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Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

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Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#331

Post by throwaway_g3 »

throwawayabcer wrote: post #305
throwaway_goog wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because I don't want my salary history to become public. I spent 5 years at Google. My AGI (as measured by the IRS) during my time there went $130K, $200K, $280K, $280K, $300K, $356K (for my last 5 months there...it also includes unexercised stock options for the last 5 years, though). The bump to $280K was upon promotion to senior SWE; the one to $200K was largely because of a generous stock refresh grant.

Also throwaway for obvious reasons. What you say sounds totally in line with my experience: I am Senior SWE at an Alphabet company. Came to MTV in middle of 2015 from a company in the midwest where I made over $200K last year (much of this was profit-sharing bonus), and I was definitely at top of the market for my city. My total compensation for this coming year (based on current value of GOOG, obviously this can var…

One more datapoint from Google (non-Bay Area office):

$75k (partial year), $182k, $254k, $360k

and then I left for a start-up where my total package is $50k. No less happy :-)

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#332

Post by habosa »

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 don't know about 250k, but there is a lot of money to be made at a big company. I am not a 'SWE' at Google so these are not my numbers, but I know it's pretty normal for people to see this out of college:

~110k salary ~60 shares of GOOG per year (so right now about 45k) ~15% bonus (so 15k, conservative)

That right there adds up to 170k and that's entry level. Get a promotion or two (could be a 20% increase if you're lucky) plus the general year-to-year raises to keep up with the market and you're looking at 250k being possible before you're 30.

Now of course this can't be everyone. But it's a lot of people, and anyone who is going to be competent enough to keep a startup afloat is probably good enough to rise a rank or two at Google/Apple/Facebook/etc.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#333

Post by thedufer »

sanderjd wrote: post #269
rockinghigh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One thing I'm always curious about: most of these discussions seem to be targeted at college grads, discussing where they could be after their first 5 years in the industry. The sense I've gotten is that these big companies tend to compensate all new hires approximately the same, caring little about experience outside their company or perhaps one of the other big companies. It seems to me that smaller, less well know…

At 3.5 years of experience Google offered me about double what I'm hearing for new grad total comp, so it seems that they value at least the first few years. Given the oft-cited ageism in the industry, I expect that tails off pretty quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years of experience wasn't worth noticeably more than 5 years.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#334

Post by thedufer »

School-Cotton wrote: post #293
phamilton wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSUs are stocks. A grant of 1 RSU means that on the date it vests, the company will buy 1 share of its stock and drop it into your account at a major brokerage. It's considered compensation and taxed as income, though it's often withheld as bonus income.

My point was that inasmuch as they don't vest the same year they're granted, RSUs are nothing but a commitment that part of your compensation in the future will be in the form of stock. If I grant you $1,000,000 in RSUs, vesting over 1000 years, is your annual income $1,000,000 ? No, it's $1,000.

When people cite total comp, including RSUs, they only include the RSUs that vest in that year. At least, this is how the recruiters at the big companies talk about it, which is typically where total comp numbers come from. So a grant of $300k worth of RSUs vesting evenly over 4 years counts as $75k of compensation.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#335

Post by habosa »

Equity at a startup is a joke these days, even as valuations climb to infinity. When you're an engineer at a VC-funded startup you're competing against VCs for a piece of a pie. And guess who will walk away with the pie at the end? Will it be the Ruby expert who wrote the backend, or will it be the VC partner who drew up the terms of the funding and the exit?

If you join a startup early you'd be very lucky to get 1%, 2% maybe? Ok so then 4 more rounds of funding go by and you're diluted. Then finally after 5 years you sell to Googapplesoft for $200M. Holy shit, payday is here! Wrong.

First you're going to pay out to all of the preferred shareholders, some of whom might have special payout clauses because you guys really needed the money. Then you find out your 1% is now 0.3% and you have to wait 6 months to sell any of it. So you busted your ass for 5 years for a few hundred thousand dollars when you could have had a full-benefits, low-stress job at Googleapplesoft in the first place and not put nearly so much at risk.

Oh and there's a 90% chance that exit never even happens and all you did was work way below market salary for worthless stock. Oh and that whole time you probably had crap health insurance and minimal 401k matching so your savings aren't looking too good either.

The point of the above is not to say "don't work at a startup" because it's obviously a great experience and the right choice for some. And who knows, maybe it will be WhatsApp and you'll be a billionaire and you can come back here and mock me. But if you run the numbers (as the article says), you really shouldn't work at a startup if you're after money.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#336

Post by bigcothrowa »

gozur88 wrote: post #325
bigcothrowa wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't scale down like that.

Wouldn't that be nice, though? I'd do it in a heartbeat. One of the guys tried to arrange that where I work, and he ended up retiring.

Yeah, me too. Taxes make it advantageous if you would value the additional free time. I'd happily scale to 4 days/week now for 80% (gross) pay.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#337

Post by mahyarm »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #241
dsacco wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a senior engineer? Are you at a large company in a metropolitan area? Is your salary less than $250k? If you answered yes to all three, yes, you are probably underpaid. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong if you love your job, but know that you could earn more.

I'm sorry but... if you were a senior software engineer in Sacramento (a metropolitan city) and asked for 200k at intel, hp, oracle, apple, etc., someone would quietly hang up the phone hahaha. A laughable amount is even closer to 150k if it wasn't a tech giant ie. Sutter, Blue Shield, Proctor & Gamble, PG&E, Franklin Templeton, etc. Lead, architect, principal... they may not hang up but I would expect a double take…

When Sacramento is a 2 hour drive away, why don't you move to Fremont and work in SF, Mountain View or San Jose?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#338

Post by invaliddata »

I've worked at sv companies of all sizes, and I think that for a fresh grad especially, the most important thing as some have stated is to find a team (manager, coworkers) and project that are right for you. You want a place where you will be supported, where you will have interesting work, and where you'll be able to develop in all the aspects (not just technical ones) that you'll need as a more senior developer. You'll want to avoid toxic cultures and places where no real work gets done. In companies of all sizes and stripes there is a huge amount of variation internally. Unfortunately it's often difficult to know what a particular team is like unless you know an insider. This advice may seem like common sense, but in my own experience and through talking to junior colleagues, many people don't have much of a clue for what to look for in a job (beyond - they pay a bit better / I've heard of them and its a prestigious name / I have some idea about what they want me to do and it sounds vaguely intetesting).

For fresh grads there is almost no negotiating room on compensation. Additionally, what one learns and experiences is critical to career growth. At one sv bigco I got paid intern level wages to manually label machines in a server room for a month (hired as a developer). I'm sure this is not represent tative of that company. At another bigco I have seen fresh grads and interns get plum work assignments (and pretty good compensation, according to surveys), and I know that's not the case for many other parts of that company. Neither of these companies is appamagoogsoftbookflix, but I know both these scenarios can be found pretty much anywhere.

Even midcareer professionals should care a great deal about the people and projects they will be working with, but there the ability and need to optimize compensation can be more acute. So, avoiding optimizing for compensation and company prestige early in ones career is something to be cognizant of.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#340

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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