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> The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap

> The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. The sample set of people using TripleByte is not going to be remotely representative of the market for developers as a whole. Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters to spray their resume around; they are going to be applying directly to the companies they want to work at or getting headhunted by the companies themselves.

chillacy 8y ago
The title is really better labeled: "How much software engineers on triplebyte received in offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle"
- wallflower 8y ago
  While I suspect the title will not be changed for SEO/targeting reasons, a slight improvement on your title is: “How much software engineers on Triplebyte received in base salary offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle” Yes, I know HTML titles cannot do any emphasis. EDIT: HN title has now been improved by dang. To be more accurate about “SEO/targeting”, I meant the title on the blog hosted by Triplebyte: “How much money do Software Engineers actually make?”
  - dang 8y ago
    We're happy to change titles to make them more accurate, but someone's going to need to make it fit 80 chars. Edit: I took a shot. "Triplebyte" doesn't fit, but probably shouldn't be in there anyway; it's already next to the title.
    - wallflower 8y ago
      Thanks dang for editing the title well given those constraints!
    - adtac 8y ago
      >(Triplebyte) software engineer base salaries in SF, NYC, Seattle You have 15 more chars to work with.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
rifung 8y ago
> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters to spray their resume around; they are going to be applying directly to the companies they want to work at or getting headhunted by the companies themselves. Why are those mutually exclusive? I like to think I have a decent resume and would apply to companies directly but if I can get more offers using Triplebyte why wouldnt I? Isn't their draw that you don't have to interview at individual companies but can use a streamlined application?
- nilkn 8y ago
  Everything I've read indicates that you do still have to do the normal in-person technical interview gauntlet at each individual company. It's possible things have changed recently, though.
  - john-radio 8y ago
    The draw is that you don't have to do a phone technical screen, which is true, but they do still want to have you over for a full-day technical & comprehensive interview.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  There is a simple reason: scarcity of talent. Talent that can be commoditized through a platform instantly becomes cheaper, with employers much more easily able to sift through inventory (candidates) and look for deals or just waste peoples’ time gathering market data on interview performance. If you’re sincerely highly talented, you’re not going to advertise yourself as a commodity on a platform. Your increased skill may not have a chance to be displayed because the platform uses foolish things like coding trivia or a black box proprietary method for recommending salary ranges for candidates like you, or offers automatic ways to find similar candidates so that if employers don’t like your salary demands, they can use your characteristics to tailor a search for a cheaper version of you. Putting yourself on a platform like TripleByte essentially instantly signals that you’re on the cheap, commodity end of the spectrum (and yes employers think of $130k as cheap salary for this type of position). Using TripleByte is like cheapening your personal brand. In fact it’s even worse because you’re voluntarily doing it and voluntarily centralizing all of this interview performance data and profile data for them.
stale2002 8y ago
> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters This is an interest statement. It is interesting, because the data I am seeing is that apparently Triple Byte is able to give people quite successful results. (Yes, 150k base salary is pretty good). But your statement seems to imply that candidates that use them are apparently below average or something. And yet even though they arent as good candidates, they are apparently able to give people really good results, despite that. Is my barometer for tech salaries so off, that apparently people believe that 150k base isn't something that a "stronger" candidate might receive? Yes, I've heard of some high salaries, but I still wouldn't call this something to scoff at
- davidjnelson 8y ago
  It’s very location dependent. In Florida, 150k is great for a principal engineer. In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Also, the faangs of the world do pay twice as much in total comp.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    > In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Maybe if you work at google. But you have an extremely skewed view of job salaries, if you describe 150k as "terrible". Yes, FAANGs pay a lot. But the vast majority of developers, even in san francisco, do not work at FAANGs. 150k, is just around the average salary, for a senior engineer, actually.
    - davidjnelson 8y ago
      I would say principal at most companies maps to l6 at google. In Mountain View that pays $560,000/year total comp on average according to levels.fyi Non faang pay for principal engineers in Mountain View could be estimated roughly by using stack overflow’s salary calculator. Mountain View, react, typescript, aws, postgres, linux, 20 years experience, no degree lists $187,000 for the 50th percentile. I think the discussion gets confusing because as an industry we suck at describing levels of the technical track in a portable way. I do know senior engineers making 150k in the Bay Area. I also know some making 750k.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
