Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 272 posts

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

#61

Post by lhorie »

closeparen wrote: post #56
aphextron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bay area comp is massively bimodal. FAANG tier folks are certainly making that much, but they are a tiny fraction of the market. Most senior devs at smaller companies and startups are making under $200k.

Companies in the tier of Stripe, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Robinhood, etc. pay that much at senior levels. Often better than FAANG.

AFAIK, the difference between the two tiers comes down to public companies that pay equity with real stock vs those who are not public and cannot offer comp in the form of liquid equity.

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

#62

Post by dcolkitt »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #39
stack_underflow wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Equity is great when the stock market is booming, but when it decides to drop off a cliff every decade or so for whatever reason I'd prefer if my actual salary didn't go with it

The thing is, it's very hard to get rich without some sort of equity. Maybe it's not equity in public companies, but almost all wealthy people get to that point by owning something. Whether that's stock options in a startup or a general partnership in a hedge fund or a medical practice or a piece of property that gets developed.

All equity comes with risk. Doubly so for the type of equity that generates a lot of wealth. Stability is nice, but expect to pay through the nose for it. The only real exception I can think of are people with exceptional talent in an exceptionally in demand skill. E.g. Tom Brady or Linus Torvalds or a world-class neurosurgeon.

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

#63

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

dang wrote: post #45
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…

Makes sense. My goal with the comment was to shortcut the stuff that's already been discussed.

I wouldn't necessarily call this topic "generic". The "gravitational pull" you mention seems like a product of "number of people affected" x "how much of a relatable concern it is"; employment compensation scores high. Apple launches are another example of this.

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

#64

Post by savanaly »

dcolkitt wrote: post #55
sharkweek wrote: post #52

I cannot believe how high tech salaries are right now in my city (Seattle) versus even three years ago the last time I had a "real" job. What would have been a low 100s salary three years ago is easily pushing over 200k now. This is all well and good except for when one of those folks tries to go to buy a house here and is outbid by 15 people all offering cash with 200k in escalation clauses...

It's incredible to me that most of the surplus wealth generated by all of humanity's innovation in the 21st century has basically accumulated to property owners in the Bay Area and Seattle. This is only a slight exaggeration.

Also incredible that it could have been predicted over 200 years ago [0]. The law of rent, one of the most firmly established in economics, is that all the bounty of our efforts will accumulate to the holders of fixed assets, namely land and human talent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent.

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

#65

Post by opportune »

lhorie wrote: post #61
closeparen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies in the tier of Stripe, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Robinhood, etc. pay that much at senior levels. Often better than FAANG.

AFAIK, the difference between the two tiers comes down to public companies that pay equity with real stock vs those who are not public and cannot offer comp in the form of liquid equity.

Several of those companies are not public. They are indeed offering paper money, but if you trust valuations during fundraising rounds (and given how late stage Stripe, Robinhood are) it's a pretty safe bet.

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

#66

Post by sidlls »

dcolkitt wrote: post #55
sharkweek wrote: post #52

I cannot believe how high tech salaries are right now in my city (Seattle) versus even three years ago the last time I had a "real" job. What would have been a low 100s salary three years ago is easily pushing over 200k now. This is all well and good except for when one of those folks tries to go to buy a house here and is outbid by 15 people all offering cash with 200k in escalation clauses...

It's incredible to me that most of the surplus wealth generated by all of humanity's innovation in the 21st century has basically accumulated to property owners in the Bay Area and Seattle. This is only a slight exaggeration.

It’s misleading, too. Most of the surplus wealth has accrued to people who were already wealthy. They are property owners in these areas, perhaps, but that’s incidental.

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

#67

Post by jcims »

aphextron wrote: post #31
posharma wrote: post #7

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.

Bay area comp is massively bimodal. FAANG tier folks are certainly making that much, but they are a tiny fraction of the market. Most senior devs at smaller companies and startups are making under $200k.

Curious what SRE/TPM/security roles are making. I have turned down two different security job offers from FAANG companies because the comp was even or a net loss over my current role at midwest orgs each time, and that was before factoring in CoL.

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

#68

Post by subsubzero »

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/

With regular chats with a few old coworkers in various FANGish companies(we talk total comp between us) the numbers are always solid at levels, I wish this was more widely known as companies want to keep pay bands secret to drive down engineer's wages. Good work on the site and thanks!

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

#69

Post by enra »

_qwfv wrote: post #5

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…

Also people forget you cannot compare equity compensation just based on quoted value between companies. Even public companies have different growth trajectories.

Equity always carries added upside (and downside) value. Earlier you join the company, more risk there is, longer it takes to pay off, and but also more equity upside you have.

Google stock has 3x in the last 5 years. Equity in company 5 years before pre-IPO can increase in value 20x. Equity in a 1-2 old startup can increase 100x or more sometimes.

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

#70

Post by fwiwm2c »

These numbers are ridiculously low. Here is what a typical FAANG setup pays you in the bay area (Source: I have worked in a couple of them):

IC5 Eng (~5 yrs exp): $350k/yr all in (cash+stock+bonus) IC6 Eng (~9 yrs exp): $550k/yr all in IC7 Eng (~12 yrs exp and you are exceptional): $800k/yr

As you go from IC5 to IC7, your stock and bonus goes up (as expected). A typical IC7 will earn around $250k in cash, ~25% bonus (on the base cash salary) and the rest in stock.

Now those $2M houses don't sound too expensive right?

Post reply on HN