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Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

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Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#131

Post by j_baker »

raldi wrote: post #37

Speaking as a Google engineer: There are three components to compensation here. Base salary, annual cash bonus, and stock grants. When he says he "takes home" $250k, he probably means the sum of all three. When the author says he thought the average Google salary was $130k, he might be referring just to the base. Most of the comments in this thread are similarly ambiguous. If you post a comment, please be clear about…

Not to mention that they may get a retention bonus if they were part of a startup that was recently acquired. This could easily add up to $250k.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#132

Post by Selvik »

veyron wrote: post #48

I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund. My programmer friends at hedge funds (all between 22 and 26) are averaging 500K salary with 100K bonuses (note: as a programmer, base is much higher but bonus is lower). So if google isn't paying those types of numbers to people, then money cannot be the only factor at play.

What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#133

Post by socratic »

Ignoring passion, does it make sense economically to join a startup in the Bay Area?

It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area to be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus + equity. Over 30 years, that's a more or less guaranteed $5m -- 7.5m before taxes from a single income. (Ignoring things like promotions and older engineers possibly needing to retrain.)

If you're not an early employee at the next Google, or a co-founder of a to-be-talent-acquired company, is it likely at all that you will beat those numbers at a string of startups? And if you do beat those numbers at a startup, is it because you're basically doing the same work you would be doing at Google anyway, likely ads or infrastructure?

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#135

Post by xiaoma »

tptacek wrote: post #125
xiaoma wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst possible outcome would have been accepting the offer at $110k, and nobody at your company would care either way because the difference is bat guano to them. That's a pretty unimaginative worst possible offer. The company could pay you 115k, resent it, and use it as justification to give you various shit-work. I've seen that happen to a friend and it actually hurt his mid term learning and career growth. I…

Any company that treats you like shit because you negotiated a 5k bump over their first comp offer is a company you are better off not working for. And, please, read that sentence again. The worst case scenario is that you accept their first offer and don't find out until you've spent a year and a half of your life working there that the company isn't worth working for. That is the worst case.

There's a difference between giving someone extra work, likely "shit work" and treating someone like shit. More than one employee at excellent companies has been assigned more work due to having a higher salary than colleagues at the same grade. This is an easy, even somewhat logical rationalization for a manager to make.

The "worst case" you put forward is still far from convincing. In work, black swans are generally positive. If a typical job has a value of x, most will be between .8x and 1.2x, but a few will be 10x or even 100x. Outside the military, where death is on the line, -100x jobs are very, very rare compared to +100x jobs.

Wasting a year and a half in a ho-hum environment is not as big a price as missing a once in a lifetime opportunity due to over negotiation. In the opposite vein, the amazing opportunities often come at a reduced salary. How much less would Warren Buffet be worth today if he'd tried to negotiate a higher salary with Benjamin Graham instead of doing the exact opposite?

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#136

Post by tptacek »

nikcub wrote: post #109
Woost wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't as simple as "push for equity". There are plenty of companies where equity makes no sense (say, a private consulting company, or a company with no plans to sell a la 37signals) What other options are there? Guaranteed end of year bonuses? Commissions in the form of profit sharing?

It is funny that options are now so associated with a company exiting that we totally forget that their original purpose was as an efficient mechanism for profit sharing

I was thinking exactly the same thing, about the parallels between speculative bets on appreciation and dividends.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#137

Post by tptacek »

ericd wrote: post #118
veyron wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"brunch" is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch, and refers to a meal that occurs in the late morning in lieu of separate breakfast and lunch meals. This satisfies the 3 conditions: - constituents must be words "brunch" is a combination of "breakfast" and "lunch" - blending sounds from the words the beginning sounds like "breakfast" and the end sounds like "lunch" - combining meanings of the words described above.

And cartelicious: -Constituents must be words "cartelicious" is a combination of "cartel" and "delicious" -Blending sounds from the words the beginning sounds like "cartel" and the end sounds like "delicious" -Combining meanings of the words It's delicious cartel action, for repugnant values of delicious. I don't think this one is a strict requirement, in any case. This is getting a bit too pedantic.

This is a thread with all the charm of a Wikipedia Talk: page argument. Maybe we can just let it die.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#138

Post by zem »

Selvik wrote: post #128
fake_handle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to the data pool: I'm also an under-30 engineer making ~250k in the Bay Area (at a publicly-traded gaming company, not at Google). My company has six pay grades for pure engineers; I'm at the second highest. My 2011 comp breaks down as follows: * 166k base * 45k bonus * 35k stock grants (RSUs) Note this does not include 401k matching, stock purchase plan, healthcare, or any other quantifiable perks. When I too…

Isn't a perfect math score very hard to get, something like the upper 1%ile? Do you know your IQ? I'm scandinavian and could do a traditional finance/consulting/management/accounting thing in my home country but the software industry seems far more fascinating. I'm afraid my 120 to 125 iq means I'm too stupid to do well in SV though.

all your iq score really measures is how well you do in iq tests. if you have an interest in and a basic aptitude for programming, you should be fine.

(also, a perfect math score in the sat isn't impossibly hard - the level of mathematics is probably lower than your last school exam. it just takes a lot of practice to do that many questions fast and accurately.)

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#139

Post by yuhong »

veyron wrote: post #58
cletus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. (d) in particular is worth stressing. There is no difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. There is simply an unwillingness to pay them what they're worth and give them an environment in which they'd want to work. Supply and demand. It's pretty simple. Yet so many (typically business types) want to treat engineers as an interchangeable cost center. "5 years ago an engineer cost $100k so I refuse to pay…

The reason why business types see engineers as cost centers is because engineers have positioned themselves that way. Engineers pushed for higher salary in lieu of the variable upside. What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures even if the company is seeing…

In fact, I think this problem is even worse in the CEO world due to the legacy MBA culture of greed.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#140

Post by georgemcbay »

veyron wrote: post #58
cletus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. (d) in particular is worth stressing. There is no difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. There is simply an unwillingness to pay them what they're worth and give them an environment in which they'd want to work. Supply and demand. It's pretty simple. Yet so many (typically business types) want to treat engineers as an interchangeable cost center. "5 years ago an engineer cost $100k so I refuse to pay…

The reason why business types see engineers as cost centers is because engineers have positioned themselves that way. Engineers pushed for higher salary in lieu of the variable upside. What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures even if the company is seeing…

"What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures"

A lot of engineers I know are like this because they were badly burned earlier on in their careers with promises of equity (while working below-market paying job for that equity) that turned into dust (due to massive dilution and other factors) even when the company had a very successful exit.

One could argue there they only have themselves to blame for not being sure of the actual value of their position in all possible exit situations, but now you're arguing they shouldn't just be engineers but also financial/contract law experts, which is especially unrealistic when they are just getting out of school.

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