4 ms·
most principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD
by MuffinFlavored 3y ago
most principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD
- bushbaba 3y agoEven that seems low. New college grad going to a large tech firm can make 200k these days.
- nicechianti 3y ago[dead]
- bagacrap 3y agoI think that's only true if you pretend the equity grant all vests in year one. In reality it takes some time, so you won't get that amount until after several years at the company.
- dmoy 3y agoI think it depends on if it's like Facebook or Amazon. FB probably is paying $200k or close to it for first year vesting only. Amazon, probably not.
- scarface_74 3y agoAmazon has a back heavy vesting schedule and the first two years you get a large prorated signing bonus to get market rates.
- whimsicalism 3y agoyou’re wrong about that
- explaininjs 3y agoMSFT starting TC is ~250k.
- zeusk 3y agoIt quickly decays to around 150-180k; the refreshers and bonus are lousy <L63 at MSFT.
- explaininjs 3y ago"quickly" being 4-5 years?
- zeusk 3y agoQuickly being, 1 year and can go lower after 3 years if you don't get a SSA.
- explaininjs 3y agoDon't know what an SSA is. But I've seen flat/gently-increasing payout curves over 4 years, ~250k each.
- zeusk 3y agoI worked at MS for 3 years after undergrad, My first year was 221k, 180k, 191k and would've been ~185k for Y4 then 160k after cliff. SSA is Special Stock Award given arbitrarily (M2s are not sure or have any say in who/how much to be given) but believed to be used for retention by HR. Annual stock refreshers for <L63 at Microsoft are in the range of 0-20k vesting over 5 years. I chose to move to Amazon then recently Apple.
- whimsicalism 3y agofalse e: really for HN i would think people had a better sense of the market, i am seeing wrong statements all over the place L59 at MS is absolutely not paid $250k
- ivalm 3y agoMedian is much lower, but I know a few ~$230k. Basically top school/good internship/competing offers.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd that’s not representative of most of the 2.7 million developers working in the US. Check out comp for most “enterprise” jobs at banks, insurance companies, SaaS companies or even many YC companies.
- whimsicalism 3y agonot in the bay lol
- throwaway5959 3y agoYup, I’m right in that band.
- depereo 3y ago'Principal' in a lot of NZ companies just replaced the term 'Team Lead' and generally just means the most 'senior' person in the team. Sometimes it's used as a way to justify a raise. The scale of difference and difference of scale between New Zealand and the USA cannot be overstated. There really are not enough people in New Zealand to make the level of differentiation between a Senior, a Principal and a Staff engineer meaningful in the vast, vast majority of our industry. The titles are basically pointless and just word salad. They're also used very differently company to company, although I don't think that's unique to this geography.
- bogota 3y agoThat is staff band at a company without inflated titles and if we are only talking about the cash part of the offer.