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Compare career levels across companies
- henryw 8y agoI ran into this site before from all the compensation discussions on https://www.teamblind.com https://www.teamblind.com
- Zaheer 8y agoHi, I'm one the makers of Levels.fyi. Happy to answer any questions and would love to hear feedback! We have a lot of features in the coming months that we think folks will love!
- xeromal 8y agoClicking around on the page adds to the tab's history. I had to click back 10x to go back to this thread. Seems kind of pointless to record state in this usecase?
- NKosmatos 8y agoHi and thanks for the info. A couple of things if I may. Please don’t hijack the browser history, played around with some companies and levels and when I tried coming back to HN the history was full ;-) Also it would be good if you could include some extra details about each level (e.g. education, years of experience). I think I’ll give Triplebyte a try, reminds me of HackerRank.
- Zaheer 8y agoGood feedback. The browser history was a bug introduced from recent change in last few days. We're on it. Regarding additional details on each level, although there is some correlation between years of experience and level, it actually isn't very strong. A better indication is typically responsibilities / scope of impact which we are working on defining more clearly. Thanks for the feedback!
- Zaheer 8y agoUpdate: fixed!
- null000 8y agoInteresting site - it's nice to have such straightforward compensation numbers. Worth mentioning, though - several tech companies intentionally and transparently attempt to pay more for some locations. My company, for instance, pays way more if you're in Silicon Valley than pretty much anywhere else. It'd be nice aggregate, summarize, and compare companies based on a single location.
- Zaheer 8y agoWe're working on ability to filter by location more easily. More of a UX challenge than data challenge since we have data for other regions already. Still need to think through how to present this cleanly without over cluttering the site. Thanks for the feedback!
- malvosenior 8y agoHi, thanks for making such a helpful site! My feedback would be: * Would love to see the salary numbers without clicking for easy comparison * I don't like how clicking around fills my browser history and adds back button clicks
- Zaheer 8y agoWe have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: www.comp.fyi :)
- malvosenior 8y agoOh, great! It's nice to see them all side by side like that.
- ummonk 8y agoI've been using levels.fyi and really liking it. It provides much more useful data than paysa. I strongly believe the economy needs a functioning free labor market, and price discovery is crucial to any free market. The main feature I'd like to see is information on typical refreshers. Also useful would be a way to just get a list of companies sorted by comp at a given approximate level. Additionally, information about refreshers and career trajectories at different companies would be nice too, for evaluating medium-long term prospects of working at any given company (e.g. I've read anecdotes that Apple offers more generous refreshers than most companies). I'd also like to see data on equity aggregated across small-medium startups, perhaps as a function of valuation, employee number, employee experience and time since last valuation. AngelList has some data about listed equity but it's very broad, and I'd like for some actual data of the sort that startups privately share with each other but keep secret from employees / job-seekers. Edit: It would also be cool if you guys can get some companies to post job ads with compensation ranges included for the posted levels. It would be useful for everyone involved; it would help candidates avoid needlessly applying to companies that can't match their desired comp, help out companies that offer competitive comp in sourcing candidates, and add more revenue for you guys as well.
- Zaheer 8y agoThanks for the feedback! We've been currently been heads down working on adding account functionality so that folks can start reviewing companies / teams within companies. As soon as that's out (next few weeks) we're hoping to work on more granular compensation information as well!
- Pfhreak 8y agoConsider adding non-binary genders to the comp reporting. Something as simple as 'other' or 'non-binary' would be nice. The challenges that non-binary folks face can sometimes be different, and it might be nice to see that reflected in the comp tool. Edit: I wouldn't ask, except that the tool already asks for gender. If you are already asking for a gender, you should consider include options beyond male/female. Curious about the downvotes without responses. Tech has people who are non-binary, whose salary negotiations may be impacted by that, and who may struggle to find data that represents them.
- amoshi 8y agoFitting username.
- andrewem 8y agoI've downvoted this because it seems like you're trying to be insulting to this person on the basis of an assumption about their gender. That doesn't seem worthy of HN.
- malmsteen 8y agoThere's barely enough data to make statistic over the whole population in his website i'm not sure it would make sense to isolate specific minority who would have like 1% of the already little data... i'd be more into removing the male / female distinction overall in the website
- Zaheer 8y agoGood feedback, we'll get this added shortly. We added gender recently based on feedback to highlight the gender wage gap. Agree that non-binary folks may experience another set of challenges and will be good to see the data.
