* What do you do? Software engineer working on the machine learning side of the company. I help research scientists build working large-scale systems that can a

* What do you do? Software engineer working on the machine learning side of the company. I help research scientists build working large-scale systems that can actually be used in production. Working on production, user-facing applications makes it easy to justify why your salary should be high: if I can show a 20% improvement in performance, I can save the company $X00,000/year in costs. It's also important to work in the area of the company they care about. Your managers (and their managers) will have more power and influence. Working on plumbing doesn't get you paid as much as user-facing. * What is your job title? Senior software engineer * What is your total comp? - 150k base salary - ~30k bonus / year - ~100k stock / year (at current stock price) - [not counted in the above] 60k one-time signing bonus * Who do you work for? FAANG, don't want to be more specific * Where do you live (assuming you don't work from home)? Live and work in SF * How long did it take you to get here? - Undergrad BS in 2009 at top-4 CS school, hired directly into top company at 110k total compensation. Worked on maintaining a large distributed system. Was paid "less" than I could have but the work was technically difficult and I learned a ton. Economy was down and getting a job wasn't as easy. - Switched jobs and company in 2011 and started making 140k total compensation. Now working a more standard software engineer role on a user-facing application. - Switched jobs and company again in 2013 and made 150k total compensation at a startup in the AI space (hire #~10). Company did well for the first year, then started to do not so great. I left before it failed to do a one-year MS in AI. - Went back to school for one-year MS 2015-2016. Didn't learn as much as I hoped, and cost me a chunk of change, but networking and the diploma was critical in landing my current job. - Hired as a senior software engineer at 240k in 2016. Have stayed with this company and got a salary bump last year (and the stock is now worth more). * How did you get here (networking/raw technical skill/job board/dumb luck, etc.)? All of the above. Well-off parents to help me get to a top undergrad school who could pay for my education so I could focus on classes. Was always top-20% of class, but never top-5%. Went to lots of job fairs, negotiated my first offer. Always look for new hard problems. Switch jobs often for a higher salary. Work in whichever area the company cares about.