12 ms·

How much I made as a good Engineer at Facebook

76 points by i0exception 6y ago

spoonjim 6y ago
Holy crap. Never knew the numbers were like this.
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  I lived in SV and moved to Europe to do a startup. If things were to go south, I wouldn't even consider regular employment over here. Even when told, most people still refuse to believe the compensation numbers achievable by even fairly average engineers.
  - ivanche 6y ago
    It seems unbelievable really. It's literally 5x-20x of what a solid developer can earn in Europe. I mean, the best of the best (and I know maybe 1000 developers so not that small of a sample) I've heard is around $150K, a few over $100K and everyone else below $100K. Of course, there's other stuff - 30 (working) days of paid vacation, solid and cheap education, solid medical coverage (I consider $50 medical bill damn high) etc.
    - powerapple 6y ago
      It is less about the skills. With a good platform, your skills will transfer to higher value (I mean money really) than average platforms. It is not like the person with highest score in class end up with the biggest house. There is only one Facebook, one Google, one Amazon, one Microsoft and one Apple, and the US has all of them.
    - marcell 6y ago
      As a SV engineer I’m having the opposite experience hearing those numbers. It sounds way below market rates.
    - randomchars 6y ago
      > 30 (working) days of paid vacation > solid and cheap education > solid medical coverage Unfortunately none of these are uniform across Europe. I only have 20 days of vacation, medical coverage is horrible, with 2-3 month waiting lists for even an MRI, and education is absolutely horrid. I wouldn't even call them free, nor cheap: income taxes come out to about ~35%, and VAT is the highest in the world. And to add on to that, achieving compensation above ~80k usd is basically impossible. With ~3 years of experience I barely get half of that at a Google L4 level equivalent.
      - riknox 6y ago
        That's the unfortunate reality of working in Europe I think, especially in a lower cost of living country. I've just moved from Germany to the UK, and my salary has increased in gross terms (and an associated significant increase in net), but I lose many of the German provisions/safety nets that the high taxes pay for over there.
      - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
        Genuine question, I have always wondered about this regarding EU based FAANG roles (I am making the leap that you are EU based): How statistically common/likely is it for EU based engineers to move to the US on a L-1 visa, specifically at google?
        0xfaded 6y ago
        I didn't work at google, but of the people I know, if H1B wasn't an option they would usually push through an O1.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        In California, if you're making over a million dollars you're looking at 50.3% marginal income tax i believe, which is a lot more than the 35% cited by the parent as "expensive" and you're probably getting a lot less
        randomchars 6y ago
    - zelos 6y ago
      The median daily rate for sofware contractors in the UK is apparently around $500, which is probably over $100k/year. I guess that stops counting as Europe fairly soon, though.
      - randomchars 6y ago
        > sofware contractors Contractors always earn more than employees though don't they?
        zelos 6y ago
        Yes, but they're still software developers: most teams I've worked on have had plenty of contractors. It seems like the more experienced developers either stay permie and move into architecture/management or become contractors. There are plenty of "contractors in name only", too.
    - RestlessMind 6y ago
      > Of course, there's other stuff - 30 (working) days of paid vacation, solid and cheap education, solid medical coverage (I consider $50 medical bill damn high) etc. I worked at FAANGs in Silicon Valley for many years. I always got at least 20 vacation days, 10-12 holidays (like Christmas or July 4th), excellent insurance plans and could pay off my 40-45K education loan in a breeze. Total cost of private education is ~25K per child. If you have a Software job at a FAANG in SV, it will be better than almost any other arrangement in Europe (exception: Zurich) even after taking into account vacation days, insurance premiums, California taxes, private schools cost and probability of gun violence.
      - drevil-v2 6y ago
        I am curious what's special about Zurich that makes it an exception?
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    I suppose for a lot of non US engineers the main issue is not so much believing the compensation packages but actually navigating the legal constraints to be allowed to work in the US (or more specifically in SV, Seatle, NY, where those packages are available).
    - henvic 6y ago
      I'd say in the US, as this is an immigration issue. Things are so much easier for those who have the luck of either being US citizens or somehow being allowed to legally work there...
  - durnygbur 6y ago
    > I wouldn't even consider regular employment over here. You have a chance to complete for free a long queue of take home assignments which might end up with an employment for 2k EUR net monthly.
    - Rainymood 6y ago
      As an EU engineer this ... pains me ... because how true it is ... please tell me about the promised land
    - 0xfaded 6y ago
      HAHAHA, this sounds laughable similar to all the "startup competitions" where the grand prize is pitching to some noname investor.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    Personally, I think the SV numbers are just too high. Your attitude is a good example of the issues that come with that. We’re engineers, not royalty. There’s nothing any one of us could do that would justify these wages, if it wasn’t for US immigration policies causing an artificial supply/demand issue.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Well clearly there's something you can do to justify it because fb justifies it. This is business after all. Your value is a combination of what you bring to the company and how hard you are to replace. FB makes $$$, the $$$ didn't just appear out of thin air, it happened because of the people who work there. Giving engineers a share of all that money seems much more reasonable than giving zuckerberg a second private jet.
    - jhowell 6y ago
