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Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

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Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#561

Post by sdnlafkjh34rw »

abalone wrote: post #338
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 engin…

For actual healthcare outcomes, Kaiser will outrank most PPOs. Because Kaiser is an integrated health system, they are highly incentivized to actual improve outcomes. PPOs might feel better to you (because they let you have choice and freedom) but I strongly suspect that from a purely what's best for public health is systems like Kaiser. A patient's sense of satisfaction with their healthcare is rarely correlated to outcomes. For example, I worked with healthcare data and we were developing quality metrics and we found for a lot of providers had a negative correlation in metrics to their review scores. I.e there are tons of doctors with high reviews who actually perform quite badly in terms of outcomes. We strongly suspected these are doctors who have good communication and empathy skills but weak clinical skills. I remember looking at malpractice studies and seeing something similar. As a doctor, the probability of getting sued for malpractice is driven by your bedside manner and NOT your clinical outcomes. Essentially, we've found that a doctor with bad clinical expertise but great bedside manner will get sued more than an amazing clinician who has bad bedside manner.

It's a slipper slope if you think your anecdotal satisfaction with your medical provider is a metric of how well the system takes care of you. Unless you are looking at outcomes at a population level it's really hard to see what's going on.

I will say (as others have noted) that Kaiser's mental health support is terrible, but there outcomes outside of that are very strong (if not best in class). They were frequently studied in my partner's master of public health, because of their strong outcomes.

Also don't underestimate the power of primary care in the heaths system (patient's tend to skip primary care visits in PPOs). Many of the life threatening issues my partner sees were caught only due to a primary care visit which exactly why systems like Kaiser are effective.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#563

Post by fyfy18 »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #394
crispyporkbites wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can pitch in to say in London I make ~$150k + $50k/y options (not sure how to value these, strike price is only slightly discounted) for L4 (should be ~$300k according to levels) From what i've heard London has by far the highest tech salaries in Europe

That is around £114k, which is a high salary for London, but nothing in comparison to what you can make contracting (and at the same 'salary', as a contractor you'll pay less tax in the UK). The base rates for web technologies are around £500/day, and if you specialise and have a track record for delivering you can easily push that up.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#564

Post by chillacy »

marvin wrote: post #253
eru wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A strategy that has worked for me is to interview in batches. Companies interview multiple candidates, too. That gives you extra leverage and extra information.

I tried this in West Norway recently, being as firm in the negotiation tactics as possible. Didn't yield higher offers at all ! So that tells me the market here is actually not nearly as competitive as all the consulting companies try to make people believe. In other words, the success of this strategy is market-dependent, but it certainly seems to have a huge effect in SV.

It might be competitive in the other direction: too many engineers, not enough opportunities. Then it becomes a bidding war to see who will accept the least pay.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#565

Post by dehrmann »

kokey wrote: post #513
thatsenough wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a peak in the mid-80s, and another around 2005. CS enrollments reached a max around 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble. But when the bubble burst in 2000-2001, enrollments plummeted in 2002, 2003 and 2004, leading to the local minimum in graduates in 2009. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/CSCapacity/images/BS...

I'm getting a bit of a dot-com feeling around these compensation figures, especially seeing the sign up bonuses and how tangible stocks are considered as normal compensation now. The FAANGs remind me a bit of Microsoft, Cisco and Intel before their y2k peaks.

I do get some of that feeling. The differences is that the FAANGs are all public, have been for a while, and have real revenue. The dot-com bubble was mostly fueled by VC, IPOs, and a virtuous cycle (though I guess Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel had been public for a while, and they did survive the bubble burst).

Facebook and Google do ads, and most online advertisers look for immediate, real value. These success stories are as real as e-commerce.

That brings us to Amazon. It's e-commerce is real, but margins are low. AWS looks more like the dot-com bubble in that some of that money is coming from VCs. If funding dries up, AWS gets hit. That said, there's a larger migration to the cloud, and that's also real.

Apple makes high-margin phones that people all over the world buy. Full stop.

Netflix is the least like the others. It's smaller, and while it revolutionized how we consume content, it's current model is heavily funded by debt, and it's facing stiff competition. No one's talking about how Netflix will take over long-form video, they're griping at having to pay for six streaming services.

The alternate story for tech salaries is that PCs and the internet weren't ready for prime time in 2000. After the bubble burst, there were too few CS grads for when the internet was finally ready. The internet wasn't ready until 2006-2010 when most people had broadband at home, smartphones matures, and LTE was ready.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#566

Post by tempestn »

villahousut wrote: post #248
tempestn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good advice. Just one nitpick: The 4% rule, which states you can as a rule of thumb safely withdraw 4% of the starting capital per year in real dollars (IE increase it each year to account for inflation), is intended for a standard retirement period (65+) and does expect the principal to decrease. There's more debate as to what would be a safe withdrawal rate over the long term without depleting principal, but I expe…

That's a bit incorrect. Returns from a typical investment portfolio have been over 4% for the last 10-20 years, so that's the amount you can withdraw without depleting any principal. If you're looking to consume your whole principal by the time you die you can go way ahead of 4%, easily double that.

We've basically been in a continuous bull market over the past 11 years; it's not a representative sample. Nor is any period of 10-20 years nearly long enough to tell you much about long term stock market returns. Plus, valuations (ie P/E or P/B) are significantly inflated currently compared to the past. Since valuations can't inflate forever, future market gains over the long term are expected to be lower than past.

