Interview with the creators of levels.fyi • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#21

Post by MuffinFlavored » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so far), yet levels.fyi pretty much advertises everybody that at a senior level makes $300k/yr+

I'm $40k/yr shy of the average reported salary for the average senior SDE, and I'm missing $140k+ in stock/bonus... am I wasting my time at my current job making 50% of what I should be making or am I missing something about these massive public companies (like, not everybody gets hired at these companies... or... they suck to work for?)

Where are these $200-300-400-500k/yr rates coming from? Do you have to sell your soul to reach that? Am I grossly underpaid? I usually am at the higher level in my organization/division, and yet I'm impoverished (comparatively) according to levels.fyi?

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#22

Post by vjeux » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #12

nodesocket wrote: post #7

I've never worked for a public company (such as Facebook, Netflix, Google), when it says $120,000 in stock is that essentially free shares at a given price? I.E. you are open to sell them whenever? I worked at a small series B level startup, and when I left I had the option to buy my shares at the last valuation price, but at just over $20,000 total I declined. I decided I could use that capital better than waiting a…

Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change companies often, get promotions and refres…

In addition to that, RSUs are taxed at around 50% before you receive them and another 20% of the value it gained from when you received it to when you sold it. So the numbers in your bank account look less impressive than the ones on paper.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#23

Post by svachalek » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #21

What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so far), yet levels.fyi pretty much ad…

Are you working in Silicon Valley for a large tech company? If so you may be negotiating poorly. Otherwise, you may be getting typical or even good pay for where you are.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#24

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #21

What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so far), yet levels.fyi pretty much ad…

Are you working at the companies that show that level of pay? Are you located geographically the same as those offers?

levels.fyi does not say everyone makes $300k+ - it says people at specific companies in a specific region make that much. It makes that quite obvious from how you have to select the companies, the level, and then you see where those offers are geographically and with how much experience/tenure.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#25

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #23

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #21

What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so far), yet levels.fyi pretty much ad…

Are you working in Silicon Valley for a large tech company? If so you may be negotiating poorly. Otherwise, you may be getting typical or even good pay for where you are.

You don't have to be in Silicon Valley. Some companies have a premium for working there, but not always, especially at the high end. The more important detail is working for a large company that has stock/RSUs, a bonus program, a robust technical job ladder, and a regular review process.

If your company doesn't do stock/RSUs, you're missing out on that aspect (though a small number of companies make up for that with large cash bonuses).

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#26

Post by clintonb » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #21

What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so far), yet levels.fyi pretty much ad…

Location matters. $140K in a low cost of living area is not the same as $140 in the Bay Area.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#27

Post by markdown » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

Zaheer wrote: post #5

thinkingkong wrote: post #3

I think this type of information is desperately needed for all geographies and way more (smaller) companies. The one challenge is that the pay grades themselves are usually dependent on a common definition of certain roles, which is definitely also missing. It would be great to be able to have _some_ kind of standardized career track for Individual Contributors and Managers within software engineering so we could con…

Zaheer from Levels.fyi here. Our next feature is actually better regionalization. This is the top ask we've gotten so far. Additionally we're considering coming up with a standard leveling so that we can provide industry-wide granular information easily. Ping us at hello (at) levels (dot) fyi if you have more feedback!

request :)

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#28

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

huac wrote: post #15

magicnubs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All of these "pay banding" methods are used to enforce a culture of no one asking for more pay regardless of the value of their contributions, because "sorry, even though I think you deserve a raise, you're at the top of the pay band for your role/title, there's nothing I can do". If your manager has to convince their manager to fight with their own manager to get you an out-of-band pay increase, it's almost…

VP is (apparently) also a title which legally denotes that the holder is an "officer" of the corporation, and can enter into deals on behalf of the corporation. Having a lot of those people around is typically a good thing for financial institutions (e.g. for quicker decision making).

Financial institutions also need such people at individual branches. Companies have far fewer sites than banks have branches.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#29

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

Facebook and Google are only setting the pay standard among other well paying public companies.

The rest of the valley isn't keeping up. Startups in particular feel like slowly ramped up in pay but capped out. They're not offering enough stock to make up for it either. Usually only enough to make it such that your TC at startup would be equal to that of a big company IF the company IPO's/sells. (A big IF!) I don't see many salaries past $200k for IC software engineer (outside of 1 year to IPO startups) and most people still balk at the idea of it. Yet, 1-2 years out of school at Big CompanyTM and you'll be past $200k TC.

I feel bad for the people who aren't in tech or things that tech pays for (real estate) and have to deal with even more frozen pay. However, it still sucks for engineers not at Big Co who believed they could make the american dream possible here.

I'm on the verge of leaving this area. My current compensation makes me feel poor even though I could afford to buy a brand new Porsche. Even if I joined Big Co now and made $400k/yr... housing has grown too fast in price in the peninsula. By the time I've saved $300-400k for a down payment, I'm going to be priced out even more. If my SO had only become a software engineer or born into a rich family instead then maybe I would have been able to afford this region.

Such is life in the bay area - you can buy a brand new Porsche but you can't afford a garage to put it in.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#30

Post by compumike » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

vjeux wrote: post #22

opportune wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change companies often, get promotions and refres…

In addition to that, RSUs are taxed at around 50% before you receive them and another 20% of the value it gained from when you received it to when you sold it. So the numbers in your bank account look less impressive than the ones on paper.

Yes, but to be fair to RSUs, this is no worse than having some additional ordinary income.

The 50% on receipt number comes from your marginal federal tax bracket plus state -- same as if the dollar value were additional gross (pre-tax) income.

The 20% on growth number (potentially 25-30% including state) is what you'd pay on capital gains -- same as if you'd taken this extra income as cash and invested it in anything.