      > We’re engineers, not royalty. There’s nothing any one of us could do that would justify these wages, if it wasn’t for US immigration policies causing an artificial supply/demand issue. Executives, CEOs and shareholders are all highly compensated for their risk in both time and money and are not "royalty." I would argue that being royal implies birth as an unjustifiably paid skill.
      - kuschku 6y ago
        > Executives, CEOs and shareholders are all highly compensated for their risk in both time and money That too is wrong. Paying wages based on supply/demand instead of based on the value an employee actually provides leads to exactly this kind of heavily distorted labor markets.
        quickthrower2 6y ago
        Well how do you define value? Is it workers should get enough for a modest life, a fair pay for a fair days work, the rest goes to shareholders?
        6y ago
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Among developed economies, Canada is similar to Europe, and Japan is the worst for software engineers. The Balkans pay programmers like US 7-11 cashiers. :)
- hardwaresofton 6y ago
  https://levels.fyi/ https://levels.fyi/
- objclxt 6y ago
  > Never knew the numbers were like this. What’s missing from this post is how common it is. E8 at Facebook is extremely rare. I can’t remember the exact percentage when I was there, but it’s around 1-2%. E5 at FB is a terminal level, many engineers don’t get beyond that. I worked on a team of several hundred engineers and we only had one or two E7s, and nothing higher. To put this in perspective: at FB, E8 is the individual contributor equivalent of engineering director.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    The post does say that this is rare and the extreme upper end of compensation.
  - johnx123-up 6y ago
    Is the mentioned E5 salary (304k) above average or?
    - exged 6y ago
      Below average for someone joining as a new E5 employee, especially if stock refreshers and equity appreciation is taken into account.
kilroy123 6y ago
You are so ridiculously set if you can earn this much while working remotely in a low cost living area.
- ves 6y ago
  If you’re making this much, you don’t care about cost of living, assuming you’re not going to have some crazy standard of living (mansion, supercars, etc.). A 50% increase in your food costs is a rounding error, for example.
martamorena9182 6y ago
> Year 1 was learn to become a good engineer, > Year 2 was learn become a good Tech Lead This made me laugh... One year to become a good engineer and another to become a tech lead. Seriously? Facebook seems like an interesting place to be. Maybe I should also apply there. But on a more serious note. There is no way, no matter how smart you are, to become a Tech Lead (at least not at a reputable company) within two years. It's just mentally not possible to learn all the things you need to learn in that time. And that is not even considering the fact that most of the time you don't have such ideal conditions that you would be exposed to the necessary scenarios and learning opportunities to pull that off even if it was humanly possible. Perhaps Facebook's levels are more based on "business achievements" than actual competence, which is fine I guess. If I make the company 10 million dollars, why should I not get a good chunk of it, regardless of how experienced I am? (I am serious) But the fact that E8 is still about "team of 4" tells me a lot. Principal Engineers at Amazon are responsible for potentially hundreds of engineers and that level is said to be about E7. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And the author shows that: "E6->E7 and E7->E8 promotions were mainly about making something successful. My execution could have been perfect but if the product didn’t work, I would not have been promoted." Yup, pure business success based promotions, which makes any level based comparison between Facebook and Amazon kinda moot. I would be interested to know if this is just one data point, or if this is how Facebook generally operates.
- falcor84 6y ago
  > One year to become a good engineer and another to become a tech lead. Seriously? We don't know what the OP did before. They possibly had significant industry experience from before, and just had to figure out how to apply that at Facebook.
  - mic47 6y ago
    I worked for FB (left in 2018), and you are right. He started as E4, which means that he was not new grad (new grads starts as E3). So he was either phd, or had industry experience before. His first year: "Because of the 3 launches and building a 4 people team, I was promoted to E5" -- looks like he should have been E5 when started (given that he was able to build team in the first year), and they quickly corrected for that.
traskjd 6y ago
But.... you have to work at Facebook.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  True but everyone has a price, and this is far above mine.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Indeed. https://youtu.be/-DiBc1vkTig https://youtu.be/-DiBc1vkTig comes to mind
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    I guess everyone's different but I feel like a good devs in America can make a damn good living without working for something evil. You won't be a millionaire in 5 years, but you will be just fine. How much do you really need?
    - bradlys 6y ago
      It really depends on where you live. If you want to own a home, Facebook and similar are really your only options for the Bay Area. Assuming you also want a nice commute, decent schools, etc. stuff that most professionals work towards.
      - taylodl 6y ago
        The reason commonly given for living in the Bay Area is all the jobs available but you're pointing out that's not actually the case because if you want to live well in the Bay Area then you have few employment options. Is that the reality?
        bradlys 6y ago
        > Is that the reality? Certainly is for me. The $170k/yr startup salary I get is certainly not enough to afford jack shit around here. Even an extra $50k/yr wouldn't do anything to alter my lifestyle. I couldn't get any kind of home around here with that and I'd still be very uncomfortable renting a home on that income - as it'd be more than a third of my take home pay (lose your job? You better have a very large emergency buffer - unemployment won't even pay a third of your monthly rent). The engineers I know who stay around here are A) wealthy (bought home long before average price was past $1m or inherited one), B) rent, dual engineer income, and enjoy the renter lifestyle, C) Work at FAANG and/or have a spouse who does and make big fucking $$$$ D) Going to move away, no plans to stay permanently. There are no young people (<35) moving here, working for no-name companies, and buying homes after saving for a down payment after a few years. Almost all young people I know who do such things have A) had a startup IPO or B) work at FAANG. Certainly can't make it here on a single startup salary - not even in the faintest. I'm proof of that. The reason people move here is because there's a chance (insert dumb and dumber reference) to strike rich. There's also way more jobs here than anywhere else in the country and that's why I moved here. I couldn't get a job anywhere else but I somehow managed to get one here four times in a row now.