- Pfhreak 8y agoThanks, who knows if enough non-binary folks will report, but I appreciate you taking the feedback!
- phd514 8y agoI added my comp at one of the listed companies a couple weeks back and it never showed up in your list. I'm not sure if there are bugs in your front end or lots of false negatives in your spam filtering or what. I'm happy to contribute to such an effort but not to the point where I have to figure out how to game your submission process.
- Zaheer 8y agoApologies - this shouldn't happen. Are you sure it never made it on the site? The comp page takes ~5 minutes to refresh new submissions.
- returnInfinity 8y agoAdobe is missing
- bronxbomber92 8y agoThanks for putting this site together! Two pieces of feedback: 1. It would be valuable to ask for years at company and years in industry along with the reported compensation. 2. When reporting my compensation, how should I account for additional bonuses/RSUs due to being promoted? (E.g. climbing a level). I historically receive an additional 100k grant when I’ve been promoted, but I don’t anticipate that 100k on non-promotion years.
- Zaheer 8y ago1. We actually do ask for this - it's toward the end of the form. :) Click the '+' on the left side of the row to show it. 2. The main Total Compensation field is per-year and the simplest way is to look at your W2. For RSUs / bonus we recommend taking the average amount you receive per year
- freyir 8y agoWhy don’t the numbers always add up? A Tesla P3 engineer lists his or her base as $130k, stock grant as $150k and TC is listed as as $168,000? Does it not check whether the numbers make sense?
- shanghaiaway 8y agoStock grant over 4 years, TC is per year.
- ryandrake 8y agoDo you believe that self-reported salary data will be biased either high or low? Do you attempt to measure bias? How do you account for the difference between the salaries reported on your site and the averages/medians published by salary.com and glassdoor.com? Is it that your site only focuses on outlier (top) companies? Any plans to add "Project Manager" role?
- Apocryphon 8y agoI like how the sample question on Triplebyte tests API memorization instead of algorithms knowledge. Of course, you can't win. At a whiteboarding session, there will always be applicants who give out the method from the library instead of providing an algorithmic solution.
- saagarjha 8y agoI found it to be an ok question; not at all an API one. The answers differ quite a bit, and by choosing one and explaining why you can show that you understand what you’re doing. For example, if you choose str.indexOf(‘ ‘) you clearly have no idea what you’re doing, and if you pick str.count(‘ ‘) - 1 you look like you saw the actual solution somewhere and are picking something that looks similar without really thinking about it (why are you subtracting one from something that seems like it returns the number of spaces in a string?). The last one would require the knowledge that “words” is not a common API that any language vends.
- Arnavion 8y agoI agree with you about A and C, but not your reason for discounting D. In particular, https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.0.0/unicode/str/trait.UnicodeStr.html#tymethod.words https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.0.0/unicode/str/trait.UnicodeStr... is an ancient counter-example (it was replaced by split_whitespace).
- true_religion 8y agoCounting words isnt strictly the same thing as counting spaces, so without knowing Javascript, you can still guess that it is wrong. Most of their questions are like SAT questions. They require you have some knowledge about the field in general, then place the answer within the wording of the question itself, or allow logic to determine the right answer.
- Kaveren 8y agoWith anonymous submissions on sites like these (see also: Glassdoor), I wonder if there's any sabotage going on where companies submit fraudulent information about competitors. Isn't it a potential downside to this open approach without any verification?
- Zaheer 8y agoWe've had several HR reps from companies reach out to us actually thanking us for the data we have. There are consulting companies that gather salary data today and resell it to anonymously to other companies so that they know what they're competing with. We haven't seen many bad actors yet but that is something we'll have to look out for as we grow! Not sure honestly how we'll solve it just yet as we don't verify the information for low friction. Perhaps we could introduce a 'verified' salary process. Lmk if you have ideas!
- selfselfself 8y agoHow did you determine that you haven't seen many bad actors / reporting bias?
- compumike 8y agoAnonymous, self-reported compensation data will likely skew higher than reality due to reporting bias. In contrast: https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary shows the actual width of the salary distribution, and the dataset includes all offers made to engineers on our hiring marketplace -- no reporting bias or fudging numbers upwards. (Disclosure: made that page. But also love Levels.fyi. Transparency is good for engineers.) Edit: previously discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15808549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15808549
- dublidu 8y agoI actually think Triplebyte’s numbers are low because they don’t reflect RSUs and refresher grants. It’s also hard to compare ISOs to RSUs.
