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We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything
- lordnacho 5y agoHow do you verify the salaries, and how do you decide which firms to have in the site?
- zuhayeer 5y agoHi, we collect both self-reported entries and proof documents such as W2s, offer letters, and pay stubs for verified entries (https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html). We also collect verified offers through our negotiation service. While we don't display these on our site or make them public, they anchor the data on our site to a ground truth. We've added thousands of companies recently for a push to get more information, check out our company directory at https://levels.fyi/company/ https://levels.fyi/company/. We also take requests on this page if you don't see a company. The biggest limitation for us is getting salary data for a company – if we get 3 or more submissions for a company, we'll create a page for it. We encourage everyone to help us out by contributing at the link above!
- ludamad 5y agoMedian compensation around Toronto for C$158,000 seems quite high. Real numbers of course might shed light on surprising facts such as this. How do you combat the bias of people feeling that higher salaries are more important to report, however?
- zuhayeer 5y agoYeah fair point, we need to collect more salaries overall to present a more accurate picture of the labor market. One way we plan to tackle this is to provide more incentives to share your salary. Perhaps this is more of a social stigma issue around sharing your salary, but we encourage everyone to submit their salary, it helps everyone else out: https://levels.fyi/addcomp.html https://levels.fyi/addcomp.html
- ludamad 5y agoIf you consider US political polling, one key correction is demographics of people who respond well to optional polls. Of course, they have eventual ground truth and are only predicting a 1bit outcome. Still, do you guys have any thoughts on corrections on the data you get in?
- tester756 5y agoIs it possible to work for SV $TOP directly from e.g Eastern Europe? If yes, then how the salary would be reduced due to location adjustments?
- throwaway158497 5y agoBased on my experience with India, they will try to pay 20-30% more than next best comopany in that region you live in.
- Zaheer 5y agoYes many of the top tech companies are now hiring across Europe (and in fact have been). Ex. https://eng.lyft.com/introducing-lyft-engineering-kyiv-2884d1bba69a https://eng.lyft.com/introducing-lyft-engineering-kyiv-2884d... Salaries are definitely adjusted. To get a feel for salaries: - https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Netherlands/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Netherland... - https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Ukraine/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Ukraine/ - https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/
- tester756 5y agoBut isn't it like that e.g EU branch of $FAANG company does less cool stuff? e.g Google EU does CRUDs and maintains GCP meanwhile cool stuff is being done in MV?
- baby_wipe 5y agoWhy is stock such a big portion of compensation for the big tech companies?
- thebean11 5y agoMy guess is that it lets companies pay higher salaries without affecting their cash flow (instead of paying cash, they dilute the stock).
- bern4444 5y agoI'm not from levels.fyi but I think some reasons are * Its cheaper for the company than cash (stock is the company's currency, they can issue more of it, decrease the supply, use it as collateral in financing etc) * It can be better for the employees (pay less in taxes, more opportunity for growth) * Incentives become aligned (I now care about the continued success of the company more so than I otherwise would)
- zuhayeer 5y agoYup the higher you go in level, the larger your stock compensation is to tie you to company growth and align incentives. A company that's the exception to this is Netflix: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Engineer/Senior-Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Eng... They have one level and pay all cash with an option to convert some of it to equity.
- bern4444 5y agoI thought Netflix let you pick the exact split between cash and equity no? For example, for a 500k salary you could say, I want 200k cash, and 300k in stock
- pumaontheprowl 5y agoSomething doesn't add up here. Levels is showing that the average senior engineer at Netflix is only getting $11k stock though. If employees were allowed to choose what percentage stock they wanted, I'd expect most employees to choose a larger percentage than that. Stock is likely to grow in value over the course of the year while cash is almost guaranteed to lose value due to inflation. You'd have to be pretty pessimistic about Netflix's future to choose the all-cash option. And even if you're only neutral about it, the stock is the better choice because it's inflation protected. If I were a Netflix employee, I'd probably choose $200k cash, $300k stock. The fact that levels is reporting such wildly different numbers tells me employees don't actually have that level of freedom to control their comp.
- BelenusMordred 5y agoThis is really confusing with the link being the actual "ask us anything" and people asking questions here that others are answering, yet OP hasn't written a single response.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- comprev 5y agoThe AMA was on the linked site not here on HN. I agree it's confusing
- uyt 5y agoHow do you account for stock/option appreciation? Which number is displayed on the site? There might be a huge difference between a person reporting their total compensation from their offer letter (according to the fair market value at the time) vs what it is after a few years of appreciation.
- zuhayeer 5y agoWe think of data points on our platform as snapshots of salaries in time. Currently, we ask for the last reported year of compensation which would include stock appreciation. You can distinguish this on our compensation page by filtering the "Years at Company" field: https://levels.fyi/comp.html?showFilters https://levels.fyi/comp.html?showFilters When the Years at Company field is 0 it is a new offer.
