Is there any data on what the big companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, ...) are starting software engineers at? Anecdotally, friends starting at Google out of school are getting base salary offers closer to the senior numbers here than the junior numbers.
Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
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Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#12I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".
> Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience?
Isn't that what a Principal Engineer is for?
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#13This should probably be titled Silicon Valley startup salaries by experience level.
Yea at startups you often have way more flexibility to grant larger options blocks or a bit more equity to rockstars to bring them in while the salary is closely eyed by the investors to keep burn rate low. So startup salaries are by definition lower and “just enough” to get people come there. If they added something like “assumed value of options or equity when I first joined” that would be useful to understand. The reality is a ton of people at senior levels get paid way more than 150k in Silicon Valley. Plus there are levels above senior at virtually all companies.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#14These numbers reinforce what I think anytime someone suggests I move to California to "further my career." Fuck that.
While I agree cost of living is a tough pill to swallow in California, a salary table is irrelevant to the concept of 'furthering ones's career'. To further your career is, in fact, usually about taking something that is not financially beneficial but valuable for the experience or worldview that it imparts.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#15Those figures do not justify giving up a job in a cheap cost of living area. These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#16These numbers reinforce what I think anytime someone suggests I move to California to "further my career." Fuck that.
The compensation is too low? Look at paysa.com for total compensation numbers.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#17I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV. Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".
My employer uses Principal Software Engineer/Developer.
The full series is Associate x, x, Senior x, Principal x, Senior Principal x.
We also have roughly parallel titles for QA/Test Engineers and Software Architects.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#18(Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.) I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior. One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startup…
This is definitely an artifact of your data focusing on startups. These numbers are shockingly low for the larger or established companies.
I also think focusing on base salary may have been an easier choice but it is really doesn't paint an accurate picture. Between bonuses and stock I've had years where my base salary was roughly half of my overall compensation.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#19It's amazing that career lengths in this business are split into "first few years", "1-3+ years" and "5-7+ years", given that most people will have careers of 40 years or more.
They're taking into account the ageism that occurs in SV.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#202% equity is 99th percentile?
The future might look back on us and wonder why employees ever put up with this.