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I guess I need to move to Silicon Valley. These numbers are insane for two years and an undergrad degree. I have 32 years experience and I don't get these kinds
by ChicagoDave 9y ago
I guess I need to move to Silicon Valley. These numbers are insane for two years and an undergrad degree. I have 32 years experience and I don't get these kinds of offers. This is either complete BS or the guy is a savant. Something smells fishy here.
- HN15718653 9y agoSounds high to me, but not BS-high. Just a bit surprising to see 160 base. <130 would be more commensurate with 2yrs exp.
- fossuser 9y agoThese are reasonable numbers - a little high, but not if he negotiated since he had competing offers. Silicon Valley salaries are pretty decent and I’ve heard of new grads getting 100k signing bonuses at Facebook.
- cjhanks 9y agoThey seem a bit higher than what I would normally expect for 2 year experience; sometimes a successful startup and some salary negotiations can give you a boost. But recall: $1 USD (SFO) != $1 USD (Almost anywhere else). And there are some other downsides, you work very long hours in a company of 70%+ men. I think quality of life in South Bay for most isn't as nice as much less affluent places. It depends on your cup of tea, I guess. https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare/san-francisco-vs-chicago https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
- holydude 9y agoWhoa...such bias. Like working in a company of 70%+ males is a bad thing. Stop this madness please. The americans are known for working hard that's not a mystery.
- joshuamorton 9y agoTrue, but the total compensation here is at or above 250K annually. Most places in the US won't break 100K with 2 years of experience, and the cost of living is less than 2.5x as much. In other words, you still come out well ahead.
- cjhanks 9y agoMaybe. But checkout Austin cost of living https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare/san-francisco-vs-austin https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare... and stack overflow careers https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Austin%2C+TX%2C+United+States&d=20&u=Miles https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Austin%2C+TX%2C+Unit.... That's essentially a parallel move if you consider nerdwallet doesn't consider local tax rates (very high in SFO vs 0% in Texas).
- joshuamorton 9y agoAgain though, I don't know anyone 2 years in making 134K (the Austin-equivalent of 250K in SF) in Austin. I know more than one person 2 years in making that much in SF. And you're also ignoring that CoL calculators bias against high CoL areas in a few important ways.
- handbanana 9y agoWhen I had 2 years exp, I was offered 125k at a company in Austin. Not 134k, but I imagine that figure isn’t impossible
- usaphp 9y ago> And there are some other downsides, you work very long hours in a company of 70%+ men Why is it a downside for someone who has no bias against men? Would you call a downside working for example as a registered nurse just because there are too many women?
- siddharthdeswal 9y agoOr working in a coal mine with over 90% men?
- Bahamut 9y agoAt my BigCo, I am working maybe slightly more than 40 hours/week on average, and mainly due to unfortunate circumstances. Otherwise it’s pretty relaxed - I did mostly 5-6 hour days last week for example, and that includes meetings where I had to take company shuttles to get around to a different building. Also for comp, keep in mind that he is getting that sort of comp with two years of experience - I have met people with even less experience getting similar numbers (I know one with less experience with non-technical degree making even more). If you have the right experience/background, you can get such compensation. Just imagine what the comp is like when these people get experience under their belt at the big companies.
- siddharthdeswal 9y agoIs working in a company with 70%+ men really a bad thing, or are you just leaning on existing cultural biases?
- ChicagoDave 9y agoHaving a work culture that matches societal norms is just a healthy practice. It makes us all better people.
- ChicagoDave 9y agoAccording to that site, I'd need to make over $200k to meet my same standard of living, but I still think someone with two years experience can't come close to my knowledge of software development. There are inherent limitations. Of course if the job is to write code without any comment about the big picture and without complaint about hours, then maybe it is competitive. And that signing bonus? That just doesn't translate to the Midwest at all.
- syllogism 9y agoAll else being equal 32 years experience will count against, you though --- and this is quite rational... These companies want to hire for trajectory. If someone's gotten to a great level of skills 2 years out of university, that says good things about where they'll be in 5 or 10 years.
- scarface74 9y agoWe just bought a 5 bedroom, 3-1/2 bathroom house with a nice size separate office in the northern suburbs of Atlanta with about 2800 square feet. Brand new build for $335,000 with all of the niceties. I've looked on Zillow, the same square footage, much older home, would be around 2-4 million at least in San Francisco.
- softawre 9y agoYup, this is the major difference. The COL numbers can be explained away, but if you want space now and a retirement later then you can get by with much less work outside SF.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- joshuamorton 9y agoNo, they're par for the course in the bay area (well, among the set of companies that are oft-discussed on HN: FAMG and well funded startups).
- FlyingLawnmower 9y agoI still find it a little hard to believe... When I was a new grad, I got offers from several of the companies you listed, and the comp didn't come close to OP's post. I can't imagine 2 years of experience and some negotiating changes the compensation that drastically. Google, for example, offered a base salary just over 100k. Is the difference between level 3 and 4 (what I assume 2 years of experience gets you) really ~60%? The annual RSU difference is also drastic, as OPs offer was 100k in stock annually. Note: I'm calculating the 60% by looking at annual salary + stock + target bonus each year.
