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Was that just a random number you threw out? Because it's depressing if even VPs can only afford three Bay Area homes.

• gonehome 5y ago
  I'd guess a VP can afford just one? Median housing price is 3M in Palo Alto.
  • temporalparts 5y ago
    I'm guessing Google VPs make ~5 mil a year, given that L8 engineers make ~1 mil a year [0] [0] levels.fyi
    • sombremesa 5y ago
      There are huge issues with how these salaries are reported. When you include stock compensation especially: what about vesting schedules and taxes? You can leave a job (by choice or otherwise) where you worked for a year and were making "1 million a year" with less than $300k in total compensation. It feels like a little trick being played on the employees, kind of like unlimited PTO. I'm sure some people actually enjoy the full benefits of what they're promised, but I'd be surprised if that's a majority.
      • romanhn 5y ago
        It's all fairly straightforward actually, as long as you're familiar with how compensation works at big companies (salary, stock, bonus, refreshers). Blind and levels.fyi have raised the transparency on comp quite a bit. $1M/year total compensation (that's annual comp, not the total four year vest) is reasonable for a L8/director-level at the tech giants. This is before tax of course, which is how literally everyone talks about compensation.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • reaperducer 5y ago
        It feels like a little trick being played on the employees It's a common trick. In the 1990's Bill Clinton famously categorized people who made $200,000 a year as "millionaires." Why? Because they "should" be able to save a million dollars within five years. People in power find it easy to play word games with other people's money.
      • comp_throw7 5y ago
        Equity compensation at places like Google vests monthly with no cliff, and it's taxed as income. You get what you see on the tin.
        • sombremesa 5y ago
          > places like Google Which place aside from Google?
          • comp_throw7 5y ago
            Facebook, Amazon (mostly cash bonus first two years, but still "vests" monthly with no cliff), Uber, Lyft (every 3 months), Snapchat, etc. It's not all of them but it's an increasing number. Also, even with a 1-year cliff, for most people it'll still basically be indistinguishable from cash? Leaving (or getting fired) before you hit the 1 year mark is pretty rare, and after the first cliff it usually transitions to something like every 3 months.
            • sombremesa 5y ago
              The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim. The reason I brought up taxes (which might seem odd to people since compensation usually ignores them) is because they will significantly change the equation for various reasons. (AMT, RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term, state tax affecting comp regardless of cost of living, etc.) Ultimately, any compensation number that rolls all of this up into one number is mostly useless for actually knowing how much money you’ll have in N years, but it is useful for comparing offers, which is fine - but then these numbers shouldn’t appear without qualification in the type of discussion where personal finance is involved. Not to mention that since this is a forum where many people are involved in startups, a 50k salary often (ok, maybe not often but I’m on 1/1) turns into several millions in a few years. Does that mean founders should claim they were making $2 mil per year? I don’t think so - but that’s the only comparison available if you use levels.fyi.
              • 5y ago
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I mean a good senior engineer is making $450k+ per year, I don’t know what a VP makes but it’s gotta be pretty high? Anyone know?
• akomtu 5y ago
  VPs start at about 2M/year before taxes. That doesn't buy you much in the Bay Area.
  • jkubicek 5y ago
    I bought a $1MM house in the bay area on a salary 1/10th of that. $2MM/year TC buys you a heck of a lot of house.
    • akomtu 5y ago
      You probably meant you were given a loan to buy a house.
      • xyzzyz 5y ago
        Yes, that’s how people typically buy houses. Deeming a salary low if you can’t buy a house with one year of after-taxes, after-expenses income, sounds rather insane to me.
        • akomtu 5y ago
          No, they don't. They lease houses from banks, with a possibility to buy it in 30 years.
          • xyzzyz 5y ago
            That’s not how mortgage works, no.
  • romanhn 5y ago
    That's a very odd take. There are very few homes one wouldn't be able to afford (yes, with a mortgage) at 2M/year.