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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#101

Post by lacker »

paxys wrote: post #16

There's a huge difference between early stage and mid-late stage private companies. For the latter, you are almost always getting RSUs rather than options, so you don't have to pay taxes out of pocket to exercise them. It's also wrong to automatically consider all stock grants to be worth $0 just because you can't immediately sell them. If Stripe or Databricks offers you a million dollars worth of shares today it'll…

Yes! This advice to value shares of private companies at zero is buried deep in the article, but I think it renders the article quite misleading.

The right thing to do is to use your own judgment to estimate the value of the stock. A small stake in a promising early-stage company really is worth something. There just isn't a clean formula for how much it's worth.

When you really think hard about it, this will push you toward working for companies that are more likely to succeed. If you treat all stock offers like they are worth zero, that will push you toward working for companies that don't offer their employees stock, and that are not likely to succeed. Over time, those companies just don't attract the best coworkers. So you're really hurting your career if you decide that you don't care about the stock, even besides the direct financial hit.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#102

Post by sweezyjeezy »

nine_zeros wrote: post #65
beebmam wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are these numbers so massively different across the world? Do European companies generate that much less revenue? Or are labor unions in Europe just that much less effective at bargaining? Or is productivity that much lower in Europe? (I'm not sold on any of these)

The addressable customer market is one big difference. American companies sell to the world. Eastern EU companies are largely stuck with eastern Europe or EU at large. The other difference is that smaller addressable market also means fewer problems to solve and thus fewer companies. As an example, engineers in China, India and Indonesia are making way more that $18k these days because there are many problems to solv…

But can American companies not hire these Eastern European developers to do this? If yes, why do the US salaries stay an order of magnitude larger?

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#103

Post by adammarples »

websap wrote: post #37
m_ke wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know a lot of FAANG people getting 500-600K packages. Makes it hard to even think about startups.

Depends on your definition of Startup, late stage companies like Stripe and Databricks are definitely matching/beating these offers. Mid-stage companies like Convoy are also going very high, but there is an upside with those companies. Don't know much about early stage, but a few of my acquaintances are moving from FAANG companies to early stage companies to play the lottery.

Stripe being founded 12 years ago with 7 billion in revenue I don't call a startup. Might as well call facebook a startup at this point. Databricks is 8 years old. They are just private.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#104

Post by nonameiguess »

beebmam wrote: post #23
KronisLV wrote: post #14

As someone who works in an Eastern European country, i also did a writeup on how much i've made over the years and how that figure has changed, while working for a local company: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings In short, this year i'll probably make around 18k Euros, in total. I guess that just goes to show how different the situation is depending on where you live and where you're employed.

Why are these numbers so massively different across the world? Do European companies generate that much less revenue? Or are labor unions in Europe just that much less effective at bargaining? Or is productivity that much lower in Europe? (I'm not sold on any of these)

What country? Serbia's GDP per capita is about 1/10 of the United States. Software developers make less money there because everyone makes less money there.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#105

Post by headphoneswater »

it's weird it looks like I make half of what I could as a senior, espcially in a 'hard' algorithm heavy domain

but I still oddly don't want to work for them, half the pay is still decently middle class and I'm very happy overall

there's also the internal argument I've had in that most of them don't really do anything interesting (usually things that were good ideas years ago)and even if they did odds that I'd be near what was are slim

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#106

Post by quickthrower2 »

azinman2 wrote: post #33
gpt5 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy to me that you can basically make a lifetime of earning doing the same job in Silicon Valley for one year

Except the cost of living is wayyy lower

But that’s not the reason millions of people aren’t flocking to the US to get those higher wages.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#107

Post by spullara »

erehweb wrote: post #86
Ginden wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety nets provided by European countries are intended mainly for not ending homeless. If you are running business, your loses are opportunity costs. Eg. you have already 100k EUR yearly salary and you decide to try running startup. If it fails after 5 years, so you didn't get any money from it (eg. you had to paid debts at the end), you probably lost 500k EUR in opportunity cost. Progressive taxes incentivize risk…

The healthcare safety net is a very big one, and a big disincentive to risk-taking in the U.S.

Must be causing the huge lack of entrepreneurship in the US vs the rest of the world. /s

https://ceoworld.biz/2021/01/03/worlds-most-entrepreneurial-...

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#108

Post by ecshafer »

cushychicken wrote: post #83
metalliqaz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no kidding. I was shocked at the numbers in this article. A 15-year engineer in aerospace gets you ~120k.

I've seen fpga engineers pull down $150k Real drought of senior talent in that area

A lot of the fpga talent is going towards Finance and ML companies nowadays from what I have seen, that's probably causing the salaries to bump up in non finance world.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#109

Post by cosmodisk »

Aromasin wrote: post #56
beaconstudios wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the UK, junior is £20-40k, mid-level is around £40-60k, lead can be around £60-100k. Very rough numbers, and adjust upwards slightly for London. The big money is in contracting in the UK, which would be our accessible FAANG-equivalent.

Either contracting, or alternatively, consulting. Companies like Cambridge Consulting and et al (please correct me if I'm wrong, I only know this through word of mouth) earn more in line with our US counterparts supposedly. Additionally, our country is much more focused on financial services. You can make 2-3x the average engineer salary there. The rest of the market seem content paying far below, and also content ha…

"The rest of the market seem content paying far below, and also content having an eternal manpower shortage as a result it seems"

And also nobody hears about them outside M25. Outside M25 and it looks like salaries in Poland or Estonia seem to be identical. Never really understood it..

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#110

Post by nonameiguess »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #102
nine_zeros wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The addressable customer market is one big difference. American companies sell to the world. Eastern EU companies are largely stuck with eastern Europe or EU at large. The other difference is that smaller addressable market also means fewer problems to solve and thus fewer companies. As an example, engineers in China, India and Indonesia are making way more that $18k these days because there are many problems to solv…

But can American companies not hire these Eastern European developers to do this? If yes, why do the US salaries stay an order of magnitude larger?

In some cases, they can. A friend of mine is a project manager for CC Bill, a payment processor for porn sites. They hire almost exclusively from eastern Europe for software development. But if you want to do business with the US government or financial or healthcare industries, i.e. where most of the money is if you're not an ad tech giant, you're largely restricted to hiring US persons. That doesn't mean they need to be citizens, but they need to live in the US, and live here legally, which largely means they can command US wages.
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