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Precisely. A senior engineer can certainly hope to make $400k or more per year for good performance. Not just in FAANG either - plenty of other profitable busin
by dunpeal 8y ago
Precisely. A senior engineer can certainly hope to make $400k or more per year for good performance. Not just in FAANG either - plenty of other profitable businesses are competing for the same grade of talent and thus pay in the same range.
Only a handful of almost surefire unicorns can reasonably come anywhere near matching that, and that only in the eventuality that they don't pull a Zenefits and leave you hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars short and in need of a new job.
Anecdotally, last year I was contacted by such a surefire unicorn for a role that was actually very interesting. We crunched the numbers together, and the best case scenario was them effectively matching my current comp. Which was actually a great proposition for startup comp, the best I've seen. Still, nowhere near compelling enough to upend my life for a higher risk position without any financial upside.
I worked in startups for the early part of my career, including a fairly well known one that exited. Neither me, nor any of my colleagues in that startup, nor any of the many other startup employees in my network, ever made more than a few hundred thousands on our options. Many very talented engineers made nothing at all on large quantities of options granted by several promising startups.
It's no wonder that none of the recent graduates I interview nowadays is at all interested in startups. When I ask where else they are interviewing, it's always FAANG and other high-flying profitable businesses. Even more so for senior engineers, whose opportunity cost is even higher, typically in the hundreds of thousands per year.
- megaman8 8y ago> "hope to make 400k" Even with 10-20 years of experience in the bay area at small, medium, large size software companies, I've never ever made anything close to that amount.
- dunpeal 8y agoFAANG and other large, profitable companies like Microsoft will pay you that.
- babaganoosh89 8y agoFAANG tends to pay ~300k for senior engineers. For 400k you usually need to get lucky with stock appreciation.
- dunpeal 8y agoYou can't just claim one absolute number as the comp for all "senior engineers". There's a huge amount of variance, within FAANG and elsewhere. As a simple example, SDE III at Amazon typically pays a bit more than $300k. Principal SDE, the next rank above that, will pay well over $400k. And don't forget that during years of steep stock appreciation, like much of the past decade, actual compensation will often be higher than that.
- Aeolun 8y agoI can pretty much guarantee you’ll only get that in the US.
- htormey 8y agoNah, that wasn’t my experience (apple/Facebook). Just look at the levels posted here: https://www.levels.fyi https://www.levels.fyi Hitting 400k total comp if you have the right experience (5-10 years, good brand university or companies) is totally doable.
- ttty 8y agoBut the is a big difference between total compensation and salary. Just to be clear
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- mosdl 8y agodon't listen to them, the FAANG pay thing is only for select few and is obviously a bubble waiting to pop
- realbarack 8y agoPeople are talking about total compensation, not just cash.
- dunpeal 8y ago> don't listen to them GP has replied elsewhere that all his employers were startups that paid him in "worthless options". Indeed, you won't ever see $400k or even $300k working for startups that "pay" you in illiquid 0.001% stakes in what will surely become a multi-billion dollar runaway success (in which unlikely case your share will be diluted to nothing anyway). You can certainly stick your fingers in your ears and sing LALALA while the rest of us make real money,. Your life, your choice.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoWhat was your equity compensation at these companies? Given that many (most?) companies refresh equity grants, it's very possible that after a full vesting period (usually 4 years) that you would then have multiple RSU grants vesting every year. With ~150k annually in RSUs, 150-200k base salary and 15-25% bonus is how lots and lots of people attain compensation this high.
- megaman8 8y agoIt was always worthless Options that could never be sold. One company's options I worked for 6 years, was worth about 4K after taxes, fully vested. Our typical bonuses were 1-2%. A 10% bonus was considered very high.
- dmoy 8y agoWell there's your problem. My comp is like 40% publicly tradeable stock. Also bonus closer to 15-20%.
- dunpeal 8y ago> It was always worthless Options that could never be sold. One company's options I worked for 6 years, was worth about 4K after taxes, fully vested. There's your problem. Getting paid in options is the exact mistake I've warned about repeatedly in comments throughout this thread. Yours is a fairly common case in SV: worked in a series of startups that "paid" you in illiquid options that ended up being totally worthless. I'm willing to bet these very same startups encouraged you to value these options very highly: high 6 and even 7 figures, right? These places don't pay well, because why should they? Talent is apparently willing to work their ass off for these "worthless options" that are sold to them as vouchers for surefire multi-million-dollar jackpots.
- dmoy 8y agoSee levels.fyi 400k for senior is pretty good, but still doable at a lot of the big companies. I make over 300 and I'm not senior yet.
- seesaw 8y agoYou are not alone. I have 20+ years, and I am in a senior position with a fortune 100. I don’t get paid that much. I know most of my colleagues don’t either. I think 400k+ is more common at FAANGs. 200k and below is common for a lot of experienced developers in the Bay Area.
- oAlbe 8y agoPardon the ignorance, what does it mean to "pull a Zenefits"?
- dunpeal 8y agoZenefits is an example of a surefire unicorn that made too many mistakes and lost most of its value very quickly. The key points are: 1. Startup valuations are highly volatile. There were plenty of startups that were valued above the billion dollar levels, then sold for 8 or even 7 figures. 2. While profitable established companies can also go south, such companies pay you in cash and liquid RSUs, so if they spiral down you just switch to a better performing company. Getting most of your pay in illiquid options means you risk losing multiple years of earnings in the best part of your career. Specifically, tons of talented people took a job in Zenefits based on the assumption that their illiquid shares will be worth six-seven figures, and likely will never see anything close to that in real money. Same thing wouldn't happen for those paid in liquid assets.
- rchaud 8y agoZenefits was a highly touted workplace benefits startup that got into huge trouble when a Buzzfeed investigation (of all things), found that one of its execs had gamed a state insurance agent exam (I think that's what it was), so their staff could essentially cheat and obtain certifications faster. The exec in charge was fired, and a lot of their key staff had already jumped ship by then.
- mathattack 8y agoI think the pattern was worse than a few rogue employees, and it cost the CEO his job.
- rhizome 8y agoIndeed, the fake cert thing was foundational to their business model.
- htormey 8y agoAside from it being fun to work on a small team early on in your career a startup is a great place to gain experience if you come from a non traditional background or didn’t go to a top tier university. Experience and fast career progression shouldn’t be overlooked when looking at startups.