask about past salary: [first article I googled] https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/salary-history-law-california/ https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/salary-history-la...
    - kelnos 9y ago
      Well, as of Jan 1st it will be, anyway.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      I'm not sure how laws like that help if an employer has access to information about past salary so they don't have to ask. There is an Equifax service that keeps track of past jobs to some extent. It isn't necessarily accurate or complete, but it exists - https://www.theworknumber.com/ https://www.theworknumber.com/
- eccbits 9y ago
  Obviously there is motivation for Triplebyte, as any recruiting agency, to pick data that is lower. This encourages engineers to accept offers from TB clients vs others. (Similarly, promoting higher figures to companies/clients encourages higher offers & higher close rates.
- mathattack 9y ago
  The numbers seem reasonable. They don't include bonus and equity, and they are averages. Google/Fbook/Uber aren't "average" in their comp.
- heedlessly2 9y ago
  I don't think anyone outside the BayBubble thinks the devs are underpaid
compumike 9y ago
(Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.) I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior. One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startups, which lean toward equity-heavy compensation. The range in equity is so big we had to plot it on a logarithmic scale.
- bargl 9y ago
  Any idea how this compares to the Seattle area?
- dvnguyen 9y ago
  I guess that most senior engineers receive more recruiter's emails, including from startups, than they wish, so they don't need to use Triplebyte services.
  - jhpriestley 9y ago
    I get tons of recruiter emails, but still used Triplebyte and was very happy with the experience. Triplebyte's pre-screening speeds up the process considerably, they were also just better to work with and more knowledgeable about the job market than most recruiters I've worked with. If you have strong skills then I think they're a good option whether you have a lot of industry experience or not.
  - compumike 9y ago
    Senior engineers usually come to us for one of two things: 1) Finding a really early stage startup. We spend time finding the most interesting and fastest growing startups, and given the difference in outcome between the median startup and Airbnb, it's worth spreading the net as wide as possible. 2) Executing a broader job search (including larger companies) faster.
    - sidlls 9y ago
bertmuthalaly 9y ago
This should probably be titled Silicon Valley startup salaries by experience level.
- xt00 9y ago
  Yea at startups you often have way more flexibility to grant larger options blocks or a bit more equity to rockstars to bring them in while the salary is closely eyed by the investors to keep burn rate low. So startup salaries are by definition lower and “just enough” to get people come there. If they added something like “assumed value of options or equity when I first joined” that would be useful to understand. The reality is a ton of people at senior levels get paid way more than 150k in Silicon Valley. Plus there are levels above senior at virtually all companies.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    I think we'd need both "assumed value of options", and "Actual value of options when they were realized"
- zeamaize 9y ago
  It still amazes me how low the compensation is in California. I left the Valley for the Midwest, cut my cost of living by 75%, and increased my salary by 25%.
- guiomie 9y ago
  The salaries in this chart are too low to represent salaries in the big companies in SV. It's an average, thus non-SV market are probably lower than the chart, and SV salaries are higher.
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dopamean 9y ago
These numbers reinforce what I think anytime someone suggests I move to California to "further my career." Fuck that.
- Naritai 9y ago
  While I agree cost of living is a tough pill to swallow in California, a salary table is irrelevant to the concept of 'furthering ones's career'. To further your career is, in fact, usually about taking something that is not financially beneficial but valuable for the experience or worldview that it imparts.
  - loeg 9y ago
    Nevertheless, cost is a factor. You have to weigh the expected increased career value of living in CA against the cost.
  - monaghanboy 9y ago
    Non-career things can also factor in, sunshine and weather were important to me.
  - dopamean 9y ago
    I live in Austin. I think my career will be fine here.
    - fokinsean 9y ago
      Same, however my company is wanting me to relocate to the Bay Area. For a bit of background, I have been in Austin for about 7 years, and coding professionally for almost 3 at this company. This has been my first full time job out of college and I have really enjoyed working for them. The cost of living adjustment they're offering is not what I was hoping it would be. After you take out California state taxes, it is really only about a 15% bump. I would say I make slightly above average for austin, and it would put me about below average in SF/OAK according to this graph. Rent is the huge killer for me because we (wife and I) will probably be paying around $1000 more a month. Long story short, the financials aren't ideal for moving out there, however part of me wants to get out for a bit and live somewhere new. Also I do think it would help me advance faster if I was out there, because Austin is a satellite office and HQ is in the Bay Area. I'm really on the fence about it :/
Scarblac 9y ago
It's amazing that career lengths in this business are split into "first few years", "1-3+ years" and "5-7+ years", given that most people will have careers of 40 years or more.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  They're taking into account the ageism that occurs in SV.
- plandis 9y ago
  Yeah their senior role sounds like a SDE2 at Amazon or Microsoft (61-62?)
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    This is the biggest problem I've faced. I can't put down Senior SE despite holding the title (which is verified by calling the company) because the technical skill expectations fluctuate MADLY across geographical areas and companies. If you are moving from a low-skill tech area to a high-skill tech area, there's been a lot of wasted time discussing how I moved from a more "primitive" state in the US to a more "modern" one (not my words, but said directly to my face). But I'm left holding the bag since I left that other company. And staying out of the workforce to get involved locally and learn new skills is its own risk.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      I wish my employer had an Engineer 3 position. I'm on track to be promoted out of Engineer 2, which will make me "senior" with two years of experience on a single team. It seems farcical. It seems unlikely that I'd hold up to any other company's expectations for "senior." I'm not wild about obfuscating my title, and I'd guess that a prospective employer isn't wild about hiring someone into a lower level.
  - aeling 9y ago
    I recently went through the Triplebyte process and can confirm. I went SDE2@MS -> SDE2@AMZN, but my Triplebyte offers (and others outside of the big 5) were for Senior roles.
steverb 9y ago
I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Isn't that what a Principal Engineer is for?
- alistairSH 9y ago
  My employer uses Principal Software Engineer/Developer. The full series is Associate x, x, Senior x, Principal x, Senior Principal x. We also have roughly parallel titles for QA/Test Engineers and Software Architects.
  - gxs 9y ago
    Same, but here they throw in an extra step after Associate, i.e., Senior Associate.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady". Unemployable? I kid, but there's just so much doom and gloom sometimes with the ageism posts on HN.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Stop being that doom and gloom then.
- jcadam 9y ago
  I know, I'm 37 and I'm off the scale, apparently. And here in Florida I'm making about the median for a Junior dev in Silicon Valley. For sake of comparison, my first programming job (in Colorado) paid $55k, back in the mid 2000s. I'd jump at a remote gig in a heartbeat. Right now I'm stuck in an 80s vintage cubicle in a windowless office in an old, dust/mold/despair smelling office building while the beautiful Florida winter passes by outside.
santaclaus 9y ago
Is there any data on what the big companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, ...) are starting software engineers at? Anecdotally, friends starting at Google out of school are getting base salary offers closer to the senior numbers here than the junior numbers.
- rb808 9y ago
  One of the guys I work with has been working in NY for 30 years, his newly graduated daughter got a first job at Facebook and earns more than him in her first year. Either * SV is a bubble * NY is a bad places for devs * being an old dev doesn't pay probably all 3
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    FB pays new grads in NYC the same.
  - pc86 9y ago
    Is he working for a company with comparable revenue and reliance on software as Facebook? If not then it's like comparing the salary of a newly minted cardologist with her pediatrician father.
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    For what it's worth, a big company in NYC that we work with definitely pays contractors with lots of experience (10+ years) $1000 a day. That's closing in on a quarter of a million dollars a year and you probably won't even have to invert a binary tree whilst juggling martinis in your interview.
    - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
      Not quite though, as you get zero benefits or job security with that- in the UK you’d need to knock off 4 weeks of vacation, a couple of weeks for additional training, maybe a week or 2 for sick leave, and then budget a month or so between contracts. Plus buy your own laptop, fund your own retirement fund/pension etc. Plus it can be harder to get credit if your contract can be terminated at any notice. And your next contract might go down, which is unlike a salary. and you’re exempt from climbing the ladder to a corporate position where the really big bucks are. So all told it’s probably more like 150-180k/year
austincheney 9y ago
Those figures do not justify giving up a job in a cheap cost of living area. These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  As noted below, the data set appears to be VERY start-up heavy. So, there's a bias towards both younger developers AND more compensation via equity. I would expect Apple and Google to pay significantly more. But, to your point, even at Apple or Google salaries, moving to SV would be tough for somebody mid-career (ie, with a house elsewhere that likely doesn't have enough equity to swap for a house in SV).
- swolchok 9y ago
  > These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater. Your point doesn't necessarily follow from your argument. For example, if salaries where you live were $1,000,000 per year and the cost of living was $10,000, you would gain $600,000 per year in salary and lose up to $90,000 per year in costs, for a net profit of $510,000.
  - loeg 9y ago
    Your first-principles argument is logically correct, but totally ignores the actual costs of living and salary in the given areas. The grandparent point stands just fine.
    - pseudonom- 9y ago
      The first principles argument is consonant with my actual experience in the Midwest and SV. I have vastly more money left over after living expenses in SV.
