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Ask HN: Are there “regular” SWE jobs that pay $200k+?

62 points by el_benhameen 5y ago

There’s been a lot of discussion about the bimodal distribution in entering pay (specifically at the “senior” level). Blind and Levels.fyi have plenty of data on $300k+ FAANG pay packages. There’s plenty of hiring going on outside the hotspots at the $120-160k level. But are there non-FAANG jobs (ie sane hiring process, small teams) that pay senio engineers $200-300k? If so, where are they?

crate_barre 5y ago
I think you can get close to at 200k benchmark as inflation hits. Regardless, companies that are even edging to that mark are mini wannabe faangs and will use the same hiring process.
- chii 5y ago
  > 200k benchmark as inflation hits. but then inflation hits, and so the money is worth less than before - so you didn't really get ahead at all.
  - radicalriddler 5y ago
    Yeah, but 200k sounds a lot cooler than high 100's. It's like saying you're a millionaire, but then someone asks how old you are and you're 60 and an Australian who's been mandated to put 9.5% of your pay into an investment account each year.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Slightly related anecdote: I was making $33K in 1997. I was in graduate school working on an MBA and I went to a career fair and was in awe at the “high $80K” salaries I could get at consulting companies. Then I got distracted, dropped out of graduate school and didn’t think about consulting companies anymore. Fast forward to 2020 (and a decade of letting my career stagnate until 2010), I was looking at the same companies because I was interested in cloud consulting. I found out that consulting companies haven’t kept up with inflation… https://managementconsulted.com/consultant-salary/ https://managementconsulted.com/consultant-salary/
pyuser583 5y ago
Look at finance companies.
callmeed 5y ago
At least where I’m at–which is a tier or two below FAANG companies to many–you hit 200k at L3 and L4 SWE roles (staff and principal). Usually that’s gonna require 5+ years of experience. Senior SWEs (L2.5) touch 200 for high COL locations. Keep in mind this is base salary and doesn’t include bonuses (10%ish) or RSUs. Shameless plug: I have SWE roles open at every level on some small teams doing cool stuff at Indeed. Feel free to email.
- alex504 5y ago
  I'm at a company that is about one tier below FAANG and I'm making 250 total at a senior 1 role. Or I was before the stock market started tanking, now I'll be making about 220.
scarface74 5y ago
Because it doesn’t take much to be a “good enough” CRUD framework “full stack developer” or mobile developer. Companies hiring in that market don’t have the scale and you’re just another employee. I started taking my career seriously after staying at my second job for 9 years until 2008. I got into regularly old C# enterprise dev and I saw myself hitting a ceiling at around $150K in most major American cities outside of the west coast. That ceiling remained the same from around 2016 until the present. I am still an enterprise dev/architect. But I just happen to know AWS and fell into the one niche position at the one major tech company that paid over $200K for dev+cloud in mid 2020. Even today, from my cursory searching, if I had to find another job, I would probably end up firmly on the mid $100s side again without “grinding leetCode” (tm r/cscareerquestions). So, I don’t know how to find a job outside of “FAANG” that would pay me what I make now. Not that I’m looking.
999900000999 5y ago
Yes... It's not too common, but it's doable. Most programers make between 120-160 as you said. Honestly, it's a matter of diminishing returns. Your lifestyle is probably not going to change between making 150, and making 200. The tax rates are so absurdly high at that level, you might keep about half of that additional income. Then again, I'm a single person so I imagine if I had a family to support the extra money would matter.
- scarface74 5y ago
