6 ms·
> , or even software developers. lol. really? what software devs are making 250k a year?
by ubertoop 7y ago
> , or even software developers.
lol. really? what software devs are making 250k a year?
- uwuhn 7y agolevels.fyi
- throwaway981211 7y agoThese numbers are self reported so I wouldn’t index on them that much - most numbers I see there for Amazon are on the higher end and give the appearance the higher end of the scale is the median... which is inaccurate given that some of the pay bands are pretty wide.
- borramakot 7y agoI get the sense that those numbers might include the value of stock increasing, but that's the only site that's had numbers within 10% of the offers I actually got after negotiation.
- laurencerowe 7y agoI've found levels.fyi to be pretty accurate. For hard numbers you can compare with salaries reported on green card PERM applications (which exclude stock amounts.) Netflix pays all cash and only hires at senior and above so should be comparable: http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Netflix&job=&country=&state=&year=2019&submit=Search http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Netflix&job=&co... https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix&track=Software%20Engineer https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix&track=Software%20Eng...
- ryandrake 7y agoI wouldn’t trust online, voluntary, self-reported salary “data” even a little. No more than any other form of e-bragging. Everyone who posts online makes $350k, drives a Ferrari, and has a supermodel romantic partner. Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense.
- laurencerowe 7y ago> I wouldn’t trust online, voluntary, self-reported salary “data” even a little. No more than any other form of e-bragging. Everyone who posts online makes $350k, drives a Ferrari, and has a supermodel romantic partner. Filter the visadoor results with job=software to see only the software developer salaries. These range from $280K to $850K, have a mean of $373K, a median $370K, 24 of 66 are at $400K and above. This is very much the same ballpark as the self reported average salary of $433K on levels.fyi (I'd expect PERM figures to be slightly lower than average for the company as a whole since I presume they would normally be filed in the first year of employment.) This strongly suggests to me that the levels.fyi self reported salaries for other companies are also ballpark correct. > Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense. 47 of 66 in the visadoor figures make $350 and above. While I would expect Netflix's average to be higher than other comparable companies this is because it hires only at Senior Software Developer level and above. Facebook and Google certainly pay their senior and above developers in the Bay Area similarly, albeit with a different RSU/salary mix.
- Google234 7y agoThe numbers are actually a low for Google in MTV.
- t0ughcritic 7y agoWhat is your academic bg or experience that you are getting such amazing offers?
- elif 7y agoAsk your recruiter, you'll be surprised.
- umvi 7y agoFAANG? It's actually pretty common to get compensation packages in that range
- akhilcacharya 7y agoWho _isn’t_ at this point? (Well not me, but..)
- SeanBoocock 7y agoMost senior+ level engineers at top tech companies (ie FAANG but not exclusive to those companies at least in total comp).
- nphard85 7y agoThis is very common in SV. Many junior/mid-level engineers at FAANG companies beat this figure (when accounting base + stock + bonus).
- mancerayder 7y agoHow big is stock though? In NYC a senior dev makes that much or more in finance, and in a startup probably closer to 140-160 with bonus and fuzzy-numbered stock options. I don't count my stock options ("units") as anything worth anything at this point, not because I'm cynical but because there's no clear valuation. All things considered I'm suddenly feeling underpaid - I know many quite senior folks barely breaking that.
- Cookingboy 7y ago>fuzzy-numbered stock options We aren't talking about stock options, we are talking about concrete RSUs with real valuations. A Staff Engineer at Google can easily be vesting $200k in stocks alone each year.
- user5994461 7y agoStaff is even one level above senior. It's true that they make a lot of money, so do the owner of a SME or a director in a large organization. It's not a position most employees will ever attain in their lifetime.
- novok 7y agoDirectors are equivalent to staff +1 or staff +2. Staff engineers are usually equivalent to 2nd level middle managers, with 1st level are managers of teams that are just ICs). Jr Engineers can be 30-50% of an engineering organization. So it's not that impossible.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoDirector (L8) is two levels above staff engineer (L6) in Google. But promotions get exponentially more difficult after L5, particularly if you intend to stay as an IC.
- throwaway981211 7y ago$320K at Amazon this year. I’m 32 and have been here 7 years.
- mcny 7y ago> $320K at Amazon this year. I’m 32 and have been here 7 years. If you don't mind, can you please share how much net you project to save this year after all taxes and expenses? Sorry if this is a little weird but as a poor person I'd imagine expenses to go up with higher income for ordinary people resulting in not that much (proportionately) savings.
- InterimNew 7y agoI’m not the grandparent commenter, but my total compensation this year is roughly the same, so I thought I’d chime in with my savings: $28.6k - 401k contributions & match $112k - RSUs after tax $14k - Monthly emergency fund contributions from paycheck (yearly total) ~$16k - Bonus after tax My expenses really haven’t increased in line with the compensation. The picture would look different if I had a family, but I’m in my late 20s. I suppose I could eat high quality sushi daily, but I’ll settle for weekly.
