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Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

triplebyte.com

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Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#281

Post by zjaffee »

steverb wrote: post #9

I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".

For what it's worth, for a lot of the types of software roles out there, many of them only have existed in their current forms for 10 years is incredibly rare, so to even find someone who has been doing mobile programming for 5 years should be enough to call them senior given they have been working in the field for half of the time the modern concepts have been around.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#282

Post by joeschmoecad »

steverb wrote: post #9

I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".

Most of the technology these companies are working with are less than a decade old. So, anything beyond that is mostly legacy knowledge.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#283

Post by [deleted] »

sidlls wrote: post #222
softawre wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a king? So you live in a mansion? I live in the midwest, wife doesn't work, 10 years experience - we live in a 4k sqft house in the best school district in the state about 25 minutes from the city. How much does that cost in SV?

How much is it going to cost you when XX years from now you have half the savings of a SV engineer plus your house?

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#284

Post by redditmigrant »

mikeokner wrote: post #269
celdon25 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. Being "just" an employee is not a fair deal anymore.

Why not? No one's stopping you from starting your own venture. What makes you entitled to a larger piece of the pie if you aren't putting in the extra work or shouldering the extra risk of a founder?

You are shouldering risk, by presumably not working at big co and having an assured higher paycheck.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#285

Post by seattle_spring »

jfornear wrote: post #98
digitalsushi wrote: post #74

My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior-straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country…

COL multipliers for San Francisco are about 1.8x...

People that say it's 3x to 10x seem to think they deserve to live in the same 5,000 sq ft mansion that they have in nowhere, Indiana.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#286

Post by trhway »

mikeokner wrote: post #269
celdon25 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. Being "just" an employee is not a fair deal anymore.

Why not? No one's stopping you from starting your own venture. What makes you entitled to a larger piece of the pie if you aren't putting in the extra work or shouldering the extra risk of a founder?

>shouldering the extra risk of a founder

founders give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup) while employees give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup). Did you notice any significant difference? I mean there may be difference between megacoprs and numbers of years at the startup, yet does it warrant like 100x and larger (like div by 0) difference in the outcomes?

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#287

Post by xenadu02 »

austincheney wrote: post #15

Those figures do not justify giving up a job in a cheap cost of living area. These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.

That's not correct. I moved from a low COL area to SF and despite that the take-home pay (after expenses) is far better in SF. Some people pay out the nose to live in luxury apartments in SOMA; I don't consider that sensible. I rent an entire house with yard and garage for less money.

Working for one of the big public tech companies pays way more than these numbers indicate. For a senior engineer RSUs should be anywhere from 50-150% of base. Base should be at least $180k if not more. Total gross for the year is in the $300-400k range.

If you live a similar lifestyle in SF as you did elsewhere you should be able to build wealth relatively easily. Assuming the economy doesn't completely crash I intend to buy a house here in the next 5 years; whether I pay all $1.5m in cash or have a mortgage depends on how the stock market does.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#288

Post by kp1234321 »

lj3 wrote: post #233
cgh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is to work remotely for a SV company but live in a cheap small town (this is a humblebrag). Higher salary, no Valley real estate madness, no freeway nightmares, placid country bumpkin existence preserved. I do have to bite the bullet and travel down to that blighted land a few times a year though.

Yes, but then you have to deal with the SV company. No amount of money is worth dealing with most of those companies.

Hundreds of thousands of employees would disagree with you.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#289

Post by vkou »

regulation_d wrote: post #247
csallen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality of the situation is that it's not about what you do, but about how hard it is to find someone else to do what you do. If it's easy to find programmers who will work for below-market rates, but hard to find investors who will contribute millions of dollars, then you can expect programmers to have much less negotiating power.

Exactly. In my experience it's hard enough to find investors, try insisting that they have the same liquidation preference as the employees. Good luck with that.

Do you mean to say that investors aren't deeply passionate and dedicated to changing the world in a revolutionary new way?

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#290

Post by mercutio2 »

deepsun wrote: post #40
compumike wrote: post #2

(Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.) I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior. One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startup…

Another possible explanation is that business just don't see much difference between junior work performance and senior work performance. I have 15 years of experience (both huge companies and own startups), but I keep wondering what if it's really the case: that there's simply no difference for company success? When I hire people myself, I only see value up until mid-seniority. From there what matters is just discip…

There is a huge difference between high performing senior engineers, and high performing junior engineers.

But lots and lots of senior engineers aren’t high performing. They’re still moderately more valuable than junior engineers, but not immensely so.

People calling themselves “senior engineer” are usually referring to years of experience, not to whether their management chain consisently sees them as high performing.

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