In addition, we're talking about a real withdrawal rate; a 4% real rate of withdrawal will be approximately a 6% nominal rate assuming inflation sticks around 2%. It's very unlikely you're going to maintain that from a balanced portfolio over the long term without depleting principle at all. Might be possible with an all-stock portfolio if you get lucky, but significant chance of failure if you get a poor sequence of returns.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#567

Post by abalone »

sdnlafkjh34rw wrote: post #561
abalone wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 engin…

For actual healthcare outcomes, Kaiser will outrank most PPOs. Because Kaiser is an integrated health system, they are highly incentivized to actual improve outcomes. PPOs might feel better to you (because they let you have choice and freedom) but I strongly suspect that from a purely what's best for public health is systems like Kaiser. A patient's sense of satisfaction with their healthcare is rarely correlated to…

This type of post is a pet peeve of mine because you use terms like “data” and “anecdotal” but it’s actually a poorly supported argument. This happens too often on HN. It’s certainly true that primary care visits improve health outcomes, but you offer no evidence that people get more primary care at Kaiser. Meanwhile the most significant rankings are not only patient opinions but rather systematic reviews of outcomes, expert analysis and objective metrics. Newsweek did one such ranking that put Kaiser behind 4 other hospitals.[1] US News puts UCSF ahead of Kaiser in many aspects and specialities.[2]

When you need a brain surgery or cancer treatment, you’re definitely going to “feel better” having “choice and freedom” to go to the best.

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/03/ucsf-medical-center-s...

[2] https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/ca/ucsf-medica...

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#568

Post by sdnlafkjh34rw »

abalone wrote: post #567
sdnlafkjh34rw wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For actual healthcare outcomes, Kaiser will outrank most PPOs. Because Kaiser is an integrated health system, they are highly incentivized to actual improve outcomes. PPOs might feel better to you (because they let you have choice and freedom) but I strongly suspect that from a purely what's best for public health is systems like Kaiser. A patient's sense of satisfaction with their healthcare is rarely correlated to…

This type of post is a pet peeve of mine because you use terms like “data” and “anecdotal” but it’s actually a poorly supported argument. This happens too often on HN. It’s certainly true that primary care visits improve health outcomes, but you offer no evidence that people get more primary care at Kaiser. Meanwhile the most significant rankings are not only patient opinions but rather systematic reviews of outcomes…

OP and myself were discussing Kaiser as a health care plan. The ranking you showed was about hospitals not health care plans; a health care plan and a hospital are two completely different things. I also never said Kaiser was the absolute best in every area (I even mentioned their mental heath is very weak), just that their model is solid.

Here's an actual comparison of health care plans:

[1] https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/ncqa-insurer-rankings...

[2] http://healthinsuranceratings.ncqa.org/2019/HprPlandetails.a...

[3] http://healthinsuranceratings.ncqa.org/2019/HprPlandetails.a...

[4] http://reportcard.opa.ca.gov/rc/HMO_PPOCombined.aspx

And here's some research showing Kaiser's outcomes quality: [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26131607

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29625083

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30002140

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270203/

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC64512/

> It’s certainly true that primary care visits improve health outcomes, but you offer no evidence that people get more primary care at Kaiser. Again, I worked with claims data where we could analyze primary care utilization and kaiser was significantly higher than most PPOs in our systems (and high in general). We specifically built an email targeting patients who did not visit their primary care doctor in the last year and Kaiser was at the bottom of numbers because of the high usage. There is definitely a lot more research you can find studying Kaiser's integrated approach and how it related to primary care usage. Kaiser is pretty good good at preventative care, primary care usage, and some chronic care management.

> When you need a brain surgery or cancer treatment, you’re definitely going to “feel better” having “choice and freedom” to go to the best. Again, I've outlined research showing outcomes and quality metrics showing Kaiser is pretty solid. Their primary care usage is higher than other health plans, and there are quality metrics and research showing they are pretty good at preventative, primary care, and chronic care management. There are definitely gaps, but from a population level outcomes, they perform at or better than many PPOs given their costs. If you take a step further and look at the economic ROI of their plans, they definitely outclass most PPO and HMOs.

It's not like they have that much secret sauce, the main advantages they have are the same ones a nationalized system has (being integrated aligns incentives better).

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#569

Post by superfrank »

cletus wrote: post #531
superfrank wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlimited time off is bullshit. Think of this as no time off. I'm so tired of hearing this. I think there are some professions/job levels where that is true (client facing jobs or higher up managers), but for most non-management development jobs, this just isn't the case. I've worked at three different companies that have had unlimited time off (I seek it out now) and I have plenty of friends who have worked at com…

If I can't join the company then immediately take the next 30 years off I don't have unlimited time off.

Do you also get angry at all you can eat buffets when they won't let you eat it all?

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#570

Post by gamesbrainiac »

nvarsj wrote: post #352
whiskyant wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a "bit less". A senior engineer in sunnyvale is making 400k+ a year. That's nearly 70% more pay. Assuming 250k is correct, which I'm doubtful of.

I can assure you, that you'd be lucky to be making anything north of 150k. 150 is for principal and above.
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