- joshuamorton 9y agoGoogle base is 110K for a new grad L3. This isn't a 70% difference, its a ~30% difference. Total comp for a new-grad Googler who doesn't negotiate at all will be 110K base +18K bonus + 25K stock annually = ~153. That's without negotiating at all. Negotiation can push that across 200K annually in extreme cases. From that perspective, its not as gargantuan a leap. And similarly, I expect that this person was able to negotiate their google offer, so it would be higher than the "default" for an L4.
- FlyingLawnmower 9y agoRight, I was calculating the difference across total comp. OPs total comp is ~261k per year (140 + 21 + 100), so compared against the number you listed, it's almost exactly +70% (261 / 153 = ~1.71). I edited it to 60% to account for negotiations (assumed +10-15k annually), but I didn't think there was that much room at the new grad level. I remember Google being very inflexible on base, and didn't think you could get 200k annually with just negotiating (which would involve tripling the initial stock grant you listed, assuming that base is inflexible). Even still, are the bands truly that wide across L3 and L4? I suppose I'm most astonished that the median L3 and top of L4 are that wide apart. Thank you for all the information.
- volgo 9y agoNope definitely not fishy. I'm 2 years out of college and $180k salary + 250k RSU. SF is expensive these days. And also remember California grabs 9% of your income so it goes down by a lot
- make3 9y agoNot fishy at all. The answer is A), move to sillicon valley (or work remote for a company there... many friends to that)
- Nuzzerino 9y agoDon't do it. Silicon Valley is more favorable for the inexperienced, in part because they are a blank slate that can be more easily coached. His interviewing skills could be too notch regardless of number of years of professional experience. On top of that, there is a huge bias with interviewers to expect much more interview performance from those with more years of experience. The local industry favors the young in so many ways. Also, don't forget about the cost of living. With 140k per year salary, about 10 percent of that (for me) was money that didn't go to taxes or bills. I have 15 years of experience (and I look young). It's definitely a different kind of experience, so if you're feeling adventurous, do it! Just don't expect it to be fun, and be sure to do your own homework on whether there is a realistic market for a company's product if it's a startup (especially if it is Pre-Series-B). And, for the love of all that is good, don't work for any CEO under age 25. They are probably not the next Mark Zuckerberg.
- candiodari 9y agoIf you want those offers, most of those companies are more than happy to fly you out for an onsite interview. Get 3 San Francisco weekends out of your onsites, and see if you can get this kind of pay. Practice basic algorithms. The guys at these firms aren't nearly as smart as they think they are so you can comfortably stop after part III of the "Introduction to Algorithms" (the R. Rivest one) book (which is about 1/3 of the actual book, but like half the text is exercises, so in total this is like maybe 150 normal pages of theory, which you can condense down to 3 really dense ones, which is a good exercise by itself. Make sure to have actually written those data structures in C++ or Java (Python if you must), with tests, and if you want to ace, with benchmarks. Of course you could super-plus ace and get to part 6 or so) And yes, the "real" way to learn software engineering is not a good way to ace these interviews. The author and maintainer of 10 years of a VM system you guys all know about, who codes and designs circles around the best engineer you've ever heard of failed the big G interview (also good enough that using some connections managed to get that reversed and an offer extended anyway). Like most jobs, it's not about actual ability, it's about knowing the "magical" bit of theory that doesn't matter in practice, but is effectively a lock on the door. Every last bit of it you can find extensive explanations on youtube for. Don't get distracted :). There's also a free coursera course. If you don't want to follow the time schema on coursera, download the course videos on piratebay. Oh and for academic CS candidates. Please do remember: Stanford is a LISP school, not a Haskell school. If in any book you're training for these interviews with you see the words "dependant typing", you immediately slam the book shut and make SURE you don't open it again until after the interview. Sad, but you use that stuff, your interviewer won't understand and you'll get dinged. Yes, really. Don't go into theory that you can tell your interviewer doesn't know about beyond "oh yes, I know about some stuff relating to x". DO NOT talk for 40 minutes about advanced theory your interviewer doesn't understand. Oh and one last thing. Give a small amount of thought to how you appear to others. You might be the best engineer on the planet, but if your interviewers all write that on the feedback form, they'll pass on you. You may have 10 years of experience and get interviewed by a 2 months hire (usually 2 years, but 2 months can happen). If you proceed to shout at the guy about how his person being there disrespects you ... things won't go well. Be friendly, be approachable. Talk about your cat, but for 5 minutes at most (not for 50). Also, you can get a small plus next to your name by asking to get referred.
- chaostheory 9y agoThese numbers are real, at least for Silicon Valley. There's nothing fishy when you take into account the cost of living here and the constant demand for engineering talent that's up to date.
- nunez 9y agoBefore you do that, take a look at these: Taxes: https://imgur.com/a/s3SVY https://imgur.com/a/s3SVY (Not sure if imgur links are allowed here, but I couldn't find a website that would let me calculate an estimated paycheck and share the link) Rent: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/search/sby/apa https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/search/... Car Insurance: https://imgur.com/a/3UgPw https://imgur.com/a/3UgPw Public Transit Options (https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/49dfm6/poor_public_transport/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/49dfm6/poor_public...)