- slivym 8y agoHere's a slightly related open question: Are Engineers in the US just much richer than in the UK? For perspective, I started my career with an MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering as a Hardware Design Engineer at £35k (I out-earned most of my fellow graduates). It seems like these salaries are just comically disjointed from my entire experience of life. Can anyone here speak to the differences? Everything I've seen points me to Californians just living an incredibly well-off lifestyle, but everything I read also indicates the people who have those lifestyles do not feel well-off?
- Thaxll 8y agoMost likely, I've read the other day a new grad that signed a $200k bonus / stock over 3 years in the bay area. It's just insane.
- mike22223333 8y agoWhy is it insane? You should be happy that a member of the middle class is doing well. We should expect this in our society, unfortunately programmers from lower class get happy much earlier.
- malvosenior 8y agoYes, I think they're more well off in general. The UK in particular pays developers very poorly. That being said housing costs in California are no joke, although you can find some analogies in London. Not sure how devs can afford to live there tbh. It makes sense that they would get paid this much, and quite frankly I think even the FAANG devs are drastically underpaid. The companies are printing cash and almost entirely powered by developers. The salaries sound high but execs are grabbing the vast amount of the real money.
- sjg007 8y agoI mean, the engineers can leave and start their own companies. This is the whole thing about SV...
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- seattleeng 8y agoHuge fan of this site, for two reasons: - It lets “outsiders” to the tech scene understand salary and levels at big companies. If you went to MIT you probably already have frat brothers/sorority sisters or an alumni network that consists of senior engineers at these big companies that know the promotion and compensation schemes well. But if you were an equally smart student who went to a non target school, many of these organizational “open secrets” are hidden and must be earned through work experience, which costs time and career opportunity. - Even if you do have some access to a network, these schemes evolve over time. Salary especially (levels not so much). Having up to date data is huge for assessing options during a job search or even planning for one. The site isn’t perfect— a lot of the leveling data is subjective AFAICT and not based on cross company moves, and the comp info seems a bit skewed for some companies and more senior roles. But its a huge step in the right direction towards empowering employees.
- hoaw 8y agoI agree that it is a great site. This is the kind of thing the Internet was, or at least should be, made for. I would also encourage people who like this kind of thing to think, or take it, one step further. Because even in countries where salaries (tax returns really) are public information getting a decent, or even predictable, salary remains a problem. Some of this is that there is a difference between data and information. Even though you have the data, the information asymmetry remains. After all your interests are often at odds with people whose job it is to look after the company's interests and sometimes with other people in the job market as well. But maybe most of all it is a practical problem. And it isn't usually information that solves practical problems, but what you do with the information you have.
- JimboOmega 8y agoThere are two problems with these: 1) If you aren't at one of these companies, it's not a fair comparison. It's really difficult to find a pre-IPO company who is going to compensate you like these, if for no other reason than that options are just not something you can easily stick a dollar value on. 2) It's kind of depressing. It's very easy to find people at similar experience levels as you making FAR more money (perhaps 50%, or even double), because you aren't at a FAANG company (or whatever we're calling them now). It can really make you feel like you haven't learned/grown/accomplished anything in your career when you see people starting at a similar comp to what you get for a decade+ of experience. Some people act as though these companies are an easy alternative for anyone, but the reality is that there are only a handful of them. For me, with a ruby background(+), I'm not particularly interesting to any of them, and I know I'm not the only one. It's neat that between Facebook/Apple/Google you can compare apples to apples, but for a lot of people, it's really an apples to oranges comparison, and a frustrating one. Also, I imagine it's that much worse for people outside the Bay Area. (+: While I'm happy to learn new languages on the job and not tied to any stack, it's still not easy. For instance, a Google recruiter once told me to spend a few months becoming a Python expert, and then they'd interview me (in Python); another time a Microsoft recruiter insisted that I do the interview in Java and then got frustrated when I struggled with syntax I hadn't touched in 5 years.)
- lordnacho 8y agoCan you really make a million bucks with just 10 years experience as a T7 at Google? What does a "Senior Staff SWE" do? Are there a lot of them?
- joejohnson 8y agoNo, there are very few of them, maybe on the order of 10-100. The biggest factor in comp at many of these companies is tenure; large stock grant at Google or Facebook from 8 years ago has appreciated nicely as it vested.
- esf 8y agoNo it is many more than that. From the percent I remember seeing and the number of engineers Google employs, more like 1500+? 7 is a high, difficult to get to level, average employees are not expected to pass 5, but Google is so large that's a lot of people. Google stock grants vest over 4 years, so 8 years ago doesn't matter, but there is something to just tenure in that yearly refresh grants really add up, and used to be similar size to the first grant, so pay would really escalate over the first four years for many (most?) people.