  First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. In fact, from $150 to $206K, your marginal tax rate on anything above $160K only goes up 6% I went from $150K at the beginning of 2020 to around $225K working remotely. At $150K we could do anything we wanted (married grown children) to a point six months later we could do everything we wanted. Meaning with $225K, we could: - “retire my wife” at 45 so she could pursue her passions. - max out my 401K (and soon catch up contributions) and max out my “after tax 401K” with 10% of my base - go on multiple decent vacations a year. - fly my wife out with me on business trips (on my dime) and stay over. - “Date nights” once a week or so. - stay in AirBnbs around the country for weeks at a time just for a change of scenery and work from there. We had to balance those things before. Now we can do all of it. If I made more, it would go toward my less conservative investments - real estate, opening a franchise, etc.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    I don't think they did make that mistake. In Canada at least, if you go from $150k to $225k, you're effectively making $31k more, or about $131k depending on where you live, as an actual employee. Certainly if you make a point of living somewhere incredibly cheap, then that difference will go farther, but the parent here was actually about accurate in saying you'd retain half of the difference. Living in Vancouver or Toronto for example, I'd still not be able to buy a home for quite a long time, and that difference would make a very minimal impact on my lifestyle, if I could hypothetically make that much. It would be preferable to optimize for free time.
softwarebeware 5y ago
When you say non-FAANG how do you define it? Technically, the initials each stand for one company so do you mean are there jobs at any company besides those five which fit said criterion? The only true way to find out is to start talking to recruiters or getting offers.
- el_benhameen 5y ago
  Totally, that's a fair point. I guess I'm asking this question to try to crowdsource the info more quickly than I can get it from recruiters. By non-FAANG, I guess I mean some combination of: 1. Companies your uncle might not have heard about (by this I mostly mean not AirBnB or Uber) 2. As an extension of #1, probably b2b 3. Headcount somewhere in the 20-150 neighborhood 4. Probably something established, not seed-stage or a venture rocketship 5. Somewhat less onerous interview processes. I don't mind fun algo and design problems, but I would rather not have to prep for 4 months to have speed leetcode thrown at me for 8 hours This is all just off the top of my head, though. And I know that all 5 in one company is a lot to ask for.
  - softwarebeware 5y ago
    Got it! Given those criteria, my personal feeling is that it would only be possible in Silicon Valley, New York, or Seattle, but it may not be that base salary is at least $200k for senior-level. Moreso that the total compensation would be, particularly in a startup that hasn't gone public yet because the value of the company is speculative.
portlander52232 5y ago
If you haven’t tried FAANG, it might be worth considering. I took a FAANG job on a lark, intending to stay a short time just to have it on my resume, and ended up liking the job way more than I expected and stuck around much longer than planned. In particular, my expectations about the job were completely inaccurate. The office politics, corporate bureaucracy, interpersonal dynamics, and overall stress level are all way better than I ever experienced at small companies. You cite a lack of small teams as your reason for avoiding FAANG (and I know there are probably others), but I’m generally working with 1–4 people at a time.
- avmich 5y ago
  To somebody considering a position in FAANG - ask yourself: is it a good company to work in? Does this company help the society, does it make lives of people better? Or is this company focusing on bringing monetary benefits using existing monopolistic position? Can such a company be created again today, or is it just employing previously favorable conditions, which are long since skewed to avoid creating meaningful competition? Does this company shares the wins obtained from massive data gathering and analysis - or does it use them to cement its unique position in IT, while refusing to give back to societies which still figuring out how to work in these new markets? If you're going to work in these companies - will you be proud or will people point to you and saying that you're the causes of their griefs or that you participated in robbing people of values and valuables?
  - caminante 5y ago
    I'll bite. Assuming these companies are morally evil, why not join to change them in a virtuous direction? Either you can make positive change or if you can't make change, then you're not necessarily additive to evil ("do no harm").
    - lostdog 5y ago
      Unless you are joining as a SVP at least, this idea makes no sense.
olliej 5y ago
