6 ms·
200k+ for 2 years experience in the valley? That is crazy. This guy is overpaid. How realistic is this? I work in the valley I have roughly a decade of experien
by crimsonalucard 8y ago
200k+ for 2 years experience in the valley? That is crazy. This guy is overpaid. How realistic is this? I work in the valley I have roughly a decade of experience and I am definitely under 200k.
Am I getting shafted?
- khazhou 8y agoInterview elsewhere and find out. Seriously, it's the only way to know.
- tru3_power 8y agowhat is your position? 200k isn’t that much these days when you take inflation into account.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThere must be some pockets with insane salaires but for most people 200K is pretty high. How many non-execs really make these high salaries?
- iaw 8y ago"Median Facebook Salary" on Google returns ~$240K/year and I think they're up to 34,000 employees and still making more profit per employee than most companies. Do you think that a $200K/year salary is pretty high for tech in the Bay Area? At a global level $200K/year is very high, but regionally, between tech employees in the and their incumbent landlords, it is not that high.
- bosie 8y agoCan you provide a link to the 240k? I can only find a claim for the total compensation to be 240k
- jldugger 8y agoNote that salary isn't the number being quoted, but Total Compensation. Base salary, Equity, and Bonus. Equity grants -- RSUs -- tend to be quoted as a big allocation vesting over a 4 year period. So roughly, divide by four and hope the stock only goes up to factor it into annual income. Critically, companies offer 'refresher RSUs' to employees on an annual basis to replace expiring equity grants. Which means at year 4, you've reached a steady state of RSU vesting. Because of this, people often tend to just add RSU grant to base without dividing, figuring they'll get a stream of refreshers. Bonus is more discretionary, but basically works like salary. Engineers with TC over 200k is not rare in the bay area. More tricky is people who's equity is pre-IPO; startups often pay low base salary in exchange for equity / lottery tix.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoI don't care much for titles. But you can call me a "senior software engineer." Polyglot. Extensive experience with python and golang. I can do fullstack work as well.
- dclusin 8y agoI have 8yr experience and saw offer for total comp of 225k/yr in bay area. No concurrent offers, non-faang company, publicly traded. Salary is extremely variable is my takeaway.
- xiphias2 8y agoHow good are you in algorithms? At the end interview performance is what really matters, not programming experience. You may day it's not fair, but it's at least a transparent process.
- marssaxman 8y ago"Total comp" is not nearly the same thing as salary.
- xyzzyz 8y agoFor stable, publicly traded companies it is practically the same thing.
- marssaxman 8y agoNo job lasts forever. You will eventually move on. When you do, you will leave un-vested RSUs on the table. That's pay that you will never collect. "Total compensation" is not the same as being paid an actual salary.
- xyzzyz 8y agoUnvested RSUs are not part of "total compensation". Total compensation is obtained by tallying up the cash you get from salary, bonus, and sale (or rather, its value at vest) of all the vested stock you get in each year.
- esoterica 8y agoThat’s why only the annually vesting RSUs are counted in total compensation, not the total grant. If you make 200k base and get 400k/4 years of equity, then your TC is 300k, not 600k.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoAnybody willing to pay me 200k+? I'm a python expert. I know golang. I can do fullstack work but my preference is for the backend. I'm basically a polyglot, willing to do anything from scala, haskell, python, lisp, you name it. I have good fundamentals, and extensive experience diving into and navigating large/old codebases.
- toomuchtodo 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19055166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19055166
- dmode 8y agoIf you have 5+years, 200k+ with equity is a definite possibility
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mattnewton 8y agoI have 5 years experience and make >200k in total comp at Google at their Mountain View campus. Google was also not the highest number offer when I was interviewing 2 years ago either (but it was the more interesting role + benefits). You should interview :)
- crimsonalucard 8y agoWell, google is different right? They hire the cream of the crop. They don't only hire for experience. They also hire for innate, inborn intelligence. I might get in, but I have to work hard to pass that interview. I'm talking about 200k on average.