alibarber 6y ago
So good that they made a three quarters of a billion dollars in year 5. (I know I know it's a typo but it's hard to take any of this seriously when the whole page is about how he or she is such an excellent engineer)
siscia 6y ago
What is a "product" in this context?
- Maro 6y ago
  eg. Stories, Marketplace, Live Video, Workplace, or a new type of Ad product, or it could be sth smaller. As a user on the web you perceive it as a big or small feature of FB.
cosmodisk 6y ago
It was hard to read this... You'd need to write code that produces unicorn pastries to be able to go anywhere near such numbers here in Europe.. But the saddest thing about most dev jobs is that even the outcome can literally make companies millions/billions, the devs are rarely awarded for it. Take sales,for instance. You sell a few million worth of licencing and you get a nice comp.. As a dev, you write code that speeds up a process by 20%, the company increases profit margins and you get..well, a trip to a conference, if you are lucky.. Citadel is a good example,where even devs can earn substantial amounts off successful trading strategies,but then it's still a US company with only a handful of people working for them.
- pc86 6y ago
  America, if you can refer to it in a monolithic context, has decided that individualism, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, etc. trump a lot of things. Almost no social safety net (barely enough to prevent you from starving or dying in the street, and not much more, and most of that won't even come from the government but from faith-based charity), but yeah if you're a software developer you might be able to make an extra $50-75k/yr compared to Europe. But how much are you going to have in student loans? I graduated in '08 with about $22k and that was a lot back then. What's someone graduating last year or this year going to graduate with? There's pros and cons to both approaches, both at individual and societal levels, but I rarely hear Europeans acknowledge why US companies can pay its developers so much more.
  - cosmodisk 6y ago
    I'm happy to discuss those 'why'. The cost of student loans or lack of social safety net hardly warrants higher salaries. This is probably more related to the availability of the specialists (immigration rules, the local supply of devs coming from universities,etc).Very few companies even in the US can pay 200-300K salaries to devs,most don't come anywhere near that.My main point is that European companies are less likely to reward employees,even though their contributions far exceed the costs. Similar trends are seen in other fields: recently, top tier law firms in London complained that the US companies with divisions in London can push graduate salaries to £100K. The same market,yet very different willingness to pay.
wruza 6y ago
Interesting how quickly this thread disappeared from first four pages of HN. Is it a hot topic not worth its discussion?
zuhayeer 6y ago
You can view more compensation ranges by level at Facebook here: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... The highest level (E8) with recorded information: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/E8/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...
newbie578 6y ago
Holy crap, when you compare the numbers, how can people still expect Europe to compete with the U.S.? In Europe, tech is seen as an unfortunate necessity, not a groundbreaking solution.. And things won’t change until the mentality changes.
- objclxt 6y ago
  FAANG hire in Europe. They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees. When I relocated from the US to Europe from a FAANG company my salary was market adjusted (about a 25% cut), but RSUs and stock were kept the same. 25% sounds like a lot, but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area, so I was more than happy. Once you become a senior enough engineer at FAANG the overwhelming majority of your compensation is stock, and when that happens the base salary becomes pretty irrelevant. My base salary is maybe 1/5 of my total compensation at this point.
  - riknox 6y ago
    I don't think it's true that the pay isn't drastically different. I was in the pipeline with Apple recently, and the pay for a sr. eng position was 80k. This is comparable to other companies where I interviewed. Of course, without receiving a solid offer I didn't hear about the RSU side, but I think your experience moving internally is totally different to starting a role with FAANG within EU.
  - RestlessMind 6y ago
    > They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees. Sorry but that's simply not true. Based on my personal experience at FAANGs (including management roles), SV packages are much higher compared to London, Munich, Paris etc. Only exception is Zurich. > but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area, The number I look at is total saving amount each year.
- finolex1 6y ago
  I think it has more to do with economics than mindsets. Compare Microsoft/Amazon salaries in Seattle and Vancouver for instance.
_0o6v 6y ago
There is not a single engineering job in the UK that pays $1m per year. There are barely any engineering jobs that pay £100k+ a year.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  There must be some that pay £1M at the tech giants. £100K is a minimum for most of the financial tech recruiters, for senior hires. At least I chat to quite a few of them and there doesn't seem to be anything under. Typical build-a-market-connector jobs. Also there's a big contracting market where people will pay £600-£2000 a day, depending on what you do. They're semi-permanent jobs that superficially seem to be temporary, but something about how banks are organised makes them feel more permanent.
  - maccard 6y ago
    I have spoken to a handful of recruiters that have suggested £100k but they definitely seem rare. I've _never_,not once, seen or come across an offer for more than 500k. Im sure there are people who are on it, but I have absolutely no idea who they are or where they work.
