Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 418 posts

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#391

Post by thedufer »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #384
thedufer wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live? These numbers are fairly local to SF/NYC/Seattle, with other large cities trailing a bit and smaller cities farther behind. That said, in those cities they are far from absurd. I started out similar to you (coding since elementary school) and now live in NYC ~3.5 years out of college. Off the top of my head, I could name half a dozen developers making seven figures, and at least 100 making over $20…

I live in San Francisco, and have for about 4 years. I'm shocked you know the salaries of 100 other developers. Care to share some of the companies that are paying this much to developers 3.5 years out of college? I'd love to corroborate on glassdoor.

I don't know exact salaries of that many people, but I know payscales at a couple high-paying companies and people who work there, so I put 2 and 2 together. I wouldn't count people who are borderline since there's a bit of estimating involved. I would slightly less confidently put the same group of people at $250k or more.

I recently turned down an offer from Google for $270k total comp, so they're definitely one of the high-paying companies. I know Facebook pays similarly well, but have no interest in working there. Being in NYC, though, the highest paying are mostly in finance.

I've found Glassdoor to run very low for higher-paying positions, though. Their numbers are all salary as far as I can tell, while a large portion of compensation is in RSUs and bonuses (40%-90% at compensation levels of $250k and up).

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#392

Post by foobarqux »

throwaway_goog wrote: post #342
foobarqux wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say unexercised you mean unvested, right? Can you redo the numbers and break-out the vesting stock? Also, since the thread is about making decisions about your career, considering compensation, why did you leave Google?

By unexercised I mean unexercised. Stock options vest continually (well, usually monthly or quarterly usually, after the 1-year cliff); when they've vested, you have the right to exercise them, and they're considered your property. You only exercise them when you choose to, and it's at that point that you're taxed on the difference between the current stock price and the strike price. Many of my coworkers would auto-…

> I figured it was time to do some things I'd always wanted to do.

Does that mean you decided to do the startup thing or that you decided to take time off?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#393

Post by logical42 »

avasylev wrote: post #372
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.

Stock bonus for Sr Dev at microsoft is up to 30% of base(vested over 5 years). That won't hit 100k even if you are at fifth year. Is it typical for google, facebook to give 100k in stocks per year (assuming they vest more a less over same 5 years or so).

It's not like they give you 100k RSUs automatically each year, but I think the math tends to average out so that that is basically what is happening.

For instance you may get 100k-150k initial allotment and suppose you get promoted in 18-24 months, they will likely give you a refresher of 150k-225k plus whatever bump you got on your salary. It's also important to note that the refreshers don't have the one year cliff of your initial grant, it starts vesting immediately.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#394

Post by throwaway_goog »

throwawaysf123 wrote: post #346
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.

does it vary by what part of the stack you work on? The impression I've got is that Google tends to value infrastructure engineers more than others (like frontend engineers).

Not to my knowledge. I started in frontend but had touched every part of the stack (including infrastructure and some ML) by the time I left.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#395

Post by throwaway_goog »

foobarqux wrote: post #392
throwaway_goog wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By unexercised I mean unexercised. Stock options vest continually (well, usually monthly or quarterly usually, after the 1-year cliff); when they've vested, you have the right to exercise them, and they're considered your property. You only exercise them when you choose to, and it's at that point that you're taxed on the difference between the current stock price and the strike price. Many of my coworkers would auto-…

> I figured it was time to do some things I'd always wanted to do. Does that mean you decided to do the startup thing or that you decided to take time off?

Startup thing.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#396

Post by manigandham »

thedufer wrote: post #377
alexandercrohde wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be put in this position, but I have to call BS. This entire thread is highly biased towards people who make more: people who make more want to chime in, people who make less are more embarrassed / discouraged from chiming in. I'm a natural (coding since 3rd grade), out of college for 6 years, and I've only known 1 engineer in my career who made over 200k. Now if by BigCo you mean Facebook, Google, Apple, Am…

Where do you live? These numbers are fairly local to SF/NYC/Seattle, with other large cities trailing a bit and smaller cities farther behind. That said, in those cities they are far from absurd. I started out similar to you (coding since elementary school) and now live in NYC ~3.5 years out of college. Off the top of my head, I could name half a dozen developers making seven figures, and at least 100 making over $20…

At least 6 developers making over $1M? Doing what?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#397

Post by ngoede »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #383
mkozlows wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to quit saying "a metropolitan area" when you mean "Silicon Valley and a few places that have satellite offices for companies based in Silicon Valley," is the thing. Show me the companies in Columbus, OH that pay that way. Or Milwaukee, WI. Or or or.

New York, Philly and DC exist. They all have tech markets that are not at all dependent on SV.

It is my experience that these figures are well on the high side for Philly though.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#398

Post by Bahamut »

crucifiction wrote: post #390
Bahamut wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Amazon compensates that much - I interviewed with them this past summer, and they tried to lowball me. I gave a firm number that I would not go below after giving some numbers I have turned down in the past, and the process stalled indefinitely. I have also heard stories about Apple lowballing friends as well, to the point startups were giving higher compensation. The others, I have heard stories about…

You were probably down leveled based on the interview. The comp will max out lower (and therefore the offer won't be able to budge significantly higher) than you may achieve somewhere that did not downlevel you.

I don't think so - I am pretty certain I aced both technical phone screens, answered the questions fast, and explained everything clearly with a high level understanding of everything asked (including all the nuances) while remaining calm & jovial the whole way. The technical screens were some of the easiest interviews I've ever had.

I should note that I didn't get to the in-person interview, and that was because salary negotiations start beforehand. I did my research afterwards, and everything I found seemed to point towards cheapness.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#399

Post by whamalama »

QuercusMax wrote: post #385
serge2k wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is so doable within five years that at large companies like Google and Microsoft you are expected to hit senior level, and if you don't it begins to reflect badly on your record. More explicitly, "senior" is the last level that everyone is expected to hit Not at Amazon. They are fine if people cap out at SDE 2. It's a bit of an odd thing IMO, and it's resulted in a comparatively low number of senior and above…

Probably because Amazon has enough problem with retention as it is, they don't want to encourage even more people to leave.

Pretty much.

The ratcheting hiring bar[1] and the punishing promo process[2] mean that SDE II has to be treated as a career role as a practical matter for the tech orgs to continue to function. As hard as it is to retain good engineers, it'd be even harder to retain good managers if they were expected to manage all their SDE II's up or out.

[1] - Every new hire is expected to be better than 50% of the current employees in a given role and level across the company. This means the "bar" for a given role and level continuously trends higher modulo attrition.

[2] - Senior engineer candidates typically require at least a dozen peers and managers at or above the senior level to each dedicate a couple of hours to write detailed SBI feedback. The promo candidate's manager then has to spend many more hours crafting a lengthy document from this. The doc then gets reviewed (i.e. picked apart) multiple times at every management tier up to the org VP. At any point along the way it may be punted back for rework, or denied. The process gets even more cumbersome going to principal - so much so that it's often said that the easiest path from senior SDE is to leave Amazon for a couple of years and get hired back as a principal.

source: former Amazonian who really liked working at Amazon, but who finally got an offer elsewhere he couldn't refuse.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#400

Post by throwaway_lazy »

Why not add consulting (i.e. helping startups out as someone "external") into the mix?

I make ~$110k/yr after taxes (!) and insurance and I work 10 hours per week, tops. I literally watch Netflix more than I work on an average workday. I know it's not great money (don't have a Tesla), but it's quite cozy.

Thoughts?

Post reply on HN