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Why you're having trouble hiring
- tsunamifury 8y agoI feel like the author here is a bit naive of the salaries out here. They seem to think directors and VPs make 125k when a large firm would be offering 1-2m total comp in the Bay Area for those positions. More than enough to live very well even I’m SF. A junior engineer is offered the 125k quoted for comparison in the article.
- sct202 8y agoIt seems like he switches between the intro talking about VP/directors to mid-level for the actual comp portion. Like a mid-level SE in Columbus earning $80k sounds reasonable (but still low), and would be ridiculously low for a VP/director even in a low cost of living metro.
- city41 8y agoI've lived in the bay area for 4 years now and am still perplexed by salaries here. Sites like paysa.com and H1B salary sites tell one story, then job sites like Indeed tell a very different story. Also whenever a recruiter contacts me and includes a salary range, it's usually on the very low side considering the cost of living here. What are people in the bay area really making across all company types? I honestly don't know.
- electrograv 8y ago> Hypothetical scenario: a reputable tech firm in SF or NYC offers $125,000 in salary to a mid-level That’s not even what a fresh college grad would make in total compensation at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc, let alone “mid level”. A senior engineer at one of those companies would make several times that in total compensation. P.S. The biggest common mistake I see in salary comparisons is the omission of scheduled stock grants, which sometimes can comprise even the majority of one’s compensation.
- ptd 8y agoWhat percent of engineers in SF or NYC are working for FANG companies? Most people aren’t working for companies that pay like Facebook.
- sjroot 8y agoObligatory "^ this." Perpetuating the idea that everyone who comes out of school with a CS degree will end up with such a comfy gig is a disservice to software engineers everywhere, particularly for those outside the United States. As a mid-level engineer currently job hunting in NYC, the salary range for most non-FAANG companies (including most start-ups) seems to be $90-150k. From my experience, the idea of "mid-level" and "senior-level" employees in our industry seems to be skewed to the left. Mid-level employees are generally 2-5 years into their careers, and senior-level can be anywhere beyond that. When you think of senior-level employees in other industries, you generally assume they have 10-20+ years of experience under their belt.
- ptd 8y agoFrom my anecdotal experience the breakpoints in engineering experience seem to be: 0-3 years-Junior:You don’t know what you’re doing. 3-8 years-Mid-level: You think you know what you’re doing. 8+ years-Senior:You know that you don’t know what you’re doing.
- ghostly_s 8y agoAt large companies, sure. The proliferation of startups really skew this on average. I know of many people who were "Senior Devs" at startups within the 1-5 years range.
- dleslie 8y agoOutside of SF, even FAANG pays considerably less. Canadian employees of the same frequently earn half that.
- 8y ago
- donretag 8y agoIt is not just the cost of living, it is the homeless defecating on the streets in San Francisco that gets to me. Enjoy your SF lifestyle! I do laugh at the Y Combinator job postings that appears on HN. I have actually very few emails from the Bay Area in the past few months. Maybe recruiters have gotten together and blackballed me.
- kylestlb 8y agoThe bay area is more than just SF. In fact, SF is quite small. Some towns here are actually not so defecated-upon (but expensive).
- donretag 8y agoBut the actual Bay Area is boring. You pay the premium in SF and NYC to be close to arts and culture, both of which are lacking in Silicon Valley. And good luck getting a date if you are a guy.
- nradov 8y agoThe rest of the Bay Area is not at all boring if you value being close to a wide variety of outdoor recreation. Many people don't care about about arts and culture; everyone values different things.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago> But the actual Bay Area is boring. There is lots of fun stuff in the Bay Area outside of San Francisco. I always have a blast going to shows, openings, etc in Oakland and Berkeley.
- donretag 8y agoSorry, I said Bay Area instead of Silicon Valley. I like Oakland quite a bit. Sunnyvale? Mountain View? You can keep your stock options.
- kylestlb 8y agoOne thing the author didn't even mention was the disparity of purchasable real estate between places like Austin and SF. Having a middle class salary in Austin will likely enable you to purchase a decent home near the city. A middle class salary in the Bay Area will maybe get you enough or a downpayment on a condo in 8 years.
