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> YMMV. YMMV is right. There's a lot of factors here. It's almost meaningless to take averages without qualifying those against a fairly large number of condit

> YMMV. YMMV is right. There's a lot of factors here. It's almost meaningless to take averages without qualifying those against a fairly large number of conditions. Total comp North of 300K for an IC sounds like science fiction to many folks which aren't in Silicon Valley, in certain fields, and in certain companies.

jcadam 4y ago
It's not what you make, it's what you keep. That 300K+ in SV comes coupled to an extreme cost of living. :)
- beamatronic 4y ago
  It also doesn't help when the previous administration specifically targets you with punitive tax policies.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Good thing there are such things as remote jobs…
  - jcadam 4y ago
    But you're not going to get paid SV salaries working remotely (yes, I work remotely because living in CA is not appealing to me).
    - scarface74 4y ago
      I work for BigTech remotely. My comp may be about 10% lower than the equivalent position on the west coast according to the internal “anonymous” compensation sharing Slack channel.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      I do and so does my whole team. I live in Seattle but a lot of our guys are in the south making six figure salaries. Not being paid the average salary seems to be fud I’ve heard from anti-remote people.
      - acchow 4y ago
        By “in the south making six figure salaries” do you mean $300k on 4 YOE?
        mrep 4y ago
        My target is $250k, I'm getting $350k due to stock growth and I am remote with 6 YOE.
        jcadam 4y ago
        $200K with 15 YOE - I think that's pretty typical. I know people with even more experience who make less. Recruiters I talk to balk when I ask for $250K.
      - acchow 4y ago
        The article lists out the average software developer salary as $120k. I have no idea if this is true (it sounds low to me), but I don't hear people saying that $120k remote jobs don't exist... People are saying $350k remote jobs don't exist. Which obviously is untrue (go work at Airbnb). But they're exceedingly rare.
- tzs 4y ago
  SV COL is high, but I don't think it is high enough to explain SV pay. Looking at a few non-SV cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Nashville, Orlando, Sacramento, Austin, and Fresno it costs $14-18k/year more to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area than to rent in those other places. The average monthly spending on food in SF is about $150/month more than the US average. That's under $2K/year. California does have a high income tax. For someone moving from somewhere else to California you might have to pay them maybe 10% more to compensate for that. Putting it all together, a job that pays around $100k/year in non-SV non-NY decent sized cities should need to pay if we are generous maybe around $140k/year due to higher COL in the Bay Area. That Bay Area tech pay is way more than that suggests that something other than SV COL is the main factor.
codefreeordie 4y ago
That's actually so much of why people feel underpaid. Pay varies incredibly widely. The job also varies quite widely, but when you're not in the job, IC sounds a lot like IC. You could be an IC with a total compensation of $80k (and actually getting $80k), you could be an IC with a TC of $300k (and actually getting $300k), and you could be an IC with a TC of $750k (and actually getting something like $200k-250k because your employer is private and your equity is all hypothetical)
- scarface74 4y ago
  If your employee is private, it is silly to count non liquid statistically meaningless “equity” as part of your compensation. “compensation” is something I can trade for cash once I have earned it and then exchange for good and services.
  - TooKool4This 4y ago
    It’s also incorrect to assume the expected value of the equity is zero. It’s much more useful to model it as E(x)=x*p(x), especially if you have some useful information on estimating p(x) that a person working at a startup might.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Every startup thinks their company is going to be successful. No matter what the person thinks who is working their, they don’t know when the investors will cut their losses or when the market isn’t hungry for money losing startups and the VCs have to put off going public…like now.
  - lhorie 4y ago
    Paper equity for late stage startups can be traded for cash in secondary markets like EquityZen
    - scarface74 4y ago
      If your company allows it and it will probably be at a discount.

jcadam 4y ago

It's not what you make, it's what you keep. That 300K+ in SV comes coupled to an extreme cost of living. :)

beamatronic 4y ago
It also doesn't help when the previous administration specifically targets you with punitive tax policies.
scarface74 4y ago
Good thing there are such things as remote jobs…
- jcadam 4y ago
  But you're not going to get paid SV salaries working remotely (yes, I work remotely because living in CA is not appealing to me).
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I work for BigTech remotely. My comp may be about 10% lower than the equivalent position on the west coast according to the internal “anonymous” compensation sharing Slack channel.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I do and so does my whole team. I live in Seattle but a lot of our guys are in the south making six figure salaries. Not being paid the average salary seems to be fud I’ve heard from anti-remote people.
    - acchow 4y ago
      By “in the south making six figure salaries” do you mean $300k on 4 YOE?
      - mrep 4y ago
        My target is $250k, I'm getting $350k due to stock growth and I am remote with 6 YOE.
        jcadam 4y ago
        $200K with 15 YOE - I think that's pretty typical. I know people with even more experience who make less. Recruiters I talk to balk when I ask for $250K.
    - acchow 4y ago
      The article lists out the average software developer salary as $120k. I have no idea if this is true (it sounds low to me), but I don't hear people saying that $120k remote jobs don't exist... People are saying $350k remote jobs don't exist. Which obviously is untrue (go work at Airbnb). But they're exceedingly rare.
tzs 4y ago
SV COL is high, but I don't think it is high enough to explain SV pay. Looking at a few non-SV cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Nashville, Orlando, Sacramento, Austin, and Fresno it costs $14-18k/year more to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area than to rent in those other places. The average monthly spending on food in SF is about $150/month more than the US average. That's under $2K/year. California does have a high income tax. For someone moving from somewhere else to California you might have to pay them maybe 10% more to compensate for that. Putting it all together, a job that pays around $100k/year in non-SV non-NY decent sized cities should need to pay if we are generous maybe around $140k/year due to higher COL in the Bay Area. That Bay Area tech pay is way more than that suggests that something other than SV COL is the main factor.

codefreeordie 4y ago

That's actually so much of why people feel underpaid. Pay varies incredibly widely. The job also varies quite widely, but when you're not in the job, IC sounds a lot like IC. You could be an IC with a total compensation of $80k (and actually getting $80k), you could be an IC with a TC of $300k (and actually getting $300k), and you could be an IC with a TC of $750k (and actually getting something like $200k-250k because your employer is private and your equity is all hypothetical)

scarface74 4y ago
If your employee is private, it is silly to count non liquid statistically meaningless “equity” as part of your compensation. “compensation” is something I can trade for cash once I have earned it and then exchange for good and services.
- TooKool4This 4y ago
  It’s also incorrect to assume the expected value of the equity is zero. It’s much more useful to model it as E(x)=x*p(x), especially if you have some useful information on estimating p(x) that a person working at a startup might.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Every startup thinks their company is going to be successful. No matter what the person thinks who is working their, they don’t know when the investors will cut their losses or when the market isn’t hungry for money losing startups and the VCs have to put off going public…like now.
- lhorie 4y ago
  Paper equity for late stage startups can be traded for cash in secondary markets like EquityZen
  - scarface74 4y ago
    If your company allows it and it will probably be at a discount.