      - austincheney 9y ago
        Are you single? I imagine you find a reasonably priced small apartment for a single person in SV. I doubt you can find a reasonably priced 3000 sqft house in SV.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
2% equity is 99th percentile? The future might look back on us and wonder why employees ever put up with this. https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
- nck4222 9y ago
  You're expecting it to be higher? This is an average. If a startup hires 10 engineers you're expecting them on average to dole out 20% of their equity just to them?
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Yes. Those first 10 engineers make or break the billion dollar business.
    - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
      Maybe, but giving them extra equity won't get you any closer to making it, and will make it harder to raise funds (which is what you really need)
    - nck4222 9y ago
      This is a really one size fits all statement to make. I don't have data to support this but I would bet that the vast majority of startups don't have billion dollar potential. Also, it's probably more accurate to replace "engineers" with "employees". Again no data and depends on the business, but of the first 10 employees, on average maybe 5 of them are engineers? Lastly, I doubt that 10 is the right threshold. 20 at a minimum sounds more reasonable to me. This changes your statement to "Those first 20 employees sometimes potentially make or break a billion dollar business". I agree with the point that employees could receive more equity, but if the average right now is .15%, that's over a 13x increase to 2%. Which seems completely unrealistic and not warranted given the above.
robohamburger 9y ago
Almost making the senior software engineer salary and working remotely in a non-expensive coastal city. Oh boy is it going to be hard moving back. Maybe I won't :) I wonder what the Seattle prices are? Probably somewhat close I would imagine.
gizmodo59 9y ago
The data in payscale.com seems to vary a lot with these numbers. I assume they have much more data than Triplebyte. For example, the 50th percentile of a SE with 3 years exp will have a salary of 100K in a city like NYC. The cost of living in NYC is as high as in SV. May be there are more engineers who are paid a lot less? I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > The cost of living in NYC is as high as in SV. The Bay Area has eclipsed NYC, at this point. Average rent in NYC is something like ~3200 last I checked, Bay Area ~3600. Depending where you live (outside of 'main' San Francisco or Oakland west of the lake) a car is also a likely requirement in the Bay Area.
  - what_ever 9y ago
    Except that Bay Area is not just SF and there are plenty of high paying companies in South Bay where average rent is not $3600. $3600 gets you a good 3 Bed apartment in San Jose.
- CalChris 9y ago
  > I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream. That dream is so not going to happen. CEOs are going to forward any tax cut to their investors. Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at all be surprising. Trump's Tax Promises Undercut by CEO Plans to Reward Investors https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump-s-tax-promises-undercut-by-ceo-plans-to-reward-investors https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump-s-t...
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    > Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at all be surprising. When is the myth that a company's fiduciary duty to its shareholders includes funnelling all profits back to them going to die?
nevir 9y ago
To get the real picture, though, you really also need to include total compensation (e.g. avg bonuses, shares, 401k benefits). The actual numbers are quite a bit higher, I bet. Particularly for more established companies.
deleted 9y ago
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loeg 9y ago
Comparing only salary comp is pretty useless. Total annual comp., outside of private equity and options, is really easy to value! I don't understand why they avoid it. It would also be good to see a comp. curve for senior+1 engineers.
tiffani 9y ago
I would love to see this broken out by gender as well.
- chronic824 9y ago
  Women get paid less. It will continue to be that way until their skills or life decisions match those of men.
pzo 9y ago
People in Europe can be envy of salaries in US. Even in London which is not cheap either it's common for dev to get around $60k annually before tax (and taxes are high). This beg to ask a question : why employeers are so reluctant to hire remote devs even within similar timezone?
- user5994461 9y ago
  The salaries in London are often much underestimated. Just like people underestimate salaries in the FANG in the valley.
  - joshvm 9y ago
    Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a comfortable margin), but anywhere from £40-80k seems to be the norm. £80k being at the high end of senior. Six figures is possible, but fairly unlikely outside of finance or senior positions at the megacorps. If you don't live in London (or the South East), £40k alone would be considered a very comfortable salary. This is corroborated by Glassdoor, various sites which claim to have surveyed salaries and actual job adverts (e.g. via StackOverflow Jobs or recruiters).
    - user5994461 9y ago
      The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.
      - twic 9y ago
        That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.
srcmap 9y ago
In US, IRS has everyone's true salaries on per company, zipcode, job titles, years of experience base. It would be very cool if they can be anonymized and some data scientists graph them out like this page.
1001101 9y ago
> We've found that engineers are at a fundamental disadvantage in salary and equity negotiations. They always know less than the hiring manager. This is unfair. I'd be interested to know if they are motivated not just by a sense of fair play, but also if their commissions are tied to salary.
- karthikshan 9y ago
  I think triplebyte's commission is 25% of first year salary, but that doesn't mean the people behind triplebyte are solely motivated by larger commissions.
  - gwern 9y ago
    If one wanted to speculate about bias, I think it could go either way. It's similar to the real estate agent problem: while at first glance TripleByte is incentivized to get their candidate the highest possible salary to maximize that commission, they also get no commission if the candidate doesn't accept any offers or the offers get withdrawn (presumably? I can't see how else it could work), so like a real estate agent, they want to cycle people through as fast as possible and focus on recruiting as many people as possible rather than optimizing each person's offers. The former is pro-employee but the latter is pro-company. It's not obvious to me how this would work out on net.
digitalsushi 9y ago
My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior-straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country bumpkin with absolutely no idea what is really out there.
- mrweasel 9y ago
  It really raises the question why anyone would put a software company in the Silicon Valley area. You could get cheaper and more experienced people pretty much anywhere in the world for at least 60 - 70% the price.
  - Tade0 9y ago
    My compensation is roughly 40% of the lower end of any of these charts, and that's considered "not bad" in my area. This makes me think: how valuable our work is really? Do I have a job only because I'm an inexpensive alternative to the devs from the US and western Europe?
    - drspacemonkey 9y ago
      Once you take the exchange rate into account, I'm below the 2nd percentile for a senior dev. And I make a great salary for the Vancouver area. I knew I could double my salary south of the border, but that hurts.
      - sdesol 9y ago
        I've heard it's very difficult to get H1B visa's now a days, so Canadians looking to move to the states, might not be able to.
        noirknight 9y ago
jorblumesea 9y ago
For the cost of living, these aren't really as high as I'd thought. Goes to show you that salary doesn't always scale with living expenses. I'm curious what the real world take home is between housing + income tax + general living expenses. Being paid 150k but paying 3k in rent sounds like a raw deal...
- xbzbanna 9y ago
  It depends a great deal on your household situation and where you are on the pay scale. If you are an average skilled dev in a single income family with multiple dependants who require separate bedrooms, you are probably going to be worse off in SV. Your housing cost will be a relatively high proportion of your income, so you won't have as much left over. If you are an above average dev who is decent at negotiating salary and splits housing with other income earners, you have the opportunity to build a ton of wealth. You can save six figures annually and buy a million dollar bungalow if you want. SV has absolutely huge opportunity for advancement compared to most regions - I think any good software dev should spend some of their early career years here to see if they can make it big, family attachments permitting. Worst case scenario, you don't like it and go home with a stack of cash after your RSUs vest.
denzil_holles 9y ago
Are these salaries reasonable? The data for Jr. Eng. suggest that only 12% of Jr. Engs. make less than $100K/yr.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  SV as a whole has juniors pinned ~ the 103 mark.
denzil_holles 9y ago
Are these salaries reasonable? The data suggests that for jr. eng., only 12% of them make less than $100K/yr.
otakucode 9y ago
Does anyone know an easy way to derive a Cost/$ of profit for various tech companies based upon reasonable estimates of how many engineers of whatever salary they've got? Obviously it would be a rough estimate, but it would be interesting to see, if only within an order of magnitude, just how terribly the cost center of software engineering is destroying their earnings.
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
  For some baseline comparison, salaries usually account for 20-30% of revenue for a company (not profit). Netflix employs about 3500 people, with a revenue of ~$11b. That ratio would put the average salary at 630k - 940k.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    This simple formula doesn't hold for super profitable business like netflix. They can't spend the money they get fast enough.
    - majani 9y ago
      Netflix is super profitable? According to what accounting methods?
      - user5994461 9y ago
        According to 1M+ revenues per employees and the billions they have in the bank.
k__ 9y ago
Coming from Germany, these salaries often feel crazy to me. Is this because owning real estate is such a big deal in the US?
- user5994461 9y ago
  Yes, there is a lot about costs of living. The valley is $4000 a month to rent a flat.
  - what_ever 9y ago
    I see people quoting those amounts for all of valley but South Bay isn't $4000 for a flat, SF is. In MTV, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose 1 Bed starts from 2k, 2 Bed from 2.5k and 3 Bed from 3k. It gets cheaper as you go South. If you want better quality/newer apartments, add $500.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Do you realize that any of these flats would be less than 1000 in Germany?
      - pedrosorio 9y ago
        Do you realize that at $150k gross pay, that's ~$96k net/year or $8k/month -> $6k after paying for rent?
        user5994461 9y ago
        That's not the point that was being illustrated. The point being that at 60k a year, it's not even possible to pay for the rent in the valley. That's why salaries are much higher than Europe.