    - lordnacho 6y ago
      Assuming you mean senior jobs in finance, 100K is a sort of modal zone. You lose your personal tax allowance just above, so there's a dead zone around there. That's my guess anyway, what's the point of your employer paying 100% tax? £500k as a salary is rare, most comp at that level is some sort of bonus. I've heard of banks that hire people in at ordinary day rates, but then once they are familiar with the person will bump the rate to whatever.
      - maccard 6y ago
        > You lose your personal tax allowance just above, so there's a dead zone around there. That's my guess anyway, what's the point of your employer paying 100% tax? It's tapered from 100 to 125k, but at no point is your employer paying 100% tax. From 100 to 125k, your marginal tax rate is ~60%, but drops after that point. > £500k as a salary is rare, most comp at that level is some sort of bonus. Even with bonuses, or RSU/some other form of shares, I think "rare" is understating it, and that's exactly the point. The discussion in this thread is that the top performers in FAANG are clearing _well_ above these values (multiples of these numbers). > once they are familiar with the person will bump the rate to whatever. Can you be a little more clear with the "whatever" number? 100k? 500k? 1m?
gnrlst 6y ago
Cries in European.
kartoolOz 6y ago
Posts like this make me want to sell my soul to the devil O.O
dcl 6y ago
Astonishing.
dave_sullivan 6y ago
You get this guy, then you make the mistake of looking for projects on angel list and find half the people posting think they can hire engineers for 0 cash. I’ve been told my whole career that I don’t charge enough and yet I have to look hard to find people that pay my rate. Then I check HN to find what an underpaid loser I am. Coffee break over, back to the mines I guess.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  Well, people most likely are correct telling you to charge more. Getting clients is part of the job,if it'd be easy, everybody would be doing it.As for $0/h expectations: those people are everywhere.A few month ago spoke to one in my network. I need an app.. what kind of app? Well, not sure yet, but could you recommend someone,who won't rip me off?? Oh my...
  - pc86 6y ago
    Honestly, dealing with these types of clients is why I stopped freelancing/consulting full-time. It's just so mentally exhausting to go through the "I need something affordable, I mean I don't want to pay $800 for an app or something crazy!" (actual quote) even when you qualify them early.
    - cosmodisk 6y ago
      I think what helps early during the qualification process is asking if they've got money. I remember a fully fledged meeting with a whole bunch of people around the table discussing how they'd like the project to look. Eventually,after an hour or so,my manager at the time, asks: have you got budget for this? Emm...emm.. we may.. it's almost there..etc.
Maro 6y ago
Some notes from a former FB engineer (DE, E5, London). First of all, congrats to the author of the post! Even having worked there, seeing these numbers is a bit shocking :) Some comments to help cool down EU emotions in this thread. As the author points out, there are very few engineers at FB who have this sort of career path or income. The author says that from year 2-8, every single year he got an "additional grant" over the refresher stock. I asked a friend who is a former Eng.Man. at FB, he says that these "additional grants" are given to very few people every year by the executive team, so this makes the career path even more of an outlier. He says this level of income is unusual even for E7-E8s. This career path is probably the statistical quivalent of building a successful startup and cashing out. Also, to end up with the these W2 numbers (W2 is a tax form in the US, by W2 the author means "total gross compensation"), you need to join early, to get the nice stock appreciation. Having said that, so far it's never been the wrong time to join: in 2016 when I joined (FB was a 10+ yo company) stock was at ~$100, now it's at ~$300 :) How are these numbers in EU offices: in London (in 2016-17), number were significantly lower than in US, both base salary (and hence bonus, since it's a multiplier) and stock grants, and also opportunities (products) and visibility (eg. every 6 months I got my rating from an unknown quorum of people at the Menlo Park HQ, and I had mostly remote managers who didn't have much time for me). Expect to make -25-50% if you're in London vs Menlo Park for the same work/effort. Per my recollection, as an E5 back then, everything added up (base, bonus, stock), my net salary was around 7k GBP/mo. If I would have stuck around at FB, without levelups, just because of stock appreciation and refresher stocks I'd probably be making >10k GBP/mo now. SWEs make ~20% more than DEs. Also, to put the author's promotion track into perspective, I found that it's very hard to get promoted at FB. When I was hired (35 yo, working as a SWE/Data/Manager since 23), I felt E5 is under-leveling me, so I worked very hard throughout my time there, working weekends, doing SWE projects, etc. While working there, I saw how strong the talent pool is at FB, and how steep the expectations are (wrt measurable and consistent impact of your work), so I knew that I'm definitely not at an E7 or above, but I did feel that I'm an "entry E6 level" (which is significantly more money than E5). But getting leveled up was out of the question, there were simply no opportunities, either work or visibility for DEs in London at that time. So I left after ~20 months. In retrospect, the right thing to do psychologically, assuming you stay for the long-run, is just ignore the levels, collect the refresher stocks, hope/wait for the stock to appreciate, make/look for/wait for impactful projects, but take the long view (it's a marathon, not a sprint). Overall, my advice for EU people: if you get a chance to interview at a FAANG, take it, it's a good experience! If you get an offer, take it, you'll come out ahead wrt learning, money, and you'll have a big stamp of approval on your CV. If you don't like it, you can always leave and it'll be easy for you to get another job.
phendrenad2 6y ago
And if you're unlucky enough to be in the bottom 50% of programmers that can't make it through the Facebook interviews, you can at least make 1/3 as much.
- pc86 6y ago
  Do you think half the programmers in the country could make it through a FB interview?
  - phendrenad2 6y ago
    I was being generous