- seattleeng 8y agoSenior staff is something like <10% of all engineers (probably closer to 5%), the technical equivalent to a managerial “Director” title. Most engineers top out 2 promotions below.
- jpatokal 8y agoNot quite: the technical equivalent to director is Principal SWE (T8).
- augbog 8y agoJust rumors I've heard but the people who make that much (and I've heard some crazy numbers) are people who have a lot of knowledge of proprietary systems internally in Google. I don't know if there are actually a lot of them though.
- imbusy111 8y agoEither I was: 1) seriously underpaid at Google, 2) things have changed a lot in the past half year or 3) the stats do not reflect real averages.
- bhelkey 8y agoAre you comfortable posting your previous level/salary?
- imbusy111 8y agoIt was a little under 200k/yr total in Mountain View for T4.
- bduerst 8y agoI think the stats reported are probably inflated because of equity. If it includes people who had equity packages hired five years ago, that equity income is now worth twice as much as opposed to the equity someone would get if hired today.
- vonmoltke 8y agoPeople should be reporting the dollar values they were awarded, not what the shares are worth when they added their comp.
- dilyevsky 8y agoBut refreshes and new offers are matching the current stock value not the original
- vonmoltke 8y ago$60k worth of stock is $60k worth of stock. Initial and refresh awards are converted to shares from a dollar amount. If new grants were $200k six years ago and are still $200k now, what the stock price has done in the interim is irrelevant.
- pcurve 8y agoWow, I'm 40 year old director at big fortune company... and I find this mildly depressing lol. Why is this so different than Glassdoor?
- cycrutchfield 8y agoIIRC Glassdoor is salary, not total comp.
- logical42 8y agoThey have fields for additional compensation.
- mrep 8y agoProbably because glassdoor averages out compensation over all years despite tech wages continually growing and thus they are weighted down by old data.
- maerF0x0 8y agoOne reason is that Glassdoor doesnt deprecate old data (or at least gross it up by CPI)
- misun78 8y agoGlassdoor is heavily skewed towards older data points and hence underestimates significantly given the sharp rise in comp in the last few years.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Why is this so different than Glassdoor? Not sure about this, but IIRC Glassdoor is not systematically gathered, and so doesn't support generalization to any population other than “people who choose to provide info to Glassdoor.” Glassdoor is radically out of line with systematically gathered data like BLS data.
- taurath 8y agoGlassdoor doesn’t look at stock grants as income.
- Zaheer 8y agoMaker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html
- bankim 8y agoI don't see a way to search within a company. Like salary of software engineers at level E5 at Facebook.
- Zaheer 8y agoAh yes this is a common feature request. We'll get to it soon! For now searching the company name in textbox + clicking on column sort may help.
- bertjk 8y agoWhere is the data sourced from? Is it all self-reported?
- Zaheer 8y agoYup, you can add your own here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html
- dodders 8y agoBarclays - missing VP (between AVP and Director), and Capital One isn't an investment bank...
- kabdib 8y agoI was an L66 at Microsoft six years ago; the numbers there line up pretty well with my own, and the other numbers I'm aware of there.
- robynsmith 8y agoThis makes salaries and compensation in Toronto seem outrageously low. Wow. Maybe I should be moving? Crazy. (Sadly, family is here, so moving is unlikely)
- radicaldreamer 8y agoThis is the usual reaction for those outside the Bay Area. Cost of living is very high in SF though, as are home prices.
- robynsmith 8y agoTrue. But Toronto is pretty bad too. And we generally don't have the high levels of stock compensation. That looks like it could make a huge difference.
- usaar333 8y agoYes, but if you are capable of getting to senior levels at Google, COL in the Bay area is much less of a concern.
- int_19h 8y agoIt doesn't only show Bay Area numbers, though, but also e.g. Seattle, where the prices (while still high) are far lower - especially in more remote places that still have a decent commute to tech campuses in Redmond, Kirkland and Bellevue.
- randyrand 8y agoworth noting that homes are expensive because compensation is high, not the other way around. expensive housing does bring up low wages, but does not increase top level wages. while savings rate stays the same despite CoL, total savings increases. all else being equal, living in the bay is worth it despite the CoL for most developers
- ttt111222333 8y agoWould be nice if people from Toronto would enter more data points for the more popular startups I.e. shopify, instacart, unata, ritual, league, top hat, wealthsimple, freshbooks, pivotal, ada, etc
- nerdponx 8y agoWould be nice to see data science in here as well.