        sjg007 9y ago
        Yeah 120k or so for a family of four in San Mateo qualifies you for affordable housing.
guiomie 9y ago
This is still far from FANG salaries. A senior level at Google makes more than 200k total comp add in another 100k or 200k.
jordache 9y ago
Does it take into account how many jobs the individual has worked in? Generally speaking, someone with long tenure with a single company will make less than if that person jumped around, with a salary bump at each jump.
megamindbrian2 9y ago
Wow, I am way underpaid.
amelius 9y ago
So how does a SV salary compare to the rest of the world? I.e. what is the conversion factor for a salary in e.g. NY, Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc.
- qznc 9y ago
  In Germany 30-60%. Higher in the big expensive cities (Berlin, Munich).
djrogers 9y ago
I'm truly stunned that someone with only 5-7 years of experience is considered 'senior' in this field. Is that really the case, or is TripleBytes using funny numbers?
dmode 9y ago
These numbers can be misleading. I don't work for the big four or five, but rather for a boring enterprise company. One of our top UI developer pulls in more than 500K. How do I know that ? Because I can see his comp statement as the manager of the group.
wolfspider 9y ago
This is a huge contrast to the south and particularly in Florida. I'm a project lead in Florida, started programming when I was 8, have won multiple national competitions, and now a project lead with people working under me (most that apply have an MS degree) but as a government worker making only 58K. I work for the government because in this area of the country there have been problems with finding companies that hire based on merit (I'll just leave it at that). It's shocking to hear these numbers and think that this is the norm in other places. Maybe I just don't know Florida like I thought I did but for being a state with the 3rd largest population there are a serious lack of opportunities in technology. Maybe I'm missing something maybe someone can recommend how they've been able to 'make it' in Florida with a job here doing development. Otherwise I think it's worth putting it out there to encourage people to think about this very circumstance before ever moving here.
- sn9 9y ago
  The numbers are less shocking after running them through a cost-of-living comparison with your base salary.
- uniacid 9y ago
  Being a fellow South Floridian I feel your pain and I would say it sounds like you're being underpaid for the position you're in currently but that's the story of Tech in Florida I think we can all agree on that based on equal experiences hopefully? In my own experience it's been pretty hit or miss as you can find very wide ranging salaried jobs but it's also dependent on location here as well, some areas might be better than others as far as where the actual wealth lies thus the big cities usually seem to hold more value and wealth, you might be able to get lucky and find something in between the big cities though. Also cost of living in Florida is relatively low but it is also raising so it's not easy when you start off with a low base that should really be higher when you compare and contrast positions elsewhere... especially surprising in the government area where you think they would staff people at least with wages people can feel financially comfortable with and not just to be able to live week to week based on their paycheck.
- marsrover 9y ago
  I'm sorry but this sounds like you're being taken advantage of. I got my start in Orlando, right out of college, making 65k. That being said, there is a very serious lack of opportunity in Florida. That's why I left.
ptmstart 9y ago
So what should be the expected total annual compensation from GAMF with 8 years experience? 260k ~ 300K? or more than that?
tfmatt 9y ago
It honestly pains me to look at salaries of people in the Bay Area compared to mine. I see salaries 3X mine and wonder, 'where did I go wrong?'
hardwaresofton 9y ago
Number of years are not a good measure of experience. You can spend 10 years in a huge fortune 500 that isn't doing anything innovative or interesting, or even engineering right. There are people who have spent 5 years at companies with their heads in the sand. Also, must we have a key requirement of being a senior software engineer being mentoring other engineers? Just because I enjoy building good/stable systems and have done it a lot doesn't mean I want to hand-hold more junior engineers or start taking up management tasks. I see this so much at companies and it just reeks of the company trying to get me to become a part-time teacher for their own benefit -- though it's of course arguably what they're paying me to do.
- atomicUpdate 9y ago
  By working with others, you've obviously benefited from learning from others. And even if you have spent your career alone in a dark office, the company has spent time paying you to learn from your mistakes. Why it is strange for the company to expect you to pass along anything and everything you've learned to other developers, junior or otherwise? The stranger part is that you can't recognize that teaching other people makes the whole team better. Time spent fixing a mistake that someone on the team knew how to prevent, but was too selfish to share, is time wasted. When it comes to education, the rising tide really does raise all ships.
  - hardwaresofton 9y ago
    I absolutely recognize the fact that everyone learns from others and having a space to do that and people who are willing to invest in others is great -- my problem is that it's a requirement and not a differentiator. Not every good engineer is a good teacher and not every good teacher is a good engineer. The two things are almost orthogonal in my opinion. The kind of teaching you mention in the second paragraph is second nature to any good engineer. That's a base level realization, possibly even just a component of maturely working in a team as a human being. It shouldnt even be a differentiator between a 'junior' and 'senior' person to begin with, that's just hiring people who work well in teams/understand team dynamics. To expand more on why i I dislike this requirement, I have seen companies use it only as a barrier to being promoted. "Oh yeah you're up for a promotion but you haven't lead a class on X technology yet". Having a policy like this also lets companies ignore the real problem: inadequate new hire training. To sum up, the kind of teamwork you're suggesting is vital/good for companies, i agree. I disagree that it's a differentiator between juniors and seniors though. Another argument is that value (being good at teaching/mentoring other engineers) is VERY valuable to the company, and the pay increase they're trying to offer for people who can do it (well, I assume) is inadequate.
taurath 9y ago
The people affording those $1.2mil houses are not the people earning any of these levels in terms of takehome pay. Most senior engineers I know are getting 40-60% of their comp in straight up RSUs.
cloudkj 9y ago
Whenever one of these salary posts/articles/studies crops up, there's inevitably some caveat: data bias, small sample size, etc. In this case, although the article is using a (hopefully) representative sample based on offers, it's still based on base salary only, which makes it very difficult to make comparisons. I think the most accurate salary data that can be considered for comparison would be taxable wages reported on a W-2, for software engineers with different titles at different companies. The wages would be much more representative of the total compensation package an engineer gets, as it includes salary, taxable equity, bonuses, and other benefits such as health care reimbursement, relocation, etc. Since the amount is for taxable wages, I think it would also more realistically account for vesting and other special situations such as deferred compensation. Provided that the data had a large enough sample, it would include a nice cross-section of employees at different parts of their vesting lifecycle with different types of equity compensation, and thus the numbers in aggregate would be useful for comparison. Practically, the only entity I can see doing that type of study would be the IRS, or perhaps Turbo Tax or some other tax software vendor that adds some sort of anonymous wage collection option for users when filing. That actually sounds pretty creepy and intrusive though, so hopefully nobody at Intuit or the IRS is reading this and gets any ideas!
anovikov 9y ago
Now tell me what is the point of hiring a junior developer for the median $118K if you can get senior for median $155K? Doesn't make any sense to me. The latter can work without supervision and provide at least 5x the output. In offshore outsourcing, 10x gap between senior and junior is the norm, not 1.5x. And it sounds fair to me. If i managed the Valley startup in these salary conditions, i'd happily hire as many seniors as i can afford (they are a bargain at this price and even in offshore destinations, many make about as much), and let each of them manage a few $1000 a month juniors or $3000 a month mid-level ones in Ukraine. It strongly looks like there is a 'base' payment of about $100K just for being in the Valley, and real salary is $18K for junior and $55K for a senior :) And $100K just effectively works to cover the fixed costs like exorbitant rent - that's how the market put it. And about 10% of sub-$100K positions are taken by locals who own their homes.
Annatar 9y ago
Senior software engineers: have 5-7+ years professional engineering experience At five to seven years of experience, one is still just an apprentice. A senior engineer will have 20-30 years of experience. What would those guys with 20 years of experience be considered then?
amorphid 9y ago
One thing to keep in mind here is that companies often use recruiters to fill their more difficult roles. If 25% of positions are filled by recruiters, these offers could be closer to the top 25% of salaries, too.
fpisfun 9y ago
These types of posts and the ensuing comments drive me crazy because they have mentions of very high salaries (for example people talking about 400k total compensation, etc) but sparse info on what type of developer positions actually pay this. Grouping all software developers as if they are the same makes no sense to me. It's been my assumption that developers working in machine learning, and other related areas, tend to command the highest pay? I can't imagine that people are building basic CRUD apps and making $300k a year, for example?
ataturk 9y ago
How many hours a week are these people putting in? As a senior-level developer in the midwest, my pay looks paltry in comparison and yet I bet you I live a much more comfortable lifestyle overall--zero debt, a decent work day in a calm environment and decent time off. If your cost of living is so ridiculous that you have to pay people 50-100% more than pretty much the entire rest of the continent what have you gained?
chelovek89 9y ago
Question about triplebyte: What if you’ve only been learning for a few months and want to know where you stand on the learning curve? If you take the test and flop how long do you have to wait before taking at Again?
- compumike 9y ago
  We invite everyone to re-apply after 4 months. https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15 https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15
moooffooom 9y ago
When i read things like that i feel like i really screwed up ! i have a PhD in Computer Science (in one of the hot Topics: Machine Learning !!!) and here in Germany i only earn 95k € / year with 8 years experience :(

