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Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#41

Post by astrange »

ketamine__ wrote: post #35
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #11

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"

On balance, anyone remote before the pandemic and traveling the world has probably had a better life than someone with the same skills making double the salary in SV. Just the reduction in poop on sidewalks speaks for itself. Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.

San Francisco isn't in Silicon Valley. They're just pretending.

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#42

Post by ska »

lacker wrote: post #19
kar5pt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source that says the average experienced engineer in Silicon Valley makes $400k/year?

That number is too high. If you restrict to the FAANG companies, though, it is only a small overestimate. See https://www.levels.fyi/ and select Google. There an L5 represents an "experienced" engineer with at least 4-5 years of experience, and total comp is $350k. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are similar.

> If you restrict to the FAANG companies,

But then you are talking about a small minority of even SV salaries, and a tiny minority overall.

The real issue as noted elsewhere is that the distribution is at least bimodal, and many conversations get derailed by confusion around this fact.

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#43

Post by vmception »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #11

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"

when the deepest financial discussion from the general population is about cost of living, I rest assured that I have no competition

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#44

Post by kar5pt »

lacker wrote: post #19
kar5pt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source that says the average experienced engineer in Silicon Valley makes $400k/year?

That number is too high. If you restrict to the FAANG companies, though, it is only a small overestimate. See https://www.levels.fyi/ and select Google. There an L5 represents an "experienced" engineer with at least 4-5 years of experience, and total comp is $350k. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are similar.

Yeah, my point is that's only true for FAANGs. Not the average engineer.

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#45

Post by dang »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #11

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"

You're quite right. I wish we had a more reliable way to downweight such generic responses, which reliably recur on every story related to an ongoing theme. HN threads are much better when they have interesting diffs.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Of course I need to downweight this subthread too, because metageneric is a subset of generic, plus meta is its own issue.

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#46

Post by logicslave »

zuhayeer wrote: post #30

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/

Your website has single handedly changed the negotiations for so many people. It was so hard to get good salary data

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#47

Post by dang »

ketamine__ wrote: post #35
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #11

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"

On balance, anyone remote before the pandemic and traveling the world has probably had a better life than someone with the same skills making double the salary in SV. Just the reduction in poop on sidewalks speaks for itself. Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.

Scene_Cast2 should add this as a fourth element to their list.

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#48

Post by phendrenad2 »

renewiltord wrote: post #4

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.

Yeah I wish they had mentioned what those are supposed to be exactly. Is it average? Median? Entry-level? Senior?

In my experience, the SF value on the chart seems to match entry-level developers, and the other values on the chart are above what senior developers make elsewhere. If you're a developer in Detroit, maybe you can make 90k, but I suspect you'll have to settle for closer to 60k.

Looks like Dice is based in NYC. Maybe a bit of cross-coastal rivalry pulling our apparent numbers down so we don't steal all the NYC devs? ;)

Re: Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.

#50

Post by dan-robertson »

renewiltord wrote: post #4

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.

Perhaps there is a bimodal distribution? Eg large public companies or older well funded startups in Silicon Valley can afford to pay more than the (many?) other companies
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