It’s important to realize that when people are throwing around 3,4,500k etc at FAANGs they’re not generally reporting the base salary, but rather salary + RSUs. The vast majority of FAANG jobs are below 200k base salary, but if you then throw in a few 10s of thousand in bonuses, a few hundred k of stocks vesting, and suddenly you get to stupid levels of income (worked a multiple FAANGs as a reasonably high level IC)
- crate_barre 5y ago
  200 is not base yet in SF and NYC?
  - olliej 5y ago
    Can’t speak to NYC, but 200 seems to require a degree of seniority in the Bay Area. But again RSUs are a huge part(for example they make half my income in my taxes this year)
- scarface74 5y ago
  Why are you acting as if RSUs are not real money? As soon as they vest, I pay taxes on them. As soon as they hit my brokerage account, I can sell them and spend the money.
  - olliej 5y ago
    The phrasing of the question seemed to reflect the fairly common belief that the giant FAANG figures people throw around are the base salary. This is a problem that repeats in all the salary+wage transparency bills. Most of the intended targets already have established level->salary bands, discriminatory comp is largely through bonuses and stock (RSUs, options, etc).
    - scarface74 5y ago
      He clearly stated that there was “plenty of data on levels.fyi”. He knows that the total compensation includes RSUs/bonuses if he looked at the data. Options in private companies are statistically meaningless, they are close to lottery tickets.
closeparen 5y ago
Browse levels.fyi. Slack, Robinhood, Twitter, Splunk, Slack, Uber, Airbnb, Stripe, Square, and many other non-FAANG paying >$200k and in some cases >$300k total compensation for the first level past new grad.
- Ancalagon 5y ago
  You said slack twice
- scarface74 5y ago
  They are specifically looking for companies that don’t require DS&A styled interviews.
  - vanillax 5y ago
    This is a very critical point. Is there a site that lists out companies that DONT do DS&A interviews but pay well?
  - el_benhameen 5y ago
    I don’t mind tech rounds that involve some algo questions, but yeah, I would rather they be applicable to the job and not a matter of how much leetcode I can regurgitate in four hours.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      What type of “practical” coding interview do you expect say Google to give you when they don’t even know what team you’re going to be on? The way that Google kills products, the product you are being hired for if they did hire for certain teams may not be around in a year.
      - el_benhameen 5y ago
        I guess that part of the reason to look at these tier-2 or 3 companies is that they have fewer products, and those products are all part of their core business, so interviews can address relevant questions without obsolescence being a concern. I have no illusions about avoiding the FAANG hiring process if I want to work at a FAANG … but that’s why I’m avoiding them altogether.
ddoolin 5y ago
I make ~225K (all cash/salary) at a regular/non-FAANG company. The dev team of a couple dozen was in Southern California pre-COVID, now basically all remote with people across the country. I've never worked for a FAANG company so I can't say much about how it compares, but my workload is more than a simple web developer and likely has more depth and breadth than FAANG roles which, as far as I know, tend to be more specialized. I've been here for five years making mostly the same amount, and five years at a smattering of other places making half or less.
- fire 5y ago
  Are... you hiring?
- d82nsjk9 5y ago
  > ... but my workload is more than a simple web developer Oof... "simple web developer" is not very nice of you.
  - ddoolin 5y ago
    As an adjective, it fits. I was one for as much time before and it's certainly simpler.
iainctduncan 5y ago
Background: I'm a consultant for a company that does technical due diligence on tech companies being purchased by private equity firms. When we do one, we get all the information, including comp and totally salary to revenue, etc. FWIW, there are a surprising number of companies that pay senior contributors this well in unglamorous fields. The world is full of what we call "tech enabled service companies", and some of these do very, very well. They depend very much on their secret sauce - the software they develop that makes them special. My perception, however, is that they probably aren't generally hiring at those kind of rates, but rather promoting/raising the devs that helped get them where they are. Some of them seem like very nice places to work. The old adage applies: you make money doing what other people don't want to do or can't do. If it's not glamorous and hip and shiny new tech, the competition is a lot less fierce and rates must rise accordingly.
