4 ms·

Thanks. I know this is a very crude question to ask, but what does tech comp look like for software engineers?

by lakeshore 5y ago

Kinrany 5y ago
https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi
- lakeshore 5y ago
  Thanks! That's a wide spread of salaries! I will assume those earning $300K+ are the top-tier of talent and have roles that would be hard for me to break into while self-learning programming part-time. Would that be fair?
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    Yes. Top tier of talent, experience, and companies. There are many excellent developers who don't make that money either. The vast majority of developers are around $100k.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    Not easy, but probably not near impossible, but I imagine they’re more of less mid-level and not entry level roles. You’d probably do better to spend your time doing leetcode prepping for the interviews though if they’re your goals.
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
No not all! Perfectly reasonable question. As Kinrany pointed out there is a website called https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi for tech jobs. It's like glassdoor but good. You can poke around there and see comp at various companies. There is a pretty stark divide between older enterprise companies and Silicon Valley tech companies / well funded startups. In the enterprise world the salaries tend to start at around $80k and top out around $150k. There are some exceptions in both directions depending on experience and expertise. At the larger tech companies (google, facebook, netflix, etc) they can afford to pay quite a bit more in the from of Stock RSU's that are highly valued in the market. Starting comp tends to be around $200k for effectively entry level $300k-$350k for senior, $500k for Staff Engineer (in this role you are delivering entire projects. So say you hear google make an announcement of a new service coming out, there is at least one Staff Eng behind that. It does keep going past that but the numbers are harder to find. $1M-$3M is more rare but if you promote enough happens. I've heard tell of recutirers being baffled they couldn't steal especailly sought after engineers from these companies and then finding out their comp was in the double digit millions per year. Lets just say not everyone reaches that level haha. Those companies are fairly hard to get into. It's possible but requires a fair bit of effort and most people find the style of interviewing they do to be a real slog. I'm not very familiar with manager comp at the silicon valley tech companies but from what I understand it's reasonable good, often more than the engineers on their team are making. In large enterprise companies on the other hand it tends to be quite bad (compared to the same amount of experience as a dev) and is often less than their engineers make. One interesting path might be to try to make the switch to one of the Silicon Valley Tech companies as a manager without learning to code (or only learning a nominal amount). You also mentioned DeFi. You could look around at companies doing fintech or blockchain. Crypto related companies have a reputation for paying quite well (unfortunately I don't know any of the numbers there. Maybe look around for companies like Coinbase on levels.fyi)

Thanks. I know this is a very crude question to ask, but what does tech comp look like for software engineers?

Kinrany 5y ago

https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi

lakeshore 5y ago
Thanks! That's a wide spread of salaries! I will assume those earning $300K+ are the top-tier of talent and have roles that would be hard for me to break into while self-learning programming part-time. Would that be fair?
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Yes. Top tier of talent, experience, and companies. There are many excellent developers who don't make that money either. The vast majority of developers are around $100k.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Not easy, but probably not near impossible, but I imagine they’re more of less mid-level and not entry level roles. You’d probably do better to spend your time doing leetcode prepping for the interviews though if they’re your goals.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

No not all! Perfectly reasonable question. As Kinrany pointed out there is a website called https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi for tech jobs. It's like glassdoor but good. You can poke around there and see comp at various companies. There is a pretty stark divide between older enterprise companies and Silicon Valley tech companies / well funded startups. In the enterprise world the salaries tend to start at around $80k and top out around $150k. There are some exceptions in both directions depending on experience and expertise. At the larger tech companies (google, facebook, netflix, etc) they can afford to pay quite a bit more in the from of Stock RSU's that are highly valued in the market. Starting comp tends to be around $200k for effectively entry level $300k-$350k for senior, $500k for Staff Engineer (in this role you are delivering entire projects. So say you hear google make an announcement of a new service coming out, there is at least one Staff Eng behind that. It does keep going past that but the numbers are harder to find. $1M-$3M is more rare but if you promote enough happens. I've heard tell of recutirers being baffled they couldn't steal especailly sought after engineers from these companies and then finding out their comp was in the double digit millions per year. Lets just say not everyone reaches that level haha. Those companies are fairly hard to get into. It's possible but requires a fair bit of effort and most people find the style of interviewing they do to be a real slog. I'm not very familiar with manager comp at the silicon valley tech companies but from what I understand it's reasonable good, often more than the engineers on their team are making. In large enterprise companies on the other hand it tends to be quite bad (compared to the same amount of experience as a dev) and is often less than their engineers make. One interesting path might be to try to make the switch to one of the Silicon Valley Tech companies as a manager without learning to code (or only learning a nominal amount). You also mentioned DeFi. You could look around at companies doing fintech or blockchain. Crypto related companies have a reputation for paying quite well (unfortunately I don't know any of the numbers there. Maybe look around for companies like Coinbase on levels.fyi)