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

Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 455 posts

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#311

Post by amzn123 »

volkadav wrote: post #168
htormey wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentialy I have heard that Amazon has a vesting schedule for stock where everything skews towards the last two years.

Yep. I haven't worked there but got an offer from them and work with a number of ex-amzn people. I forget the exact numbers but it was something like ~20% in total vest over the first two years and then something like 40% a year in years three and four. It's heavily back-loaded and, what a surprise, they have a lot of attrition in the first two years of every cohort. There is a bonus to offset this in the first coupl…

Vesting Schedule after working with the company for X months months:

    12: 5%  
    24: 15%  
    30: 20%  
    36: 20%  
    42: 20%    
    48: 20%
They give cash signing bonuses for the first 2 years while RSU vesting catches up. SDE1 gets a lump sum with prorated clawback, SDE2 and up gets monthly installments and no clawback. The year 1 signing bonus is slightly larger than the year 2 signing bonus. The larger RSU vest in year 2 more than makes up for this. With this structure target total comp rises 5-20% per year.

Base salary is capped at $160k in most locations, $180k in ultra-high COL areas like San Francisco and New York City.

Source: I work at Amazon

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#312

Post by stevenwoo »

ricardobeat wrote: post #258
sidlls wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even about skill at CS. I have no problem in that regard. I just see it as a stupid, irrelevant hazing ritual.

Worth going through a couple hours of that for the 150k prize at the end?

What I remember seeing on hacker news is people blogging about spending three to six months of their free time making sure they can answer every single question on leetcode, that's a lot different from a one time, one day interview.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#313

Post by sidlls »

ricardobeat wrote: post #258
sidlls wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even about skill at CS. I have no problem in that regard. I just see it as a stupid, irrelevant hazing ritual.

Worth going through a couple hours of that for the 150k prize at the end?

Not really, no. I have a better "prize" at my current employer, and I didn't have to go through that hazing ritual to get here. I'm not working on toy webapp garbage for social media, ads or the like, either. Even if that weren't the case my answer would remain the same: encouraging juvenile hazing ritual nonsense is not something I care to do.

Also, it takes a lot of time and effort outside of work to keep that undergrad CS trivia readily available for discussion in an interview. So it's not just "a couple of hours."

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#314

Post by DubiousPusher »

zcrar70 wrote: post #296
trhway wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.

Early startup employees are risking almost the exact same set of things. The moral of the story is that even as an employee, you're playing the lottery with a startup and you should only join on that will reward you as such if everything works out.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#315

Post by sgs1370 »

trhway wrote: post #307
zcrar70 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.

What i see around, ie. friends & acquaintances, is at some point, usually after a good stint at one or a couple places a midlevel manager/executive decides "time to make next level of money", and together with several like minded guys and established good connections they pick up some investors from a line up of the investors eager to get in, and the rest is a well defined process. There is no risk, no giving up of a…

"There is no risk"

What? You're wrong.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#316

Post by ykler »

trhway wrote: post #307
zcrar70 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.

What i see around, ie. friends & acquaintances, is at some point, usually after a good stint at one or a couple places a midlevel manager/executive decides "time to make next level of money", and together with several like minded guys and established good connections they pick up some investors from a line up of the investors eager to get in, and the rest is a well defined process. There is no risk, no giving up of a…

It sounds like you're complaining, but if it is really so easy, just become a founder. In a way, it is impossible for there to be an unfair distribution of wealth between people who do A and people who do B if everyone has the choice whether to do A or B.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#317

Post by TheHegemon »

bhollan wrote: post #293
anonacct37 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out /r/cscareerquestions for their experienced dev salary https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6yt8pl/o... Personally I bring in around $400k/year working remotely in a low COL area. That being said if I was working on the local market I'd probably be making somewhere between $120k - $150k.

What on earth do you do for $400k/year? Make moon rockets in your garage or something?

What's funny is that if he did, that would be a low-demand expertise with a lot of willing suppliers so he probably would be making closer to $40k/year.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#318

Post by joshuamorton »

beisner wrote: post #300
joshuamorton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Though maybe not from TripleByte. For context, salary at FAMG is in the range of 100-110K for a new grad. So its in the lower half of the "Junior" area, which would make sense. Total comp though puts you into the 80-90% Senior territory. For exact numbers, I believe Amazon starts people at 103K in Seattle, Microsoft at 107K in Seattle, and Facebook and Google both start at 110K in South SV. But the caveat is tha…

Just to add, negotiation using competing offers from hedge funds, prop trading firms, and certain unicorns goes a LONG way here. Easily 3-4x as much equity if you bring in the right competing offer (i.e. from Citadel, Five Rings, AirBnB, HRT, etc.).

3-4 might be high, but double isn't. And I say this having seen some of those offers. (And having negotiated my own).

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#319

Post by sgs1370 »

bhollan wrote: post #293
anonacct37 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out /r/cscareerquestions for their experienced dev salary https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6yt8pl/o... Personally I bring in around $400k/year working remotely in a low COL area. That being said if I was working on the local market I'd probably be making somewhere between $120k - $150k.

What on earth do you do for $400k/year? Make moon rockets in your garage or something?

Nowadays, this might not be true. 10 years ago, I hired Oracle dbas (not many, mind you) at hourly wages of 300K+ (edit: yes, they worked 40hrs/wk at least)

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#320

Post by hardwaresofton »

Number of years are not a good measure of experience. You can spend 10 years in a huge fortune 500 that isn't doing anything innovative or interesting, or even engineering right. There are people who have spent 5 years at companies with their heads in the sand.

Also, must we have a key requirement of being a senior software engineer being mentoring other engineers? Just because I enjoy building good/stable systems and have done it a lot doesn't mean I want to hand-hold more junior engineers or start taking up management tasks. I see this so much at companies and it just reeks of the company trying to get me to become a part-time teacher for their own benefit -- though it's of course arguably what they're paying me to do.

Post reply on HN