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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.

#181

Post by ghaff »

dcolkitt wrote: post #62
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 weal…

Linus Torvalds makes a lot less than Tom Brady. He basically makes as much as the executive director at the Linux Foundation, something over $600K, but nothing extraordinary by SV standards. And there's no equity associated with the LF.

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

#182

Post by bradlys »

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/

Can you add more nuance for private companies? It is hard to determine what people got at private companies because no one is using a consistent formula. It'd be good if everyone just gave number of shares they received (unless it's some other format like how Stripe does it) for private firms.

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

#183

Post by legerdemain »

jjjeii3 wrote: post #180
legerdemain wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from family experience, here's what actually happens: someone driving an expensive car drunk hits you . Then they pay a small bribe and get away with impunity.

In Germany you don't even need money to only get probation for such a deadly crash incident: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https:/...

To make sure we're on the same page, the grandparent is describing this as a positive part of living in Ukraine.

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

#184

Post by angry-tempest »

vmception wrote: post #3
whorleater wrote: post #2

interesting how different this is from the salaries at large companies on levels.fyi. annoyingly, the dice URL is broken currently, so I can't verify the underlying dataset.

yeah huge information asymmetry as people are used to looking up "salary" versus "total compensation" these salaries are 1/3rd to 1/10th of what people actually make, and thats not a statistical outlier with the stock appreciation over the last few years

1/3rd I can agree with, but 1/10th?? That has to be a senior L7/L8 salary

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

#185

Post by iaw »

Justsignedup wrote: post #119
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/

Just looking at this data I question why even bother working for a startup. Getting paid 200k at a startup is a rarity, usually with poor health benefits. Lots of work and a hope that you can make up the difference in case of a huge sale. Am I looking at it wrong?

Nope, that's why FAANG pays so much: startups can't compete and they get a monopoly on talent.

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

#186

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF »

cromka wrote: post #179
Impossible wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L7 is rare though, and most of them have more than 12 YOE (or maybe they have 12 YOE at the company). Levels.fyi seems to only have 38 data points for FB for example ( https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... ) and 47 for Google ( https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi... ) vs. 490 and 457 L5 entries. It's probably safe to say if you get to L7 you're in the top 5% of engin…

What does EM stand for? Something with management, I presume?

Engineering Manager

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

#187

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF »

dilyevsky wrote: post #77
riantogo wrote: post #49

For those outside Silicon Valley why might think, "you could live like a king with that kind of money", here is a potential home you are looking at ($2M, 1200 sqft, 7 rated schools): https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...

You do realize it’s the price of a lot? That house is a teardown

Yeah but the houses nearby are not that much better, look at this: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3561-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...

$2.7M for a 100x50 lot and a 4 bedroom? That's mansion money pretty much anywhere. Hell you can even get a nice place in NY for that much.

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

#188

Post by bit_logic »

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/

https://www.levels.fyi/2020/

I need some help interpreting the location data. For example, if you click on Los Angeles, there's a bar chart with median and different percentiles. I assume this is across all engineer levels (I - V). But I'm interested in compensation for a level at a location.

Going by years of experience, my level is Staff (IV) and the description notes that this is 10% of all engineers. Looking at the LA bar chart, the 90th percentile is around $325k total compensation. So a Staff level engineer in the LA area should expect around this much. Does this analysis seem correct with the given data?

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

#189

Post by I_AM_A_SMURF »

riantogo wrote: post #49

For those outside Silicon Valley why might think, "you could live like a king with that kind of money", here is a potential home you are looking at ($2M, 1200 sqft, 7 rated schools): https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...

Yeah I started the interview process with Apple and they mentioned that we would have to relocate to the bay. Wife and I looked up house prices and we were like NOPE.

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

#190

Post by Mehdi2277 »

ska wrote: post #157
Justsignedup wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looking at this data I question why even bother working for a startup. Getting paid 200k at a startup is a rarity, usually with poor health benefits. Lots of work and a hope that you can make up the difference in case of a huge sale. Am I looking at it wrong?

> Am I looking at it wrong? It all depends on what you want out of your work. The balance has shifted semi recently so that if you want to maximize your expected earnings, for most tech area engineers the answer has shifted from "pick the right startup" or maybe "go be a quant if you can" to "go work for FAANG". Things get a lot more complicated if you are not merely optimizing for income.

Quants still pay a silly amount that being a quant at a top firm (citadel, jane street, HRT, etc) still out pays FAANG most of the time. A candidate that interviews well and negotiates some can go for 300-400k new grad bachelors to those firms. That's not doable at FAANG. For FAANGs, over 300k without equity growth requires senior level or top band mid level. 400k needs senior level. While for citadel they're willing to immediately go that high. The growth in pay is also high in finance although it is very bonus heavy so performance matters a lot more than other places.
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