Back at Workpop, an hourly jobs website, we actually observed a negative correlation between educational attainment and getting interviews. This was from data that did not use a recommender system at all, so it lacked the serious confounding “feedback loop” that may occur in TripleByte’s case. After comparing to a much smaller set of broad-market resumes, it was clear that you’re right: people using online job finding tools are actually shut out, for some reason, from conventional job channels where the intuitive rules apply. But yes, obviously there’s something wrong with the data if the salary gap observed was so small. I generally like TripleByte and its writing, but it seems like they really got something 200% wrong here.
cynoclast 8y ago
That's not true. I'm lazy (efficient) and I let my recruiter get me passed the HR shenanigans.
gumby 8y ago
This! We are a small team of 5 expecting to double in 2019, all from experienced folks extracted from big companies. We budgeted $260 each and our investors didn't bat an eye.
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  To be fair, the budget and the employee's base salary are not quite the same thing. Let's take a $150k base salary as a specific example, as a nice round-ish number. The numbers from Triplebyte don't include bonuses and equity; I suspect that 20% combined is a reasonable assumption. That puts us at 180k. Now we have employer costs that the employee never sees (this all assumes the US): * Social security: $8.2k (6.2% of $132,900 in 2019). * Medicare: $2.6k (1.45% of 180000) * State payroll taxes (for things like unemployment insurance): ~$1.5k in California, say, mostly for State Disability Insurance bits. We're up to $193k. Health insurance for employees, if you provide it, is probably $10k-$30k depending on the health plan and whether the employees have families. So $203k-$223k. Equipment is a few thousand per year. Office space (if local) or possibly travel (if remote, though maybe you could try to do everything async or over videoconference), really depends on the geography. At that size, I don't know whether you have 401(k) matching or safe harbor contributions, but if you do that's presumably another $5k-$15k depending on how generous the match is. So a base salary of $150k means a budget of at least $205k and more likely closer to $230k or $240k.
  - gumby 8y ago
    We budgeted 260 base. We expect most of the hires to have tuition payments to make...not that we will pay younger hires less. But we have specific people with specific experience in mind. These folks are getting that kind of money at FAAxG today.
    - bzbarsky 8y ago
      Ah, 260 base is a totally different story. Thank you for clarifying!
    - dcosson 8y ago
paultopia 8y ago
Yeah, just to elaborate on this (because I think the point of this comment has been missed a bit elsewhere on the sub-thread): - TripleByte imposes a cost (having to go through their process) in exchange for getting to signal programming ability, a prerequisite to getting in the door (getting an interview) - People with strong credentials don't need to incur that cost, so they probably won't do so. This means TripleByte's pool probably doesn't have any Stanford CS grads who are looking to leave their Google job. But these are also the people who command the highest salaries. Let's say it chops off the top x-percentile of the market, for some reasonable definition of x (10? 15?) Then, TripleByte's screening process probably also chops off the bottom y-percentile, because those are people who can't actually pass the screening. Once you restrict the range like that, and also make paper credentials less relevant because there's an alternate signal available, of course the rates are going to be compressed.
- autokad 8y ago
  that makes sense because these numbers feel inflated to me. I think facebook only pays data scientists 135k range.
  - driverdan 8y ago
    That's base pay and doesn't include RSUs.
  - nilkn 8y ago
    I can't imagine an experienced data scientist at Facebook is only making $135k in total. I'd double or triple that for experienced senior engineers (including non-cash compensation like RSUs, etc.).
- auntad 8y ago
  I'll throw in another wrinkle: it's not just the candidate pool to consider, but how companies are choosing to leverage - or avoid leveraging - the platform. I wouldn't say Triplebyte imposes a significant cost on the candidate. They only have two rounds: one is a quiz that's quite straightforward to complete (about a half hour of multiple choice, if I recall correctly), and a single 1-2 hour video interview. If nothing else, it's good practice for the candidate. Plus, they dangle some brand names as partners that would attract any candidate, including the cream of the crop. Stripe, Palantir, etc. So top tier candidates are certainly likely to be convinced to give Triplebyte's process a shot. I'm not sure how often candidates get matched with those top tier companies on Triplebyte -- I didn't get matched in my recent job search, and ended up applying and receiving offers from several of them independently of Triplebyte -- but it's certainly plausible that Triplebyte has many top candidates at least giving the platform a try. Regardless of which candidates are using Triplebyte, the only relevant data is which candidates are _getting offers via Triplebyte_. In my experience, I received several offers, only one of them via Triplebyte (I only accepted one onsite there) - Triplebyte has no insight into my other offers. That one offer via Triplebyte was significantly lower - at least on base - than all of the other offers I received. It would've put me in the 50ish percentile on this post's plots. The other offers put me in ~60-97 percentile. Very anecdotal, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of companies giving offers via Triplebyte are generally paying less than top companies who are less likely to use Triplebyte despite having a presence on the platform.