- kcorbitt 8y agoI was talking to someone who builds a product for recruiters recently. Apparently, common knowledge among recruiters these days is that you can't get anyone with experience to move to SF anymore (they are still able to attract young talent right out of university). It breaks my heart the way this city is squandering its potential with backwards-looking policies that make it impractically expensive for basically everyone, tech employee or no.
- pault 8y agoLately Netflix has been trying pretty hard to get me to come in for an interview. They don't seem to understand that because I make $200k/yr doing contract work in Austin, they would have to pay me $500k/yr to not take a relative pay cut. I know they pay well, but no company in CA will be able to offer me the same income to cost of living ratio that I have here.
- knightofmars 8y agoAnecdotally, I would need to be paid 3 times as much as I currently make to even consider moving to SF. And that 3 times is almost always outside (by 30%) the salary range for a parallel position in SF. I have more than 10 years of experience developing software. Every time I get pinged by a recruiter I do some snooping about the salary for the position (Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc). 99% of the time, the salary range for the position would be a pay-cut (even with stock options). And no, I'm not overpaid based on my current position and where I live. I could easily leave and find another company that was willing to pay me the same salary within a 5 mile radius. Here are some additional metrics, my mortgage (owning a house in one of the most desirable areas in the city) is 1/6 of my monthly paycheck. My taxes are 10% of my monthly paycheck. I'm not saying any of this as a way to brag or show off. I'm pointing out that the quality of life I have would only drop off if I moved to a place like SF.
- souprock 8y agoGlassdoor is nonsense. Somehow, they think we pay experienced specialists roughly the going rate for flipping burgers or mopping restrooms.
- funfunfun 8y agoHaving just moved from SF to a smaller market with a 'lower cost of living' I can tell you DO NOT DO IT The value you lose from your current and future network alone is so devastating that any NerdWallet estimate of your costs is total BS. Lookup how much networks are worth to lifetime earnings Now your job sucks? Good luck getting a new one you like. Either move back or find something that 'works' Lastly, your coworkers will be from a smaller pond and instead of learning with the most experienced, you'll atropying your progress as you argue for basic things with people who've never worked in a big pond. There's a reason people go to hollywood for movies and SF for tech. A bunch of them actually.
- readingnews 8y agoHave not been there, but I suspect this is very true. Couple that with the authors assumption that those in the flyover area will ever get a raise (he makes the comparison of the person in atlanta eventually making 40k more a year). I live in a flyover area, have 25 years of experience, and have never seen a real raise, much less "oh, in 15 years I will be making 40k more". I would move to a tech center in a heartbeat, just for the networking.
- austincheney 8y agoI live outside the Bay Area and I get interview offers for good real jobs about 3-4 times a month even though I am not looking. If I were looking for a new job it would be 12-15 recruiters contacting me per month. What I have observed from listening to recruiters and hiring managers in the bay area is that they are desperate for any talent they can get, which is great if you are a junior or if you simply suck. As a senior developer the work looks for you (like the zombies in World War Z) regardless of the metro. The problem with being a senior though is whether your teammates operate on your level or whether they are juniors. The problem with being a senior on a newb team is like being a 50 year old man marrying an 18 year old girl. Beauty and first impressions diminish quickly and you are left chasing busy work for immature bullshit.
- funfunfun 8y agoYou can also become very 'senior' in level without exposure or experience that would be comparable to somebody in SF. Its a bummer when you live there, but the whole city lives and breathes tech. You can't get that elsewhere.
- gbustomtv5 8y agoThe claim is that the numbers do not add up for tech workers ro make Bay Area attractive. 125k salary is used as a mid level comp to do cost of living calculations. The numbers for 125k indeed do not add up. However mid-level in Bay Area is 200k+ and Senior is 300k+. Not sure where 125k comes from. Finding people with skills expexted for Bay Area’s mid level (forget about Director or VP) is a massive challenge.
- Uberphallus 8y ago125k is entry level for FAANG, but most jobs aren't. I got offers from mid sized companies in the BA, 140k max with +10 years of C++ experience, I guess that qualifies as Senior? +relocation package, green card sponsorship, etc, but still very much not worth it.
