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This is so misleading. In silicon valley total compensation is touching 400k+/year on an average for experienced professionals. They should've at least consulted something like levels.fyi before publishing and looking dumb.
This Dice stuff is hard to believe. I have literally not made that much in base comp since 2014 (no matter what my visa application says). It's like way low.
One of the founders of Levels.fyi here – wish we were cited on here too! But we also did a pay report for 2020 with a breakdown of companies and locations which was covered in another IEEE post: https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-... In our report, we account for total compensation including equity. Feel free to check it out: https://levels.fyi/2020/
The standard conversation that happens around such posts: "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is rent, but SV still comes out to be more profitable" "Salaries in USA are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is healthcare, and there's no social safety net" "Salaries in FANG make smart people work on optimizing for clicks instead of doing something more beneficial for the world"
One thing I've noticed is that the people making these counter-arguments seem to completely ignore (or don't know about) the ridiculous amounts of equity that $big_tech_co's are handing out. Yes some of those points can be valid, and I understand that not all software companies hand out that much stock or are private and therefore it's harder to depend on, etc. But maybe it's just the bubble of tech that I've existed…
Even if someone hasn't won the FAANG lottery, there are a lot of folks, including those that aren't collecting SV-level comp, who have done pretty well being well-invested in diversified equities.
The standard conversation that happens around such posts: "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is rent, but SV still comes out to be more profitable" "Salaries in USA are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is healthcare, and there's no social safety net" "Salaries in FANG make smart people work on optimizing for clicks instead of doing something more beneficial for the world"
Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.
One data point. My salary was basically stagnant 2005-2015 then started going up. Last couple years increased quite a bit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Several companies I know seemed to lie and use Covid as a convenient excuse to not give out raises (or give shitty bonuses, etc) to save money in the short term. Meanwhile hiring and earnings don't match up to those actions.
That's a fairly cynical take. You may be right, at least in some cases, but I also think it's reasonable for any executive to look at the unprecedented situation with a high degree of uncertainty and reign in spending on all possible fronts. In hindsight perhaps cutting back salaries/bonuses wasn't warranted, but that doesn't mean it was all planned as a scheme to boost profits.
One of the founders of Levels.fyi here – wish we were cited on here too! But we also did a pay report for 2020 with a breakdown of companies and locations which was covered in another IEEE post: https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-... In our report, we account for total compensation including equity. Feel free to check it out: https://levels.fyi/2020/
Honestly your site blows away the competition. AFAIK you have the best data. Great work and bravo on making compensation more transparent.
The standard conversation that happens around such posts: "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is rent, but SV still comes out to be more profitable" "Salaries in USA are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is healthcare, and there's no social safety net" "Salaries in FANG make smart people work on optimizing for clicks instead of doing something more beneficial for the world"
One thing I've noticed is that the people making these counter-arguments seem to completely ignore (or don't know about) the ridiculous amounts of equity that $big_tech_co's are handing out. Yes some of those points can be valid, and I understand that not all software companies hand out that much stock or are private and therefore it's harder to depend on, etc. But maybe it's just the bubble of tech that I've existed…
IMO, it's not useful to look solely at salaries. My salary and my compensation are radically different numbers. My salary is approximately $200k/year, but my compensation is closer to $650k this year. Most of the engineers I know view their salary as only part of the picture. I'm also a firm believer in sharing compensation numbers openly and transparently as a mechanism for increasing worker negotiating power. Talk…
Is the rest RSUs? Only a select few that work for big publicly traded companies get to benefit from those...