76 points by i0exception 6y ago

spoonjim 6y ago

Holy crap. Never knew the numbers were like this.

0xfaded 6y ago
I lived in SV and moved to Europe to do a startup. If things were to go south, I wouldn't even consider regular employment over here. Even when told, most people still refuse to believe the compensation numbers achievable by even fairly average engineers.
- ivanche 6y ago
  It seems unbelievable really. It's literally 5x-20x of what a solid developer can earn in Europe. I mean, the best of the best (and I know maybe 1000 developers so not that small of a sample) I've heard is around $150K, a few over $100K and everyone else below $100K. Of course, there's other stuff - 30 (working) days of paid vacation, solid and cheap education, solid medical coverage (I consider $50 medical bill damn high) etc.
  - powerapple 6y ago
    It is less about the skills. With a good platform, your skills will transfer to higher value (I mean money really) than average platforms. It is not like the person with highest score in class end up with the biggest house. There is only one Facebook, one Google, one Amazon, one Microsoft and one Apple, and the US has all of them.
  - marcell 6y ago
    As a SV engineer I’m having the opposite experience hearing those numbers. It sounds way below market rates.
  - randomchars 6y ago
    > 30 (working) days of paid vacation > solid and cheap education > solid medical coverage Unfortunately none of these are uniform across Europe. I only have 20 days of vacation, medical coverage is horrible, with 2-3 month waiting lists for even an MRI, and education is absolutely horrid. I wouldn't even call them free, nor cheap: income taxes come out to about ~35%, and VAT is the highest in the world. And to add on to that, achieving compensation above ~80k usd is basically impossible. With ~3 years of experience I barely get half of that at a Google L4 level equivalent.
    - riknox 6y ago
      That's the unfortunate reality of working in Europe I think, especially in a lower cost of living country. I've just moved from Germany to the UK, and my salary has increased in gross terms (and an associated significant increase in net), but I lose many of the German provisions/safety nets that the high taxes pay for over there.
    - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
      Genuine question, I have always wondered about this regarding EU based FAANG roles (I am making the leap that you are EU based): How statistically common/likely is it for EU based engineers to move to the US on a L-1 visa, specifically at google?
      - 0xfaded 6y ago
        I didn't work at google, but of the people I know, if H1B wasn't an option they would usually push through an O1.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      In California, if you're making over a million dollars you're looking at 50.3% marginal income tax i believe, which is a lot more than the 35% cited by the parent as "expensive" and you're probably getting a lot less
      - randomchars 6y ago
  - zelos 6y ago
    The median daily rate for sofware contractors in the UK is apparently around $500, which is probably over $100k/year. I guess that stops counting as Europe fairly soon, though.
    - randomchars 6y ago
      > sofware contractors Contractors always earn more than employees though don't they?
      - zelos 6y ago
        Yes, but they're still software developers: most teams I've worked on have had plenty of contractors. It seems like the more experienced developers either stay permie and move into architecture/management or become contractors. There are plenty of "contractors in name only", too.
  - RestlessMind 6y ago
    > Of course, there's other stuff - 30 (working) days of paid vacation, solid and cheap education, solid medical coverage (I consider $50 medical bill damn high) etc. I worked at FAANGs in Silicon Valley for many years. I always got at least 20 vacation days, 10-12 holidays (like Christmas or July 4th), excellent insurance plans and could pay off my 40-45K education loan in a breeze. Total cost of private education is ~25K per child. If you have a Software job at a FAANG in SV, it will be better than almost any other arrangement in Europe (exception: Zurich) even after taking into account vacation days, insurance premiums, California taxes, private schools cost and probability of gun violence.
    - drevil-v2 6y ago
      I am curious what's special about Zurich that makes it an exception?
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  I suppose for a lot of non US engineers the main issue is not so much believing the compensation packages but actually navigating the legal constraints to be allowed to work in the US (or more specifically in SV, Seatle, NY, where those packages are available).
  - henvic 6y ago
    I'd say in the US, as this is an immigration issue. Things are so much easier for those who have the luck of either being US citizens or somehow being allowed to legally work there...
- durnygbur 6y ago
  > I wouldn't even consider regular employment over here. You have a chance to complete for free a long queue of take home assignments which might end up with an employment for 2k EUR net monthly.
  - Rainymood 6y ago
    As an EU engineer this ... pains me ... because how true it is ... please tell me about the promised land
  - 0xfaded 6y ago
    HAHAHA, this sounds laughable similar to all the "startup competitions" where the grand prize is pitching to some noname investor.
- kuschku 6y ago
  Personally, I think the SV numbers are just too high. Your attitude is a good example of the issues that come with that. We’re engineers, not royalty. There’s nothing any one of us could do that would justify these wages, if it wasn’t for US immigration policies causing an artificial supply/demand issue.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Well clearly there's something you can do to justify it because fb justifies it. This is business after all. Your value is a combination of what you bring to the company and how hard you are to replace. FB makes $$$, the $$$ didn't just appear out of thin air, it happened because of the people who work there. Giving engineers a share of all that money seems much more reasonable than giving zuckerberg a second private jet.
  - jhowell 6y ago
    > We’re engineers, not royalty. There’s nothing any one of us could do that would justify these wages, if it wasn’t for US immigration policies causing an artificial supply/demand issue. Executives, CEOs and shareholders are all highly compensated for their risk in both time and money and are not "royalty." I would argue that being royal implies birth as an unjustifiably paid skill.
    - kuschku 6y ago
      > Executives, CEOs and shareholders are all highly compensated for their risk in both time and money That too is wrong. Paying wages based on supply/demand instead of based on the value an employee actually provides leads to exactly this kind of heavily distorted labor markets.
      - quickthrower2 6y ago
        Well how do you define value? Is it workers should get enough for a modest life, a fair pay for a fair days work, the rest goes to shareholders?
      - 6y ago
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Among developed economies, Canada is similar to Europe, and Japan is the worst for software engineers. The Balkans pay programmers like US 7-11 cashiers. :)
hardwaresofton 6y ago
https://levels.fyi/ https://levels.fyi/
objclxt 6y ago
> Never knew the numbers were like this. What’s missing from this post is how common it is. E8 at Facebook is extremely rare. I can’t remember the exact percentage when I was there, but it’s around 1-2%. E5 at FB is a terminal level, many engineers don’t get beyond that. I worked on a team of several hundred engineers and we only had one or two E7s, and nothing higher. To put this in perspective: at FB, E8 is the individual contributor equivalent of engineering director.
- bawolff 6y ago
  The post does say that this is rare and the extreme upper end of compensation.
- johnx123-up 6y ago
  Is the mentioned E5 salary (304k) above average or?
  - exged 6y ago
    Below average for someone joining as a new E5 employee, especially if stock refreshers and equity appreciation is taken into account.

