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Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

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Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#151

Post by chucksmash »

georgefrick wrote: post #50

So I've been at this 9 years and I'm not making six figures. Fuck. I don't even understand where I went wrong. Part of me can't believe the article at all. His comment about cost of living was kind of an outright dismissal, very odd? I don't think Google will let me work from Milwaukee. Where is the information on travel, quality of life (owning a house?), etc?

Out of curiosity, how many companies have you worked at during that time period? My experience over the past 4 years as a developer and 7 years in the labor force has been that my biggest raises have always come either by switching jobs or by bringing an offer to my boss.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#152

Post by tptacek »

balls187 wrote: post #149
didip wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can come up with a few on top of my head: Netflix, Apple, Google

Do you have sources for this information? Is 200k median salary, or an outlier for the top senior engineer there?

The top senior engineer at Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn is not making $200k.

More than 10 years ago, my in-the-door offer as one member of a team of 5-6 senior developers at an east coast tech firm was higher than $200k.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#153

Post by manyxcxi »

manyxcxi wrote: post #70
herge wrote: post #7

I'd recommend anyone looking for their first job out of university to consider strongly a job at a startup. Consider it a 'finishing school', where you'll have the highest chance to touch as many different technologies and tasks as possible (from system administration, to backend to frontend work), as opposed to the 'Big Company' where (especially for a first job) you'll be focused on one task. The important thing is…

I believe the inverse, I think most kids out of school should start at a (good) large company, they have the resources and framework to provide all kinds of career training you'd never get from startups or small companies. Mentors, leadership training, technical skills training, much bigger budgets, and a smaller group of tasks that someone is expected to perform. The pace is likely more deliberate, if not even borin…

Also, this has been MY career experience to this date. As I now run my own tech companies and have been hiring technical people for the last 7 years, I have anecdotally found this to hold true. The early to mid-career types that have only ever been at tiny companies or startups are really good at having a breadth of experience and an ability to move fast. The spent all my career with big company types have usually been pretty deep at something (a language, framework, tech niche) and are very used to processes. They're typically slower and have a need to encumber small things with bloat (process, tech, etc). Marrying these people together on a team has yielded me fantastic results in nearly every case. The big enterprise people feel like they've been released from a cage, and the scrappy startup types seem a little less feral, while providing an infectious get shit done attitude.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#154

Post by mrshoe »

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…

That this is currently the top comment reinforces the author's hypothesis that many software engineers underestimate how much they could make at a large company.

> 250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really?

Yes, 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.

Nope, not true.

> So I think this article is spreading a myth that there is guaranteed piles of money to be made by working at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

Have you worked at Google, Facebook, or Apple for 5 years? If you do, and you're a decent programmer (not a rock star, but a solid contributor), you'll find there are guaranteed piles of money to be made.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#155

Post by logical42 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #136
logical42 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

From my understanding, they don't really recalibrate pay scales at the bigcos based on location.. but this is purely anecdotal evidence.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#156

Post by fivedogit »

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.

You're exactly right. And it comes down to simple economic truths. If mass amounts of people could "easily" make 130k out of college on a path to 250k then the hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world would give up their ~$100k jobs and go do that. But they don't. Just look at glassdoor salary averages! It's right there in black and white! The sunny salary numbers he posits are, as you said, out of reach for most.

(It should be noted that I completely agree with the article's conclusion. I've come to feel that the EV of buying a startup lottery ticket is woefully lower than pg, sama or [insert vc/angel here] assert. If you can land a solid and interesting bigco job, that's probably your best bet.)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#158

Post by Retric »

ryandrake wrote: post #49
exstudent2 wrote: post #2

I don't think you can go into a company as large as Google and expect your salary to double in five years. HR will have set limits to how much of a raise you can get in any given year and even with promotions you would be very unlikely to see that kind of bump. I also don't think the middling programmers he mentions would hit the 250k year mark. Orthogonal to the point of the article, but the only time you can really…

The idea of starting fresh out of school at a company for $130K, doubling up to $250K seems to me ludicrous, besides for a rare few outlier roles at a rare few companies. I can say I've got close to 20 years of experience and I don't make anywhere close to that. Not saying there are no roles like this--just saying this probably several standard deviations from the mean, and not useful as a "back of the envelope estim…

I personally know someone that went from 130k to over 1 million in 7.5 years at a large 20,000+ person non valley company. Skills, luck, negotiation, and HR will get ignored.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#159

Post by [deleted] »

mrshoe wrote: post #154
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…

That this is currently the top comment reinforces the author's hypothesis that many software engineers underestimate how much they could make at a large company. > 250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yes, 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. Nope, not true. > So I think this art…

[deleted]

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#160

Post by tptacek »

balls187 wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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???

The best approximation of an answer to that question I can find is "virtually every large non-startup tech company in the valley that isn't Cisco".
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