- Zaheer 8y agoWe rely heavily on crowdsourcing. If you can send us levels for datascience roles at any companies you know that would help a lot! hello [at] levels [dot] fyi
- CM30 8y agoIt's an interesting site, and it seems like a nice way to compare salary and the possibilities for advancement at the companies included. However, am I the only one who kinda thought it'd give a bit of information about the responsibilities and required skillsets for each level? Personally, I've always found the hardest bit around shopping around for a job knowing exactly what they expect of a hire with X number of years of experience, or what they consider a junior/middleweight/expert engineer. It'd be interesting to see something like this which says say, Google expects a Senior Software Engineer to know these languages and have these skills, whereas Facebook expects them to know these languages and have these other skills or what not.
- Cyph0n 8y agoAt a large company like Google or FB, responsibilities for the same role may vary widely between orgs or even teams within the same org. So I don’t really think that you can define “responsibilities” in a way that allows you to compare between companies.
- marcell 8y agoIt’s usually a bit more ambituois than knowing specific languages or having specific defined skills. A lot of the benefits of having more senior engineers is good judgement, which is hard to define or quantify or identify. However good judgement can have huge benefits. For example picking the right abstraction today avoids an expensive refactor 2 years from now.
- mkhizar53 8y agoThis is so clean!!!! Glassdoor is so messy compared to this!
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- shmerl 8y agoThose stock grants values are crazy high.
- oculusthrift 8y agostock values are crazy high right now in general. what was 80k a few years ago is 160 or more at a lot of these companies
- nemo44x 8y agoI believe based on comments here that they are reflecting current value, not initial grants. Many of these companies have performed insanely well over the last 10 years and anyone getting typical grants have done well by them. An AMZN grant from 4 years ago is worth over 5X from then, for instance. 6.5X 1 month ago for that matter but October was rough. Being at the right company during the right 10 years is transformative and leads to early retirement.
- Bahamut 8y agoThis is not true of most of the numbers on levels.fyi that I can tell. I know for my own FAANG employer, the numbers seem right on the dot with numbers I have seen elsewhere and my own compensation (RSUs being at time given, not current value).
- georgeburdell 8y agoPerhaps a stupid question, but are the comparable levels for equal seniority or impact of work, or equal compensation? If the latter, they definitely don't line up, especially FAANG vs. non-FAANG. If the former, it seems about right; wife and I are both staff-level at two different companies and the tiers are next to each other.
- Zaheer 8y agoWe take a holistic approach to level comparisons. The ultimate goal being to answer, "If I join X company, what level will I be placed at?". Compensation as you've pointed out, is not reflective of this because it varies wildly based on the size of company.
- amazon_tossaway 8y agoAmazonian here. Can anyone else from Amazon speak to whether you think these numbers look accurate? I'm sitting here in almost disbelief at how little I apparently make at AMZN. I don't think I have anyone to ask that would know and would be willing to give any kind of answer. I've been fairly content at Amazon. I've done good work, and have been a resource to others on my team. But if these numbers are right, I don't think I can stay much longer.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI work at Amazon too. The numbers seem accurate and represent mid-range of the band from everyone I've talked to. Of course, this is only from what I've seen. The numbers seem to be a pretty tight grouping overall so I'm curious what your TC is like if you're in disbelief.
- amazon_tossaway 8y agoI noticed the tight grouping as well. I'm in the very low end...of the job level below me.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoL5? Which location? When did you join? Did you receiver refreshers? Your stock growth alone should push you into upper bands if you stayed long.
- amazon_tossaway 8y agoI've been here 4 years. I'm sorry, I'd rather not divulge much more than that. Stock growth did result in a higher than expected TC, but the number of shares I have vesting will drop substantially over the next 2-3 years. If you're curious, every year I've been here my manager has given me great annual reviews. My base pay is substantially lower than the others on the list. What are refreshers? Perhaps it's something I know by another term?
- domlebo70 8y agoWhat is it like working at Google? I work at a startup, and these numbers are insanity to me. I have 10 years experience in mostly Haskell & FP (and that's what I enjoy doing). What would I do with my skills at one of the bigger tech companies?
- mrep 8y agoMove protos around [0] :/ [0]: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/ https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
- mav3rick 8y agoThis is not true. There are many many interesting projects at Google. And mobility is very easy compared to other big companies. Please do your own research before falling for the HN dogma of "FAANG" jobs == boring.
