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We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

tldr.tech

101–110 of 114 posts

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#101

I don't know why no one else has been asking this but why are you keeping us EU engineers high and dry? No wonder we're making half or less of our US compatriots!

We have salaries for EU as well! Here's a list of locations: https://levels.fyi/locations/

We definitely have a lot of work to do to make international support better. We're working on better localization features right now.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#102
post #98

Love the idea, recently got referred to it by a friend. Hopefully it will help the "open salaries" movement I'm more interested in the business side of things e.g. how do you plan on monetising this app?

We currently make most of our revenue by helping job candidates negotiate their compensation packages by connecting them to someone on our team of experienced tech recruiters. We've helped thousands of people to date negotiate their salaries up!

More info at https://levels.fyi/services/

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#103
post #61
post #25

It feels like there are two classes of engineers in the US. One class of engineers makes 60k-120k and the other makes 150k-500k. Is this just a really well kept secret? I don't really see many engineers trying to migrate from the first class to the second class. I'd expect most software engineers would jump through hoops at the prospect of doubling their salary.

For every job that it's open in one of the FAANG, recruiters get thousands of applications. It sounds like many are trying, but the vast majority never gets a call back. Others cannot pass the interview. Others again are not interested in working in a very demanding environment. I worked at a FAANGs, now I work in lower-tier tech company. I make 3/4 (low-ish upper tier) of what I used to make, I work 1/8 of the hours…

$300k at 5-10hrs/week is likely to be obscenely obscure and not a good reference point for anyone.

Yours would be way more desirable than the FAANG stuff. People could moonlight for your job easily…

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve wondered about this myself - might you have any more information or be able to point me/us to any particularly good data sources?

I've done both, in my experience at a FAANG you choose your own WLB. If you want to go for a promotion, you're going to have to work a lot. If you want to just get by for a couple years and vest stock, that's an option too. I think people also put a lot of pressure on themselves because it's unclear where the bar is and they don't want to get fired for performance reasons. At a smaller company there simply isn't that…

> At a smaller company there simply isn't that much work to do, nor is there much of a path for promotion (when your boss is the CTO...)

Ouch! That’s exactly right. Ultimately I bailed on small/medium companies because of the “boss is the CTO” promotion problem. There’s nothing to grow into at a smaller company. Also, most of them have no technical promotion track for Individual Contributors. You start at Junior Engineer, maybe get promoted to Senior Engineer, and that’s it. No more level ups unless you want to people-manage, which is a whole different skill set.

Contrast that with some place like Google, that has something like 7 or so distinct engineering levels with huge pay bumps and responsibility bumps between each of them! If you are a ladder climber by nature, the smaller company will infuriate you.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#105
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t retiring early exactly what it offers? A 500k job would pay the equivalent of ten years of work (ish… taxes).

Not for most people. A silicon valley job means a silicon valley house and mortgage - you're in for at least a couple of million for a house in those parts, and it'll be fairly modest by US standards. If you have kids, you have silicon valley school fees and activities. And since all your new friends are silicon valley friends with silicon valley money in their pocket, all your own activities are going to grow more e…

And that would be easy if you didn't raise kids or have a spouse that will very quickly be acclimated to all of this. Yanking the rug so you can retire early? That's a quick way to ensure you'll be back at work anyway, because your spouse may take the kids and bail.

It's only a for-sure viable option for those that never marry or have children. And even then I'd caution someone to do it as long as you possibly can stand, you have no idea what lies ahead expense wise in life in your long retirement.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#106
post #97
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ covers this well. This skew is not obvious to people outside Silicon Valley, but it's discussed more now that sites like levels.fyi are providing data. Even more shocking is the split between SV/NYC/SEA salaries and the rest of the world. When the Google internal Salary Spreadsheet was created, people were amazed and the difference in salaries between LON/EU SWEs and US SWEs g…

Equally skilled at engineering, but is there something special USA engineers bring to the table to warrant a higher salary? Easier to work with? More business sense? Longer hours/less holidays? Better understanding of the target market? Don’t get me wrong. it might just be that life’s not fair.

I'm American but have worked in the EU, France specifically. There's no comparison in how hard you're pushed in the US vs over there, as you're insinuating. Everyone knows that part. And most of us on the US side are not in Silicon Valley nor do we make those wages. The EU guys have the better deal. They just need to actually secure full-time employment at all, which is hard to do there outside of Germany. That's the part no one will tell you.

It won't happen here, because our working class is asleep to the economic game being played, but the best blend is probably the UK and it's where we need to head as far as our demands.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup the higher you go in level, the larger your stock compensation is to tie you to company growth and align incentives. A company that's the exception to this is Netflix: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Eng... They have one level and pay all cash with an option to convert some of it to equity.

I thought Netflix let you pick the exact split between cash and equity no? For example, for a 500k salary you could say, I want 200k cash, and 300k in stock

It's ESPP up to a certain limit, so not as flexible of a choice

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#108

I don't know why no one else has been asking this but why are you keeping us EU engineers high and dry? No wonder we're making half or less of our US compatriots!

We have salaries for EU as well! Here's a list of locations: https://levels.fyi/locations/ We definitely have a lot of work to do to make international support better. We're working on better localization features right now.

Here's a vote for tiny Denmark. We're starving for good salary comparison sites.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for most people. A silicon valley job means a silicon valley house and mortgage - you're in for at least a couple of million for a house in those parts, and it'll be fairly modest by US standards. If you have kids, you have silicon valley school fees and activities. And since all your new friends are silicon valley friends with silicon valley money in their pocket, all your own activities are going to grow more e…

The house can be sold though, not exactly "spent" money beyond the buying/selling/maintenance fees

Assuming you didn't buy too close to the annual forest fires, and neither the mortgage crisis or the pandemic wiped out housing prices in your area, yes.

Unfortunately hard to predict those events at the time of house purchase. Some people do very well on Bay Area real estate, some not so well.

Re: We're Levels.fyi, the most accurate resource for tech salaries, ask us anything

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The house can be sold though, not exactly "spent" money beyond the buying/selling/maintenance fees

Assuming you didn't buy too close to the annual forest fires, and neither the mortgage crisis or the pandemic wiped out housing prices in your area, yes. Unfortunately hard to predict those events at the time of house purchase. Some people do very well on Bay Area real estate, some not so well.

Yeah, it's hard to predict events like that in any asset class, what's your point? Keep it in cash?

In what areas did the pandemic wipe out housing prices?

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