5 ms·

I think this is the sum of a few factors. 1. you. you are likely successful and in a bubble near other successful people giving the perception of $300k being c

I think this is the sum of a few factors. 1. you. you are likely successful and in a bubble near other successful people giving the perception of $300k being common. Let's be generous and say there are 1M SWEs in the USA, avg. salary is $150k and 1% of them make >$300k. That's 10k total people. It's hard to find concrete data, but it's also hard to imagine the proportions being more generous than that. 2. stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever. 3. recency bias. SWE is still a relatively young profession. I'm not convinced we'll be as hot or trendy or well payed 5-10 years from now as the labor supply grow and automation continues to take over. Overall I'm not convinced this field is as solid of a bet as it once was -- at least relative to other fields. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ&t=9099s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ&t=9099s

mucle6 5y ago
A quick search says that netflix has ~9,400 developers, and they pay ~500k to start. Even if we say that half of their developers are international and not being paid that much, over half of your expected number is seen in one company. levels.fyi shows that l4's on average at Google make ~270k and ~279k at Facebook. Even if we say only half of employees at Google and Facebook are l4+, and half of those are in America that goes far far over 10k people . This doesn't talk about hedge funds, or even other tech companies. I think we should expect that there are at least 100k developers in America making ~300k+ That said I think your premise of only 1M SWEs is off https://goremotely.net/blog/how-many-software-engineers-are-there/ https://goremotely.net/blog/how-many-software-engineers-are-...
- disambiguation 5y ago
  Haha wow I was way off, 4.4M is pretty mind boggling, exactly the data I was looking for thanks for sharing! Though I still stand by the rest of what I said. And funny you should mention netflix after what happened to their stock last week :)
  - mucle6 5y ago
    Oh my! I didn't know about their stock. I was thinking about working there and choosing to do 100% of compensation in stock... I guess if I were to do that, now is a good time
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
>stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever. It's going to be interesting to see how people react to the total comp paycut that is likely to occur this year due to the stock markets.

mucle6 5y ago

A quick search says that netflix has ~9,400 developers, and they pay ~500k to start. Even if we say that half of their developers are international and not being paid that much, over half of your expected number is seen in one company. levels.fyi shows that l4's on average at Google make ~270k and ~279k at Facebook. Even if we say only half of employees at Google and Facebook are l4+, and half of those are in America that goes far far over 10k people . This doesn't talk about hedge funds, or even other tech companies. I think we should expect that there are at least 100k developers in America making ~300k+ That said I think your premise of only 1M SWEs is off https://goremotely.net/blog/how-many-software-engineers-are-there/ https://goremotely.net/blog/how-many-software-engineers-are-...

disambiguation 5y ago
Haha wow I was way off, 4.4M is pretty mind boggling, exactly the data I was looking for thanks for sharing! Though I still stand by the rest of what I said. And funny you should mention netflix after what happened to their stock last week :)
- mucle6 5y ago
  Oh my! I didn't know about their stock. I was thinking about working there and choosing to do 100% of compensation in stock... I guess if I were to do that, now is a good time

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

>stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever. It's going to be interesting to see how people react to the total comp paycut that is likely to occur this year due to the stock markets.