kilroy123 6y ago

You are so ridiculously set if you can earn this much while working remotely in a low cost living area.

ves 6y ago
If you’re making this much, you don’t care about cost of living, assuming you’re not going to have some crazy standard of living (mansion, supercars, etc.). A 50% increase in your food costs is a rounding error, for example.

martamorena9182 6y ago

> Year 1 was learn to become a good engineer, > Year 2 was learn become a good Tech Lead This made me laugh... One year to become a good engineer and another to become a tech lead. Seriously? Facebook seems like an interesting place to be. Maybe I should also apply there. But on a more serious note. There is no way, no matter how smart you are, to become a Tech Lead (at least not at a reputable company) within two years. It's just mentally not possible to learn all the things you need to learn in that time. And that is not even considering the fact that most of the time you don't have such ideal conditions that you would be exposed to the necessary scenarios and learning opportunities to pull that off even if it was humanly possible. Perhaps Facebook's levels are more based on "business achievements" than actual competence, which is fine I guess. If I make the company 10 million dollars, why should I not get a good chunk of it, regardless of how experienced I am? (I am serious) But the fact that E8 is still about "team of 4" tells me a lot. Principal Engineers at Amazon are responsible for potentially hundreds of engineers and that level is said to be about E7. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And the author shows that: "E6->E7 and E7->E8 promotions were mainly about making something successful. My execution could have been perfect but if the product didn’t work, I would not have been promoted." Yup, pure business success based promotions, which makes any level based comparison between Facebook and Amazon kinda moot. I would be interested to know if this is just one data point, or if this is how Facebook generally operates.

falcor84 6y ago
> One year to become a good engineer and another to become a tech lead. Seriously? We don't know what the OP did before. They possibly had significant industry experience from before, and just had to figure out how to apply that at Facebook.
- mic47 6y ago
  I worked for FB (left in 2018), and you are right. He started as E4, which means that he was not new grad (new grads starts as E3). So he was either phd, or had industry experience before. His first year: "Because of the 3 launches and building a 4 people team, I was promoted to E5" -- looks like he should have been E5 when started (given that he was able to build team in the first year), and they quickly corrected for that.

traskjd 6y ago

But.... you have to work at Facebook.

speedgoose 6y ago
True but everyone has a price, and this is far above mine.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Indeed. https://youtu.be/-DiBc1vkTig https://youtu.be/-DiBc1vkTig comes to mind
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  I guess everyone's different but I feel like a good devs in America can make a damn good living without working for something evil. You won't be a millionaire in 5 years, but you will be just fine. How much do you really need?
  - bradlys 6y ago
    It really depends on where you live. If you want to own a home, Facebook and similar are really your only options for the Bay Area. Assuming you also want a nice commute, decent schools, etc. stuff that most professionals work towards.
    - taylodl 6y ago
      The reason commonly given for living in the Bay Area is all the jobs available but you're pointing out that's not actually the case because if you want to live well in the Bay Area then you have few employment options. Is that the reality?
      - bradlys 6y ago
        > Is that the reality? Certainly is for me. The $170k/yr startup salary I get is certainly not enough to afford jack shit around here. Even an extra $50k/yr wouldn't do anything to alter my lifestyle. I couldn't get any kind of home around here with that and I'd still be very uncomfortable renting a home on that income - as it'd be more than a third of my take home pay (lose your job? You better have a very large emergency buffer - unemployment won't even pay a third of your monthly rent). The engineers I know who stay around here are A) wealthy (bought home long before average price was past $1m or inherited one), B) rent, dual engineer income, and enjoy the renter lifestyle, C) Work at FAANG and/or have a spouse who does and make big fucking $$$$ D) Going to move away, no plans to stay permanently. There are no young people (<35) moving here, working for no-name companies, and buying homes after saving for a down payment after a few years. Almost all young people I know who do such things have A) had a startup IPO or B) work at FAANG. Certainly can't make it here on a single startup salary - not even in the faintest. I'm proof of that. The reason people move here is because there's a chance (insert dumb and dumber reference) to strike rich. There's also way more jobs here than anywhere else in the country and that's why I moved here. I couldn't get a job anywhere else but I somehow managed to get one here four times in a row now.

alibarber 6y ago

So good that they made a three quarters of a billion dollars in year 5. (I know I know it's a typo but it's hard to take any of this seriously when the whole page is about how he or she is such an excellent engineer)

siscia 6y ago

What is a "product" in this context?