- throwaway981211 7y agoSomewhere between $150-160K. My salary is $160K (that’s the max your salary can be at Amazon). The rest of my compensation (remaining ~$160k) is in restricted stock unit vests. I save 100% of that $160K after taxes. I max out my 401K from my salary. I also save 30-40% of each paycheck. My husband and I don’t eat out 11 months of the year. The 12 month is a vacation where we travel within the US for a week vacation. Even then, we don’t go to expensive restaurants and will look for good deals... I mean my husband will open the McDonalds app on his phone to get a buy 1 get 1 Big Mac coupon. We don’t spend eating out... it is unhealthy and a bad habit. We don’t have a car - so living in downtown Seattle, no expensive car tabs or parking. Also no fuel costs or car insurance payments. We paid off student loans and so there’s no debt. We pay for that with high rent ($2400/month excluding utilities). Our only splurge is we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and we might get Disney’s new service. Our apartment is upscale (by our standard). Our furniture is nicer. You called yourself a poor person - I’m sure you know this, but income is not a measure of wealth. We’ve built up some investments and liquid savings over the years, but I know coworkers from previous teams and other friends who earn just as much or more than us but also have $15K/month mortgages and are house broke or have expensive drinking or general spending habits where they end up saving practically nothing.
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- tikhonj 7y agoCounting total compensation (salary + stock + bonus), that would be a substantial number of developers at big tech companies as well as developers at other companies that compete for talent with the big tech companies. You can see numbers and distributions at paysa.com or levels.fyi. It's hard to tell how accurate these sources really are, but they're reasonably consistent with my first- and second-hand knowledge, so I believe they're in the right ballpark.
- themagician 7y agoThe 1%.
- dudul 7y agoA lot, especially on the West Coast.
- baron_harkonnen 7y ago$250k total comp is pretty common for software engineers with a bit of experience. I’ve found Blind is the best place to get actual TC numbers. But even outside of the Bay area and outside of faang $250k should be your target at this point if you’re software engineer with ~5 years of experience.
- rhacker 7y agoWhoa, so I have about 20 years professional experience (19-39), 10 years non-professional (ages 8-18), what should I be making right now? Because it's not 250
- stock_toaster 7y agoYeah, same here (nowhere near 250). This thread is depressing. ;_;
- baron_harkonnen 7y agoI used to see salary threads like this and be depressed too, but don't be. You not getting paid what you're worth does not mean you are not worth more. Next time you go out and interview be bold. Absolutely some companies will balk at a high salary requirement, but others will take it seriously. Even if you don't get $250k you'll get closer than you think and do much better than you are right now. I was making a lot less not long ago. Then I went to an interview, knocked it out of the park, and when the ask TC reqs I just said $250 would work, and they made it happen. This is not in SF-area or NYC either.
- stock_toaster 7y agoThanks, and good advice about being bolder with future salary asks. :)
- rabidrat 7y agoThat money does not come without cost: competitiveness at work, imposter syndrome, unreasonable deadlines, on-call rotations. Not to mention that you'll very likely be working for a mega-corp trying to improve some abstract metric for your division by 4% so they can sell more ads for more dollars. I don't know what your current situation is, but consider carefully what you would be giving up to get those dollars.
- bradenb 7y agoDon't forget, this is HN. I'm with you: where I live it's very typical for a software developer to cap in the mid-$100k range. I would wager that the eye-watering numbers you see from FAANG developers is atypical for _most_ software developers in the country. And that's totally fine.
- avocado4 7y agoAverage junior devs in Bay Area.
- manigandham 7y agoThis is at Silicon Valley/software companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Facebook, etc. Most developers will be above 150k-200k there, especially accounting for bonuses and stock which are considered as part of compensation. But this is actually rare across the industry as a whole in the US, and extremely rare when considering other countries. It's nowhere near as common as the heavily skewed HN comments will make you believe.
- urda 7y agoThe good ones are making that when you account for compensation, perks, and stock grants. This isn't unusual at all for top talent.
- bovermyer 7y agoI was offered 300k to work at a hedge fund in Connecticut a couple years ago. It's not unheard of.
- throwaway191016 7y ago565k salary+bonus. Java/c++ dev at HFT in Chicago.
- electricslpnsld 7y agoThe FAANGs are starting new grads at these levels now. 150K base salary, 100K+ RSUs vesting per year, 30K+ bonus targets per year will get you there and then some.
- Google234 7y agoThat's too high for Google at least, that's L4 level salary/stock.
- sockgrant 7y agohttps://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ Get promoted once at google / Facebook and you should be there. Promoted again and you’ll be 300-350k