433 points by compumike 9y ago

I want to say these distributions are shifted to the right compared to StackOverflow, Dice.com, and Glassdoor salary estimates if I recall. Does that jibe with other's impressions? Maybe this is just more up to date in the year.

bgentry 9y ago

I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Even the salary figures themselves look low and are probably heavily skewed by an overrepresentation of underpaying startups. My base salary ~4 years ago was in the 90th percentile according to this. It’s unlikely I was among the 10% highest paid Bay Area engineers at that time. Don’t settle for a mediocre salary in an area with absurdly high cost of living. Don’t be satisfied with these averages. Funded startups will pay more if they need to.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Yes, your analysis is correct. This is why the transparency is important. Check out www.h1bdata.info for what h1b holders are getting paid. The US Department of Labor forces this disclosure and is pretty up to date. Your tiny startup's cheap workers are probably in there too and you can deduce exactly who they are even though the names aren't in the disclosures.
- cairo140 9y ago
  H-1B applications often exclude expected value of bonus and RSUs (mine does) and can understate comp at bigtech by ~60k (entry level) to ~150k (mid level) to ~300k+ (senior+).
  - klipt 9y ago
    Yeah the salary listed on the Labor Condition Application is a minimum the company must meet or exceed. When I was on H1-B it was lower than my actual salary.
  - grad_ml 9y ago
    Always.
vonmoltke 9y ago
> RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there really a significant number of engineers at Oracle or Cisco getting that much non-salary compensation?
- bgentry 9y ago
  I haven’t heard about how those two companies pay. It’s definitely a common occurrence at Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, & Salesforce. Bonuses are often structured as a % of your base salary based upon your rank. More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. This is separate from RSUs, which vary a lot more widely. Their value is especially dependent upon company stock performance.
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    Add eBay and Paypal.
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    Those are in the top subset I was referring to. Most engineers working for established companies are not working for that subset. I'm not aware of Oracle, Cisco, or similar-tier companies giving stock grants to engineers. Cash bonuses are a different animal. I agree with your range (at least if you exclude defense contractors). Those alone are well short of doubling compensation, though.
    - lostboys67 9y ago
      Many FTSE 100 companies in the UK do have share save schemes available to all employees
  - onion2k 9y ago
    More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. The reason part of your salary is a bonus rather than the base is so that it can be withheld if necessary, eg in a bad year. Believing that bonus is an automatic extra 10% will, one day, leave you 10% short of your expectations.
whataretensors 9y ago
Look at how little equity in startups engineers get. Don't settle for common stock, it's 95% of the time worthless. And if it isn't you should be a millionaire for your risk, definitely not less than RSU compensation at megacorp #3.
- JonFish85 9y ago
  "Don't settle for common stock" Unless you're a C-level employee, you're not going to have the choice. And even then you're probably still not going to have a choice except in very rare cases (e.g. Uber's new CEO might have some decent protections). If you're "just" an employee, you're going to get laughed at if you demand anything besides common stock.
  - regulation_d 9y ago
    Honestly, I'd be surprised if any employees, C-level or not, get preferred stock. Unless you're putting skin in the game, you're probably stuck with common stock.
    - vkou 9y ago
      Working for below market rates is putting skin in the game.
      - angersock 9y ago
        "B-but but but muh founder status!" </s> It's a scam.
      - csallen 9y ago
        The reality of the situation is that it's not about what you do, but about how hard it is to find someone else to do what you do. If it's easy to find programmers who will work for below-market rates, but hard to find investors who will contribute millions of dollars, then you can expect programmers to have much less negotiating power.
SmellTheGlove 9y ago
> I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. I agree with your overall message, but base salary itself is very important. That's what puts a roof over your family's head and food on the table. Bonuses and RSUs might accelerate retirement, but I wouldn't put them into the overall household budget.
- bgentry 9y ago
  Completely agree! Even a substantial portion of your base salary should go into savings & retirement rather than being spent. Easier said than done in the Bay Area without 2 good salaries, especially for those with kids.
- pm24601 9y ago
  I would go even further. Too often devs overvalue RSUs / options, etc. Such things are great - but even at Apple, the return on RSUs is going to level off or become less reliable. RSU / options are lottery tickets not a reliable income stream.
  - bgentry 9y ago
    RSUs and options are very different. RSUs are shares that the company gives to you, and for a public company you can sell them almost immediately to convert them to real cash. Their value fluctuates as does the company’s stock, but it is still real income. The rational thing to do is usually to sell all or most of the shares as soon as they vest and not to gamble on future returns. Options at startups are basically worth nothing, unless/until the company becomes a breakout success. Even then you generally can’t sell them unless there is an IPO or you do a second market deal. These really are a lot like a lottery ticket. I won’t get into all the ways options can be worthless even if the company does well enough to IPO, and you actually managed to exercise / keep the shares you vested. Also, some later stage non-public startups issue RSUs instead of options. These too are closer to a lottery ticket.
- 9y ago
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turtles 9y ago
Had been thinking of moving to CA, but might as well stay in Sydney by the sounds of it.
- mceoin 9y ago
  Perhaps, but you might learn more in CA; bigger market, moves faster, more experienced co-workers, stronger culture of entrepreneurship, generally bigger thinkers. Worst case scenario is that after earning USD for 2 years on an E3 visa, you return home more experienced than your peers with "Silicon Valley Startup Experience" in your resume, if that is something that appeals to you. Stronger startup ecosystem on the small scale, bigger problem sets on the large scale. Don't get me wrong, the startup and tech scene in Sydney has grown into a solid network over the last 5 years, but you have to weigh that against the certain knowledge the Bay Area accounts for 40% of U.S. venture funding and even that pales in comparison to the tech giants who are either based or have sizable offices here. In terms of lifestyle, Sydney will always win. I suspect this is why there is such a strong loop back home after Aussies spending some time here.
firstplacelast 9y ago
Software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot. When you live in a society built around greed, it is imperative that you push to collect as much of the value you create. Unions can be extremely helpful. SWE would be the perfect people to build new custom solutions for unions to get around many of the negative externalities caused by unions. However, people don't want to unionize while they still have leverage. When software engineers are finally ready to unionize, they're going to have way less leverage and get much worse deals.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I'd be more interested in a guild or craft association than a union. I don't find collective bargaining, closed shops, standardized pay schedules, and some other features of unions to be compelling.
