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Compare career levels across companies

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Re: Compare career levels across companies

#191

Post by rco8786 »

symbolepro wrote: post #134
seattleeng wrote: post #10

Huge fan of this site, for two reasons: - It lets “outsiders” to the tech scene understand salary and levels at big companies. If you went to MIT you probably already have frat brothers/sorority sisters or an alumni network that consists of senior engineers at these big companies that know the promotion and compensation schemes well. But if you were an equally smart student who went to a non target school, many of th…

And to the "outsiders" from outside US, it should be written that 40-45 percent is taken away as taxes. So, if someone is making a total comp of 200k, it is basically 120k. This should be written in bold on this website. Actually i would say, instead of having these charts which compare total comp, its better to have a survey on how much people save after rent, taxes, and basic living expenses (not including loans et…

Where do you live that doesn’t have taxes? Also 40-45% is extremely high for the US. Perhaps you’re misunderstanding how marginal tax rates work?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#192

Post by oculusthrift »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

Can you really make a million bucks with just 10 years experience as a T7 at Google? What does a "Senior Staff SWE" do? Are there a lot of them?

l5 is terminal level for vast majority. meaning you can stay at it for 10+ years and not be expected to move up without hard work and luck

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#195

Post by nemo44x »

shmerl wrote: post #90

Those stock grants values are crazy high.

I believe based on comments here that they are reflecting current value, not initial grants. Many of these companies have performed insanely well over the last 10 years and anyone getting typical grants have done well by them. An AMZN grant from 4 years ago is worth over 5X from then, for instance. 6.5X 1 month ago for that matter but October was rough.

Being at the right company during the right 10 years is transformative and leads to early retirement.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#196

Post by jforman »

Zaheer wrote: post #76
tedsanders wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, thanks for putting this together. One thing that I'd like to see - on compensation, can you clarify whether the stock grants are valued at time of grant or at time of vesting? If they are valued at time of vesting then the numbers will be much harder to (a) compare against one another, and (b) extrapolate into the future. Right now the submission form is ambiguous, which I worry is muddying your dat…

The submission form [1] asks explicitly for what would appear on your W2 (ex. vested value). Part of the reason why comp packages have been so high in last 1-2 years is that stock grants that were given to employees 2-4 years ago have shot up in value via a bull run stock market. To attract these employees, companies have to outbid their current expected take-home pay. Thus the vested value is actually most relevant…

This is pretty critical information that, imo, you should communicate more prominently. I was a little shocked at the value of some of these grants for the level, but this makes more sense.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#197

Post by _sword »

kasey_junk wrote: post #137
JimboOmega wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two problems with these: 1) If you aren't at one of these companies, it's not a fair comparison. It's really difficult to find a pre-IPO company who is going to compensate you like these, if for no other reason than that options are just not something you can easily stick a dollar value on. 2) It's kind of depressing. It's very easy to find people at similar experience levels as you making FAR more money (p…

Finance pays similar rates as this in lots of places (Chicago, New York, Austin, Houston, Dallas). These are just jobs I know of in my network. I’ve heard that these pay band exists in other industries as well (consulting, specialist niche, etc).

Most finance roles don't anymore. There's a large supply of candidates looking for roles across finance in e.g. NYC, but the industry is also shrinking in many areas, leading to compensation compression. I'm particularly thinking of sell-side roles.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#199

Post by agoldis »

oculusthrift wrote: post #189
agoldis wrote: post #172

I left Amazon just 5 months after being employed there as an SDE, it was terrible. It's not all about the money. The levels have nothing to do with tech or experience. It's the ability of person to navigate his career through corporate bureaucracy and politics.

no offense but when i hear leaving after 5 months it just sounds like serious underperformance.

Why?

I left after 5 month voluntarily, I wasn't fired. I performed well and they wanted me to stay, 5 months was just enough to understand what kind of company is it.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#200

Post by sl8r »

rco8786 wrote: post #191
symbolepro wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to the "outsiders" from outside US, it should be written that 40-45 percent is taken away as taxes. So, if someone is making a total comp of 200k, it is basically 120k. This should be written in bold on this website. Actually i would say, instead of having these charts which compare total comp, its better to have a survey on how much people save after rent, taxes, and basic living expenses (not including loans et…

Where do you live that doesn’t have taxes? Also 40-45% is extremely high for the US. Perhaps you’re misunderstanding how marginal tax rates work?

Some of these reported salaries would come close to that, if you include social security and medicare:

For a $500k income in CA

    29.59% Federal Income Tax
  + 10.48% CA Income Tax
  +  1.59% Social Security
  +  1.99% Medicate
  ----------------------------
  = 43.65% total tax rate.
(Source: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator)
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