european321 5y ago
Look for series B+ startups in the U.S. that are aggressively scaling their teams. There is a shortage of good senior software engineers, and these startups are desperate and have the money, so many are offering base salaries that are around $200k
- bradlys 5y ago
  These are likely not the kind of places they want to join though. They’re gonna have the same leetcode style interviews and likely very bad WLB.
  - european321 5y ago
    In my experience that's not the case, but of course varies company by company
gdfgjhs 5y ago
I have just started my job search in Dallas/Fort Worth area. I hate to waste my and other's time, so I ask upfront their pay range or tell them my expectations. I am looking for $200-250K as a senior developer, and only a few of employers said it was above their budget.
hemloc_io 5y ago
I may be an outlier, but I finished interviewing recently and I can give you some insights. I would say that there are plenty of jobs that pay around 200-250k cash for mid career anyway. (Including bonus and salary.) Usually in high growth startups. For example I interviewed with a company going into series B that offered that much in cash comp + remote, and it was a smallish team of 50. Very sane hiring process, a pair programming exercise and a bunch of walking through prev projects. Had a couple startups that I ended up canceling with just b/c I got an offer I liked from someone else, but I'd assume it's the same. If you don't like algo questions some high paying companies like Stripe have alternative processes too. Other public startups, like Spotify, which pay about that much and have a pretty reasonable process compared to FAANG. Easier algo questions, less toxicity in hiring. I will caution you for my anecdata, I have some FAANG experience out of college and I passed multiple FAANG processes, as well as working for an HFT in school doing backofficey work. So maybe since I was well prepared for interviews + had some branding they were willing to pay higher than usual for me. If you or anyone else in the thread wants to chat about it feel free to email/dm me :)
- xu3u32 5y ago
  Is there a specific tech stack that matches most of these roles or is one of Python/Java/JS good enough?
  - hemloc_io 5y ago
    More common is probably better, for me I have those in my background and it seemed to workout!
Ancalagon 5y ago
Plenty, tier 2,3,4 companies all pay in this range for senior engineers (total comp). Additionally, many startups have started realizing that good senior engineering talent also starts around the 200k range now, at least for west-coast based companies/engineers. I don't know the exact tier bucket that every company falls into, but if FAANG is tier 1 (300-400k), then uber, abnb, lyft, mcsft, etc are tier 2 (also 300-400k), Walmart, Intuit, VMWARE, ServiceNow are tier 3 (200-300k), etc. etc. (I'm going off the compensation numbers Ive seen on levels.fyi so feel free to disagree with any of my placements but you get the idea).
dacur 5y ago
https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards might be a good resource
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
richardsocher 5y ago
Even as a small startup at you.com we pay our amazing engineers more than that (full pay package = salary plus equity). Of course, startup equity is hard to plan with since it's not public stock. These days, being "outside the hotspots" should be an issue since many companies (including ours) are fully remote.
- richardsocher 5y ago
  Should not be an issue -_-
bspear 5y ago
A lot of well-funded startups pay SWE $200K+ in base salary. You can find a bunch of examples here: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/?team=Engineering https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/?team=...
ch4s3 5y ago
If you have experience in functional programming, especially Elixir shoot me a message.
boring_twenties 5y ago
I'm not very plugged into the startup scene, but I know a few people that work at startups in NYC and SF, and all of them are making more than $200k. All of them have since been given the option to work remotely from (almost?) anywhere, and their pay hasn't changed (except to the extent for a couple of them, their options are now worth something, too). Separately from that, if you're interested in finance, it's more like at least $300-500k, and some of those are now becoming available fully remotely, too.
- methusala8 5y ago
  What would the tech stack be for finance?
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    C++ for the best jobs (IMNSHO). Java, C#, Python or even web stuff for the others.

