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You might as well call me reversible toothpaste then. People are getting offers, which are so insane, a friend of mine, more like a distant friend of a friend

You might as well call me reversible toothpaste then. People are getting offers, which are so insane, a friend of mine, more like a distant friend of a friend recently got a total comp package of slightly over 250k per year. He only has to go in 2 days per week, and it's pretty flexible. You can make the days up. But he's also the type of person who really likes to get out of the house, they own dogs so often he'll just need to get out of there.

p1esk 4y ago
Wait, 250k total comp sounds insane to you?
- 999900000999 4y ago
  Oh hacker news, This is the only website where you can say a friend is making 250k people act like it's not a big deal I guess lawyers and doctors make this amount of money too, but programming is the only profession you can learn with just a used laptop and a Starbucks internet connection. And then still expect to hit a minimum of 100K within 3 years of installing Visual Studio. Even if you're a college dropout. That's what happened to me. God Bless America.
  - p1esk 4y ago
    We are talking about FAANG salaries here. I have friends at Meta and Google who make 600k+. Similar experience level to mine. The problem with 250k is that you can probably get a maximum of $1M mortgage with that. Can you buy a decent average house in Cupertino for $1M? Now imagine you have 3 kids and you like to take a nice family vacation twice a year. So with an average house in SV you will end up spending almost all of that 250k, good luck saving for college.
    - 999900000999 4y ago
      Not everyone's getting FAANG jobs. If I ever have kids, I'd probably tell them to go to community college like I did . Even at community college, I was meeting students from Sweden, China, etc. Even went out with a K-pop supermodel once. You can attend college in California, at a community college for about $1,000 a year. Everything included. Then go to UC Berkeley, where at most it's going to be $20,000 a year for 2 years, that's only a total of $42,000 to get a degree from one of the best schools in the world. Now I imagine, let's say my first girlfriend finds my number, we end up having the twins that she wanted. And then our twins are super geniuses who get into Harvard. Then maybe 250k isn't enough, it's weird though because I would think that anything over 200k is doing absurdly well. Plus if you only need to go into work one or two days a week, just drive from Sacramento..
      - p1esk 4y ago
        Barely making ends meet on 250k in SV is just part of the problem. Another part is what kind of people surround you. If all your friends make much less than 250k, then sure, 250k sounds like a good deal. But if you make 250k but all your friends (who are no smarter than you) make at least double that, then you start feeling like maybe you should too. Making 250k in SV feels like the center of middle class. Not even upper middle class. Not happy with public school education? Want your kids to go to nice private schools? Sorry, can't afford it (assuming ~2.5k/mo per kid). But your friends at Google can. Want to drive ModelX like they do? That's going to be tough with all those bills you're already paying. Yeah, you can send your kids to community college - to save money - while your friends don't have to. And again, my friends are not geniuses. They are not executives. Not successful business owners. They didn't get lucky in any way, they just applied to work at big tech, and now work there as regular software engineers. Doing the same thing I do at a startup. We are social animals, and no matter what you tell yourself, if we don't measure up to our peers we feel like losers.
        999900000999 4y ago
        But isn't poverty also extremely high in San Francisco? When I went to college in California, there was an extremely wide range From people like me who honestly only showed up so I can get grant money and an apartment. To the children of millionaires, to my knowledge, I never met the child of a billionaire though. Just because you're not in the top 1% of income, earners doesn't make you a loser, if I was offered a job at like say 300K at Google With an in-office requirement, I would just find a way to commute. I don't need to live in San Francisco.
        p1esk 4y ago
        there was an extremely wide range It's all about where you see yourself in that range.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
washbrain 4y ago
250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer. College grads can easily pull down 120k in salary alone. Then there's equity, benefits, 401k matching, signing bonuses, etc.
- guessmyname 4y ago
  > 250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer. College grads can easily pull down 120k in salary alone. Then there's equity, benefits, 401k matching, signing bonuses, etc. According to Levels FYI [1] the average (total) compensation package at Apple for a Junior Software Engineer is U$162k in 2022 (data points skewed to Californian employees). That website shows 33 self-reported compensation packages in 2022 from people hired as ICT2, which is how Apple categorizes junior programmers. The highest compensation package is U$229,125 from someone with knowledge in Machine Learning / AI knowledge, their base salary is U$140k and the rest is RSU (U$37k per year, for 4 years) and a one-time signing bonus of U$52k. The lowest compensation package is U$96k (only base salary, no RSU, no signing bonus). Then, based on these 33 data points of ICT2 who joined Apple in 2022, the average (total) compensation package is U$157k, with U$124k being the average base salary. I will not say that junior programmers can not get a U$250k (total) compensation package, maybe those with a Masters degree and/or very specialized skills, but to say that “250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer” is a ridiculous exaggeration. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict2 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng...
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    [dead]

p1esk 4y ago

Wait, 250k total comp sounds insane to you?

