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Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

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Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#111

Post by stale2002 »

meritt wrote: post #80
huehehue wrote: post #53

What I'm taking away from this is that many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. I've been through the SF/NYC Senior SWE interviewing gauntlet twice in the past three years, and received 10+ offers at half this rate. Levels claims to be checking offer letters, which is great IMO. It's really hard for people to know they're being undervalued when the employers are low-balling and the self-reporter…

> many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money. The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent, as it's simply unrealistic to impossible for many firms to compete. Not to mention they app…

> No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money.

I mean.... so what? Why should I, as an engineer, care if some companies are suffering under the "unfairness" of high salaries?

> which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent

It doesn't really make sense to use the work oligopoly, which has certain negative connotations, for a situation where companies are merely choosing to outbid others.

I would only use the term oligopoly, if there is some sort of unfair barrier to entry, such as because of some government law that is hindering competition.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#112

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

chillacy wrote: post #99
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that hard depending on your natural cognitive ability. Just grind leetcode questions. For higher level interviews, also study up on systems design questions.

I think that's underselling things. These companies have very low admit rates, and leetcode is pretty tedious. That said though, divide the compensation difference by 200 hours of studying and it probably works out to a worthy investment.

One reason they have very low admit rates because most candidates are absolutely awful and cannot code at all, even if they have years of software development experience! Grinding leetcode is definitely worth it.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#113

Post by [deleted] »

perl4ever wrote: post #101
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that hard depending on your natural cognitive ability. Just grind leetcode questions. For higher level interviews, also study up on systems design questions.

If they get far more applicants than they hire, it isn't possible for the solution to be something anyone can do.

[deleted]

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#114

Post by choppaface »

dvt wrote: post #35

It's important to compare apples to apples. Lists like these are incredibly misleading, as they include non-cash bonuses. First off, these bonuses (say, RSUs) take a while to vest (incurring opportunity cost), can go down (there's risk), and so on. For example, being an early junior engineer at the next unicorn can make you orders of magnitude richer than working for FB or GOOG as a distinguished engineer (basically…

Most companies and employees do not see 4-year stock awards (whether options or RSUs) as "bonuses" but rather part of regular compensation. There are some cases where engineers get additional awards, or some stock-based compensation is tied to objectives by contract, but levels.fyi has a "bonus" field for that data.

I agree that levels.fyi is doing a poor job of comparing the value of RSUs. For example, Microsoft / LinkedIn stock grew 55% in 2019 and pays a dividend. If MSFT did that again this year, it might eclipse Aramco. It would be more useful if levels.fyi simply recorded the raw grant details (e.g. RSUs uniform 4yr vesting N shares) and used stock price data to facilitate comparison. That's especially key when looking back upon offers 3-4 years back to asses salary growth (and potentially find oddities like no-poaches).

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#115

Post by milesskorpen »

eclipxe wrote: post #82
milesskorpen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if liquid, these salaries probably reflect people vesting stock from years ago - and the high end would include people vesting stock offered at a much lower valuation. In this kind of ranking there’d be a bias towards companies with rapidly growing share prices ... and remember that last performance is no indicator of future returns.

No, these are roughly inline with new hire offers

At all of the five listed levels?

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#116

Post by pram »

qrazhan wrote: post #104
pram wrote: post #75

There is absolutely no way IC2 makes $175k at Oracle. LOL. I doubt you can even find an IC2, period. They hire everyone in at IC3 and above, and everyones paid like shit. The only exception I can think of was the people brought in to work on the 'next gen' cloud stuff who were poached from Amazon. They were all 'senior' and 'principal' engineers though.

A friend of mine was just hired as an IC2 at Oracle at 175k. He is on cloud stuff in Seattle, but by no means a senior or principal engineer -- only 1 year of experience.

Yes, as I stated in the last part, Seattle is the exception because the cloud has become make or break. Oracle has 135k employees and the vast bulk are not in Washington. HTH

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#117

Post by chillacy »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #100

Looks like us over here in Europe are getting shafted. Even if you adjust for living expenses, European engineers are grossly underpaid.

It's even worse because many of these companies have offices in Europe and pay European market rates. Same company, same level, big differences in compensation. And it's not just Europe too, same in Canada, Singapore, Israel, etc.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#118

Post by bitpow »

slg wrote: post #11

I have never worked in the valley, so the answer to this question might be obvious to the people working there. What happens to all the experienced engineers? According to this, the Senior, Staff, or Principal titles are generally for people with 5+ year experience? Those roles make up 30%, 10%, and 3% of companies respectively. That leaves 57% of engineers in positions listed are usually for people with 0-5 years ex…

They become managers.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#119

Post by meritt »

stale2002 wrote: post #111
meritt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money. The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent, as it's simply unrealistic to impossible for many firms to compete. Not to mention they app…

> No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money. I mean.... so what? Why should I, as an engineer, care if some companies are suffering under the "unfairness" of high salaries? > which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent It doesn't really make sense to use the work oligopoly, which has certain negative connot…

> I mean.... so what? Why should I, as an engineer, care

You shouldn't, you should always maximize your income. That wasn't my point. My point was the guy shouldn't interview at a 5-person bootstrapped startup and act bewildered when they cannot offer Facebook level comp packages.

> oligopoly

It's absolutely an oligopoly. There are a small number of firms who possess the capital to compete on salary and that creates a extremely high barrier to entry. It's not a bad thing, it's just the reality of the situation. There's plenty of options though, e.g. don't decide your HQ must be in San Francisco.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#120

Post by aiiane »

hdhdhdd wrote: post #74
glglwty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A senior position in the doc will probably get you ~2M in savings by 35. How do you retire with that?

400k- taxes = 270k for joined filing Monthly expenses = 3k mortgage+ 500 property taxes + 2k daycare for one child(or 529) + 1.5k for food and other = 84k Without compounding interest you need 10 years to get 2m, and these salaries are for 5+ or more years of experience. (And you need down payment, etc.). Living in those areas is expensive. If you are making 500k, that's a different story :-)

people never factor in healthcare into this calculus.
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