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Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

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Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#331

Post by hdhdhdd »

aiiane wrote: post #120
hdhdhdd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, I forgot about it. 7-8k max out of pocket (in-network) for family. In some companies there is also some payment for the health plan out of pocket. But the diff here is that on HSA plans the out of pocket comes before taxes.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#332

Post by mywittyname »

vonseel wrote: post #160
dehrmann wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this (hopefully someone can find longer-term data), the number of CS graduates was in decline until 2009. https://i1.wp.com/danwang.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bach...

I'm surprised it started growing even that early. When I attended school (2007-11), we thought CS jobs would be outsourced to India/China/etc. (we were wrong).

I started a few years before you and remember people saying I was crazy to go into development since the jobs were all being outsourced. They might have been wrong in the long run, but I did spend the first few years of my career managing offshore development more than doing actual development.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#333

Post by hdhdhdd »

joshuamorton wrote: post #220
burfog wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is assuming you never lose a job or can get a new one to replace current one easily. When market downturns, those equity based salaries will go heavily discounted, and you might not be able to afford mortgage anymore.

People overestimate their max credit payments... And financial system incentivizes that (why wouldn't you borrow from 401k? It's just your retirement savings)

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#334

Post by nvarsj »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #306
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…

What are FAANG in Europe salaries like? Is there also a perception of core product/business work taking place in SV and therefore European teams aren't as important?

You can dig through the salaries on levels.fyi. From my brief perusal, it looks like 50% less for London. I'd guess other places will be even lower.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#335

Post by abalone »

I just landed a senior role at a FAANG-ish SF company paying over $300k TC. Some comments on this:

1. Equity is the biggest factor in these figures. Levels.fyi is extremely bad at clarifying whether you should be reporting your equity value at signing vs how its changed since. Signing is the only apples to apples comparison.

2. These level descriptions are weird. They make it sound like “senior” engineers with 5+ years exp don’t write much code, are just 30% of the company, etc. I suppose it depends on the company, but key teams at FAANGs are able to hire more seniors and just invest in better engineers writing code every day. Good engineers like writing code and working with other good engineers. Netflix for example is known to hire mostly seniors. They’re not just writing design docs.

3. Speaking of Netflix they are an interesting outlier in that they don’t do equity, they do cash TC that is competitive with cash+equity FAANGs. So their offers are great data points that clear up some of the ambiguity around equity value. They are out there every day negotiating for talent. Although I think there’s a little bit of a premium to attract engineers down to Los Gatos.

4. Can they see who opens their doc on google drive when shared like this? The link immediately opened my app with me logged in.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#336

Post by thedufer »

gok wrote: post #131

I still don't understand how they're defining total compensation. Federal taxable wages, like what shows up on your W-2? Or the amount you're promised including RSUs, regardless of vesting schedule?

Typically it would be base salary, bonus, and the value of RSUs vesting over the next 12 months. I'd guess this is about the same as W-2 income?

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#337

Post by _f1dq »

cletus wrote: 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…

from a financial POV working for a startup is--how should I put this?--suboptimal. Your equity is probably worth nothing (even if you get acquihired, liquidation preferences probably mean all non-founder stock is worth $0). The hours are worse. The benefits are worse.

This has been my experience over a 20+ year career of working mostly at startups. If you choose to work for a startup, assume the equity will be worthless. Don't even factor it in to your compensation package. It's a false lure.

In many other ways, though, I don't regret working for startups. They're fun and exciting, at least when you don't have a family, and you can learn a lot in a short amount of time. They're good proving grounds for anyone with an entrepreneurial bent, in my opinion.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#338

Post by abalone »

cletus wrote: 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…

> The gold standard is probably Kaiser for CA residents.

I love your post but I almost shat myself when I read this. Kaiser is convenient but not top ranked in much. The gold standard is a PPO that lets you go anywhere (else) you like incl. top specialists + a membership primary care network like OneMedical for convenience.

(By the way, I support Medicare4All. Good healthcare shouldn’t just be for wealthy FAANG engineers and even for us the system still sucks.)

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#339

Post by angarg12 »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #298
angarg12 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add to your awesome comment, many of these companies have compensation policies that discourage retaining talent. I'll give an example of a certain FAANG. - Initial offer sets your comp for your first 4 years. - If stock outperforms the expectations (as it has historically done) you get no refreshers. - If your comp is at the top of your band, you get no/nominal raise. - Newly promoted engineers get paid the…

Getting promoted only makes sense if you can't get interviews for L+1 without the promo. Otherwise it only makes sense to do the minimum required to not get fired, and prepare for interviews elsewhere.

Many people do, particularly after getting passed for a promotion once or twice. My anecdotal evidence is that it is harder to get promoted to L+1 than to get hired at L+1.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#340

Post by notacoward »

auiya wrote: post #304
jerkstate wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See if you can negotiate a remote work position. I work for one of the companies in this report in a fairly senior position and even though they don't advertise it, they do allow some folks to go remote after a lengthy HR process. If not your current company, figure out which companies will allow it and get a different job, then work there for a year or two to establish a great reputation and then ask for a transfer.…

> See if you can negotiate a remote work position If you're lucky and they DO offer a remote position, it will be for 1/4th of your current salary. Bet on it.

Do you have any evidence for that claim? I don't have anything broad-based, but I work remotely for one of these companies and make exactly what I would if I worked at HQ. And it's not because I'm some super-awesome negotiator.
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