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    Agree. I'd much rather we organize the same way lawyers with their Bar Associations operate.
    - wils1245 9y ago
      Kind of an ironic example, lawyers have terrible working conditions. Pay is great, but the partner system of advancement is dehumanizing, and encourages cutthroat behavior and insane working hours.
      - voidfunc 9y ago
        I'm not looking to model the law firm model. That's a different system and much closer to a Consulting/Professional Services outfit. The bar is an accreditation and verification system as well as a means for upholding ethical standards across the membership.
      - favorited 9y ago
        Even lawyer pay isn't as great as it may appear. See: "Lawyer Salaries Are Weird" http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/ http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-cu...
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
> I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. Are you kidding me? I go and check salaries on Glassdoor and find out that about $85k/year is still the standard here in Boston for junior and mid-level engineers. And you're telling me that a median of $134k/year in the Bay Area is low?
- skj 9y ago
  Yes. In NYC too.
- logicfiction 9y ago
  I think there is a growing dichotomy of companies. The ecosystem I'm exposed to, 6 figures for mid-level seems normal. I'd only imagine the very early stage startups would fall outside that. This is in Boston proper and Cambridge. I do think median ranges start to fall outside the main metro area as you get to the 128 belt though.
- skgoa 9y ago
  Yes. Salaries in the SF bay area and NYC are ridiculous. Unfortunately cost of living expenses in those areas are ridiculous as well, which makes it far less worth it to move there for the average person than one would think.
shmerl 9y ago
They don't look low to me.
oppositelock 9y ago
Only use these statistics as a guideline, and negotiate the hell out of your compensation, even at a startup. You would be shocked at how much leeway companies have in compensation if they need your skill set. I've worked at preeminent silicon valley companies, middle of the road ones, and startups (been doing this way too long I guess). I've managed to sign for almost 50% over their initial offer a couple of times. The hardest place to negotiate turned out to be the mid-size companies which aren't floating in money like Google, or aren't pissing away money like a startup. When they ask, "how much are you currently making", just politely say that you would rather not go down that route, and please make me an offer you feel is fair for my skill set, and start from there. Hiring managers and departments do this a lot, and know all the numbers, and you, who change jobs infrequently don't have up to date info. What's shocking is how fast silicon valley salaries are increasing. When I started this software engineering gig in the mid 1990's, a great offer for a fresh grad out of school was $45,000. Inflation adjusted, that's around $75,000 today. When my small company hires today, I get the special joy of making counter-offers against Facebook and Google, these two companies are simply nuts. Recently lost a fresh grad from a first tier CS school to an offer of $150k annual with $100k starting bonus from Facebook, not to mention RSU. Effectively $350k for the first year for a student with a bachelor of science. It's nuts. This guy was really good, but more realistic offers only lack that starting bonus.
- mceoin 9y ago
  It is now illegal for employers to ask about past salary: [first article I googled] https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/salary-history-law-california/ https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/salary-history-la...
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Well, as of Jan 1st it will be, anyway.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    I'm not sure how laws like that help if an employer has access to information about past salary so they don't have to ask. There is an Equifax service that keeps track of past jobs to some extent. It isn't necessarily accurate or complete, but it exists - https://www.theworknumber.com/ https://www.theworknumber.com/
eccbits 9y ago
Obviously there is motivation for Triplebyte, as any recruiting agency, to pick data that is lower. This encourages engineers to accept offers from TB clients vs others. (Similarly, promoting higher figures to companies/clients encourages higher offers & higher close rates.
mathattack 9y ago
The numbers seem reasonable. They don't include bonus and equity, and they are averages. Google/Fbook/Uber aren't "average" in their comp.
heedlessly2 9y ago
I don't think anyone outside the BayBubble thinks the devs are underpaid

compumike 9y ago

(Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.) I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior. One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startups, which lean toward equity-heavy compensation. The range in equity is so big we had to plot it on a logarithmic scale.

bargl 9y ago
Any idea how this compares to the Seattle area?
dvnguyen 9y ago
I guess that most senior engineers receive more recruiter's emails, including from startups, than they wish, so they don't need to use Triplebyte services.
- jhpriestley 9y ago
  I get tons of recruiter emails, but still used Triplebyte and was very happy with the experience. Triplebyte's pre-screening speeds up the process considerably, they were also just better to work with and more knowledgeable about the job market than most recruiters I've worked with. If you have strong skills then I think they're a good option whether you have a lot of industry experience or not.
- compumike 9y ago
  Senior engineers usually come to us for one of two things: 1) Finding a really early stage startup. We spend time finding the most interesting and fastest growing startups, and given the difference in outcome between the median startup and Airbnb, it's worth spreading the net as wide as possible. 2) Executing a broader job search (including larger companies) faster.
  - sidlls 9y ago

bertmuthalaly 9y ago

This should probably be titled Silicon Valley startup salaries by experience level.

xt00 9y ago
Yea at startups you often have way more flexibility to grant larger options blocks or a bit more equity to rockstars to bring them in while the salary is closely eyed by the investors to keep burn rate low. So startup salaries are by definition lower and “just enough” to get people come there. If they added something like “assumed value of options or equity when I first joined” that would be useful to understand. The reality is a ton of people at senior levels get paid way more than 150k in Silicon Valley. Plus there are levels above senior at virtually all companies.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  I think we'd need both "assumed value of options", and "Actual value of options when they were realized"
zeamaize 9y ago
It still amazes me how low the compensation is in California. I left the Valley for the Midwest, cut my cost of living by 75%, and increased my salary by 25%.
guiomie 9y ago
The salaries in this chart are too low to represent salaries in the big companies in SV. It's an average, thus non-SV market are probably lower than the chart, and SV salaries are higher.

deleted 9y ago

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dopamean 9y ago

These numbers reinforce what I think anytime someone suggests I move to California to "further my career." Fuck that.