- mattnewton 8y agoIdk where you got the idea that being a Google engineer is innate haha, man the marketing and hype around the role is incredible. The “secret” is Google tries to hire smart hardworking people, not divinely ordained superhumans. My advice would be to study hard for the interview and let them figure out whether or not you pass the bar. At the very least it will be good practice for othe interviews and you might be accepted and find a role you really like!
- redditmigrant 8y agoYou get paid what the "market" can afford to pay you. Lots of CEOs whose companies are going nowhere, have gone bankrupt get paid millions.
- minimaxir 8y agoNote that the numbers given in the article are total compensation (including stock), not just salary.
- TuringNYC 8y agoGood point. Is this the committed total comp, or total comp stuck in vesting period during which stock luckily appreciated?
- beefalo 8y agoTotal comp at current valuations. I think all of those companies have 1 year cliff, then monthly vesting
- theptip 8y agoThe yearly TC numbers take the initial RSU grant (that vests over a 4 year period, usually with a 1-year cliff followed by monthly vesting) and divide it by 4 to get the "initial RSU grant options vesting per year". Typically you never want anyone (that you want to keep) to be fully vested, so it's expected that you'll get new grants to top up after a couple years if you're doing OK.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoIs there a way to take a poll how many people are actually getting 200k+ with just 2 years of experience? I truly find this unbelievable.
- joshuamorton 8y agoI'm one of those people at least. Coming up on 2 years, and last year and this year both, I'll see >200k in total compensation. Many of my co-workers are in the same boat.
- pbrb 8y agoMake sure you save as much as you can bud. Wish I had that opportunity so young in career - it will go a looong way for you later in life.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoGoogle is different. If there are places where programmers are actually worth that much, one of them is google.
- mlinsey 8y agoNone of the numbers in the article seem unrealistic to me. Keep in mind the big tech companies (FANG et al) are really a tier above in terms of pay, and also that the numbers given here include both RSUs and a projected performance bonus. If you think this guy/gal is overpaid, well, get a load of this table: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-facebook-alphabet-most-profitable-companies-per-employee-2017-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-facebook-alphabet-most...
- jedberg 8y agoProfit per employee is not a very good measure of anything, because it depends on how much the company is reinvesting in itself at that time. A much better metric is revenue per employee.
- oh_sigh 8y agoDoes an L3 or L4 at google in the valley make $300k/year? That seems way above normal based on those salary spreadsheets that leaked.
- titanomachy 8y agoSix offers is also well above normal. Most people I've talked to did not have a single competing offer. Salaries normalise over time though, if performance is similar to peers then comp eventually will be as well (meaning other people will get bigger raises).
- tokonami 8y agoIf you're a new hire, getting a $300k/year offer is rare for L3 and possible for L4 if you negotiate. If you've been around for a few years and performed well, it's possible to cross $300k/year as L3/L4 given how much FAANG stocks have grown.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI know lots of people that get that as new grads. Companies like Facebook, Google, and trading companies do it quite often.
- trhway 8y agoThe key is concurrent offers - until you're Dale Carnegie himself any other negotiating strategy doesn't even come close to the concurrent offers - those companies when pitted 2-3 against each other aren't unheard of to take the modest starting senior engineer offer of 500K all the way to 800K+. This guy pitted the 6 - I dont believe he ended up with just the meager 300K :)
- TuringNYC 8y agoIn NY/SF I remember 1999, it was just like this. In NY I remember 2006, it was just like this. Things spike up or down, but that doesn't mean it wont revert to the mean. Enjoy it while it lasts. Dont get cocky and come to expect it. Definitely dont make long-term commitments assuming it will go on forever.
- Zaheer 8y agoVery realistic. Check out all the submissions on: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html disclosure: I'm co-founder of levels.fyi
- foundart 8y agoCool website, but I had some difficulty with the pagination control. I sorted by company name and wanted to skip to the middle of the alphabet, but once I skipped to page 5, the control would only provide a button for the next page.