- paxys 5y agoThe problem is that right on your front page I see that the estimated annual comp for a G6 engineer at Google is expected to be $226,673 salary/$212,061 stock/$50,939 bonus. The stock portion, however, includes both brand new offers and those which have benefited from many years of appreciation, making the number effectively meaningless. Even after digging in, there is no way on the site to restrict it to only new offers. I personally have not reported my salary on levels.fyi or any similar website because my shares were granted pre-IPO and I don't want to further distort expectations for what an average software engineer is expected to make.
- kyawzazaw 5y agoI just look at the date.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zuhayeer 5y agoYeah definitely, we're working on improving the home page experience since that's what a lot of people land on initially. It's balance of keeping it simple vs having way too many options. But we do have several other pages where you can dig deeper and filter into specific data points, for example for Google L6 new offers in the last year: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&search=Google%20L6&yacstart=0&yacend=0&timerangeradio=Past%20Year https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s... Also another page with a better salary range chart to show some of the distribution: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L6/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...
- danbrooks 5y agoA big thank you for putting levels.fyi together. It's a big reason that I'm working in tech today.
- jacob2484 5y agoJust discovered the site - love it! Big step towards transparency which companies do not want us to have.
- mercutio2 5y agoMy observation, as a hiring manager, is that levels.fyi data for my company is consistently representative of the highest compensated 10% of my team, but presents itself as reflecting something closer to median compensation for a given role. Is this deliberate?
- drclau 5y agoI'm curious, how big is the range per level at the company you are hiring for?
- whymauri 5y agoSelection bias: those most proud of their offers are most likely to share it on aggregators, is my guess.
- b20000 5y agomy observation is that most companies present offers that are 30% lower than they should be to have a comfortable lifestyle in tech metros and not worry about school, housing or retirement costs. is this deliberate?
- evo 5y agoI wonder if this problem flows both ways. I suspect that at least housing and school (or the overlap, housing in good school districts) is to some degree a zero-sum game whose costs are set at the margins. In tech metros, where those marginal market-clearing prices are set by those tech salaries, it makes sense that they would settle at precisely the point where they're no longer quite comfortable to the average tech worker. Otherwise, what's to stop you from paying a bit more for that house than the second best offer?
- Zaheer 5y agoAs others have pointed out, there's a bit of selection bias at play. We don't manipulate any data. Keep in mind most people come to our site / contribute when they have a new offer, are in the job-seeking process, or savvy about their pay. As we grow, I'd hope this effect fizzles out more. New offers tend to be higher than compensation of existing employees and plays into this as well. -Zaheer (Co-Founder Levels.fyi)
- zests 5y agoIt feels like there are two classes of engineers in the US. One class of engineers makes 60k-120k and the other makes 150k-500k. Is this just a really well kept secret? I don't really see many engineers trying to migrate from the first class to the second class. I'd expect most software engineers would jump through hoops at the prospect of doubling their salary.
- whymauri 5y agoFrom the people I've talked to, they enjoy the WLB and location of their job enough to not hop.
- cyrux004 5y agoCorrect, this what I understand. Before the remote workplace, they were just too comfy in their location to think about locating to the limited tech cities where these salaries are being paid
- thatguy0900 5y agoI mean, I'll be honest, I make around 50k in a non tech job in a low cost of living area.i really don't want for anything. Maybe I just don't like really expensive toys, but anything I want, I buy. I go on nice vacations in country, plenty of wilderness around me. I don't have to look at receipts or bills before paying them and I never think about my bank account. I'm really totally unsure what making 500k instead would do for me, besides retiring super early.
- kyawzazaw 5y agoFinancial Independence is a big thing. (Not just retire) Do you have kids? Have you thought about generational wealth? These are the things that are in people's minds. If you want to understand more visit subreddits like /r/FIRE or /r/bogelheads or /r/personalfinance?
- 5y ago
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoI'm curious how people here advise specifically negotiating work-life balance? WLB (fewer hours per week/more vacation) is the single most important factor for me, but I always feel weird asking/pushing for it because it feels like I'll give a slacker impression. Even asking how many hours a team works feels delicate.
- swiftcoder 5y agoFAANGs literally won't negotiate this sort of thing (we've all tried). If you are applying somewhere that isn't offering FAANG comp, it seems a fair play during negotiations. You know, "this offer is a little lower than I was hoping for, but if you can throw in an extra week of vacation time we have a deal"
- emptysongglass 5y agoI don't know why no one else has been asking this but why are you keeping us EU engineers high and dry? No wonder we're making half or less of our US compatriots!
- zuhayeer 5y agoWe have salaries for EU as well! Here's a list of locations: https://levels.fyi/locations/ https://levels.fyi/locations/ We definitely have a lot of work to do to make international support better. We're working on better localization features right now.
- emptysongglass 5y agoHere's a vote for tiny Denmark. We're starving for good salary comparison sites.
- philmcp 5y agoLove the idea, recently got referred to it by a friend. Hopefully it will help the "open salaries" movement I'm more interested in the business side of things e.g. how do you plan on monetising this app?
- zuhayeer 5y agoWe currently make most of our revenue by helping job candidates negotiate their compensation packages by connecting them to someone on our team of experienced tech recruiters. We've helped thousands of people to date negotiate their salaries up! More info at https://levels.fyi/services/ https://levels.fyi/services/