- krschultz 8y agoIf you talk to a recruiter at any of the big tech companies they should put you in touch with teams that are looking for someone with skills like yours. I frequently have phone calls, coffee, and lunches with people that are considering interviewing at the company I work for. The whole conversation is just answering questions like yours.
- sjg007 8y ago
- mawburn 8y agoThis is surprisingly not as insane as I expected. I was expecting to feel underpaid in comparison and they do make a bit more at the same level, but this actually makes me feel better.
- arminiusreturns 8y agoWhy are sysadmins so ignored in things like this?
- Zaheer 8y agoWe'd love to add more roles but we don't have enough information yet. If you can help us with leveling information for sysadmins please email us at hello [at] levels [dot] fyi Edit: Is DevOps the same as sysadmin? We have some salary data (click 'View Compensation' on main site) for sysadmins but it's marked as DevOps in our compensation form. You can add your own here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349421
- arminiusreturns 8y agoCool, thank you for the response, Ill try to at least add to the other thread to help out.
- nixgeek 8y agoI think the new hotness is being a Site Reliability Engineer, or a Production Engineer, and for both you’re interviewed against SDE competencies (you must be able to write software). Roles which don’t involve software seem to be withering on the vine.
- arminiusreturns 8y agoThis drives me a bit nutty tbh. I dont feel like getting into it at the moment, because the entire subject deserves a proper gothrough.
- influx 8y agoWhy? One "sysadmin" who can write software can manage far more machines than one who can't. Source: started my career as a Solaris Sysadmin with a CS degree.
- eeks 8y agoThe IBM ranks are inaccurate. Fellows are not above DEs. Both are the highest ranks indeed, but of two different tracks. DE is the highest rank of the engineering track, while Fellow is the highest rank of the research track. Fellowship have also be granted to non-research people over the past 20 years, diluting the merit of the title IMHO. Examples of fellows are: John Backus, Gene Amdahl, Ken Iverson, Benoit Mandelbrot, etc. Both levels may reside in different pay bands, but they are both at the executive level. And DEs cannot become fellows, and vice versa (some exceptions to the rule may have existed).
- Zaheer 8y agoThanks for the correction! We'll update this soon.
- tytso 8y agoI was at the IBM LTC from 2001--2009 as an STSM, and my understanding was that DE's could absolutely get promoted to Fellows. So assuming that Fellows are "just" the highest rank of the research rank is not really accurate. Perhaps that's what you mean by "diluting the merit of the title", but that sounds like you're coming from the Research side of IBM. :-) Yes, it's rare for a DE to get promoted to be a Fellow, but that's because there are very few Fellows at IBM. And there's no reason why a Fellow would want to become a DE, since that would mean taking a pay cut. (See below) From a salary band perspective, STSM is actually the highest rank of the engineering track (aka Band 10). A DE is paid on the bottom rung of the executive track (Band D), while a Fellow is paid as an Executive Band C. Which means a Fellow may be the highest rank of the "research track" but a Fellow is still going to rank below an SVP or GM from a salary perspective. :-)
- eeks 8y agoYou may be right about the DE -> Fellow promotion, although I only heard of it once, and that person was pretty spectacular. The Fellow -> DE path is unheard of. As is the RSM -> DE. All the DEs I know came from SWG and were STSM. Re: my “dilution” comment, i was not thinking about DEs. I was thinking about non-technical people (management, law, accounting, ...) that have been creeping up the Fellowship lately. Also the bluewashed executive that were given a fellowship package to seeeten the pot.
- kevinyun 8y agoI remember seeing this site being posted by an indie hacker / startup guy(s?). The interface feels very familiar. Was this acquired by Triplebyte? Did Triplebyte acquire levels.io?
- Zaheer 8y agoYup we were featured on IndieHackers [1]! Triplebyte is our sponsor. We are independent. [1] https://indiehackers.com/interview/da7a4f5d63 https://indiehackers.com/interview/da7a4f5d63
- diamondcompany 8y agocan you compare career level for https://www.adc.com.au/ https://www.adc.com.au/
- agoldis 8y agoI left Amazon just 5 months after being employed there as an SDE, it was terrible. It's not all about the money. The levels have nothing to do with tech or experience. It's the ability of person to navigate his career through corporate bureaucracy and politics.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- oculusthrift 8y agono offense but when i hear leaving after 5 months it just sounds like serious underperformance.