chillacy 8y ago

The title is really better labeled: "How much software engineers on triplebyte received in offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle"

wallflower 8y ago
While I suspect the title will not be changed for SEO/targeting reasons, a slight improvement on your title is: “How much software engineers on Triplebyte received in base salary offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle” Yes, I know HTML titles cannot do any emphasis. EDIT: HN title has now been improved by dang. To be more accurate about “SEO/targeting”, I meant the title on the blog hosted by Triplebyte: “How much money do Software Engineers actually make?”
- dang 8y ago
  We're happy to change titles to make them more accurate, but someone's going to need to make it fit 80 chars. Edit: I took a shot. "Triplebyte" doesn't fit, but probably shouldn't be in there anyway; it's already next to the title.
  - wallflower 8y ago
    Thanks dang for editing the title well given those constraints!
  - adtac 8y ago
    >(Triplebyte) software engineer base salaries in SF, NYC, Seattle You have 15 more chars to work with.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

rifung 8y ago

> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters to spray their resume around; they are going to be applying directly to the companies they want to work at or getting headhunted by the companies themselves. Why are those mutually exclusive? I like to think I have a decent resume and would apply to companies directly but if I can get more offers using Triplebyte why wouldnt I? Isn't their draw that you don't have to interview at individual companies but can use a streamlined application?

nilkn 8y ago
Everything I've read indicates that you do still have to do the normal in-person technical interview gauntlet at each individual company. It's possible things have changed recently, though.
- john-radio 8y ago
  The draw is that you don't have to do a phone technical screen, which is true, but they do still want to have you over for a full-day technical & comprehensive interview.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
There is a simple reason: scarcity of talent. Talent that can be commoditized through a platform instantly becomes cheaper, with employers much more easily able to sift through inventory (candidates) and look for deals or just waste peoples’ time gathering market data on interview performance. If you’re sincerely highly talented, you’re not going to advertise yourself as a commodity on a platform. Your increased skill may not have a chance to be displayed because the platform uses foolish things like coding trivia or a black box proprietary method for recommending salary ranges for candidates like you, or offers automatic ways to find similar candidates so that if employers don’t like your salary demands, they can use your characteristics to tailor a search for a cheaper version of you. Putting yourself on a platform like TripleByte essentially instantly signals that you’re on the cheap, commodity end of the spectrum (and yes employers think of $130k as cheap salary for this type of position). Using TripleByte is like cheapening your personal brand. In fact it’s even worse because you’re voluntarily doing it and voluntarily centralizing all of this interview performance data and profile data for them.

stale2002 8y ago

> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters This is an interest statement. It is interesting, because the data I am seeing is that apparently Triple Byte is able to give people quite successful results. (Yes, 150k base salary is pretty good). But your statement seems to imply that candidates that use them are apparently below average or something. And yet even though they arent as good candidates, they are apparently able to give people really good results, despite that. Is my barometer for tech salaries so off, that apparently people believe that 150k base isn't something that a "stronger" candidate might receive? Yes, I've heard of some high salaries, but I still wouldn't call this something to scoff at

davidjnelson 8y ago
It’s very location dependent. In Florida, 150k is great for a principal engineer. In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Also, the faangs of the world do pay twice as much in total comp.
- stale2002 8y ago
  > In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Maybe if you work at google. But you have an extremely skewed view of job salaries, if you describe 150k as "terrible". Yes, FAANGs pay a lot. But the vast majority of developers, even in san francisco, do not work at FAANGs. 150k, is just around the average salary, for a senior engineer, actually.
  - davidjnelson 8y ago
    I would say principal at most companies maps to l6 at google. In Mountain View that pays $560,000/year total comp on average according to levels.fyi Non faang pay for principal engineers in Mountain View could be estimated roughly by using stack overflow’s salary calculator. Mountain View, react, typescript, aws, postgres, linux, 20 years experience, no degree lists $187,000 for the 50th percentile. I think the discussion gets confusing because as an industry we suck at describing levels of the technical track in a portable way. I do know senior engineers making 150k in the Bay Area. I also know some making 750k.

doctorpangloss 8y ago

Back at Workpop, an hourly jobs website, we actually observed a negative correlation between educational attainment and getting interviews. This was from data that did not use a recommender system at all, so it lacked the serious confounding “feedback loop” that may occur in TripleByte’s case. After comparing to a much smaller set of broad-market resumes, it was clear that you’re right: people using online job finding tools are actually shut out, for some reason, from conventional job channels where the intuitive rules apply. But yes, obviously there’s something wrong with the data if the salary gap observed was so small. I generally like TripleByte and its writing, but it seems like they really got something 200% wrong here.

