8 ms·
Either 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.
by imbusy111 8y ago
Either 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.
- dilyevsky 8y agoThis is evidently false. Stock has pulled total numbers comp up significantly. Employer is not going to give an engineer refresh that brings tc lower (in $ value) than the year before unless it wants to lose that engineer.
- Bahamut 8y agoThis is false - employers do give less. My own FAANG stock for my initial compensation when I joined my company was at $105k in RSUs, and they jumped up about 35% (was even higher, but the market is a little volatile currently). My refresh grant after a little over a year was $125k in RSUs, which turned out to be less stock by a not insignificant percentage compared to my first grant! My read of the numbers floating around the internet suggests my refresh grant was for outperforming and my TC is high for my band. Whether my new TC is less than my first year, who knows. I'm happy with my work, and while the comp could be better (I should be at the next band but promotions are slower to come by in FAANG), I don't know if I'll ever even leave my company given that my total comp for a mid-level software engineer (at my employer) is already over $300k.
- bduerst 8y agoGoogle grants RSUs. So $60k is 12 RSUs for someone hired in 2014. In 2018, RSUs are worth twice as much as 2014, so people hired for the same role in 2018 get 6 RSUs ($60k) while the people hired in 2014 are still getting [at least] 12 RSUs ($120k). This is what I'm talking about with regards to stat inflation on this reporting.
- dilyevsky 8y agoThere’s no T-ladder for a while now. That does sound kinda low. I was payed slightly more as L3 more than 5 years ago.
- imbusy111 8y agoI was L4. I was just sticking to the nomenclature of the website.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway17159 8y ago(not parent, of course) IIRC: T4 (it wasn't called that internally. it was the "SWE III" smaller text on the box), 100k/yr salary + ~15k stock / yr, don't remember bonus, in 2011. ~$114k adjusted for inflation.
- pcurve 8y agoIs glassdoor information more in line?
- misun78 8y agoGlassdoor will be significantly off as it doesn’t discount older data
- Zaheer 8y agoKeep in mind that new hire salaries at the same level are typically higher than folks internally who have been at that level for some time. The market rate has actually gone up significantly in last 1-2 years.
- vonmoltke 8y agoI have 16 years of engineering experience and Google has made me two offers (original and revised) for a T4 position in NY that are well below the numbers reported on Levels (in fact, below the average on the site). So, either I am getting low balled like hell or there is skew in the numbers. Edit: there is skew in the numbers, not some in the numbers.
- Zaheer 8y agoDid you have strong competing offers? From the discussions on Blind most folks get strong offers from Google only if they have another really strong offer. Keep in mind most of our data presented right now is Bay Area-centric. We're working on filtering all views of data by location still.
- sombremesa 8y agoThere was a sheet shared around in Seattle some time ago with salary information. Some interesting points that came out of that were that salaries for women and minority engineers were significantly lower. Also, there were clearly a lot of misreported numbers (some exorbitantly so). There are actually multiple sheets. Here's one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-CqO6Px-0yA2421OOtJoj69_MO564XvddDYDNfHuS7A/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-CqO6Px-0yA2421OOtJo...
- itronitron 8y agoThere is an incentive to overstate one's salary and no down side. In fact everyone should just double their salary when self-reporting that information to anyone that won't keep it in confidence.
- ipsum2 8y agoI'm not surprised. From personal and friends experiences, Google will lowball you if you don't have any competing offers.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoAs they should. It isn't a charity. A candidate without competing offers also represents a greater risk, because you don't have that additional signal of "somebody else wants this person too." But compensation ramps up quite quickly if you are good, likable, and not too unlucky.
- jboggan 8y agoI found that there was extreme variance at the lower levels and that would persist as people moved up through the ranks. A lot of that came down to negotiation or previous salary at the company they were leaving. I'd also say that the Zurich office throws the salary average much higher. The real strat was to get hired at Zurich, lock in the big RSU package and then take a nugatory salary cut and move to LA or Boulder.
- zeven7 8y agoThis matches up with what I was paid at Google, even a little under, at the T3 level. I didn't have any competing offers. And I didn't negotiate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe T3 level is accurate because they're new hires, but higher levels are skewed by how much the value of stock grants have increased.
- gniv 8y agoI'm inclined to think a combination of 3) and 1). For example the jump in base salary for Google from T5 (171k) to T6 (260k) seemed suspiciously high. So I looked at the page for T6, and it has 15 entries, most around 200k-220k, but one 550k. That's probably wrong. I think the reporter switched salary and stock (which shows 200k).
- kamaal 8y agoIt could also be you didn't negotiate your pay well. It happens to all of us.
- gundmc 8y agoNot just you. These numbers are seriously inflated. I think it's for a few reasons: 1) Selection bias - people with larger comp packages are more likely to report their earnings. 2) Ego - people tend to embellish their reported wages. 3) People are reporting capital gains on their stock grants as income. If you started as a L4 3 years ago, I don't doubt you are making 250k with the growth Alphabet has experienced. If you start as an L4 today I guarantee the average is below 200k.