- agoldis 8y agoWhy? I left after 5 month voluntarily, I wasn't fired. I performed well and they wanted me to stay, 5 months was just enough to understand what kind of company is it.
- MetallicCloud 8y agoThey didn't say they were fired after 5 months. I left Amazon after 10 months. It had nothing to do with underperformance, it had to do with the working conditions within the team I was on. My manager was very happy with how I worked, and since leaving has emailed me to come and work for him on a different team.
- walamaking 8y ago5 months sound about just right to get past the honeymoon phase with a new company and see what's swept under the rug, and seems fine given he/she wasn't fired.
- christopher8827 8y agoWow.... these salaries make salaries (including mine's) in Sydney really, really low.
- wingerlang 8y agoI live in Thailand and mine looks -extremely- low.
- thundergolfer 8y agoUnfortunately for Sydneysiders their cost of living is just as high as Bay Area. At least Thailand is much cheaper.
- wingerlang 8y agoThat is true, my standard of living is great and I think I am able so save quite a lot per month as well.
- christopher8827 8y agoTrue, Sydney is Soo expensive I have 3 years experience as a JavaScript developer and I haven't made six figures yet.
- oculusthrift 8y agothese are obviously new hire figures (includes signing etc). does anyone know if one can expect similiar compensation if hired as l3 and move up to l4 versus if hired as l4 directly. wondering if it’s better to switch jobs for promotions in that case.
- mav3rick 8y agoIt's always better if you come in new.
- oculusthrift 8y agoright but thinking for instance. would it make sense to leave to facebook just for the comp bump at l4 even if you really like your job at google? just because being a new hire would give you more comp?
- mav3rick 8y agoI think this is where big companies get comp wrong. They should incentivize staying because after 4 yrs, you're right, there is a big comp fall. For me personally, I am happy with my work, comp, team and manager. That happiness > my willingness to practice for interviews again :)
- TheHydroImpulse 8y agoyes, that's a really good way to grow your comp. You have actual leverage when joining a new company that you can use to negotiate. Obviously you can't really do it too often but whenever you do, your earning potential can be increased by quite a bit.
- ErikAugust 8y agoI’ve never worked in a major tier locale or for a FAANG so these TCs are wild for me. We’re hiring mid- to senior developers at probably half the big league Bay Area companies do.
- oculusthrift 8y agowhen comparing msft/amzn with the rest keep in mind the state tax and CoL. that being said goog and fb also have seattle offices. but msft and amzn have bay area offices that pay more as well
- tinkerteller 8y agoIt seems equivalent levels at Microsoft are severely underpaid by the factor of 2 and sometimes even 3. How the levels considered equivalent across different companies on this website?
- tinkerteller 8y agoBUG: Level 66 salary for Microsoft is more than level 67!
- hagope 8y agoIs this an accurate representation of comp? For the equity portion, for example if the value is calculated at 2018 peak stock market levels (RSU are granted in # of shares, not value of shares) then shouldn't all the equity values be discounted by the 10-20% drop in FANG stock values?
- Jach 8y agoI'm also somewhat curious about the "stock $ per year" measurement. If I get 650 RSUs that vest 100% over 5 years (front-loaded), and on year 3 I get another 250 RSUs with the same schedule, how exactly should I calculate that in dollars? One way would be to just take the figure on my tax returns that accounts for proceeds from selling them, which is what I would do. I also wonder if other people are including proceeds they may have received from ESPP arrangements...
- hagope 8y agoExactly, are people reporting the original value at grant date or current value of the grant, I wonder.
- maerF0x0 8y agoIMO people should be reporting "At grant" and it would be fair to gross public companies up by an estimated average market growth (~7%) .. ie 1/4th at 100% , 1/4th at 107%...
- dublidu 8y agoYes. Senior engineers at these companies are heavily compensated via equity. Total comp can fluctuate by tens of thousands each month. Its crazy hoe much picking a job has become an exercise in stock picking, and it’s crazy how little our individual performance correlates with comp.
- woolvalley 8y agoI have a saying that we didn't become all of a sudden better people, but that we are over priced like houses in the bay area, subject to similar dynamics because the demand is large and from the wealthiest companies in the world.
- bitpow 8y agoHow does Netflix have one engineering level?
- Zaheer 8y agoThey have a fairly unique leveling system / culture and only have one level. Check out their culture: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
- 1timeaccount25 8y agoFAANG companies have had huge stock increases in the last few years. A hiring bonus stockgrant 4 years ago for 50k is now delivering close to an extra 100k per year as it vests. It's not clear if folks are counting their stockgrant at the original value or the current value which could differ significantly.
