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.
Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
161–170 of 418 posts
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#162I was just perceptive enough to notice, that, copy the entire table into a comment and pontificate on it, then notice that I missed the sentence in question immediately after commenting, and delete it 3 seconds after posting it. :/
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#163250k 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 is not true, although I thought it was before joining Google from a startup. I'm now two years in (after joining at entry level) and my compensation is ~220k. 250k for senior is pretty conservative, if the Googlers I've talked to at that level are representative (and we don't work in the Bay Area).
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#164Earlier 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.
i.e Say there are two groups of 100 engineers of equal average ability. One goes into megacorps and the others do startups. Which group will have earned more as a whole after 5 years? 10 years?
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#165250k 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)…
I was under the impression that Senior is mid-level? I thought the ladder went, Junior/Associate, (Just) Software Engineer, Senior (some places have Senior I/II), then Principal, and finally (Optional for really big companies with R&D like Cisco/Juniper/United Technologies), Fellow or Distinguished Engineer (and Senior Fellow).
>a senior engineer at a large company (and thus earn ~$250k in salary)
I'm under the impression that the $250K salary is total comp, usually $150K in Silicon Valley (which is like $80K in fly-over country) and $100K in stock options/bonuses which varies year to year (e.g., what was the annual bonus of SV programmers in the year of 2002-2005? vested options now worth for employees of TWTR and LivingSocial?); also how secure are these Senior Engineer jobs and people's average tenure at those jobs? What is their hourly wage accounting for how many hours they work?
I propose a better formula for salary range for all job ad's, your cost-of-living adjusted annual salary * (1 - % involuntary attrition per year at your company) * (40 hours / avg hours worked of employees in the team) + (50-percentile bonus) + (employee stock options {if not public 0 else 50-percentile of the cohort of the one year price target of stock analysts}).
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#166Getting a job at Google as an engineer is ridiculously hard. The guy that wrote Homebrew couldn't even get hired even though 90% of their engineers use his software. https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 If you can get a job at Google, it's very different than getting a job "at a big company" and has historically actually increased your odds of success later on (via the propensity of investors to fund Xo…
It makes everyone that's interviewed at Google and didn't get it feel better, which is why it is such a good story.
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#167When it comes to compensation I think it's pretty clear that Big Companies win. You don't even need to point to Google, Facebook, etc to make this point. However, his argument becomes truly hand-wavey and spurious when it comes to the interesting work part. Of course some of the most interesting tech papers are coming out of Google, that doesn't mean anything for the average Google employee. Also, in his, argument, h…
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think you're that good at picking financially successful startups, why not invest just money rather than time AND money?
Because you're not legally able to do so unless you're an accredited investor?
However, 200k for the last 2 years + an expectation for 200k next year qualifies you as an accredited investor. (300k if married) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
Not that it's so far fetched that big Valley firms are paying over $200k base salary, but if it was so prevalent, I'd expect to see more concrete evidence to support that.
Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
From my experience, say, the North Carolina scene, you're lucky if you are going to get $120-ish with ten years of experience. There's some give or take, but includes large companies and banks. You can do a little better at something like a Cisco if you are willing to trade quality of work. Most big companies as well as startups are paying new grads somewhere in the low-high 60s or maybe 50s depending on where. I don't have hard data, but it's no where near $130k.
Data from cost of living comparison sites that some companies use indicates that these companies hiring someone in the bay area may pay those people 20% more for cost of living at most.
Startups pay substantially less on average, with senior level personnel getting around $100k, maybe $120k if you're excellent and the startup is well funded - but this is 10 years of experience kind of stuff. I have unfortunately had to turn down some great folks because they wanted north of that - and they were worth it. I've also seen companies where their maximum pay tier tops out at 135 for what amounts to principle engineer level positions. (I'd assume a fellow at IBM would do better, but they are uncommon and few have a chance of surviving the machine to get there).
Conversely, really senior level software development positions at basically-exit-ready startups in CA aren't going to be much better than 40-50% better than the above. Some of these can be obtained remotely - sometimes.
What the article states as common for Google and Facebook are absolutely not the norm, and I'm not really sure how achievable that is for most people even there.
It's great if Google/Facebook can allow to pay people that, definitely. I just wouldn't say it's even remotely common and does not translate.
I've heard some ancedotal completely crazy numbers from hedge funds that most people would hate working for elsewhere, but nothing nearing the numbers in this article.
I don't really have hard data on the New York software scene or Texas, but .. again, this isn't normal. HN may be more of a microcosm than expected if most people do feel this is normal.
To put it in perspective, this is still amazingly high compared to a lot of other positions and you'd still have it really good.