cynoclast 8y ago

That's not true. I'm lazy (efficient) and I let my recruiter get me passed the HR shenanigans.

gumby 8y ago

This! We are a small team of 5 expecting to double in 2019, all from experienced folks extracted from big companies. We budgeted $260 each and our investors didn't bat an eye.

bzbarsky 8y ago
To be fair, the budget and the employee's base salary are not quite the same thing. Let's take a $150k base salary as a specific example, as a nice round-ish number. The numbers from Triplebyte don't include bonuses and equity; I suspect that 20% combined is a reasonable assumption. That puts us at 180k. Now we have employer costs that the employee never sees (this all assumes the US): * Social security: $8.2k (6.2% of $132,900 in 2019). * Medicare: $2.6k (1.45% of 180000) * State payroll taxes (for things like unemployment insurance): ~$1.5k in California, say, mostly for State Disability Insurance bits. We're up to $193k. Health insurance for employees, if you provide it, is probably $10k-$30k depending on the health plan and whether the employees have families. So $203k-$223k. Equipment is a few thousand per year. Office space (if local) or possibly travel (if remote, though maybe you could try to do everything async or over videoconference), really depends on the geography. At that size, I don't know whether you have 401(k) matching or safe harbor contributions, but if you do that's presumably another $5k-$15k depending on how generous the match is. So a base salary of $150k means a budget of at least $205k and more likely closer to $230k or $240k.
- gumby 8y ago
  We budgeted 260 base. We expect most of the hires to have tuition payments to make...not that we will pay younger hires less. But we have specific people with specific experience in mind. These folks are getting that kind of money at FAAxG today.
  - bzbarsky 8y ago
    Ah, 260 base is a totally different story. Thank you for clarifying!
  - dcosson 8y ago

paultopia 8y ago

Yeah, just to elaborate on this (because I think the point of this comment has been missed a bit elsewhere on the sub-thread): - TripleByte imposes a cost (having to go through their process) in exchange for getting to signal programming ability, a prerequisite to getting in the door (getting an interview) - People with strong credentials don't need to incur that cost, so they probably won't do so. This means TripleByte's pool probably doesn't have any Stanford CS grads who are looking to leave their Google job. But these are also the people who command the highest salaries. Let's say it chops off the top x-percentile of the market, for some reasonable definition of x (10? 15?) Then, TripleByte's screening process probably also chops off the bottom y-percentile, because those are people who can't actually pass the screening. Once you restrict the range like that, and also make paper credentials less relevant because there's an alternate signal available, of course the rates are going to be compressed.

autokad 8y ago
that makes sense because these numbers feel inflated to me. I think facebook only pays data scientists 135k range.
- driverdan 8y ago
  That's base pay and doesn't include RSUs.
- nilkn 8y ago
  I can't imagine an experienced data scientist at Facebook is only making $135k in total. I'd double or triple that for experienced senior engineers (including non-cash compensation like RSUs, etc.).
auntad 8y ago
I'll throw in another wrinkle: it's not just the candidate pool to consider, but how companies are choosing to leverage - or avoid leveraging - the platform. I wouldn't say Triplebyte imposes a significant cost on the candidate. They only have two rounds: one is a quiz that's quite straightforward to complete (about a half hour of multiple choice, if I recall correctly), and a single 1-2 hour video interview. If nothing else, it's good practice for the candidate. Plus, they dangle some brand names as partners that would attract any candidate, including the cream of the crop. Stripe, Palantir, etc. So top tier candidates are certainly likely to be convinced to give Triplebyte's process a shot. I'm not sure how often candidates get matched with those top tier companies on Triplebyte -- I didn't get matched in my recent job search, and ended up applying and receiving offers from several of them independently of Triplebyte -- but it's certainly plausible that Triplebyte has many top candidates at least giving the platform a try. Regardless of which candidates are using Triplebyte, the only relevant data is which candidates are _getting offers via Triplebyte_. In my experience, I received several offers, only one of them via Triplebyte (I only accepted one onsite there) - Triplebyte has no insight into my other offers. That one offer via Triplebyte was significantly lower - at least on base - than all of the other offers I received. It would've put me in the 50ish percentile on this post's plots. The other offers put me in ~60-97 percentile. Very anecdotal, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of companies giving offers via Triplebyte are generally paying less than top companies who are less likely to use Triplebyte despite having a presence on the platform.