5 ms·

I mean even today, if you really want to make a ton of money in software, you're still targeting finance stuff. Not banks, but like HRT or similar.

• ryandrake 1y ago
  People really over exaggerate how much a rank-and-file software IC actually makes at these companies. Yea, they make a decent amount, but they're not casually making $2M bonuses like the investment banker types over at Goldman Sachs are, unless they are those rare outlier high-level employees. A lot of it might be stock, too, so their "good year" comp might be 3X to 4X their "bad year" comp. People see their cousin's uncle's neighbor's roommate making $400K at Meta and just assume every single employee there makes that much. Or they point to those salary sharing sites where people self-report their best salary + highest possible bonus + equity as if every year was 2021, and think of them as representative.
  • orangecat 1y ago
    People see their cousin's uncle's neighbor's roommate making $400K at Meta and just assume every single employee there makes that much. Every single employee, no. But the average L5 really does make over $300k in total compensation. Yes some of that is stock, but the companies are now stable enough so that doesn't cause a ton of variation.
    • whiplash451 1y ago
      I’ll be that guy, but $300k pre-tax at current cost of life is not an insane number at all.
      • alabastervlog 1y ago
        I both agree that $300k household income is roughly the bottom edge to support a Fussellian upper-middle lifestyle these days (and that edge is retreating upwards fast…), but also notice that it’s about 94th percentile for US household income. Household. A married couple both making that are 98th percentile.
        • whiplash451 1y ago
          Sure but less than 8% of Americans live in the top 10 most expensive cities. In what percentile of your social class do you sit with $300k? Probably not very high.
          • deleted 1y ago
            [deleted]
          • yusina 1y ago
            "Of your social class"? That comparison doesn't make much sense. If you are at the bottom of your social class, you picked the wrong class to compare yourself with. Of course I'm at the bottom of all millionaires, but that's because I barely have a 7-figure net worth and have a weird self image.
      • blitzar 1y ago
        Said like a 1990's banker / a 2020's tech worker.
      • archagon 1y ago
        That’s silly. As a high-income FAANG engineer living in the heart of SF, I was easily able to save more than 70% of my money.
        • babyent 1y ago
          What was your rent though? I was not at FAANG, but a unicorn startup back in mid to late 2010s, and I was making 150-180k in that time, but not in SF. Rent back then for a 2br was like $2400.. Today, that same apartment goes for $4900. I am pretty sure the base for the same level today is probably more like 170-200k, but literally everything has also become doubly expensive. Also if you're in SF you either need to allocate another 300-400 a month for parking, or sell your car. I was paying 130 per month for my garage parking spot (again, not in SF), and when I moved to SF some time ago I sold my car because it was going to cost me a lot to use my car. And unlike FANG, where you can either hold and double every 3-4 years if lucky, or sell immediately with taxes, I walked away with 10x or more..
          • archagon 1y ago
            Rent was (and is) around $4000 for 3br, shared between 2 people. (And this was not an unusual price to see during our apartment hunt a few years ago.) If you're paying $4900 for 2br in the city, my impression is that it's either a brand new development or in a posh area like Pac Heights. I don't have a car, but I feel like that's one of the biggest privileges of living in the city. Maybe the calculus changes if you have kids, though.
            • babyent 1y ago
              Well there you go. Sharing it makes it simpler but also not very ideal unless you’re a really young person or single and don’t mind sharing. I have cats so I need my own place and they need their own spaces :3 Getting rid of the car has been an awesome change though. I’m so cheap now it’s crazy. Only spend money on food and cat stuff haha.
              • 1y ago
    • dmoy 1y ago
      At Meta and L5, probably over $400k or $450k for the average eng. I think it's true both ways: A lot of people assume it's like finance money, but it's not. And on the flip side there's a lot of people coming from normal company or startup land, and assume that the $400k + average performing L5 is a myth, when that's pretty typical for big tech. And I definitely agree with sibling here: $300k or $400k is good money, but in a place where the median house costs $1.5 million or something insane like the parts of the bay area that have a <45 minute commute, it doesn't go as far as you'd think. And it's incredibly risky, because now you're tied to always getting that level of comp for decades or you'll get evicted. (And while $400k + L5 Meta comp may be typical at Meta, it's not exactly trivial to maintain, or nearly as relaxing as a software gig you can do at other companies)
      • fldskfjdslkfj 1y ago
        That's the avg initial comp package but the stock had a pretty nice run so a lot of people are making 600k++.
      • yusina 1y ago
        Why do need to make $400k a year "for decades" to pay a $1.5M home down to a level at which a significant income change doesn't evict you? With some napkin math, let's say down payment was $200k, so you have $1.3M loan, and if you pay down $100k a year then after just 8 years you are down to a mortgage of $500k. Still a lot of money, but won't get you evicted if you make less, and while on $400k a year and with a spouse that has income too, you shouldbe able to reach that even earlier.
        • spacemadness 1y ago
          At a 7% interest rate, your math isn't reasonable. You’re mostly paying interest. The situation in the Bay is way more insane than people realize.
        • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
          That's a lot of handwavey assumptions about how much you can pay off per year / month; where's that $100K pay down coming from? How much is the interest pay? What other expenses are there?
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
    Another thing, is the number of engineers at HRT is not that many, and the number making > 600k is probably less than 2000. A miniscule amount
    • dmoy 1y ago
      Definitely true, yes. And it's insanely competitive to get in, and at some of the shops (e.g. Citadel), your work life balance has a giant lead weight on one end of the balance beam, with a vacuum attached that is actively sucking things from the other side down the ramp.
  • throwaway2037 1y ago
    > but they're not casually making $2M bonuses like the investment banker types over at Goldman Sachs are These days, a junior MD in Goldman IB is probably close to 1M USD in total comp (base + bonus). You need to be many years into MD to get paid 2M USD total comp (or have a single, wildly lucky, outlier year). And it takes 20 solid years of outperformance (and soul crushing hours) to get there. The days of "young MDs" in IB divisions is basically over.
    • kridsdale1 1y ago
      I started reading chapter 1 of American Psycho last night. The characters are all M&A Wall St types in the mid 80s. Their personalities and obsessions and materialism strike me as EXACTLY what the 20-somethings I knew in San Francisco mid-2010s were like.