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My offer numbers from big companies

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Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#161
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope definitely not fishy. I'm 2 years out of college and $180k salary + 250k RSU. SF is expensive these days. And also remember California grabs 9% of your income so it goes down by a lot

Also, remember there are tax brackets. So you won’t be taxed at 9% for all your salary. If you made 180k, your CA tax rate is 7.53%.

Ah yes you're correct. 9% is the marginal tax bracket

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#162
post #123

These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. I live in Zurich, Switzerland and I have a similar salary (~200K) but the high cost of living (which, I assume, is similar if not lower than the Bay Area) make my salary comparable to an "ok" salary in other European countries. Just to give you an idea: the overall cost of school + a nanny for 2 kids under 6 is around 70K year in Zurich. As other have mentioned, the…

Bern, Switzerland here. I know plenty of people with families and sub-100k the are perfectly happy with their respective salary as well. I'd say it's a matter of personal spending habits what's an "ok" salary. After going back to uni, I'm also happy and ok with < 50k (of course this wouldn't be all that ok if I had kids rather than a cat).

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#163

Damn... I guess anyone smart should just stop complaining and find a way into the big co.s... Living in midwest this is insane... :) ...congrats....

You also need to think about what you'd lose if you were to work for a big company. I do not know your current company, so maybe there is nothing to lose.

I just recently quit a Big 8 co and moved to a smaller co (was working remote for a few yrs, wanted to do something local); its just different styles of working; the quality of work isnt much different between each other.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#164
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the things that really sucks about the industry. It is a new "boy's club", and if you know people in the club then the barrier to entry is easier (if you can code at a reasonable capacity).

The entry fee for a referral is striking up a single conversation at a conference. If someone from a big tech company is speaking at a conference, the fact that they are speaking isn't the primary reason for being present. They are there to recruit.

Just having a chat with someone at a conference is often not enough to get a referral tbh. I'd assume for a referral you need to know a person at least reasonably well, i.e. you know each other on first name basis and have been out for a beer or worked together on some open source project or something like that. I don't believe you can just walk to a person at a conference, talk to them to 15 minutes and then ask for their referral.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#165

These seem pretty standard for 2 years experience?

What % of developers can get these kinds of offers? Do you need Ivy League? Insane algorithm / whiteboard testing prowess? A hot company in those 2 years of experience?

OP mentioned working previously at a "unicorn" and having referrals. Keep in mind that those signals are much easier to detect (and thus justify decisions based upon).

Without these, one faces a number of challenges:

- You need to get your resume looked at somehow

- It's well-known that when it comes to programming and system design, "Real recognize real"

- You need a wide variety of skills beyond programming and system design: social skills (sometimes moreso than anything else), sometimes classic CS search/sorting/optimization techniques

- They might realize they need someone with different specializations

- You might remind the interviewer of someone they dislike

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#166

I live in the UK, to me these numbers are insane. How are these salaries at that work experience possible? Is the pay increase from then on slow? Are these salaries sustainable for the industry long term? I know experienced professionals who would be considered successful in the UK who finish their careers nowhere near this level of salary (not programmers but certainly engineers). I’m astounded.

Consider that it might be the reverse. Why are we paid so low? How come companies extract so much profit from UK developers? Can businesses get away with being much less efficient with dev resources around the world vs. USA?

Honestly, I think most development work in the UK is crap,and most of the small and medium-sized companies out there are producing bad software, slowly.

They can't afford to pay more. They offer bad salaries, they get people with low productivity and low reward expectations. The people running the company have low expectations of their engineers and the whole sorry mess just stumbles along barely holding its head above water.

(I have been contracting in the south-east these last 5 years, I've seen quite a few of these places)

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK my wife and I loose 25-30% of our pay checks to tax and national insurance and I would imagine the cost of living in the UK is comparable to the US. Our household income is considered pretty high in the UK as well so it’s not that we are badly paid in UK terms

What kind of healthcare facilities do you get from the government?

At least here in the Netherlands the minimal, obligatory package is about 100 euros a month. this is with 375 of own risk (doesn't include doctors visits). This package will basically make sure you'll never get a real surprise, except when you have something with your teeth, oddly. Some cheap drugs are not covered. And for example there are sometimes discussions of whether new immuno-oncology related drugs that go well over 100.000 a year per patient will be in this package.

For people with low income there is "zorgtoeslag", they get sponsoring from the government.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#168
post #137

True, if big. Anyone could write up such a Blind post. And when it comes to anonymously bragging via lies on the internet, there is no shortage of prior art. To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the growth rate of engineering applications to these bigcos has declined over the past few years. A decline in the supply of candidates relative to demand, among other factors, could lead to an increase in compensation per…

But you get these posts on HN quite often with similar numbers. I'd assume all of them are not lying or using fake data to brag. If only some of them are telling the truth then the numbers are real which is why I tend to believe them.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#169

Well this makes me feel terrible... Your sign on was probably for more than I've made in my professional career. My first job after graduating 10 years ago was for 45k per year. I have had an awful lot of bad luck since graduating and have yet to be paid more than that since. Every job I've had paid progressively less, always took them cause I needed the job. My last programming job paid $14 an hour. Can anyone offer…

Where are you in Texas? I'm in Houston, and those numbers don't jive with my experience (since 2000, making $30 an hour in the lowest paying jobs, and making well more than that on a regular basis)

The 45k was in Houston. Worked 10 months before the company decided to offshore everybody but sales.

Took that job because I had been looking for a year and this was the first reasonable offer. Didn't negotiate cause I really needed the job, found out after a promotion that I was lowest paid employee in the shop by 20k.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#170
Recruiters who was interviewing this guy must have been all believing he is worth it. Well done.

Have been interviewing people, many with 5+ years of experience and in my opinion it is not too difficult to spot somebody who is not fit for the job.

So well done again.

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