Naritai 9y ago
While I agree cost of living is a tough pill to swallow in California, a salary table is irrelevant to the concept of 'furthering ones's career'. To further your career is, in fact, usually about taking something that is not financially beneficial but valuable for the experience or worldview that it imparts.
- loeg 9y ago
  Nevertheless, cost is a factor. You have to weigh the expected increased career value of living in CA against the cost.
- monaghanboy 9y ago
  Non-career things can also factor in, sunshine and weather were important to me.
- dopamean 9y ago
  I live in Austin. I think my career will be fine here.
  - fokinsean 9y ago
    Same, however my company is wanting me to relocate to the Bay Area. For a bit of background, I have been in Austin for about 7 years, and coding professionally for almost 3 at this company. This has been my first full time job out of college and I have really enjoyed working for them. The cost of living adjustment they're offering is not what I was hoping it would be. After you take out California state taxes, it is really only about a 15% bump. I would say I make slightly above average for austin, and it would put me about below average in SF/OAK according to this graph. Rent is the huge killer for me because we (wife and I) will probably be paying around $1000 more a month. Long story short, the financials aren't ideal for moving out there, however part of me wants to get out for a bit and live somewhere new. Also I do think it would help me advance faster if I was out there, because Austin is a satellite office and HQ is in the Bay Area. I'm really on the fence about it :/

Scarblac 9y ago

It's amazing that career lengths in this business are split into "first few years", "1-3+ years" and "5-7+ years", given that most people will have careers of 40 years or more.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
They're taking into account the ageism that occurs in SV.
plandis 9y ago
Yeah their senior role sounds like a SDE2 at Amazon or Microsoft (61-62?)
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  This is the biggest problem I've faced. I can't put down Senior SE despite holding the title (which is verified by calling the company) because the technical skill expectations fluctuate MADLY across geographical areas and companies. If you are moving from a low-skill tech area to a high-skill tech area, there's been a lot of wasted time discussing how I moved from a more "primitive" state in the US to a more "modern" one (not my words, but said directly to my face). But I'm left holding the bag since I left that other company. And staying out of the workforce to get involved locally and learn new skills is its own risk.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    I wish my employer had an Engineer 3 position. I'm on track to be promoted out of Engineer 2, which will make me "senior" with two years of experience on a single team. It seems farcical. It seems unlikely that I'd hold up to any other company's expectations for "senior." I'm not wild about obfuscating my title, and I'd guess that a prospective employer isn't wild about hiring someone into a lower level.
- aeling 9y ago
  I recently went through the Triplebyte process and can confirm. I went SDE2@MS -> SDE2@AMZN, but my Triplebyte offers (and others outside of the big 5) were for Senior roles.

steverb 9y ago

I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".

santaclaus 9y ago
> Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Isn't that what a Principal Engineer is for?
alistairSH 9y ago
My employer uses Principal Software Engineer/Developer. The full series is Associate x, x, Senior x, Principal x, Senior Principal x. We also have roughly parallel titles for QA/Test Engineers and Software Architects.
- gxs 9y ago
  Same, but here they throw in an extra step after Associate, i.e., Senior Associate.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady". Unemployable? I kid, but there's just so much doom and gloom sometimes with the ageism posts on HN.
- softawre 9y ago
  Stop being that doom and gloom then.
jcadam 9y ago
I know, I'm 37 and I'm off the scale, apparently. And here in Florida I'm making about the median for a Junior dev in Silicon Valley. For sake of comparison, my first programming job (in Colorado) paid $55k, back in the mid 2000s. I'd jump at a remote gig in a heartbeat. Right now I'm stuck in an 80s vintage cubicle in a windowless office in an old, dust/mold/despair smelling office building while the beautiful Florida winter passes by outside.

santaclaus 9y ago

Is there any data on what the big companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, ...) are starting software engineers at? Anecdotally, friends starting at Google out of school are getting base salary offers closer to the senior numbers here than the junior numbers.

rb808 9y ago
One of the guys I work with has been working in NY for 30 years, his newly graduated daughter got a first job at Facebook and earns more than him in her first year. Either * SV is a bubble * NY is a bad places for devs * being an old dev doesn't pay probably all 3
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  FB pays new grads in NYC the same.
- pc86 9y ago
  Is he working for a company with comparable revenue and reliance on software as Facebook? If not then it's like comparing the salary of a newly minted cardologist with her pediatrician father.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  For what it's worth, a big company in NYC that we work with definitely pays contractors with lots of experience (10+ years) $1000 a day. That's closing in on a quarter of a million dollars a year and you probably won't even have to invert a binary tree whilst juggling martinis in your interview.
  - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
    Not quite though, as you get zero benefits or job security with that- in the UK you’d need to knock off 4 weeks of vacation, a couple of weeks for additional training, maybe a week or 2 for sick leave, and then budget a month or so between contracts. Plus buy your own laptop, fund your own retirement fund/pension etc. Plus it can be harder to get credit if your contract can be terminated at any notice. And your next contract might go down, which is unlike a salary. and you’re exempt from climbing the ladder to a corporate position where the really big bucks are. So all told it’s probably more like 150-180k/year

austincheney 9y ago

Those figures do not justify giving up a job in a cheap cost of living area. These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.

alistairSH 9y ago
As noted below, the data set appears to be VERY start-up heavy. So, there's a bias towards both younger developers AND more compensation via equity. I would expect Apple and Google to pay significantly more. But, to your point, even at Apple or Google salaries, moving to SV would be tough for somebody mid-career (ie, with a house elsewhere that likely doesn't have enough equity to swap for a house in SV).
swolchok 9y ago
> These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater. Your point doesn't necessarily follow from your argument. For example, if salaries where you live were $1,000,000 per year and the cost of living was $10,000, you would gain $600,000 per year in salary and lose up to $90,000 per year in costs, for a net profit of $510,000.
- loeg 9y ago
  Your first-principles argument is logically correct, but totally ignores the actual costs of living and salary in the given areas. The grandparent point stands just fine.
  - pseudonom- 9y ago
    The first principles argument is consonant with my actual experience in the Midwest and SV. I have vastly more money left over after living expenses in SV.
    - austincheney 9y ago
      Are you single? I imagine you find a reasonably priced small apartment for a single person in SV. I doubt you can find a reasonably priced 3000 sqft house in SV.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

2% equity is 99th percentile? The future might look back on us and wonder why employees ever put up with this. https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity

nck4222 9y ago
You're expecting it to be higher? This is an average. If a startup hires 10 engineers you're expecting them on average to dole out 20% of their equity just to them?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Yes. Those first 10 engineers make or break the billion dollar business.
  - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
    Maybe, but giving them extra equity won't get you any closer to making it, and will make it harder to raise funds (which is what you really need)
  - nck4222 9y ago
    This is a really one size fits all statement to make. I don't have data to support this but I would bet that the vast majority of startups don't have billion dollar potential. Also, it's probably more accurate to replace "engineers" with "employees". Again no data and depends on the business, but of the first 10 employees, on average maybe 5 of them are engineers? Lastly, I doubt that 10 is the right threshold. 20 at a minimum sounds more reasonable to me. This changes your statement to "Those first 20 employees sometimes potentially make or break a billion dollar business". I agree with the point that employees could receive more equity, but if the average right now is .15%, that's over a 13x increase to 2%. Which seems completely unrealistic and not warranted given the above.

robohamburger 9y ago

Almost making the senior software engineer salary and working remotely in a non-expensive coastal city. Oh boy is it going to be hard moving back. Maybe I won't :) I wonder what the Seattle prices are? Probably somewhat close I would imagine.

gizmodo59 9y ago

The data in payscale.com seems to vary a lot with these numbers. I assume they have much more data than Triplebyte. For example, the 50th percentile of a SE with 3 years exp will have a salary of 100K in a city like NYC. The cost of living in NYC is as high as in SV. May be there are more engineers who are paid a lot less? I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream.

santaclaus 9y ago
> The cost of living in NYC is as high as in SV. The Bay Area has eclipsed NYC, at this point. Average rent in NYC is something like ~3200 last I checked, Bay Area ~3600. Depending where you live (outside of 'main' San Francisco or Oakland west of the lake) a car is also a likely requirement in the Bay Area.
- what_ever 9y ago
  Except that Bay Area is not just SF and there are plenty of high paying companies in South Bay where average rent is not $3600. $3600 gets you a good 3 Bed apartment in San Jose.
CalChris 9y ago
> I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream. That dream is so not going to happen. CEOs are going to forward any tax cut to their investors. Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at all be surprising. Trump's Tax Promises Undercut by CEO Plans to Reward Investors https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump-s-tax-promises-undercut-by-ceo-plans-to-reward-investors https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump-s-t...
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  > Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at all be surprising. When is the myth that a company's fiduciary duty to its shareholders includes funnelling all profits back to them going to die?

