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Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

triplebyte.com

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Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#121

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

rifung wrote: post #77
esoterica wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. The sample set of people using TripleByte is not going to be remotely representative of the market for developers as a whole. Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters…

> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters to spray their resume around; they are going to be applying directly to the companies they want to work at or getting headhunted by the companies themselves. Why are those mutually exclusive? I like to think I have a decent resume and would apply to companies directly but if I can get more offers using Triplebyte why wouldnt I? Isn't…

There is a simple reason: scarcity of talent. Talent that can be commoditized through a platform instantly becomes cheaper, with employers much more easily able to sift through inventory (candidates) and look for deals or just waste peoples’ time gathering market data on interview performance.

If you’re sincerely highly talented, you’re not going to advertise yourself as a commodity on a platform. Your increased skill may not have a chance to be displayed because the platform uses foolish things like coding trivia or a black box proprietary method for recommending salary ranges for candidates like you, or offers automatic ways to find similar candidates so that if employers don’t like your salary demands, they can use your characteristics to tailor a search for a cheaper version of you.

Putting yourself on a platform like TripleByte essentially instantly signals that you’re on the cheap, commodity end of the spectrum (and yes employers think of $130k as cheap salary for this type of position).

Using TripleByte is like cheapening your personal brand. In fact it’s even worse because you’re voluntarily doing it and voluntarily centralizing all of this interview performance data and profile data for them.

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#122

Post by [deleted] »

martin_ wrote: post #10
beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Awesome tool! Though I'm personally happy to hear compensation isn't weighted based on formal education, I'm not sure I'd f eel the same way if I did complete University... I'm self-taught without a degree, ended up moving from Wales to Silicon Valley when I was 20 and only really felt education was a concern for my first role, and visa. Many of the companies who didn't respond to my application years ago now target…

[deleted]

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#123

Post by dang »

wallflower wrote: post #109
chillacy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is really better labeled: "How much software engineers on triplebyte received in offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle"

While I suspect the title will not be changed for SEO/targeting reasons, a slight improvement on your title is: “How much software engineers on Triplebyte received in base salary offers in SF, NYC, and Seattle” Yes, I know HTML titles cannot do any emphasis. EDIT: HN title has now been improved by dang. To be more accurate about “SEO/targeting”, I meant the title on the blog hosted by Triplebyte: “How much money do S…

We're happy to change titles to make them more accurate, but someone's going to need to make it fit 80 chars.

Edit: I took a shot. "Triplebyte" doesn't fit, but probably shouldn't be in there anyway; it's already next to the title.

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#124

Post by dang »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #115
beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Hey Ben I really hate how your company spams every web page I visit. I just wanted to say that and look forward to your company eventually going out of business.

Attacking another user like that will get you banned here. We've warned you about this before, as well as about other guideline violations.

Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart? It would be great if you'd contribute just out of curiosity and avoid poisoning the well. Maybe you don't owe better to companies that annoy you, but you owe better to the community here.

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#125

Post by purple_ducks »

bluedino wrote: post #72
ams6110 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever need to provide a resume/CV? If so were you honest about your education? Did you just omit it?

I've had companies ask for high school transcripts. What the heck.

That sounds like HR in those companies had way too much power.

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#126

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

> “One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in other industries”

Why are you mistakenly confusing education for education signalling?

There are many types of skills required to be an effective software engineer. Most of them have nothing to do with mastery of a programming language or technical tool, and have zero connection to solving coding puzzles in a short timeframe or memorizing answers to classic systems design questions.

You need to be a skilled writer and researcher to deduce business use cases and write effective summaries, presentations or user documentation.

You need appreciation for potentially many other knowledge domains, from legal topics & security to applied sciences. Having basic coursework in calculus, chemistry, physics, rhetoric, history & civics, etc., are crucially important in business settings.

It seems so tone deaf to me to baldly state that education signalling is a factor here, as if signalling was the phenomenon (it’s not).

Education (as opposed to education signalling) is a very valuable thing, and certainly fosters more effective engineers by a landslide.

The popularity of hiring from bootcamps or non-traditional engineering backgrounds is a commoditization issue, meant to suppress wages from growing as labor productivity creates dramatically greater returns.

There’s no shortage of engineers... there’s a shortage of “cheap” engineers (and yes, $130k is a cheap price for these types of hires).

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#127

Post by ohaideredevs »

beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

So are $300,000 Google salaries a myth, or Triplebyte doesn't place with FAANG?

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#128

Post by echevil »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #127
beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

So are $300,000 Google salaries a myth, or Triplebyte doesn't place with FAANG?

The base salary portion would not be too different

Re: Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle

#129

Post by BonesJustice »

realbarack wrote: post #59
BonesJustice wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a rather glaring omission—as a software engineer in NYC, roughly 55% of my total annual compensation comes in the form of a cash bonus. Since total compensation tends to vary more significantly than base salary, I would continue showing the salary-only graph by default, with an option to toggle total compensation as a second series.

Wow, over half? Is this a finance company?

Whoops, brain fart: that should have been 45%. But yes, I work in finance.

It's definitely not unheard of for bonuses of top engineers to reach multiples of their base salary. I'm not aware of compensation being that lopsided where I work, but it purportedly happens at places like Two Sigma.

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