Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#131

Post by balls187 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 6:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #110

rdtsc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I saw that and thought, ok maybe if you are on of the known or maintain a popular open source package, a conference speaker. But 250k in year 5 is not a number that rings true. Or, maybe I am doing something wrong here and am underpaid...

200k for sr in the valley is not weird. Remember: it's not year 5 of your career . It's year 5 of your tenure at one company . It's a little unusual for people to stay longer than 4 years at most companies.

What companies are paying 5 year senior enigneers $200k base salary in the Valley???

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#132

Post by benmarten » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #63

loopbit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding a entry-level job, any entry level job in Spain that pays you more than 900€ per month in Spain, Italy, Portugal... even France and maybe, Germany (although I have less information there). From what I see, you might get 2-2.5K€ per month in the rest of Europe. Ireland and UK are, AFAIK, where the highest salaries in IT are and even there you are going to get 2-3K€ per month at most. Most lawyers I k…

I did quite a lot of research on salaries in the London area 2 years ago. Starting wage for a programmer out of school was around 3-3.5K€ per month. Some places paid up to 4K per month (90th percentile). 25th% percentile was 2.5K€ per month. I have heard that starting wages have gone up a bit in the last few years. Your numbers for the UK are more typical outside of London, though. Of course nothing like Bay area sal…

Most starting salaries in Germany out of school for software engineers are between 40-60k€/year. I made 50k starting with a Bachelors. My brother with MSc. in Mechanical Engineering makes almost 60k€.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#133

Post by sbilstein » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #71

jzwinck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went about it the opposite way, and can definitely recommend that as well: big company first, then small. The big company experience shows you a ton of things, like how to interview, build, and deploy at scale. The small company can benefit from your ability to bring order to chaos, develop tools which are obvious in any big company but strangely missing from every small one, and more. Maybe it doesn't matter which…

This sounds great when you envision that big company as Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Facebook. It sounds less so when you envision that company as Oracle, eBay, Yahoo! or SAP. Some large companies are mostly going to teach you politics, byzantine process and spending money as a means of scaling bad software. It's important to differentiate skills learned at big companies. Some are very useful, but others are coping m…

yes. which big company matters so much. i find it frustrating when my hacker school friends deride big companies as having no interesting work being done or not being great places to work. Having worked at startups and two different big corporations, I've learned the most at the very large company I work at now, almost nothing at the first one I did and a mixed bag at startups.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#134

Post by sbilstein » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

logical42 wrote: post #117

jarjoura wrote: post #96

250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines. Also, you better be someone who is excellent at communication and charismatic if you want to get invited to the table of interesting work. There are a lot of brilliant hyper-competitive people who work at these big c…

I think people are actually really out of touch with bigco pay scales. 250k is pretty easily achievable in a bigco. At Facebook you'll hit 250k+ in total comp at level 5, at LinkedIn you'll hit 250k+ in total comp at Staff level. If you also factor in stacking allotments of RSUs, your pay can easily exceed 300k at these levels given a few years of tenure.

I can corroborate this. 250k is very, very attainable.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#135

Post by Cyberdog » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #124

jarjoura wrote: post #96

250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines. Also, you better be someone who is excellent at communication and charismatic if you want to get invited to the table of interesting work. There are a lot of brilliant hyper-competitive people who work at these big c…

This doesn't undermine the author's point. As another commenter said, people are really underestimating the likelihood of earning a $250k salary at a large company. It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area. The author's core point is that you are much more likely to become a senior engineer at a large company (and thus earn ~$250k in salary)…

> It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area.

If, if, if, if. Just by numbers, most devs don't meet these criteria. And even in the periods of time which I personally have, I still was not making anywhere near this kind of money.

These numbers are inflated and out of reach to the vast majority of developers in the workplace today, full stop.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#136

Post by ryanSrich » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

logical42 wrote: post #117

jarjoura wrote: post #96

250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines. Also, you better be someone who is excellent at communication and charismatic if you want to get invited to the table of interesting work. There are a lot of brilliant hyper-competitive people who work at these big c…

I think people are actually really out of touch with bigco pay scales. 250k is pretty easily achievable in a bigco. At Facebook you'll hit 250k+ in total comp at level 5, at LinkedIn you'll hit 250k+ in total comp at Staff level. If you also factor in stacking allotments of RSUs, your pay can easily exceed 300k at these levels given a few years of tenure.

Is this only in Silicon Valley? Or are these pay scales appropriate for satellite offices as well? For example: could you hit $250k working for Google in Pittsburgh?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#137

Post by dmourati » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

I spent the first 15 years of my career as follows:

3 years in small companies outside the bay area 10 years in bay area startups ~2 years in bay area big corporations

I can say the following. The transition from startup to big company was really tough. Part of this was because I was used to being "the guy" for such a wide range of things. At big corporations, these roles are divvied up into 5-10-15 different roles. This is both good and bad. On the plus side, I can relate somewhat intelligently to colleagues across a very wide range of roles. On the minus side, the colleagues all (rightfully) feel their areas are their domain and don't typically recognize expertise coming from outside their team. This knowledge with lack of credibility was hard to reconcile until I fully realized what was going on.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#138

Post by hiddencost » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #96

250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines. Also, you better be someone who is excellent at communication and charismatic if you want to get invited to the table of interesting work. There are a lot of brilliant hyper-competitive people who work at these big c…

I got a $150k starting offer from one of those companies. A friend got raised to $200k after two years at one of them. Another started at $170k with a masters in stats. Admittedly this is all anecdotal. But these numbers don't strike me as crazy.

My brother got a starting salary of $80k at a startup that went on to IPO in the single digit billions (he joined after the series A). After he sold his options, he earned an average of $130k / yr at that company.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#139

Post by benmarten » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #130

benmarten wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! I did not know that salaries where that high here. I just came to SF on an H1-B and can only look up to that... But way to go - i guess...

total comp. Not salary.

yeah true. for me its about the same though... guess i was so happy to come to the US in the first place ;)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#140

Post by dsacco » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

Cyberdog wrote: post #135

dsacco wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't undermine the author's point. As another commenter said, people are really underestimating the likelihood of earning a $250k salary at a large company. It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area. The author's core point is that you are much more likely to become a senior engineer at a large company (and thus earn ~$250k in salary)…

> It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area. If, if, if, if. Just by numbers, most devs don't meet these criteria. And even in the periods of time which I personally have, I still was not making anywhere near this kind of money. These numbers are inflated and out of reach to the vast majority of developers in the workplace today, full stop.

Yes, there are if's involved. It is not certain that you will achieve senior tier at a large company in a metropolitan area. But you are also not certain to earn anything from your startup equity.

I will reiterate - you are more likely to reach $250k working at a large company than you are to earn it (in salary or lump sum) at a startup.

This has been corroborated by numerous individual's experience in this thread, including my own. I personally interact with companies that pay this on a weekly basis.