nevir 9y ago

To get the real picture, though, you really also need to include total compensation (e.g. avg bonuses, shares, 401k benefits). The actual numbers are quite a bit higher, I bet. Particularly for more established companies.

deleted 9y ago

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loeg 9y ago

Comparing only salary comp is pretty useless. Total annual comp., outside of private equity and options, is really easy to value! I don't understand why they avoid it. It would also be good to see a comp. curve for senior+1 engineers.

tiffani 9y ago

I would love to see this broken out by gender as well.

chronic824 9y ago
Women get paid less. It will continue to be that way until their skills or life decisions match those of men.

pzo 9y ago

People in Europe can be envy of salaries in US. Even in London which is not cheap either it's common for dev to get around $60k annually before tax (and taxes are high). This beg to ask a question : why employeers are so reluctant to hire remote devs even within similar timezone?

user5994461 9y ago
The salaries in London are often much underestimated. Just like people underestimate salaries in the FANG in the valley.
- joshvm 9y ago
  Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a comfortable margin), but anywhere from £40-80k seems to be the norm. £80k being at the high end of senior. Six figures is possible, but fairly unlikely outside of finance or senior positions at the megacorps. If you don't live in London (or the South East), £40k alone would be considered a very comfortable salary. This is corroborated by Glassdoor, various sites which claim to have surveyed salaries and actual job adverts (e.g. via StackOverflow Jobs or recruiters).
  - user5994461 9y ago
    The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.
    - twic 9y ago
      That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.

srcmap 9y ago

In US, IRS has everyone's true salaries on per company, zipcode, job titles, years of experience base. It would be very cool if they can be anonymized and some data scientists graph them out like this page.

1001101 9y ago

> We've found that engineers are at a fundamental disadvantage in salary and equity negotiations. They always know less than the hiring manager. This is unfair. I'd be interested to know if they are motivated not just by a sense of fair play, but also if their commissions are tied to salary.

karthikshan 9y ago
I think triplebyte's commission is 25% of first year salary, but that doesn't mean the people behind triplebyte are solely motivated by larger commissions.
- gwern 9y ago
  If one wanted to speculate about bias, I think it could go either way. It's similar to the real estate agent problem: while at first glance TripleByte is incentivized to get their candidate the highest possible salary to maximize that commission, they also get no commission if the candidate doesn't accept any offers or the offers get withdrawn (presumably? I can't see how else it could work), so like a real estate agent, they want to cycle people through as fast as possible and focus on recruiting as many people as possible rather than optimizing each person's offers. The former is pro-employee but the latter is pro-company. It's not obvious to me how this would work out on net.

digitalsushi 9y ago

My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior-straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country bumpkin with absolutely no idea what is really out there.

mrweasel 9y ago
It really raises the question why anyone would put a software company in the Silicon Valley area. You could get cheaper and more experienced people pretty much anywhere in the world for at least 60 - 70% the price.
- Tade0 9y ago
  My compensation is roughly 40% of the lower end of any of these charts, and that's considered "not bad" in my area. This makes me think: how valuable our work is really? Do I have a job only because I'm an inexpensive alternative to the devs from the US and western Europe?
  - drspacemonkey 9y ago
    Once you take the exchange rate into account, I'm below the 2nd percentile for a senior dev. And I make a great salary for the Vancouver area. I knew I could double my salary south of the border, but that hurts.
    - sdesol 9y ago
      I've heard it's very difficult to get H1B visa's now a days, so Canadians looking to move to the states, might not be able to.
      - noirknight 9y ago

jorblumesea 9y ago

For the cost of living, these aren't really as high as I'd thought. Goes to show you that salary doesn't always scale with living expenses. I'm curious what the real world take home is between housing + income tax + general living expenses. Being paid 150k but paying 3k in rent sounds like a raw deal...

xbzbanna 9y ago
It depends a great deal on your household situation and where you are on the pay scale. If you are an average skilled dev in a single income family with multiple dependants who require separate bedrooms, you are probably going to be worse off in SV. Your housing cost will be a relatively high proportion of your income, so you won't have as much left over. If you are an above average dev who is decent at negotiating salary and splits housing with other income earners, you have the opportunity to build a ton of wealth. You can save six figures annually and buy a million dollar bungalow if you want. SV has absolutely huge opportunity for advancement compared to most regions - I think any good software dev should spend some of their early career years here to see if they can make it big, family attachments permitting. Worst case scenario, you don't like it and go home with a stack of cash after your RSUs vest.

denzil_holles 9y ago

Are these salaries reasonable? The data for Jr. Eng. suggest that only 12% of Jr. Engs. make less than $100K/yr.

bpicolo 9y ago
SV as a whole has juniors pinned ~ the 103 mark.

denzil_holles 9y ago

Are these salaries reasonable? The data suggests that for jr. eng., only 12% of them make less than $100K/yr.

otakucode 9y ago

Does anyone know an easy way to derive a Cost/$ of profit for various tech companies based upon reasonable estimates of how many engineers of whatever salary they've got? Obviously it would be a rough estimate, but it would be interesting to see, if only within an order of magnitude, just how terribly the cost center of software engineering is destroying their earnings.

lloyd-christmas 9y ago
For some baseline comparison, salaries usually account for 20-30% of revenue for a company (not profit). Netflix employs about 3500 people, with a revenue of ~$11b. That ratio would put the average salary at 630k - 940k.
- user5994461 9y ago
  This simple formula doesn't hold for super profitable business like netflix. They can't spend the money they get fast enough.
  - majani 9y ago
    Netflix is super profitable? According to what accounting methods?
    - user5994461 9y ago
      According to 1M+ revenues per employees and the billions they have in the bank.

k__ 9y ago

Coming from Germany, these salaries often feel crazy to me. Is this because owning real estate is such a big deal in the US?

user5994461 9y ago
Yes, there is a lot about costs of living. The valley is $4000 a month to rent a flat.
- what_ever 9y ago
  I see people quoting those amounts for all of valley but South Bay isn't $4000 for a flat, SF is. In MTV, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose 1 Bed starts from 2k, 2 Bed from 2.5k and 3 Bed from 3k. It gets cheaper as you go South. If you want better quality/newer apartments, add $500.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Do you realize that any of these flats would be less than 1000 in Germany?
    - pedrosorio 9y ago
      Do you realize that at $150k gross pay, that's ~$96k net/year or $8k/month -> $6k after paying for rent?
      - user5994461 9y ago
        That's not the point that was being illustrated. The point being that at 60k a year, it's not even possible to pay for the rent in the valley. That's why salaries are much higher than Europe.
        sjg007 9y ago
        Yeah 120k or so for a family of four in San Mateo qualifies you for affordable housing.

guiomie 9y ago

This is still far from FANG salaries. A senior level at Google makes more than 200k total comp add in another 100k or 200k.

jordache 9y ago

Does it take into account how many jobs the individual has worked in? Generally speaking, someone with long tenure with a single company will make less than if that person jumped around, with a salary bump at each jump.

megamindbrian2 9y ago

Wow, I am way underpaid.

amelius 9y ago

So how does a SV salary compare to the rest of the world? I.e. what is the conversion factor for a salary in e.g. NY, Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc.

qznc 9y ago
In Germany 30-60%. Higher in the big expensive cities (Berlin, Munich).

djrogers 9y ago

I'm truly stunned that someone with only 5-7 years of experience is considered 'senior' in this field. Is that really the case, or is TripleBytes using funny numbers?

dmode 9y ago

These numbers can be misleading. I don't work for the big four or five, but rather for a boring enterprise company. One of our top UI developer pulls in more than 500K. How do I know that ? Because I can see his comp statement as the manager of the group.