scarface74 5y ago

All of the difference between when I made $150K to around $225K came from RSUs. The ones I get the first half of the year are taxed at 40% (12.4% FICA, 2.4% Medicare, 22% Federal, 6% state). The second half don’t get taxed for FICA. That made the difference in our lifestyle. Just for clarification, we pay the employer’s side of FICA on RSUs and I am soon moving to a state that doesn’t tax income. But why is there a belief that you work harder to get paid more? It was a lot more work being a senior dev/de facto “cloud architect” at a 60 person company where everyone look to me for guidance (in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king) than it is being a mid level consultant at a 1.6 trillion dollar company.

brailsafe 5y ago
Definitely not always the case, but quite often you end up needing to take on more responsibility, at least within the same company. The states has different bits that I'm unaware of, but in Canada there's no such thing as not paying income tax, but there are places with lower income tax.
ericmay 5y ago
I see a lot of people say they’re moving to a no-income tax state, but don’t you just make up the difference in fixed taxes like property tax? Maybe California and/or New York are specifically bad in ways I’m not aware of.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Property taxes are also below average in Florida. A booming tourist industry does wonders.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Does the federal government subsidize flood insurance in Florida too? Wonder if that rug will ever get pulled.
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      Yes. Federal flood insurance rates are set to rise to more reasonable levels over the next few years and people are already complaining
- pilotneko 5y ago
  For what it’s worth, I live in a no-income tax state (Tennessee). I didn’t move here, I just grew up here. We have some of the lowest property taxes in the country for metropolitan areas: I pay around $2,500/yr in property taxes for my home within the city limits of Nashville. The downside is that the city has very little income for infrastructure improvement/upkeep and education.
UncleMeat 5y ago
RSUs are withheld using that formula. They are taxed as ordinary income. It doesn’t matter on your taxes if you are earning dollars or RSUs.
- scarface74 5y ago
  My company does not pay the employer side of FICA (7.4%) on RSUs
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    This feels illegal but I’m certainly no lawyer. I’ve never heard of this sort of thing happening before for w2 employees. Learn something new every day.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      I’m sure someone would have called out the US’s second largest employer if it were illegal. Just to be clear - we have to pay the employer side.
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    Most of FICA is social security, which only applies to the first $142k or so of your income. If you hit that cap before RSUs, then it wouldn't apply to those. (There's still the medicare portion, but that's only 1.45% each side.)

scarface74 5y ago

Name one for profit company that has any other goal besides profit? Do you apply your moralistic stance to the second order derivative? Will you refuse to work for a company that is hosted on one of those companies? That advertises on one of those companies? Will you try to get your company to block Google from searching? Do you think YCombinator funds companies for any other reason than for profits? A companies goal is to make a profit. If you are concerned about the greater good, encourage your government to tax the corporations and implement programs to help people.

