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Compare career levels across companies

levels.fyi

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Re: Compare career levels across companies

#272
post #34

Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

With compensation like that, I have to reconsider my drive to be an entrepreneur. If you can make a million bucks working for someone else, why work for yourself?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#273
post #3

Hi, I'm one the makers of Levels.fyi. Happy to answer any questions and would love to hear feedback! We have a lot of features in the coming months that we think folks will love!

Do you believe that self-reported salary data will be biased either high or low? Do you attempt to measure bias? How do you account for the difference between the salaries reported on your site and the averages/medians published by salary.com and glassdoor.com? Is it that your site only focuses on outlier (top) companies?

Any plans to add "Project Manager" role?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#274
FAANG companies have had huge stock increases in the last few years. A hiring bonus stockgrant 4 years ago for 50k is now delivering close to an extra 100k per year as it vests. It's not clear if folks are counting their stockgrant at the original value or the current value which could differ significantly.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#275
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 16 years of engineering experience and Google has made me two offers (original and revised) for a T4 position in NY that are well below the numbers reported on Levels (in fact, below the average on the site). So, either I am getting low balled like hell or there is skew in the numbers. Edit: there is skew in the numbers, not some in the numbers.

Did you have strong competing offers? From the discussions on Blind most folks get strong offers from Google only if they have another really strong offer. Keep in mind most of our data presented right now is Bay Area-centric. We're working on filtering all views of data by location still.

What's "Blind"?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that this tool is bad because it makes you sad ?. Information is empowering use it to make informed choices about your career. If you're taking less money, make sure there is some trade off you're happy with. Also, most Google jobs are language agnostic. You can code in pretty much one of C/C++, Java, Python, Google hires for generalists. Your Ruby experience is not what's holding you back, s…

Says google is code agnostic. Provides list of the three languages you specifically need to code in. Perhaps agnostic means something different in my language :p

I think code agnostic in this case means they don’t hire based on a language, but they still work with a limited set.

It makes sense if you think about it. A small startup with 5 Python engineers can’t afford to hire one with heavy experience in Ruby and who knows a thing or two about Python.

First, it may be the case that this person can actually transfer their knowledge and do a good job with Python, but there’s also a chance they can’t and that will disturb the entire operation for a team that small, that’s a big risk.

Also, this person is not going to be paid as a Jr. Python because they have the options to be paid as a Sr. Ruby somewhere else, so the startup need to step up their pay game, now that’s a big and expensive risk.

A big company like Google, on the other hand, can afford to have that risk. If everything goes right, they end up with a great Ruby and Python engineer, if things goes wrong, Google is so big they probably have some other projects somewhere that can use a good Rubyst, and in the worst case scenario, if the person really can’t fit anywhere, a company like Google can still afford to let them go and eat the costs of a wrong hire.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#277
post #7

Here's a slightly related open question: Are Engineers in the US just much richer than in the UK? For perspective, I started my career with an MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering as a Hardware Design Engineer at £35k (I out-earned most of my fellow graduates). It seems like these salaries are just comically disjointed from my entire experience of life. Can anyone here speak to the differences? Everything I'…

I moved to the Pacific Northwest from the Netherlands, and I'm obviously observing the world around me with similar questions. First, you need to factor a cost of living adjustment. Oregon seems a bit more expensive than the Netherlands. Bay Area is a lot more expensive than Oregon. I think the big kicker is still the bigger range of salaries. People in the proverbial mail room make a lot less here than they do in th…

>First, you need to factor a cost of living adjustment. Oregon seems a bit more expensive than the Netherlands. Bay Area is a lot more expensive than Oregon.

This doesn't gel with my experience at all and the numbers don't bear that out either[1]. Cost of living in Portland is significantly cheaper than the Amsterdam, granted that San Francisco is quite a bit more expensive than Amsterdam.

From my experience it's still no comparison, you get paid much more in the US than anywhere in Europe, so much so in fact that sometimes I balk when I hear salaries from Europe. Huge perk you guys get is vacation time, you get much more guaranteed time off than even most highly compensated people in the US. Some better benefits too, e.g. maternity/paternity leave, but you have significantly lower salaries even before taking into account taxes.

[1]https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Are you confident about this? My experience as a single guy in that total comp range is closer to 25 percent taxation. The marginal rate is that high, but only a small chunk of a 200k income is taxed at that rate. In fact, Social Security caps out before there. And if you're married,…

> Are you confident about this? My experience as a single guy in that total comp range is closer to 25 percent taxation. The marginal rate is that high, but only a small chunk of a 200k income is taxed at that rate. In fact, Social Security caps out before there. And if you're married, it's even lower. What state are you in? My experience is more similar to the parent post; bonuses which are part of your total comp g…

> bonuses which are part of your total comp get taxed slightly higher than base pay

This is incorrect. The taxes withheld when the bonus is paid may be different, but for annual tax calculation all that matters is the total income (bonus or not).

https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/income-and-investments/bonu...

"Remember, taxes may be withheld from your bonus at a higher tax rate at payout, but when you file your taxes at tax time your actual tax rate is based on your total taxable income and overall actual tax rate (...) you may get some of the money withheld back in the form of a tax refund."

> After CA income tax, etc etc effective tax rate is easily 40%+.

For a sufficiently high income, sure. In 2018, a single person living in California with no deductions, no contribution to retirement accounts (401k, IRA) or HSA and earning $364k would pay $145,602 in federal+state+FICA taxes, which is 40% effective rate up to 4 significant digits:

https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#XFuV4Aoe9F

This is the worst case (high state income tax, no deductions, no pre-tax retirement contributions, single) - change any of those factors and you're paying less than 40% effective rate.

If I had to guess, very few people around the world will be shocked to learn that someone earning $364k in California will net only $220k after paying taxes. In most of Western Europe they'd be surprised your effective tax rate is so low while earning 20x the minimum wage.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#279
post #163

Why are sysadmins so ignored in things like this?

We'd love to add more roles but we don't have enough information yet. If you can help us with leveling information for sysadmins please email us at hello [at] levels [dot] fyi Edit: Is DevOps the same as sysadmin? We have some salary data (click 'View Compensation' on main site) for sysadmins but it's marked as DevOps in our compensation form. You can add your own here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349421

Cool, thank you for the response, Ill try to at least add to the other thread to help out.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#280

Why are sysadmins so ignored in things like this?

I think the new hotness is being a Site Reliability Engineer, or a Production Engineer, and for both you’re interviewed against SDE competencies (you must be able to write software). Roles which don’t involve software seem to be withering on the vine.

This drives me a bit nutty tbh. I dont feel like getting into it at the moment, because the entire subject deserves a proper gothrough.
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