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2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

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Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#161

Post by encoderer »

There are so many large tech companies in the Bay Area that all include stock-based compensation as a meaningful portion of your salary.

Everybody on HN fixates on startup employment in the bay area. Sure, there are plenty of "starving" engineers here working for $90k at a startup. But that's a choice. Every large tech company you can think of, and many you can't, have been hiring here non-stop for years. Within a 2 blocks of where I write this is Yelp, Salesforce and Zillow/Trulia. These are not even the large tech companies.

This place is not meant for everybody, but it really has not been hard to get ahead here if you're an engineer aiming to make money.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#162

Post by dionidium »

drstewart wrote: post #128
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. I'll never move to the SF Bay Area. I encourage others not to, either. Get the companies there to open up to remote employees instead.

>Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. Wow, I found a 20 bedroom house in rural Somalia that's half that price. I'll never move to Florida and encourage others not to, either. Get the people there to move somewhere cheaper instead.

You're responding to a comment comparing San Francisco to other parts of the United States with all of the baseline luxuries that implies. Florida's GDP per capita is $38,497. In Somalia it's about $600.

I understand that you're making a point about quality of life, but there are no serious comparisons to be made between Somalia and Florida and it says a lot about the (erroneous) views of those in the Bay Area that comments like this one are pretty common on HN.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#163

Post by sgdread »

stuckagain wrote: post #99
kcorbitt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute is a 15-minute walk, or 5-minute bike ride. :) I chose the apartment based on proximity to work -- could have saved $100-200/mo with a longer commute, but the savings would have been more than eaten up by the gas/car maintenance costs and I hate commuting. I still own a car, but don't use it to get to work. We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgra…

You don't have to go to Utah to beat that. My mortgage on a SFH in Oakland is $2350/mo, I have 1800 sq ft and a garage and a big yard.

Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina - 1800sqft, 2-car garage ~ $1410/mo. Salaries $100-140k

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#164

Post by DannyBee »

drstewart wrote: post #125
WhitneyLand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tough argument to make that SF beats SLC in net savings. You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation. Secondly there are a lot more taxes on a lot more things in SF, are you factoring that in? Also I'd bet you are worth more than 105k in SLC if you looked around longer. I love SF and it's great to live…

>You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation. You should try living in a cabin in the woods. Way cheaper plus you get fit from chopping up firewood for the winter. Obviously only a fool would live in a city in Utah when they could live in rural Alaska for cheaper!

"You should try living in a cabin in the woods."

This isn't even close to a reasonable retort.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#165

Post by w0rd-driven »

As someone who's gone through hired's process last year with a close friend, I feel this does a disservice. Primarily because COL is never 1:1 in spite of the very best analysis available and I feel like this becomes a credible source those in hiring positions. The train of thought goes something like this, seemingly from anecdotal evidence from my close friend: "Oh you're making $70K in Atlanta as a PHP developer? That's like $150K in SF!" (the SF value was plucked out of thin air because I don't quite know the calculation). When the reality is in Atlanta that's well below market rate for a seasoned developer. This is also the state of their data compiled from last year but I suspect more than most will treat it as a projection or try to run the increase/decrease as one.

My understanding may be seriously flawed because I view salary negotiations as nowhere close to a zero sum game it should at least attempt to aspire to be. From the get go, everything is entirely skewed in the employer's favor and this just feels like more ammunition.

My close friend and I shared the train of thought that if a company based in SF has $x for developers, while they can likely get more remote developers for the total at their COL decrease, splitting some of the difference with those employees would go quite a long way. Employees likely wouldn't see that total compensation range anywhere else in their current location and that difference becomes its own motivator, at least for someone like me who has struggled to reach market rate. It becomes a double edged sword when that offer is vastly above market rate as finding another job in that range would be increasingly difficult. Employees would likely be way more tempted to stay well after burn out sets in because what should be closer to the norm becomes more of a golden ticket.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#167

Post by ctrl_freak »

Bahamut wrote: post #127
brilliantcode wrote: post #63

...and Vancouver, BC doesn't even show up on the radar because our average is roughly $53,000 USD / year. Might wanna consider outsourcing here. Same time zone as SV, similar culture, speaks English, tight job market means loyal workers. source: https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/vancouver-software-develop... USD/CAD as of today: 1.31

There are some good devs there too - maybe that is what made it an attractive choice for companies like Facebook before.

As brilliantcode mentioned, Facebook, Microsoft et al are using Vancouver as a visa staging ground for people outside of North America. Most Canadian software engineers can work in the US on the TN (which doesn't have a cap like the H-1B) so they don't have visa issues. They bring them over to Vancouver, basically training them there, and once they've worked there for a year, they're eligible to use the L-1 visa, because it's considered an intra-company transfer, so they can move them into the US.

The Vancouver offices are not an investment in the Canadian tech industry; they're just taking advantage of our more lenient immigration laws and the convenience of the city being geographically close to San Francisco. Waterloo and Toronto seem to be taken much more seriously as remote engineering offices for American companies (possibly because of the universities and amount of tech talent in the region).

It's kind of a shame though. Vancouver is a beautiful city, conveniently located, and there's no good reason why it couldn't be Silicon Valley of the north. If they could just figure out how to make it more economical to live there for software engineers (i.e. cheaper housing and higher salaries), it could quickly become a booming tech hub.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#168

Post by humanrebar »

w0rd-driven wrote: post #165

As someone who's gone through hired's process last year with a close friend, I feel this does a disservice. Primarily because COL is never 1:1 in spite of the very best analysis available and I feel like this becomes a credible source those in hiring positions. The train of thought goes something like this, seemingly from anecdotal evidence from my close friend: "Oh you're making $70K in Atlanta as a PHP developer? T…

> I view salary negotiations as nowhere close to a zero sum game

I think you mean "level playing field" or something. "zero sum" implies that the employer wins when the employee loses.

But I agree with you on the above. I think the dirty little secret is that most employers have very little clue about how much a particular skill set (let alone a particular dev) is worth. So they tend to use previous salary as an anchor point to make sure they're not more than 20% more crazy than the last overpaying employer.

Cost of living adjustments is likewise a hack to help pick a number out of the air. I really doubt employers think "hey, you can't raise a family on $130k in downtown DC, so we'll have higher turnover when college hires reach 5-10 years of experience".

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#169

Post by smcdow »

blondie9x wrote: post #28

A lot of the cost of living calculations are wrong. I had moved from LA paying 1400$ a month rent to Austin and paid nearly the same rent in Austin for a one bedroom. The plus is no income tax in Washington and Texas but food costs are more and property taxes are double in Texas when compared to California.

For cost of home ownership, Austin beats LA hands down.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#170

Post by j4_james »

Calcite wrote: post #143
walshemj wrote: post #122

84k in London dam I am underpaid

The average salary is 73k£. 84k£ is adjusted to the cost of living in SF.

Actually I think it's only 56K in pounds - 73K is the dollar value. It's confusing because the order of those values is swapped between the two maps. On the first map they have $73K (£56K), i.e. the dollar value is first. On the second map (adjusted for cost of living) they have £84K ($104K), i.e. the pound value is first.
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