- gbustomtv5 8y ago125k at FAANG is base. With bonus and RSUs that becomes 160k+. 140k is a very low offer for someone with 10 years. Offers like that are typically made by desperate startups. Seniority is assessed by skills and not tenure. Requirements for senior positions are pretty stiff in Bay Area. Seniors need to deliver regarless of circumstances.
- fatnoah 8y ago>140k max with +10 years of C++ experience Ouch, that feels very low to me. Granted, I'm in Boston, but you can get that at nearly any startup around here (I've both held those jobs and hired people for them). The bigger companies can then throw some real equity on top of that.
- vinceyuan 8y agoWow, so high! What kind of engineers are mid-level or senior? Typically, is a lead engineer a senior?
- gbustomtv5 8y agoMid-engineer is someone who can accomplish all tasks with occasional design-level guidance. Senior is someone who can accomplish complex tasks without any guidance. Lead is a senior engineer.
- austincheney 8y agoThe article actually mentions kids. When talking about working in the bay area with technology people from the bay area I really get the impression that nobody there ever has children and everybody is sterilized. I don't think I have ever heard anybody talk about the bay area being great unless they were childless. Outside of the bay area I can actually afford to have children and a house without being a millionaire. Yeah, I know, its weird. I have enough money left over (even though I have kids and a large house) that my wife isn't forced into labor to prevent immediate financial ruin. I simply cannot imagine (I mean those words very literally) the horrid state of affairs of making six figures and still being on the verge of poverty.
- otoburb 8y ago>>I simply cannot imagine (I mean those words very literally) the horrid state of affairs of making six figures and still being on the verge of poverty. NYC is rolling out free schooling for children aged 3 and up, known as Pre-3K[1]. It's not a full solution, but it helps alleviate some of the childcare costs in the early years. The article mentioned: "One semi-local daycare in Manhattan quoted me a waitlist two years deep." Some daycares are in high-demand, but there are also other decent private daycares where the waitlist is (much) shorter or non-existent. While the caregiver outlay is believable, the waitlist datapoint sounds like it was cherry-picked. Depending on the age their child, the author might have had access to free public Pre-3K or Pre-K programs too. [1] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/enrollment/enroll-grade-by-grade/3k https://www.schools.nyc.gov/enrollment/enroll-grade-by-grade...
- austincheney 8y agoDay cares with wait lists is also something I have never heard of even though I have children and gone through the day care thing and socialize with people who have children. That is so unbelievably foreign to me.
- otoburb 8y agoIt was also totally foreign for us too, but after the initial shock wore off we put in some time and found other options quickly enough.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hackerpoos 8y ago- The table with actual math contradicts the title and the point the author's trying to make. - The author thinks directors and VPs make 1/2 to 1/10th what they actually do. - Unlike the author, those of us living in the coastal areas discussed do not play inferiority-complex games where we fantasize about the grass on the other side. What is this half baked clickbait doing on HN?
- hapless 8y agoFirst off, $125k is the entry level wage in NYC and SF. That's what you pay fresh grads out of college. The author massively understates the wage gap between the core job areas and peripheral cities. Any recruiter offering a senior hire $125k to relocate is working on the behalf of complete idiots. Secondly, distributed teams are nonsense, from an economic point of view. Why on earth would I pay someone in a "flyover state" $80k when I can get very similar talent for half as much in Argentina? If I'm willing to compromise on time zones, I can pay even less in Eastern Europe or South Asia. The only reason that your bloated American wage is justified is communication. Good English skills can be purchased in any market in the world, for much less than what Americans demand. Being on site, in the damn office, is how you earn that money.
- romed 8y agoThe numbers really are crazy wrong. My total comp as a new grad in SF tech industry was $170k, in 1998. A “senior software engineer” at Google, which is the median grade of engineers at that company, makes around $500k/yr in total comp.
- vonmoltke 8y ago> First off, $125k is the entry level wage in NYC and SF. It's the entry-level wage at top-tier tech companies, and a few second-tier who can compete with them at the junior levels (like Bloomberg). It is not what the average new grad should be expecting.
- eropple 8y ago> Good English skills can be purchased in any market in the world, for much less than what Americans demand. Is this true? My experience differs; even hiring semi-technical roles where the most important factor was "high-level English competency" I've had really disappointing results. It gets better if you're willing to deal with less than that, but that's a pretty rough compromise for a lot of highly collaborative roles. Strong technical skills are easier to source, but strong technical skills without good communication is tough to square.
