5 ms·

Can anyone attest to the accuracy of this? Levels have pay ranges, right? If so, does this site portray the lower or higher end of the range? Also, are levels

Can anyone attest to the accuracy of this? Levels have pay ranges, right? If so, does this site portray the lower or higher end of the range? Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one company have weight when interviewing at another?

gthrow 8y ago
For Google at least. Salary and Stock are low end of the range. Bonus numbers seem ridiculously high: 49k bonus for an L4, even with Superb you don't get that.
- jrockway 8y ago
  I never got a $100k bonus as a T5. I was at Superb when I left too.
Zaheer 8y ago
There's also crowdsourced data via a Google Form they have at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1IS4w_6To5oMUtksPShuk1nuc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1I...
jpatokal 8y ago
I'm not qualified to comment on the comparisons, but there's a glaring mistake on the first page: software engineers at Google are "SWE", not "SDE". Given that this is the most common job code in the company, this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its accuracy. And yes, for Google/FB/MS these are common knowledge and HR will set offers accordingly. Interesting to see that eg. Netflix and Palantir apparently don't have any software engineer levels though.
joshuamorton 8y ago
Neither. As far as I can tell, levels.fyi is mostly new-hire offers. This is reflected in the mix of compensation (large bonuses are signing, not performance bonuses). It's also based on relatively small sample sizes. As a result, you get things that are, sort of by accident, mostly within the ranges you would expect for an employee at that level (because new hires normally start lower in-band, but they have large 1-time bonuses to make things up). So, sometimes they're low in the range. Sometimes they're high in the range. They almost never reflect the actual compensation mix an employee would receive over a sustained time period. Maybe they're better than nothing? >Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one company have weight when interviewing at another? Depends. In my limited experience, these levels are certainly more translatable than other titles (ie. someone who is L5 at facebook is likely to be hired at L5, or at worst L4 if they perform badly in interviews at Google, whereas someone who makes it to Senior SWE at some random software company might not have been exposed to the skills and tech necessary to be considered an L4 at Google or Facebook). That said, its not like a perfectly rigid hierarchy where putting in your time at Microsoft will guarantee you a higher level job at Amazon or whatever.

gthrow 8y ago

For Google at least. Salary and Stock are low end of the range. Bonus numbers seem ridiculously high: 49k bonus for an L4, even with Superb you don't get that.

jrockway 8y ago
I never got a $100k bonus as a T5. I was at Superb when I left too.

Zaheer 8y ago

There's also crowdsourced data via a Google Form they have at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1IS4w_6To5oMUtksPShuk1nuc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1I...

jpatokal 8y ago

I'm not qualified to comment on the comparisons, but there's a glaring mistake on the first page: software engineers at Google are "SWE", not "SDE". Given that this is the most common job code in the company, this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its accuracy. And yes, for Google/FB/MS these are common knowledge and HR will set offers accordingly. Interesting to see that eg. Netflix and Palantir apparently don't have any software engineer levels though.

joshuamorton 8y ago

Neither. As far as I can tell, levels.fyi is mostly new-hire offers. This is reflected in the mix of compensation (large bonuses are signing, not performance bonuses). It's also based on relatively small sample sizes. As a result, you get things that are, sort of by accident, mostly within the ranges you would expect for an employee at that level (because new hires normally start lower in-band, but they have large 1-time bonuses to make things up). So, sometimes they're low in the range. Sometimes they're high in the range. They almost never reflect the actual compensation mix an employee would receive over a sustained time period. Maybe they're better than nothing? >Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one company have weight when interviewing at another? Depends. In my limited experience, these levels are certainly more translatable than other titles (ie. someone who is L5 at facebook is likely to be hired at L5, or at worst L4 if they perform badly in interviews at Google, whereas someone who makes it to Senior SWE at some random software company might not have been exposed to the skills and tech necessary to be considered an L4 at Google or Facebook). That said, its not like a perfectly rigid hierarchy where putting in your time at Microsoft will guarantee you a higher level job at Amazon or whatever.