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

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#271

Post by Jabbles » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:02 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #261

lcr94 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This style of reply is not constructive. How can we know with certainty whether or not you have a reasonable shot at making 250k/year after five years of working at Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft? Provide an anecdote, links to articles, etc.

I suspect its pretty certain, it certainly held true when I was working there and that was before Google was 50K employees. The flip side though is you may not make it to 5 years. A lot of employees don't (which is less commonly talked about) but Google has always tried pretty hard to not retain people who weren't providing what they considered an appropriate level of contribution. So if you start working at Google,…

> A lot of employees don't

And what is your evidence for that?

I hope it's not an estimate for the average time an engineer has been at Google, which is clearly not the same thing.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#272

Post by School-Cotton » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

rockinghigh wrote: post #249

lcr94 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This style of reply is not constructive. How can we know with certainty whether or not you have a reasonable shot at making 250k/year after five years of working at Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft? Provide an anecdote, links to articles, etc.

If you're talking about total compensation, 250k is on the low end. Base of $140-190k is common. Add to that $10-30k of cash bonus and $100k of stocks.

People get $100k of stocks a year? As in, not RSUs - vested stocks? I suspect you're confusing the two, though I admit I'm not certain

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#273

Post by thedufer » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:08 PM UTC

fivedogit wrote: post #156

Cyberdog wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think a good number of people just don't know that they're underpaid. I worked 3 years at ~100k, then started interviewing and quickly moved up to the kind of numbers mentioned in the article (note: nyc, so all numbers are somewhat inflated). I also gave up some unvested equity, but there's no way it could be worth anywhere near the salary difference.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#274

Post by patio11 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

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???

AppAmaGooFaceSoft and every company which is isomorphic to them. Tens of thousands of people have this pay package.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#275

Post by gniv » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

There is valid criticism to be made, but the negativity in this thread is out of proportion.

As somebody who worked at Google for 5+ years, I'd like to emphasize a point: If you sustain good work [1] for a few years, you will be rewarded well beyond expectations [2]. Your compensation will depend on your performance, and not on your starting salary. I think this is unique to Google and maybe a few other tech giants. From this point of view, the generalization to 'big company' is flawed. But otherwise the points made by OP are true, and I wish more new grads would see it (and believe it).

[1] Your overall contribution to the project is important. Whether you work 30 or 50 hours a week to get there, it depends on you, of course.

[2] And those rewards do not depend on the stock price going up. That's just cream on top.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#276

Post by thedufer » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:14 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #100

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…

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...

I recently got an offer from Google for 270k total comp (<4 years experience, nyc). I would expect tenure to be worth a sizable amount over that, and it's my understanding that nyc is very similar to silicon valley.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#277

Post by lisivka » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:22 PM UTC

eecks wrote: post #230

sbilstein wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just in the states? What about in Europe? FB, Google and others have headquarters in Dublin. I don't think they pay anything like that, do they?

$80K is top of the top developer salary I heard of in Ukraine. My own salary is $55K. With $250K, I can hire team to work instead of me. :-)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#278

Post by thedufer » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:24 PM UTC

aantix wrote: post #54

devonkim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of difficult to have start-ups hire juniors because they desperately need people to be productive and so I'd caution that start-ups that accept junior coders straight out of school may not be the kind of start-ups that give the kind of experience that's desirable even for a year. Instead of recommending what people should go after college for their first job, I'll recommend what people should not do: 1. Wor…

If you take a startup job out of school, make sure that they embrace pair programming. Work for a Pivotal Labs. Work for an Andres Camacho. Work for a Chad Fowler. Or an Ernie Miller. Find the leaders that understand all programmers need training (especially around process and coding standards). Sell that on your passion and that you want to become good _quickly_.

Pair programming is not for everyone. More generally, you want to be somewhere you can learn from senior folk. Pair programming and high quality code reviews are both great for this, and will appeal to different people.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#279

Post by thedufer » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:40 PM UTC

bigcothrowa wrote: post #68

charleslmunger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample: I was hired straight out of school at a big company 2 1/2 years ago, at slightly more than the author describes (100k and change salary, ~100k equity over four years, 15% bonus target). I've been promoted twice, and my income over the next year will hit the double mark for total compensation. I've been promoted faster than most, but my numbers stretched over a 5 year timespan still work out.

I think the important distinction is that the author claims to be discussing the low-end or at least middle, but your example is in fact significantly-better-than-average.

No one's arguing that doubling in three years is average, but of people that get jobs at Google, doubling in five years seems very reasonable.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#280

Post by Matthias247 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

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?

At least it would be only BigCo in USA and the tech sector.

I know only numbers from germany and somebig corporations here. Apart from management you would here be very unlikely to even hit 100k (neither $ nor €).