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As a point of data, I work at Google and am at a similar point in my career. My base salary a year ago was $136k, but there was a companywide 10% raise last win
by googlethrowaway 15y ago
As a point of data, I work at Google and am at a similar point in my career. My base salary a year ago was $136k, but there was a companywide 10% raise last winter, and now my base is $150k.
You get a cash bonus each year that's around 15% of your base, but if you're a superstar it can be double that, or if you're a total disappointment, it can be nothing. But if I perform as expected, that's another $22k.
Finally, I was granted 300 shares of stock that vest annually over four years. So each year, I get 75x the value of a Google share. GOOG is trading around $600, so that's another $45k.
So my total annual compensation this year will be $217k. If I were bragging to an ex-employer, I'd probably round up to "a quarter million" too. :)
- fake_handle 15y agoAdding to the data pool: I'm also an under-30 engineer making ~250k in the Bay Area (at a publicly-traded gaming company, not at Google). My company has six pay grades for pure engineers; I'm at the second highest. My 2011 comp breaks down as follows: * 166k base * 45k bonus * 35k stock grants (RSUs) Note this does not include 401k matching, stock purchase plan, healthcare, or any other quantifiable perks. When I took this job a year ago, I had a similar offer from a prominent NYC startup: ~220k (150k base, 30k bonus, 250k options over 4 years using offer-time valuation). I was 26 at the time. For added context, I did not attend an elite school. I did not complete my undergraduate degree. I'm smart, but not extraordinarily so (800/710 math/verbal SAT). I interview well. I have a "disruptive" skill (cloud expertise).
- wallflower 15y ago> I interview well Any tips or techniques outside of the standard behavioral based interviewing techniques (like STAR)? Also, I suspect you may be underselling yourself here, you very well may have excellent communication skills (like presenting complex ideas clearly to senior management) or even just social acumen.
- mahyarm 15y agoBrushing up on your standard CS algorithms and concurrency school problems, a favorite of SV interviews. And being skilled in whatever area you are being interviewed for.
- eurohacker 15y agowhat kind of work do you do - what programming languages you can write in and what type of tasks you do
- Selvik 15y agoIsn't a perfect math score very hard to get, something like the upper 1%ile? Do you know your IQ? I'm scandinavian and could do a traditional finance/consulting/management/accounting thing in my home country but the software industry seems far more fascinating. I'm afraid my 120 to 125 iq means I'm too stupid to do well in SV though.
- zem 15y agoall your iq score really measures is how well you do in iq tests. if you have an interest in and a basic aptitude for programming, you should be fine. (also, a perfect math score in the sat isn't impossibly hard - the level of mathematics is probably lower than your last school exam. it just takes a lot of practice to do that many questions fast and accurately.)
- wtvanhest 15y agoIQ is a good test, but at 120-125 you are still far smarter than most people on earth. Just look at the normal distribution of IQ scores: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IQ_curve.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IQ_curve.svg Sure, a lot of people are in the 120+ range on Hacker News, at top management consulting companies etc. but if you are 110+ IQ you are probably smart enough to do almost any job on the planet. I'm not a programmer, but I imagine that like business, there are plenty of terrible programmers with 140 IQs that believe they are entitled to not working hard or being good with people. They will always make less and even their high IQ will not allow them to figure it out.
- brianm 15y agoNo, you are not. The more damning trait would be believing you are not qualified because of a test administered when you were 8 years old (or worse, believing the results of any IQ test administered after that). There are certainly brilliant folks around in the valley, who can grasp concepts faster and more deeply than seems human, but they are a significant minority. The prime requisites for success as an employee in the valley are still: 1) Good judgement (which tends to come from accurate self-reflection and critique) 2) Love of learning (so it takes you a couple hours or even days to grok redis's failure modes instead of 20 minutes, who cares -- the question is are you going to learn it (and every other useful thing that comes along, for years)) 3) Basic sociability (the valley is a small world, everyone knows each other, if you are a jerk life will get more difficult). For a much more eloquent description of how to thrive as a programmery type in the valley, consider http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html but translate research into "generally useful skills for building stuff." "You and Your Generally Useful Skills for Building Stuff." :-)
- teratau 15y agoDo you know if the 10% raise is automatically applied to the base salary of new hires as well? I'm looking for a new job, and strangely, Google's base is about 10% lower than the base from my other offers (Apple, Facebook, Zynga, LinkedIn), rather than 10% higher. Also, to add my own datapoint: I'm four years out from undergrad at an elite school, and Google offered me $120k base and 500 stock units over four years. My recruiter said that given the way annual bonuses work (15% bonus if you perform average, all the way up to 15% * 3.5 = 52.5% if you're extraordinary), I should haven't have much trouble getting about a 30%-35% bonus. So my expected annual salary from base, stock, and bonuses is about $120k + 125 stock units * $600 (which is what Google is currently trading at) + 30% * $120k = $231,000. If I'd joined Google right out of school, I expect this would be even higher, since I would have received the 10% raise last year (and also, I've made a series of poor career decisions to join no-name startups that I think have kept my current base salary lower than normal and made me a little less desirable). Pure speculation, though.
- tensafefrogs 15y agoYes, it is. They just increased their pay scales by 10% across the board forever.
- raldi 15y agoThe 10% is factored into new offers.
- littledanehren 15y agoTell your Google recruiter about your competing offers, especially if you're considering choosing another job on this basis.
- teratau 15y agoAh, I did, and he slightly more than tripled my RSUs (from 150 to 500), but left my base the same. Which is also weird since that base is lower than my current one.
- 15y ago
- dodedo 15y agoI'm at another large valley company, at a similar point in my career, and I have almost the same base / equity compensation. Added up I hit around 220k. I've had offers from other shops in the same just-over-200k ballpark, and I know peers at google pulling in around the same. I don't doubt 250k for a second.
- felipemnoa 15y ago>>So my total annual compensation this year will be $217k. If I were bragging to an ex-employer, I'd probably round up to "a quarter million" too. :) That last part about "a quarter million" made me crack up. Awesome stuff! Now, down votes, come to me.
- xytop 15y agoI'm web developer, 25 years old, I'm raising 21000 euro/year. What I'm doing wrong? :/