wolfspider 9y ago

This is a huge contrast to the south and particularly in Florida. I'm a project lead in Florida, started programming when I was 8, have won multiple national competitions, and now a project lead with people working under me (most that apply have an MS degree) but as a government worker making only 58K. I work for the government because in this area of the country there have been problems with finding companies that hire based on merit (I'll just leave it at that). It's shocking to hear these numbers and think that this is the norm in other places. Maybe I just don't know Florida like I thought I did but for being a state with the 3rd largest population there are a serious lack of opportunities in technology. Maybe I'm missing something maybe someone can recommend how they've been able to 'make it' in Florida with a job here doing development. Otherwise I think it's worth putting it out there to encourage people to think about this very circumstance before ever moving here.

sn9 9y ago
The numbers are less shocking after running them through a cost-of-living comparison with your base salary.
uniacid 9y ago
Being a fellow South Floridian I feel your pain and I would say it sounds like you're being underpaid for the position you're in currently but that's the story of Tech in Florida I think we can all agree on that based on equal experiences hopefully? In my own experience it's been pretty hit or miss as you can find very wide ranging salaried jobs but it's also dependent on location here as well, some areas might be better than others as far as where the actual wealth lies thus the big cities usually seem to hold more value and wealth, you might be able to get lucky and find something in between the big cities though. Also cost of living in Florida is relatively low but it is also raising so it's not easy when you start off with a low base that should really be higher when you compare and contrast positions elsewhere... especially surprising in the government area where you think they would staff people at least with wages people can feel financially comfortable with and not just to be able to live week to week based on their paycheck.
marsrover 9y ago
I'm sorry but this sounds like you're being taken advantage of. I got my start in Orlando, right out of college, making 65k. That being said, there is a very serious lack of opportunity in Florida. That's why I left.

ptmstart 9y ago

So what should be the expected total annual compensation from GAMF with 8 years experience? 260k ~ 300K? or more than that?

tfmatt 9y ago

It honestly pains me to look at salaries of people in the Bay Area compared to mine. I see salaries 3X mine and wonder, 'where did I go wrong?'

hardwaresofton 9y ago

Number of years are not a good measure of experience. You can spend 10 years in a huge fortune 500 that isn't doing anything innovative or interesting, or even engineering right. There are people who have spent 5 years at companies with their heads in the sand. Also, must we have a key requirement of being a senior software engineer being mentoring other engineers? Just because I enjoy building good/stable systems and have done it a lot doesn't mean I want to hand-hold more junior engineers or start taking up management tasks. I see this so much at companies and it just reeks of the company trying to get me to become a part-time teacher for their own benefit -- though it's of course arguably what they're paying me to do.

atomicUpdate 9y ago
By working with others, you've obviously benefited from learning from others. And even if you have spent your career alone in a dark office, the company has spent time paying you to learn from your mistakes. Why it is strange for the company to expect you to pass along anything and everything you've learned to other developers, junior or otherwise? The stranger part is that you can't recognize that teaching other people makes the whole team better. Time spent fixing a mistake that someone on the team knew how to prevent, but was too selfish to share, is time wasted. When it comes to education, the rising tide really does raise all ships.
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  I absolutely recognize the fact that everyone learns from others and having a space to do that and people who are willing to invest in others is great -- my problem is that it's a requirement and not a differentiator. Not every good engineer is a good teacher and not every good teacher is a good engineer. The two things are almost orthogonal in my opinion. The kind of teaching you mention in the second paragraph is second nature to any good engineer. That's a base level realization, possibly even just a component of maturely working in a team as a human being. It shouldnt even be a differentiator between a 'junior' and 'senior' person to begin with, that's just hiring people who work well in teams/understand team dynamics. To expand more on why i I dislike this requirement, I have seen companies use it only as a barrier to being promoted. "Oh yeah you're up for a promotion but you haven't lead a class on X technology yet". Having a policy like this also lets companies ignore the real problem: inadequate new hire training. To sum up, the kind of teamwork you're suggesting is vital/good for companies, i agree. I disagree that it's a differentiator between juniors and seniors though. Another argument is that value (being good at teaching/mentoring other engineers) is VERY valuable to the company, and the pay increase they're trying to offer for people who can do it (well, I assume) is inadequate.

taurath 9y ago

The people affording those $1.2mil houses are not the people earning any of these levels in terms of takehome pay. Most senior engineers I know are getting 40-60% of their comp in straight up RSUs.

cloudkj 9y ago

Whenever one of these salary posts/articles/studies crops up, there's inevitably some caveat: data bias, small sample size, etc. In this case, although the article is using a (hopefully) representative sample based on offers, it's still based on base salary only, which makes it very difficult to make comparisons. I think the most accurate salary data that can be considered for comparison would be taxable wages reported on a W-2, for software engineers with different titles at different companies. The wages would be much more representative of the total compensation package an engineer gets, as it includes salary, taxable equity, bonuses, and other benefits such as health care reimbursement, relocation, etc. Since the amount is for taxable wages, I think it would also more realistically account for vesting and other special situations such as deferred compensation. Provided that the data had a large enough sample, it would include a nice cross-section of employees at different parts of their vesting lifecycle with different types of equity compensation, and thus the numbers in aggregate would be useful for comparison. Practically, the only entity I can see doing that type of study would be the IRS, or perhaps Turbo Tax or some other tax software vendor that adds some sort of anonymous wage collection option for users when filing. That actually sounds pretty creepy and intrusive though, so hopefully nobody at Intuit or the IRS is reading this and gets any ideas!

anovikov 9y ago

Now tell me what is the point of hiring a junior developer for the median $118K if you can get senior for median $155K? Doesn't make any sense to me. The latter can work without supervision and provide at least 5x the output. In offshore outsourcing, 10x gap between senior and junior is the norm, not 1.5x. And it sounds fair to me. If i managed the Valley startup in these salary conditions, i'd happily hire as many seniors as i can afford (they are a bargain at this price and even in offshore destinations, many make about as much), and let each of them manage a few $1000 a month juniors or $3000 a month mid-level ones in Ukraine. It strongly looks like there is a 'base' payment of about $100K just for being in the Valley, and real salary is $18K for junior and $55K for a senior :) And $100K just effectively works to cover the fixed costs like exorbitant rent - that's how the market put it. And about 10% of sub-$100K positions are taken by locals who own their homes.

Annatar 9y ago

Senior software engineers: have 5-7+ years professional engineering experience At five to seven years of experience, one is still just an apprentice. A senior engineer will have 20-30 years of experience. What would those guys with 20 years of experience be considered then?

amorphid 9y ago

One thing to keep in mind here is that companies often use recruiters to fill their more difficult roles. If 25% of positions are filled by recruiters, these offers could be closer to the top 25% of salaries, too.

fpisfun 9y ago

These types of posts and the ensuing comments drive me crazy because they have mentions of very high salaries (for example people talking about 400k total compensation, etc) but sparse info on what type of developer positions actually pay this. Grouping all software developers as if they are the same makes no sense to me. It's been my assumption that developers working in machine learning, and other related areas, tend to command the highest pay? I can't imagine that people are building basic CRUD apps and making $300k a year, for example?

ataturk 9y ago

How many hours a week are these people putting in? As a senior-level developer in the midwest, my pay looks paltry in comparison and yet I bet you I live a much more comfortable lifestyle overall--zero debt, a decent work day in a calm environment and decent time off. If your cost of living is so ridiculous that you have to pay people 50-100% more than pretty much the entire rest of the continent what have you gained?

chelovek89 9y ago

Question about triplebyte: What if you’ve only been learning for a few months and want to know where you stand on the learning curve? If you take the test and flop how long do you have to wait before taking at Again?

compumike 9y ago
We invite everyone to re-apply after 4 months. https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15 https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15

moooffooom 9y ago

When i read things like that i feel like i really screwed up ! i have a PhD in Computer Science (in one of the hot Topics: Machine Learning !!!) and here in Germany i only earn 95k € / year with 8 years experience :(