- wasdfff 8y ago
- esotericn 8y agoIt's fundamentally _odd_ to me that people are looking at rental costs. The working class worry about making rent. A senior professional (in any field) cares about building a secure life, buying property, raising a family, saving for retirement. For a whole bunch of people it's the entire reason they put all of that effort into their craft in the first place (otherwise they'd move out into the country and work on OSS all day). You're going to struggle to hire competent, rested, mature, well rounded individuals if you expect them to rent tiny flats downtown and have that be their life. I don't have a visa anyway, but that's part of the reason I haven't bothered looking in to moving to SF. It seems to be built around the idea that you spend your youth grinding in a rented flat, with rental furniture, using rental cars, buying every meal outside, so that in your 40's you might be able to move out and live a decent life with some modicum of security. Baffling. Like, what are you going to do socially? You think you'll just "be rich" somewhere else and live in your house with all the other SF migrants?
- tsunamifury 8y agoI think you misunderstand that several workers out here rent because they can amass capital with their jobs in a more liquid format than buying a house. A house is a middle class investment opportunity, several people out here are making enough to focus more on flexibility and liquidity.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- esotericn 8y agoI've had prolonged discussions about this elsewhere on HN, but I think if you're considering a house (or an apartment) to be an "investment opportunity", you've missed the point entirely. It's a home first and foremost, and a monetary asset second. If your model is 'grind your 20s-40s away living in a box and then move out' then I implore you to read my comment again.
- tsunamifury 8y ago
- jupiter90000 8y agoThe article doesn't mention this, but it will be alot easier to max out a 401k and build that retirement fund making those larger coastal salaries. Ultimately it seems hard to argue in general that one would come out ahead financially and career-wise living outside one of those tech hubs. However, as 'they' say money isn't everything, so it could be worth the trade off to a particular individual or family to make less and live elsewhere.
- corn_dog 8y agoThese numbers match my before/move-to-NYC salary numbers. He mentions the possibility of a raise at current position but doesn't say much about post-NYC/SF raises. It took a few years but I've roughly doubled my initial NYC income. Also, you have to make it to save it.
- sargun 8y agoI don't understand why people don't just pay more, and hire fewer people. It's easy to see a senior engineer that outputs 2-3x as much as a junior engineer, but you don't see them being comped like that. If you're a company without a great culture, or other issues, it may still impede your hiring, but just comp people fairly to start with -- plenty of medium sized companies are doing this, and are thriving.
- d357r0y3r 8y agoA reality that doesn't seem to get discussed much is that non-FAANG companies in Bay Area don't actually pay that much. If your option is Austin post-IPO or Google, then okay. If your option is Austin post-IPO or Series A Startup in SF, then it's not that straightforward of an equation. It seems pretty common for funded startups in SF to pay something like 140-160k for mid-level engineers. You can easily find 120k salaries in Austin and Raleigh and it goes a hell of a lot further.
- base698 8y agoLike a mass media news story, these anecdotes are written to appeal to the demo in question, namely engineers not in the Bay Area or NY, to make them feel better about their choices. This blog post also has the side effect of being framed in a naive way that also has people who do live in NY or the Bay Area discuss the sheer ridiculousness of it, which is why it's already got 51 comments in less than hour. People move to the Bay Area because of the idea of opportunity. Maybe a friend's startup makes a billion dollars and you get to do your own after, or maybe it goes bust and there are 100s of other jobs that are more interesting and make more than you would in NC, Austin or other small metros. I'm not a billionaire, but I have found MUCH better work and opportunities, and if I choose I can move to a lower cost of living area and buy a house in cash and start my family there. Put another way, would you rather spend the first 5 years with your kid at home, or would you rather worry about slaving away to a bank for $100K hoping you aren't laid off in a downturn? Being smart with your money even with expensive housing can go a long way.
- oh_hello 8y agoI have found this to be extremely true working for a small company in CA. We have great benefits and ok salaries for the market, but nowhere near the huge total comp numbers seen at big companies. Decent candidates are hard to come by and generally want more money than we can offer.