Maro 6y ago
eg. Stories, Marketplace, Live Video, Workplace, or a new type of Ad product, or it could be sth smaller. As a user on the web you perceive it as a big or small feature of FB.

cosmodisk 6y ago

It was hard to read this... You'd need to write code that produces unicorn pastries to be able to go anywhere near such numbers here in Europe.. But the saddest thing about most dev jobs is that even the outcome can literally make companies millions/billions, the devs are rarely awarded for it. Take sales,for instance. You sell a few million worth of licencing and you get a nice comp.. As a dev, you write code that speeds up a process by 20%, the company increases profit margins and you get..well, a trip to a conference, if you are lucky.. Citadel is a good example,where even devs can earn substantial amounts off successful trading strategies,but then it's still a US company with only a handful of people working for them.

pc86 6y ago
America, if you can refer to it in a monolithic context, has decided that individualism, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, etc. trump a lot of things. Almost no social safety net (barely enough to prevent you from starving or dying in the street, and not much more, and most of that won't even come from the government but from faith-based charity), but yeah if you're a software developer you might be able to make an extra $50-75k/yr compared to Europe. But how much are you going to have in student loans? I graduated in '08 with about $22k and that was a lot back then. What's someone graduating last year or this year going to graduate with? There's pros and cons to both approaches, both at individual and societal levels, but I rarely hear Europeans acknowledge why US companies can pay its developers so much more.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  I'm happy to discuss those 'why'. The cost of student loans or lack of social safety net hardly warrants higher salaries. This is probably more related to the availability of the specialists (immigration rules, the local supply of devs coming from universities,etc).Very few companies even in the US can pay 200-300K salaries to devs,most don't come anywhere near that.My main point is that European companies are less likely to reward employees,even though their contributions far exceed the costs. Similar trends are seen in other fields: recently, top tier law firms in London complained that the US companies with divisions in London can push graduate salaries to £100K. The same market,yet very different willingness to pay.

wruza 6y ago

Interesting how quickly this thread disappeared from first four pages of HN. Is it a hot topic not worth its discussion?

zuhayeer 6y ago

You can view more compensation ranges by level at Facebook here: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... The highest level (E8) with recorded information: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/E8/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

newbie578 6y ago

Holy crap, when you compare the numbers, how can people still expect Europe to compete with the U.S.? In Europe, tech is seen as an unfortunate necessity, not a groundbreaking solution.. And things won’t change until the mentality changes.

objclxt 6y ago
FAANG hire in Europe. They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees. When I relocated from the US to Europe from a FAANG company my salary was market adjusted (about a 25% cut), but RSUs and stock were kept the same. 25% sounds like a lot, but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area, so I was more than happy. Once you become a senior enough engineer at FAANG the overwhelming majority of your compensation is stock, and when that happens the base salary becomes pretty irrelevant. My base salary is maybe 1/5 of my total compensation at this point.
- riknox 6y ago
  I don't think it's true that the pay isn't drastically different. I was in the pipeline with Apple recently, and the pay for a sr. eng position was 80k. This is comparable to other companies where I interviewed. Of course, without receiving a solid offer I didn't hear about the RSU side, but I think your experience moving internally is totally different to starting a role with FAANG within EU.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees. Sorry but that's simply not true. Based on my personal experience at FAANGs (including management roles), SV packages are much higher compared to London, Munich, Paris etc. Only exception is Zurich. > but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area, The number I look at is total saving amount each year.
finolex1 6y ago
I think it has more to do with economics than mindsets. Compare Microsoft/Amazon salaries in Seattle and Vancouver for instance.

_0o6v 6y ago

There is not a single engineering job in the UK that pays $1m per year. There are barely any engineering jobs that pay £100k+ a year.

lordnacho 6y ago
There must be some that pay £1M at the tech giants. £100K is a minimum for most of the financial tech recruiters, for senior hires. At least I chat to quite a few of them and there doesn't seem to be anything under. Typical build-a-market-connector jobs. Also there's a big contracting market where people will pay £600-£2000 a day, depending on what you do. They're semi-permanent jobs that superficially seem to be temporary, but something about how banks are organised makes them feel more permanent.
- maccard 6y ago
  I have spoken to a handful of recruiters that have suggested £100k but they definitely seem rare. I've _never_,not once, seen or come across an offer for more than 500k. Im sure there are people who are on it, but I have absolutely no idea who they are or where they work.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Assuming you mean senior jobs in finance, 100K is a sort of modal zone. You lose your personal tax allowance just above, so there's a dead zone around there. That's my guess anyway, what's the point of your employer paying 100% tax? £500k as a salary is rare, most comp at that level is some sort of bonus. I've heard of banks that hire people in at ordinary day rates, but then once they are familiar with the person will bump the rate to whatever.
    - maccard 6y ago
      > You lose your personal tax allowance just above, so there's a dead zone around there. That's my guess anyway, what's the point of your employer paying 100% tax? It's tapered from 100 to 125k, but at no point is your employer paying 100% tax. From 100 to 125k, your marginal tax rate is ~60%, but drops after that point. > £500k as a salary is rare, most comp at that level is some sort of bonus. Even with bonuses, or RSU/some other form of shares, I think "rare" is understating it, and that's exactly the point. The discussion in this thread is that the top performers in FAANG are clearing _well_ above these values (multiples of these numbers). > once they are familiar with the person will bump the rate to whatever. Can you be a little more clear with the "whatever" number? 100k? 500k? 1m?