avmich 5y ago
> Name one for profit company that has any other goal besides profit? From the top of my head - Costco has a reputation of being a better place to work in. I may be mistaken, bring your points if you want. Costco doesn't nearly have the position on its market comparable to, say, Google's, so it's a good example of the company which has to - and does - care more about society it's in. > Do you apply your moralistic stance to the second order derivative? No I don't. I do breathe the same air as currently alive criminals, for example. > Will you try to get your company to block Google from searching? If I get to define technical policies in a company, e.g. make a startup I'll try. I'm optimistic that it's doable. > Do you think YCombinator funds companies for any other reason than for profits? I think there are reasons that YCombinator funds companies for other reasons too, yes. > A companies goal is to make a profit. If you are concerned about the greater good, encourage your government to tax the corporations and implement programs to help people. I believe it's a simplistic approach. Following the "letter" of the idea "bring benefits to shareholders" usually assumes "short-term benefits". Here's the contradiction.
- closeparen 5y ago
  Few industries have had more deleterious impact on American society than big box retail. Tobacco, maybe. I would much rather take responsibility for Facebook than for the hellscape of parking lots and chain stores that dominate the environment around any home worth less than a million dollars.
  - usednet 5y ago
    How do you suggest lower and middle income people purchase their necessities? You can’t feed 330 million people through farm-to-table distribution. That’s not to say they can’t be improved on.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      How do you suggest that lower and middle class people find stuff on the internet (Google) or can afford phones (Android)? How do you suggest small companies take advantage of a global distribution network and unknown authors get their books published (Amazon)? Who has done more to commoditize computers to make them affordable than Microsoft and Google? Amazon raising wages to $18/hour lifted wages for everyone. Yes the “evil monopolies” have done good also. I purposefully left out Facebook. I don’t see how they have been a net good for society. I also left our Apple, since they don’t focus on the “lower and middle income”.
      - DukeBaset 5y ago
        What I wonder is why do poor wage slavers like you enjoy tounging the boot so much?
        scarface74 5y ago
        Well, three responses: 1. I have an addiction to food and shelter and my parents seem to have a problem taking care of someone who is almost 50. 2. According to DQYDJ, I’m in the 97th percentile of income earners [1]. I am not bragging, a college grad 5 years out of school would be too as an SDE2 at any major tech company. 3. Are you independently wealthy or do you also exchange labor for money? [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
    - closeparen 5y ago
      Walkable communities. Main Street. Local independent stores.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > Costco has a reputation of being a better place to work in This shifts the goalposts towards “good place to work in”, which I would say large companies like FAANG easily qualify for. However, this is exactly the problem. The press and social media love dunking on tech companies, so we collectively forgot about all the other industries. If we go back to the initial concern of morality, are you claiming Costco doesn’t care about profit, has a fully ethical supply chain, pays all levels of workers fairly, treat customers fairly, etc? This is rhetorical btw, since literally no company in our globalised capitalist world can fulfil these goals. They can only virtue-signal while committing atrocities…
  - avmich 5y ago
    >> Costco has a reputation of being a better place to work in > This shifts the goalposts towards “good place to work in”, which I would say large companies like FAANG easily qualify for. This takes my words out of context.
- baash05 5y ago
  I second that. I've worked for many companies whose goal was not to make a profit, but instead to make the world better for one group of people. They did profit, but that was really just so they could afford to continue to help their target audience. I've never really understood the anger toward share holders. Most people have a pension, and that's invested in the stock market. When people say "share holders" I think of teachers pensions, and nurses pensions, my welders-widow grand mother. The "share holders" are people. RE tax.. I can't think of a better way to light money on fire. Australia recently spent nearly 100million on a Covid safe app that tracked people. It was an utter flop, and I'm not sure it tacked down even one person. 100 Million $ on a 100% predictable flop.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Did your company have VC backers? I guarantee you that they were concerned about profits over everything else. What specifically did the companies you held in such high regards do that caused them to forego profit?
- scarface74 5y ago
  Have you thought that company’s “treat their employees better” because retention has bottom line benefits? None of the major tech companies got there by worrying only short term benefits. Did you chose computer science over something like social work for the monetary benefits?
refurb 5y ago
Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster: All right this has gone on long enough. Juan Tripp is a great American. His airline has advanced the cause of commercial aviation in this country for decades. Juan Tripp is a patriot. Juan Tripp is not a man who's interested in making money. Howard Hughes: Well, I'm sure his stockholders would be happy to hear that. [Everybody starts laughing]

8note 5y ago

I don't know why you'd only apply this rubric to FAANGs. Every company is horrible; it's fundamental to private ownership of capital, and therefore you should not work, especially not in IT

d82nsjk9 5y ago
Sure. But do you think that, say, Tesla is as horrible as Facebook? i.e. electric cars are as horrible as advertisement?
- yunohn 5y ago
  I don’t see much value in comparing random companies across verticals, but I’ll bite. Tesla is a luxury electric car company that is dependant on a very immoral supply chain to procure various raw materials, for their cars and batteries, i.e. pretty much everything. Of course, nobody cares about the hidden blood/slavery inherent to their supply chain. Facebook is a social media company, that billions of people use and enjoy, while being monetised by ads (attention). It has been used as a “weapon” to create radical parties and subvert democratic process - but at a larger global scale than traditional press media could achieve. Not everything is cut and dry, and most mainstream opinions are manufactured by the global media. Why /did/ we all collectively forget about every other industry than tech? Because the media is being replaced by social networks, and they’re facing an existential crisis, so they respond with biased coverage. Think hard about that!
- scarface74 5y ago
  You really haven’t heard about how badly Tesla treats its workers? https://thesuffolkpersonalinjurylawyer.com/injuries-unsafe-working-conditions-reported-tesla-factory/ https://thesuffolkpersonalinjurylawyer.com/injuries-unsafe-w... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/12/hundreds-covid-cases-reported-tesla-plant-following-musks-defiant-reopening-county-data-shows/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/12/hundred...
- whoknew1122 5y ago
  Why is Tesla intrinsically better? Is it because Elon Musk hangs out with Joe Rogan? Tesla is as toxic as any FAANG. Every Tesla employee I've talked to has been treated worse than I get treated at AWS.