- patagonia 8y agoNo vehicle = massive reduction in options for impromptu leisure activities (unless you factor in costs for rentals or trains / planes, which in my experience was non-negligible). Unless all you plan to do is reachable by public transit. Which gets old after a few years. (Plus let’s be honest, anyone on that kind of salary takes a good deal of cabs / Lyft rides.) That and, factor in a yard large enough for me to have BBQs and store my sailboat and then we’ll talk.
- Balgair 8y agoNo Vehicle = No Kids, as well. It's not that you can't take a bus with kiddos, it's the emergencies, especially in a place like SF with less than 'efficient' mass transit. Your kid puked in class today? Gonna need a car to come pick them up. Your kid broke an arm at the park? Gonna need a car to go to Urgent Care. Your kid has a science fair project due tomorrow that they just told you about? Gonna need a car to go pick up supplies.
- pas 8y agoSailboat? Shouldn't that sit in a marina somewhere? Or that amortizes it too damn quickly?
- fecak 8y agoThe amount of recruiter spam being sent to people in fly-over country (or anywhere outside the handful of major hubs by companies within those hubs) is based on the fact that there is almost no cost to sending those messages, and if one in 10,000 pays off the ROI is still probably fantastic for the recruiting firm. This article is mostly about COL differences and why people may not choose to move, but the premise about the reasons for the volume of recruiting spam is flawed. It's not because "recruiting is hard" (though it is) so much as it can be explained by "sending spam is easy and free".
- arbitrage 8y agoIs it possible that you're not paying your employees enough?
- carapace 8y agoFWIW, I've been telling recruiters for years now that I'd be willing to knock $20K off my salary for an office with a door that closes. Everyone always treats it like a joke.
- esoterica 8y ago$20k might be less than what it would cost them in rent to allocate you that much space, depending on how fancy your office building is.
- chrisBob 8y agoThe problem with an analysis like this is that people have a strong preference about the environment they live in. I know a lot of people that would never consider moving out of a major city. I have similarly established a clear guide for any future job moves: Can I afford 6 acres within a 10 minute commute from work? That narrows down my options quickly, and makes my current job, which I really enjoy, seem extravagant.
- weliketocode 8y agoThe title isn't even close to the article's content. It reads like just another rant against sf/nyc. Some back-of-the-envelope math with conclusions that we all knew already.
- oldboyFX 8y agoMoving to SF/NY makes sense if you're an ambitious, hard-working extrovert who knows how to sell and take advantage of those networks. For ambitious introverts like myself, remote consulting/contracting feels like the best option. A childhood buddy of mine moved to SF last year and got a job at a big corp downtown. He manages to save around $3,000/month as a senior developer with a ~$200k salary. No children, living with a partner who works as a teacher, and they're both quite frugal. I work as a remote contractor from a small European town and am able to consistently save way more than that. I was saving more than that even in the past while working as a sub-contractor through platforms like Toptal. How big of a salary would one need in order to save > $100k/year in SF (Single, small rental apartment, no car, average middle-class lifestyle)?
- tschellenbach 8y agoBoulder is starting to have many of the same problems when it comes to housing and childcare.
- nsxwolf 8y agoOffer remote positions and quit making lame excuses about why you can't do that. Seriously. The companies that make remote work happen aren't stupid and they aren't failing at it.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoFrom the article: Recruiter spam is nothing new, but the idea of doing nationwide candidate searches for non-executives strikes me as awfully weird. Allow me to offer an alternative view, this is entirely speculative. Director level and above people are paid quite well in the Bay Area, after stock compensation it can get to to close to half a million dollars per year. Folks outside the 'bubble' as it were, might still be amenable to $150K to $200K for a salary. Thinking "wow that is double what I'm currently making, its a huge jump for me!" and its half of what other directors make. So maybe they are trying to get senior management "on the cheap" and cut their payroll costs, they know that locally sourced candidates won't go for what they want to offer so they try to entice people from lower paid locales. If it works they get a director and still have enough left over to hire another engineer right?
- fizwhiz 8y agoThere are L4 SWEs (so ~5yrs of experience) at Google that make upwards of $400k (including mild stock appreciation ofcourse). Directors (L8s and above) are easily clearing $1M with the right competing offers.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dev_by_day 8y agoits a hard problem