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Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

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Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#281
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…

You'll do better if you focus on living your best life instead of worrying about someone else having more money.

If you don't move to USA, how does envy make your life better?

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#282
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war. That may be true, but there's more to it than that. The first wave of successful IPOs (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, etc.) caused a spike in housing prices as employees purchased houses. On top of that, companies have added tens of thousands of new jobs, without proportional growth in the housing supply. So housing prices are now absurd, and thes…

Yeah I think this part is a stretch. Just look at Vancouver as a far more extreme example of how local property prices can be out of whack with wages. House prices are a function of wages (or, more accurately, have a floor set by wages if land is constrained) not the other way around. Also, the level of entitlement by a lot of such engineers I find to be borderline disgusting. Why do you think you're entitled to a $1…

>Engineers are compensated well now because of the value they create for their employer

This is dubious.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#283
post #171

As a FAANG engineer going on 9 years now, let me address the usual rebuttals: - There is a selection bias. Nope, this is pretty much accurate. - These aren't real. Yes, yes they are. - Self-reporters are lying. Maybe some do but these numbers are pretty accurate. If anything, I question Lyft and Airbnb as such outliers. I wonder if this factored in Lyft's post-IPO stock performance and makes unrealistic valuations of…

[deleted]

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY state pays all IT people (with a 4-year degree) $56K to start currently. Of course, you get a pension(!) and good health insurance. Private sector companies often don't pay much higher, and have much worse benefits.

IT is not comparable to SWE.

All of the latter are a subset of the former in this context.

And of course, many people go from, say, QA, help desk, 3rd tier support, or programmer/analyst to developer.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#285
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…

I don't think that universally true. I work for G in Munich, and salaries post cost of living are competitive with the Bay Area (maybe 10%-20% off, but OTOH consider quality of life). From what I can tell, Zurich beats the Bay Area.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#286
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The best investment is whatever large cap company left wingers hate the most. It used to be oil companies.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that software development's divided between the maybe— maybe —5% who are looking at comp at these levels, and everyone else who's in the $70K-180K range, with a cap somewhere in lower-leadership positions that perhaps reaches $200K, maybe mid $200Ks at best as you start to move into management proper. Anything past that you've gotta really nail some niche that someone with lots of money (probably fi…

Its not a small number of positions its just a small number of companies At the moment these few companies are expanding as fast as possible and have an infinite number of positions that pay these amounts until they dont

Not infinite. They have hard caps on how many they hire each year.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would divorce before considering working an extra 27 years. If your spouse thinks this is justified then he/she needs to be replaced anyways.

Yeah because nothing is more important than the acquisition of wealth.

Another way of putting it is adding 27 years of work to someone's life.

It's okay if your marriage doesn't work out because you want to be in different places and have different life goals.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#289
post #171

As a FAANG engineer going on 9 years now, let me address the usual rebuttals: - There is a selection bias. Nope, this is pretty much accurate. - These aren't real. Yes, yes they are. - Self-reporters are lying. Maybe some do but these numbers are pretty accurate. If anything, I question Lyft and Airbnb as such outliers. I wonder if this factored in Lyft's post-IPO stock performance and makes unrealistic valuations of…

> - These numbers are inflated by years of stock growth that is unlikely to continue in the future. This there is some truth to but not as much as people claim. Amazon, of all these companies, builds in expected stock growth into their initial grant valuation (which I think is total BS; if any Amazon recruiters are reading this, please stop). Yeah Amazon is really deceptive with their offers and raises. Assume you wo…

Also, this has Amazon's location listed as "Seattle, CA"

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#290
post #238

Now imagine having one of these incomes but having a spouse who is hellbent on moving back to the southeastern U.S. in a year. It’s driving me nuts; I can’t find any company in the south that pays anywhere near my current compensation, and a rough calculation indicates that leaving FANG will bump my retirement age from 38 to 65 (never mind the amazing health insurance I’ll be giving up too). It’s like throwing a winn…

Surely cheaper housing, education and other costs would compensate for a locally lower income? I don’t know where in the southeast you’re talking snot but I imagine it’s 50-80% cheaper for housing?

Also higher quality of life. The spouse wants to move for a reason. I wouldn't live in San Francisco for any amount of money.
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