999900000999 4y ago
Oh hacker news, This is the only website where you can say a friend is making 250k people act like it's not a big deal I guess lawyers and doctors make this amount of money too, but programming is the only profession you can learn with just a used laptop and a Starbucks internet connection. And then still expect to hit a minimum of 100K within 3 years of installing Visual Studio. Even if you're a college dropout. That's what happened to me. God Bless America.
- p1esk 4y ago
  We are talking about FAANG salaries here. I have friends at Meta and Google who make 600k+. Similar experience level to mine. The problem with 250k is that you can probably get a maximum of $1M mortgage with that. Can you buy a decent average house in Cupertino for $1M? Now imagine you have 3 kids and you like to take a nice family vacation twice a year. So with an average house in SV you will end up spending almost all of that 250k, good luck saving for college.
  - 999900000999 4y ago
    Not everyone's getting FAANG jobs. If I ever have kids, I'd probably tell them to go to community college like I did . Even at community college, I was meeting students from Sweden, China, etc. Even went out with a K-pop supermodel once. You can attend college in California, at a community college for about $1,000 a year. Everything included. Then go to UC Berkeley, where at most it's going to be $20,000 a year for 2 years, that's only a total of $42,000 to get a degree from one of the best schools in the world. Now I imagine, let's say my first girlfriend finds my number, we end up having the twins that she wanted. And then our twins are super geniuses who get into Harvard. Then maybe 250k isn't enough, it's weird though because I would think that anything over 200k is doing absurdly well. Plus if you only need to go into work one or two days a week, just drive from Sacramento..
    - p1esk 4y ago
      Barely making ends meet on 250k in SV is just part of the problem. Another part is what kind of people surround you. If all your friends make much less than 250k, then sure, 250k sounds like a good deal. But if you make 250k but all your friends (who are no smarter than you) make at least double that, then you start feeling like maybe you should too. Making 250k in SV feels like the center of middle class. Not even upper middle class. Not happy with public school education? Want your kids to go to nice private schools? Sorry, can't afford it (assuming ~2.5k/mo per kid). But your friends at Google can. Want to drive ModelX like they do? That's going to be tough with all those bills you're already paying. Yeah, you can send your kids to community college - to save money - while your friends don't have to. And again, my friends are not geniuses. They are not executives. Not successful business owners. They didn't get lucky in any way, they just applied to work at big tech, and now work there as regular software engineers. Doing the same thing I do at a startup. We are social animals, and no matter what you tell yourself, if we don't measure up to our peers we feel like losers.
      - 999900000999 4y ago
        But isn't poverty also extremely high in San Francisco? When I went to college in California, there was an extremely wide range From people like me who honestly only showed up so I can get grant money and an apartment. To the children of millionaires, to my knowledge, I never met the child of a billionaire though. Just because you're not in the top 1% of income, earners doesn't make you a loser, if I was offered a job at like say 300K at Google With an in-office requirement, I would just find a way to commute. I don't need to live in San Francisco.
        p1esk 4y ago
        there was an extremely wide range It's all about where you see yourself in that range.
  - hgsgm 4y ago

washbrain 4y ago

250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer. College grads can easily pull down 120k in salary alone. Then there's equity, benefits, 401k matching, signing bonuses, etc.

guessmyname 4y ago
> 250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer. College grads can easily pull down 120k in salary alone. Then there's equity, benefits, 401k matching, signing bonuses, etc. According to Levels FYI [1] the average (total) compensation package at Apple for a Junior Software Engineer is U$162k in 2022 (data points skewed to Californian employees). That website shows 33 self-reported compensation packages in 2022 from people hired as ICT2, which is how Apple categorizes junior programmers. The highest compensation package is U$229,125 from someone with knowledge in Machine Learning / AI knowledge, their base salary is U$140k and the rest is RSU (U$37k per year, for 4 years) and a one-time signing bonus of U$52k. The lowest compensation package is U$96k (only base salary, no RSU, no signing bonus). Then, based on these 33 data points of ICT2 who joined Apple in 2022, the average (total) compensation package is U$157k, with U$124k being the average base salary. I will not say that junior programmers can not get a U$250k (total) compensation package, maybe those with a Masters degree and/or very specialized skills, but to say that “250 total comp is a fairly junior engineer offer” is a ridiculous exaggeration. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict2 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng...
- hgsgm 4y ago
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