brailsafe 5y ago

Well, if you were paid $0 base salary, but $300k at the end of two years if you meet some high level of performance and keep it there the entire time, does that count as money? I wouldn't put money on that money. You can't pay a mortgage with that money, or feed your kids, or pay rent.

scarface74 5y ago
Major tech companies have a vesting schedule where you are guaranteed to get the stated amount of shares on a certain date. I knew the minimum number of shares I would get for the first four years after I got hired. After that, I will know for two years in advance.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Ya but if anything happens to prevent that schedule from taking place, you won't get those shares. Is that not correct?
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Anything happens like you lose your job before the six months is up? That’s just like saying if they agreed to pay you $250K in cash, and you lost your job in June, you wouldn’t get the other $125K. But if we are talking about the 5 largest tech companies - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, I doubt they are going to be so distressed that they are going to not pay their RSUs.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      The difference in my mind is that you have a certain amount of liquid income paid to you gradually, probably twice a month. I feel like it's more comparable to a cash bonus, except that it's a different asset and different period. So if you lose your job before that 6 months, or whatever the time period is, you're still paid money from your salary, but only that. But perhaps I misunderstood something about RSUs or one of your previous comments. As a contractor, even cash is risky the longer you draw out the payment period and terms, and there's also time-value of money to consider.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        I live in a medium cost of living area so my base covers all of my living expenses. I use my RSUs for savings, vacations, and big ticket items. It’s about getting into a certain rhythm. Let’s say I get my RSUs in June. I have them set to sell as soon as I vest and now cash is just sitting in my brokerage account. At the beginning of every month, I have $1500 transferred to my main checking account. That offsets the deficit I have in my monthly budget after I have retirement savings deducted from my regular account. If I were getting the money monthly, I would save for big ticket items every month. I know I’m getting a net around $25K in six months, so I just allocate that. But in the grand scheme of things we are only talking about six months in the whole. It is slightly different from a bonus since statistically, you would expect your RSUs to go up over time. Your “bonus” is going to be worth more than the initial stated value. If you are granted 100 RSUs over 4 years when the stock was worth $100, even if they just go up with the rest of the stock market, the last amount will be worth 30% more when you vest. But this also assumes we are talking about the big 5 profitable tech companies and not places like Uber and Robinhood.
        brailsafe 5y ago
        Thanks for the overview, I do find it interesting to see how other people manage things. Like you say though, you're making a calculated risk assessment and allocating money ahead-of-time accordingly, and you also have a base salary and stability such that it makes sense to do so. I think if I were offered a new job, even at one of the big 5 (that isn't really in the cards fwiw), I wouldn't consider the same bet until I could all but guarantee that I'd have the job after that period of time. Particularly with a lot of people moving jobs in the last year, and with economic volatility, I think that's an appropriately conservative move to make for a lot of people. Would you disagree? Did you set out to do what you described as soon as you got the job and simply assumed that you'd have it 6 months, 1 year etc.. later? I personally hedge against having work 6 months out, but tend to account for that bias if I'm talking in generalities and be a little more optimistic. (high cost of living area, extreme income volatility, extremely unstable career, no savings, not a big spender etc..)
        5y ago