gnrlst 6y ago

Cries in European.

kartoolOz 6y ago

Posts like this make me want to sell my soul to the devil O.O

dcl 6y ago

Astonishing.

dave_sullivan 6y ago

You get this guy, then you make the mistake of looking for projects on angel list and find half the people posting think they can hire engineers for 0 cash. I’ve been told my whole career that I don’t charge enough and yet I have to look hard to find people that pay my rate. Then I check HN to find what an underpaid loser I am. Coffee break over, back to the mines I guess.

cosmodisk 6y ago
Well, people most likely are correct telling you to charge more. Getting clients is part of the job,if it'd be easy, everybody would be doing it.As for $0/h expectations: those people are everywhere.A few month ago spoke to one in my network. I need an app.. what kind of app? Well, not sure yet, but could you recommend someone,who won't rip me off?? Oh my...
- pc86 6y ago
  Honestly, dealing with these types of clients is why I stopped freelancing/consulting full-time. It's just so mentally exhausting to go through the "I need something affordable, I mean I don't want to pay $800 for an app or something crazy!" (actual quote) even when you qualify them early.
  - cosmodisk 6y ago
    I think what helps early during the qualification process is asking if they've got money. I remember a fully fledged meeting with a whole bunch of people around the table discussing how they'd like the project to look. Eventually,after an hour or so,my manager at the time, asks: have you got budget for this? Emm...emm.. we may.. it's almost there..etc.

Maro 6y ago

Some notes from a former FB engineer (DE, E5, London). First of all, congrats to the author of the post! Even having worked there, seeing these numbers is a bit shocking :) Some comments to help cool down EU emotions in this thread. As the author points out, there are very few engineers at FB who have this sort of career path or income. The author says that from year 2-8, every single year he got an "additional grant" over the refresher stock. I asked a friend who is a former Eng.Man. at FB, he says that these "additional grants" are given to very few people every year by the executive team, so this makes the career path even more of an outlier. He says this level of income is unusual even for E7-E8s. This career path is probably the statistical quivalent of building a successful startup and cashing out. Also, to end up with the these W2 numbers (W2 is a tax form in the US, by W2 the author means "total gross compensation"), you need to join early, to get the nice stock appreciation. Having said that, so far it's never been the wrong time to join: in 2016 when I joined (FB was a 10+ yo company) stock was at ~$100, now it's at ~$300 :) How are these numbers in EU offices: in London (in 2016-17), number were significantly lower than in US, both base salary (and hence bonus, since it's a multiplier) and stock grants, and also opportunities (products) and visibility (eg. every 6 months I got my rating from an unknown quorum of people at the Menlo Park HQ, and I had mostly remote managers who didn't have much time for me). Expect to make -25-50% if you're in London vs Menlo Park for the same work/effort. Per my recollection, as an E5 back then, everything added up (base, bonus, stock), my net salary was around 7k GBP/mo. If I would have stuck around at FB, without levelups, just because of stock appreciation and refresher stocks I'd probably be making >10k GBP/mo now. SWEs make ~20% more than DEs. Also, to put the author's promotion track into perspective, I found that it's very hard to get promoted at FB. When I was hired (35 yo, working as a SWE/Data/Manager since 23), I felt E5 is under-leveling me, so I worked very hard throughout my time there, working weekends, doing SWE projects, etc. While working there, I saw how strong the talent pool is at FB, and how steep the expectations are (wrt measurable and consistent impact of your work), so I knew that I'm definitely not at an E7 or above, but I did feel that I'm an "entry E6 level" (which is significantly more money than E5). But getting leveled up was out of the question, there were simply no opportunities, either work or visibility for DEs in London at that time. So I left after ~20 months. In retrospect, the right thing to do psychologically, assuming you stay for the long-run, is just ignore the levels, collect the refresher stocks, hope/wait for the stock to appreciate, make/look for/wait for impactful projects, but take the long view (it's a marathon, not a sprint). Overall, my advice for EU people: if you get a chance to interview at a FAANG, take it, it's a good experience! If you get an offer, take it, you'll come out ahead wrt learning, money, and you'll have a big stamp of approval on your CV. If you don't like it, you can always leave and it'll be easy for you to get another job.

phendrenad2 6y ago

And if you're unlucky enough to be in the bottom 50% of programmers that can't make it through the Facebook interviews, you can at least make 1/3 as much.

pc86 6y ago
Do you think half the programmers in the country could make it through a FB interview?
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  I was being generous