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Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

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Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#111

Post by nodesocket »

ehsankia wrote: post #108
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…

As pointed out by others, they vest slowly over 4-5 years, to get you to stay. If you leave you lose your stocks. Also, they are taxed quite heavily so realistically imagine half of that. At the end of all that, $120,000 stocks would look like an extra 1000$ per month, which is still pretty good.

But levels.fyi is reporting annual stock. Facebook E5 is listed at $146,000 in stock annually not 4-5 years total.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#112

Post by pm90 »

yibg wrote: post #99
bradlys wrote: post #29

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 se…

One thing I've seen smaller companies do some times to attract the same type of talent from FAANG is to bump up the level of candidates. So L5 (or whatever equivalent) at FAANG would go in at L6 or L7 and get a pay bump that way that's somewhat close to FAANG comp levels.

This would be a ridiculous trap, but some people do find titles to be important, so I guess its fine if they're attracted to jobs that can't pay enough but make up for it with inflated levels.

I get the impulse behind trying to level employees but it always seemed ridiculous to me. Either you care about it enough to game it (which is pretty easy to do) or you don't an you just do what you think is important to you and your team and it works out... so you level up by accident.

This is actually a huge reason I don't like bigger companies. There is so much emphasis on Seniority, Levels etc. Its complete bullshit. You see people game the system, rise to the top, get all kinds of bullshit honors for doing bullshit things. Meanwhile the grunts doing all the actual work and innovating like crazy are just happy to make the higher ups look good in front of _their_ peers and don't really give a shit about the product or the market.... its a vicious, self-sustaining and self-dealing beast.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#113

Post by pm90 »

Zaheer wrote: post #42
a1pulley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually had the opposite experience with Google. I'm currently negotiating a job offer at Google; my initial offer was significantly lower than my four other ones. It's TBD whether they'll end up matching, but my recruiter has been trying to systematically deconstruct the argument for working at a local competitor to make the case that 0.67 * other offer = Google offer. I'm not sure if they'll end up matching -…

Google in particular often starts will lower compensation but will match other offers (from Big-N companies) quickly. I'd recommend getting another Big-N offer and using that to negotiate. Some great resources for negotiation: - https://teamcandor.com/salary/guide/ - https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation

> but will match other offers (from Big-N companies) quickly

Don't current Googlers find that depressing?

I've also heard that pay raises within a team at Google are often designed to "level out" the spread. So if you started low, then you eventually catch up. All anecdotes and internet readings though, would love it if someone with actual knowledge commented on these things.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#114

Post by pm90 »

mkoryak wrote: post #97
enahs-sf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question for me as an engineer becomes, do I grind it out at a FAANG company and try to be one of those level 7’s OR do I roll the dice on the startup? My intuition is that the former has a better outcome on average. Seems pretty rare to become staff/principal/whatever at a big co and based on the data from levels.fyi, you gotta be pretty far along in your career.

I worked at ~6 startups for about 10 years before google. What do I have to show for it? A slight beer belly and less motivation to build something from the ground up yet again only to see it burn down. Yeah, I had a ton of fun too. Would I trade all those years at startups for going straight to google? eeh, maybe 4 of them. On the other hand though, I don't think I would have made it through the interview without kn…

Interesting. Maybe FAANG's do so well in SV because they have a nice pipeline of startup burnouts who learn all this weird shit that you only learn from working at startups for a decade, and then finally end up in FAANG's, use all their wisdom to build even better systems....

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#115

Post by pm90 »

jldugger wrote: post #68
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in South Florida (somewhere in between Miami + Fort Lauderdale cost of living) levels.fyi shows people making $300k in Austin, TX (which as far as I know, is not a high cost of living area) What are some areas that are comparable to South Florida that are listed on levels.fyi?

Austin is not SV, but rents there have jumped in the last decade. Try pricing out a 2br apt, near one of the major tech offices. First place I clicked on was $2,300 a month! Average is closer to $1,500. This is unusual for Texas =)

300k is definitely highly unusual for Austin. With that salary you can literally live like a King. Buy a house in the city AND one on Lake Travis for the weekends.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#116

Post by Thorrez »

ehsankia wrote: post #108
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…

As pointed out by others, they vest slowly over 4-5 years, to get you to stay. If you leave you lose your stocks. Also, they are taxed quite heavily so realistically imagine half of that. At the end of all that, $120,000 stocks would look like an extra 1000$ per month, which is still pretty good.

RSUs are taxed the same as salary.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#117

Post by Thorrez »

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.

RSUs are taxed the same as salary. If you don't like them gaining value, then sell them as soon as they vest, and that's 20% tax of $0.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#118

Post by jacobolus »

xenihn wrote: post #103
bradlys wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.padmapper.com/apartments/35506914/3-bedroom-2-ba... . Doesn't have AC. Looks like a pretty depressing home - tbh. HDR'd to hell but a brick yard and a BYO washer/dryer that's literally underneath the sun and skies isn't exactly where I'd like to put my expensive appliances. You can check Craigslist and you won't have much better results. Adding AC | Air Conditioning to your search criteria makes it narr…

I know people living in $2 million+ homes in SF without AC...

AC is completely unnecessary in most parts of SF.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#119

Post by Gibbon1 »

davidjnelson wrote: post #102
borski wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your standards may be too high. That looks like a gorgeous home to me. To be fair, I will agree with you that most places in the Bay Area don't seem to have A/C, but that's also because it's not generally needed here except for a couple weeks a year. You could do what we did in NYC all the time: window A/C's.

It’s 90 degrees plus 4 months of the year in many parts of the Bay Area, such as San Jose. So yes, you need air conditioning.

I grew up in San Jose. It's more like 2-3 weeks out of the year where air conditioning 'would be nice'

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#120

Post by taway90210_0 »

bradlys wrote: post #71
borski wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I’m not actually a realtor, but here’s a home for you: https://www.padmapper.com/apartments/35506914/3-bedroom-2-ba... My search space was Mountain View, so expand and you’ll find more. Point is there are plenty of options, you just have to look for them. And, to be fair, I only searched PadMapper, which is an apartment rental website, so my results weren’t even focused on SFH.

> https://www.padmapper.com/apartments/35506914/3-bedroom-2-ba... . Doesn't have AC. Looks like a pretty depressing home - tbh. HDR'd to hell but a brick yard and a BYO washer/dryer that's literally underneath the sun and skies isn't exactly where I'd like to put my expensive appliances. You can check Craigslist and you won't have much better results. Adding AC | Air Conditioning to your search criteria makes it narr…

Many people ignore more meta aspects than numbers:

Seriously, I went to a top-3-in-the-world engineering school...seriously dont I deserve something better than a shack?

Secondly, half the 40+ workers in tech I know are washed out and cant get hired, likely due to age discrimination. Tech is a lighter version of Football -- you better make the money in your 20s and 30s, because you need to live on that cash for the rest of your life. So I cant just blow ALL my post-tax income on rent, I need to save it for the post-40 slump.

Thirdly, you are constantly on the treadmill learning the new new technology. Its an uphill battle constantly for those high paying jobs.

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