11 ms·

I'm actually surprised that as a 'Principal Architect' he was only making $208,000 a year. Considering that entry-level positions at large companies which can h

I'm actually surprised that as a 'Principal Architect' he was only making $208,000 a year. Considering that entry-level positions at large companies which can have cash compensation of around $150,000+, it seems he may have been 'underpaid'. Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
In 2014.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
As I noted in another comment he’s for whatever reason only counting cash salary. I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(
- freditup 8y ago
  Fair points, though I don't know how high of an expected value I'd give to 50k of Box options. It's hard for me to imagine that options given that late are that valuable. I'd imagine the equity compensation at lots of other places would be better. Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    I think I do fine, but I do already work in a very expensive area at a very large company.
    - majky358 8y ago
      And what's your expenses per month ? I see there are big salaries in the US but when i imagine, i am in central EU, smaller country, there's possibility to get 4-5k € per month in gross, that's around 3,5k in net and cost living even if you have 2/3 rooms flat and other daily stuff would not be higher than 1000€ per month. A have to note, you work 40 hours per week, around 170 hours per month max.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
RoyTyrell 8y ago
Would you be able to purchase a home or condo in the Bay area with a $208k salary? If so, what could you get (size, quality, approximity to the main tech areas)?
- Kalium 8y ago
  Yes. Well, yes if you assume decent credit and some cash saved up for a down payment. The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay. It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    "The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay." Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down? Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      To clarify, I mean that the old wisdom that you can only buy if you can put 20% down does not apply in the same sense that it is voices. 50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash. 5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage. In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue. Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.
LandR 8y ago
In the US, maybe. In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that. I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k. I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky. Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.
- drrob 8y ago
  I'm the Systems Architect in a small (fifteen people) non-IT consultancy, and I'm on £72k, so I'd say your estimates are bang on.
  - test1235 8y ago
    As a small-town-developer, I'm on ~50k as a boring, middle-of-the-road corporate dev.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  I really can't understand why they stay in the UK then, to be honest. We seem to have better salaries and generally lower cost of living across the sea... I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher: https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/ https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/
  - n4r9 8y ago
    Well, the places where you'd get better salaries than London probably don't have a much lower cost of living. Personally I'd consider working somewhere like California for a couple of years for the experience, but like a lot of Brits I just don't think the US would be a comfortable cultural fit.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      Right, but I was referring to the Irish Sea. €95k (about $107k thanks to the atrocious euro atm) for that job would be ridiculously low in the valley, after all. As someone who left California for Europe because I wanted a better cultural fit I wouldn't tell Brits they should move to the US. But Ireland appears to offer better salaries, for all of its housing issues is still cheaper than southeast England, and isn't so dissimilar culturally. TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL. Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either. Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)
sjg007 8y ago
Entry level 150k is a lawyer or quant maybe.
throwaway487548 8y ago
> Principal Architect This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago

In 2014.

akhilcacharya 8y ago

As I noted in another comment he’s for whatever reason only counting cash salary. I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(

freditup 8y ago
Fair points, though I don't know how high of an expected value I'd give to 50k of Box options. It's hard for me to imagine that options given that late are that valuable. I'd imagine the equity compensation at lots of other places would be better. Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I think I do fine, but I do already work in a very expensive area at a very large company.
  - majky358 8y ago
    And what's your expenses per month ? I see there are big salaries in the US but when i imagine, i am in central EU, smaller country, there's possibility to get 4-5k € per month in gross, that's around 3,5k in net and cost living even if you have 2/3 rooms flat and other daily stuff would not be higher than 1000€ per month. A have to note, you work 40 hours per week, around 170 hours per month max.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

RoyTyrell 8y ago

Would you be able to purchase a home or condo in the Bay area with a $208k salary? If so, what could you get (size, quality, approximity to the main tech areas)?

Kalium 8y ago
Yes. Well, yes if you assume decent credit and some cash saved up for a down payment. The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay. It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  "The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay." Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down? Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    To clarify, I mean that the old wisdom that you can only buy if you can put 20% down does not apply in the same sense that it is voices. 50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash. 5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage. In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue. Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.

LandR 8y ago

In the US, maybe. In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that. I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k. I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky. Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.

drrob 8y ago
I'm the Systems Architect in a small (fifteen people) non-IT consultancy, and I'm on £72k, so I'd say your estimates are bang on.
- test1235 8y ago
  As a small-town-developer, I'm on ~50k as a boring, middle-of-the-road corporate dev.
CalRobert 8y ago
I really can't understand why they stay in the UK then, to be honest. We seem to have better salaries and generally lower cost of living across the sea... I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher: https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/ https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/
- n4r9 8y ago
  Well, the places where you'd get better salaries than London probably don't have a much lower cost of living. Personally I'd consider working somewhere like California for a couple of years for the experience, but like a lot of Brits I just don't think the US would be a comfortable cultural fit.
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    Right, but I was referring to the Irish Sea. €95k (about $107k thanks to the atrocious euro atm) for that job would be ridiculously low in the valley, after all. As someone who left California for Europe because I wanted a better cultural fit I wouldn't tell Brits they should move to the US. But Ireland appears to offer better salaries, for all of its housing issues is still cheaper than southeast England, and isn't so dissimilar culturally. TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL. Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either. Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)

sjg007 8y ago

Entry level 150k is a lawyer or quant maybe.

throwaway487548 8y ago

> Principal Architect This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.