Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level • Hacker News Board

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#211

Post by whiskyant » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #3

I do the job of a senior engineer and yet am paid a bit less than what's listed for an entry level engineer. And I live an incredibly comfy life. What's the catch? Are these for more than 40 hours a week? Is silicon valley really that expensive? Or are they literally giving college grads enough money to retire by 35?

I'm a senior engineer at FAANG, work 40hrs/wk, and get paid $400k+/yr.

The cost of living is higher, but it's well under the increase in pay for being in the area. My current living situation is actually pretty cheap; I split a 4BR house, live 7 min from work, and pay $1650/mo for my portion of rent/utilities.

Most people I know tend to get 2BR apartments and split it with someone, usually paying $2000-2500/mo.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#212

Post by whiskyant » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:27 AM UTC

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.

Just join a FAANG company that has a branch office in Europe. They'll pay a bit less, but a senior engineer should still be able to get 250k+/yr.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#213

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #205

nixgeek wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda disagree, Oracle/HP (personal experience) and Google/IBM (extremely good friends) both have career tracks for IC which go up to ‘Distinguished Engineer’ level, and where compensation can be equivalent to a VP on the management track. What you might be trying to say is there are more available positions at VP than DE, so your chances of making it are better? Or that being promoted to VP is easier than to DE? I…

> both have career tracks for IC which go up to ‘Distinguished Engineer’ level, and where compensation can be equivalent to a VP on the management track. Sure, it exists. How many DEs do you know of, vs. VPs? How do you get a DE job? Usually you are the most well known person in your field. How you do you get a VP job? You have to be a pretty good manager. At Google, there are 100s of VPs. There are maybe 10 DEs, if…

> At Google, there are 100s of VPs. There are maybe 10 DEs, if that many

Fwiw, the number is significantly higher than 10, though still fewer than there are VPs.

That said, things get tricky: there are DEs who have reports, and there are VPs with no (or trivial, like 3) reports. But either way, if your metric is DE/VP or if it's manager of a large org vs IC/TLM, the number of IC-track people is higher than you suggest.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#214

Post by jypepin » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:30 AM UTC

gnrlst wrote: post #190

What I find completely demotivating is working for a FAANG in Europe, and seeing the massive disparity between US colleagues. You can argue cost of living is different, healthcare is public blablabla, but recruiters have told me straight out: we dont adjust for cost of living, we adjust for market rate. Therefore they dont give a rats ass about how much it costs to live in a specific country, they just pay based on t…

For what it's worth I moved from SF to AMS a few years ago for my employer (FAANG-ish) and they cut my salary by 30%. I was pissed and fought hard, but they didn't bulge. My quality of life (including buying power) was still more in AMS.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#215

Post by SirHound » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

gnrlst wrote: post #190

What I find completely demotivating is working for a FAANG in Europe, and seeing the massive disparity between US colleagues. You can argue cost of living is different, healthcare is public blablabla, but recruiters have told me straight out: we dont adjust for cost of living, we adjust for market rate. Therefore they dont give a rats ass about how much it costs to live in a specific country, they just pay based on t…

Also we don't get free heathcare, we pay for it through taxation. I believe this is morally right, but that's beside the point: These well-paid American employees are also probably getting a great healthcare package as part of their contract, so they don't even have to pay for it.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#216

Post by jypepin » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

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…

What I've personally seen is that the smaller the company the more experienced people you'll have, because they need more independent people and have less time/resources to mentor juniors.

So the proportion for a large majority of startups is not similar to what this document shows, which is centered to bigger (1000+ engineers) companies.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#217

Post by daggerdrone » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #81

ameen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I get paid lower than an entry level engineer while managing, developing and maintaining the entire web presence for our company - public site, e-commerce store, etc. I get paid 1/50th of what the company made in e-commerce sales (similar amounts through other channels). I can’t quit and prepare for a job interview as I need to maintain visa status. And my workload averages ~60h/week.

The visa situation is just terrible, I knew so many smart coworkers who were afraid to move because of H1B uncertainties. Ultimately this hurts everyone in the industry because labor markets require a liquidity to function properly.

What uncertainties exactly? Just interview normally and if you get an offer then you can accept the offer and they will start the H1B process. You will get the H1B approval in about three weeks. Then you can put your two weeks notice. Overall it will take around 5 weeks from your offer date to your joining date which is pretty reasonable. If there is a delay in the H1B or it does not get approved, then you can continue to work at your old place. Pretty much everybody on H1B these days is following this process.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#218

Post by jypepin » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

choppaface wrote: post #95

Another point of reference: here are some offers recently aggregated on Blind. In 2019, I got an offer almost identical to one of those listed below, and a friend got an offer a little higher than listed below. So I believe the reports are legit. While the raw salary data on levels.fyi is useful, other context about the candidate & team is pretty important. For example, my friend has no college degree but matched to…

I've recently interviewed and got 5 offers. Those numbers check out.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#219

Post by lowdose » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

rdslw wrote: post #209

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…

Disagree. This is top 5. Look at the difference betwen position 1 and 5 (30% (sic!) for entry level). Ask yourself how many companies are in the SV area? Then think where MEDIAN of those numbers is. Looking at top 5 is like looking at best performing stocks in last year (from 5000 of ohers), and thinking "YEAH, thats what I should expect from my future investment portfolio".

Your portfolio should only contain FANG companies. Every single one has outperformed the market by at least 2X and up to 6 X over the last 5 years.

The contrarian position now is to double down on a small number of stocks where the business model function as a data aggregator hence FANG. As opposed to index tracking style portfolio investing, even your Uber driver has ETF's.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#220

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 9:36 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #167

tlb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find this in many places around the Bay Area outside SF. I have 5 acres and keep chickens in Woodside, and it's 15-20 minutes drive to several big tech companies in Palo Alto and Redwood City. Some people keep horses here.

Nice, but I don't see how it generally works. The highest levels of pay in the article was $950,000. Wikipedia says that in Woodside "The median household income in the town is $212,917, and the median family income is $246,042." Double those pay numbers to determine the price of a house that a person can afford... and it is not looking good. I looked around on www.trulia.com a bit. An empty lot of questionable geolo…

Why on Earth do you think you need to make 950k/year to afford a million dollar home?

The mortgage on a 2 million dollar loan (which would be a 2.4 or 2.5 million dollar home) is 10k/mo or 120k/year, which is solidly affordable on a 400k income.

I know of 5 and 6 bedroom houses than can be gotten for that much in Palo Alto and Cupertino.