- partycoder 8y agoSome companies have a higher technical level. Do you think a principal engineer at a non-descript company can find a job as a principal engineer at Google for example? I highly doubt so. Do you think an engineer at working in v8, Blink, Skia, Chromium are at the same level as an engineer indirectly using those technologies? Do you think an engineer working on internet-scale APIs is at the same level of a user of such APIs?
- truth_seeker 8y agoNetflix - Senior Software Engineer, only one level across the company
- vonmoltke 8y agoSimilarly, Bloomberg only has two: Senior and not-Senior.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI've been in the software industry for idk, 9 or so years now and nowhere have I worked where there was like a level up system. You're judged - and paid for - by merit and personality (the last one is unfortunate, I'm a bit autistic and cynical so I'm nowhere near where I could be income-wise). We do have people with job titles from time to time beyond 'developer' but they seem like exceptions - like, having to invent a CTO title because the guy hit some income ceiling for the software development department.
- Havoc 8y agoAwesome. Could you add Big 4 accounting firms please?
- m4r71n 8y agoDoes anyone know of similar data but for EU countries? As was already mentioned in this thread, salaries differ from the US quite a bit, but it would still be nice to know what the norm is. I'm considering moving to Germany and have no idea what salary I should be asking for in interviews for a senior software engineer, nor do I know where to find out this information.
- saiya-jin 8y agoglassdoor? Or check expat forums in germany for the same question (I am sure they will be annoyed to hear it a millionth time, but you should find useful info)
- m4r71n 8y agoGlassdoor is a good starting point but it would be nice to know of a community-gathered data source. Any pointers to specific expat forums?
- kweinber 8y agoSites like this are recruiter-bait. (Notice that Triplebyte is a recruiter). They purport to have real salary info from the richest companies in the world to unsettle employees. (With no claim to even be telling the truth). This inspires people to be job flippers when they are closer to the average salaries that pay well but don’t compete at the high end. Changing jobs every year might get you quick raises early but actually achieving meaningful results takes time and gets you bigger raises/satisfaction in the long run. Don’t let recruiter-bait push you into someone who hops around out of envy and never really commits to anything.
- bb611 8y ago> actually achieving meaningful results takes time and gets you bigger raises Do you have evidence this is true? I agree with your point about satisfaction, but I've seen a lot of people who believed this about salary and got totally screwed as a result.
- unionemployee 8y agoAs an average potential software engineer in the Midwest, it's at first exciting to see these salaries, but I also feel the need to check myself and realize that, in some ways, this is another universe to which I probably don't have access.
- twoquestions 8y agoIt seems getting access to this world requires either superlative ability, a network of people who can teach you the lingo, or university pedigree. Probably a matter of time until programming is another power-law career like music or law is, where only the top hundred or thousand in the world can get by.
- Bahamut 8y agoFWIW, I don’t think FAANG necessarily care about what degree you have vs. what can you do. Mine certainly doesn’t, and I know a number of people at these companies who are college dropouts.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> where only the top hundred or thousand in the world can get by. I don't think that's correct - music or law employs a ton of working professionals at all levels. If working at one of the big companies is the measure of "getting by" that means if you're a lawyer in a small town you're probably not getting by, which is absolutely not the case.
- gadnium79 8y agoDon't think like that. I grew up in a small town in midwest. I mean reeealy small. Graduating class was 32. I am now an L6 and making the numbers shown here. It just takes time. 14 years worth of studying, multiple jobs, moving across the country, etc.... The get rich quick paradigm of tech makes everyone think they're not worthy. Its a marathon. Not a sprint.
- octorian 8y agoI feel like there are two ways to get access... 1. Get hired by an SV-area startup that cares more about how interested you are in them than the other way around (assuming you're good). 2. Relocate (or pretend you've relocated) to the SV-area, and suddenly you appear on recruiters' radar. I did #1, but interest from random recruiters before/after the move was practically like a step function. I've heard stories of people doing #2, and it working out for them.
- khalilravanna 8y agoI'm not super familiar with big companies, having worked mostly at startups with less structured "levels", but is there a separate scale or set of levels for managers? Or can you be "Senior SWE" and a manager at Google for example?
- oculusthrift 8y agoIt’s essentially the same in internal levels just different title. For instance at Microsoft most managers are Principal level. And google most are atleast l5. (with some exceptions). But instead of being called principal engineer they are called principal engineering manager.