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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

#181

Post by adtac »

morgtheborg wrote: post #162
_throwawayyyyy1 wrote: post #56

I'm in Boston & went through an intensive FT job search here about 18 months ago. I'm a mobile developer with 20+ years total experience in desktop, backend, web+mobile, product management, started my own company, etc. Worked with lots of recruiters, personal network etc., felt like I really got a sense of what the salary landscape is here. Some facts: - I was leaving a job at a hot unicorn startup that paid $125K ba…

Yes. You didn't really negotiate. Ideally you interview broadly, then use the higher offers at companies that aren't you top choice to boost the offers from companies that aren't your top choice that offered less---and then use those offers to boost your actual top choice. For example, company A offered 100k, B offered 120k, and C offered 130k. You want company A. You say to company B that company C offered 130k and…

How would you sync your interviewing so that you have a decently sized, overlapping window where you can negotiate with multiple companies? I'd imagine these negotiations take about a month in total. That must mean that (earliestDeadline - latestOffer) must be at least that long.

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

#182

Post by adtac »

malvosenior wrote: post #173
umeshunni wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that FAANG (+Microsoft) employ close to quarter of a million software engineers and probably represent 50%+ of hiring in a given year, it seems weird to ignore those.

250k engineers at FAANG sounds really high. Do you have a source for those numbers?

250k is really pushing it.

I remember reading a Google earnings report that said they had 90k employees in total. Assuming Amazon/Microsoft to be larger and assuming Netflix to be smaller, we can take Google to be the average. Of that, even if 50% was engineering, we'd only have 250k FAANG engineers worldwide. In the US, I'd guesstimate ~100k.

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

#183

Post by cynoclast »

esoterica wrote: post #45
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…

> 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…

That's not true. I'm lazy (efficient) and I let my recruiter get me passed the HR shenanigans.

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

#184

Post by galazzah »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #30
garyguo110 wrote: post #4

It's nice to know what a competitive base salary is for an engineer but when negotiating an offer I think you really should be looking at Total Compensation. RSU, Stock Options, Bonuses all play a very significant role when looking at offers. Especially if you work at one of the large tech companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) the stock grants are a VERY large portion of your compensation.

You should, but it looks like triplebyte was explicitly ignoring that because it would add too many dimensions to the graph and those benefits are hard to value. Stock options are not a liquid asset, and their value can change wildly and unpredictably. Ask all those programmers around in 2001 how much their options were worth.

Stocks are a major part of compensation for tech companies. Looking at just salary is an incomplete picture and also isn't fair for job-seekers. Fwiw this page has compensation data with break down by RSU, bonus, etc: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html

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

#185

Post by lugg »

adtac wrote: post #181
morgtheborg wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You didn't really negotiate. Ideally you interview broadly, then use the higher offers at companies that aren't you top choice to boost the offers from companies that aren't your top choice that offered less---and then use those offers to boost your actual top choice. For example, company A offered 100k, B offered 120k, and C offered 130k. You want company A. You say to company B that company C offered 130k and…

How would you sync your interviewing so that you have a decently sized, overlapping window where you can negotiate with multiple companies? I'd imagine these negotiations take about a month in total. That must mean that (earliestDeadline - latestOffer) must be at least that long.

Its just a scheduling thing, line up all your interviews into a single week. Similarly, when they start coming back, push them out into the week following so you have room for the slow responses to catch up.

You can reasonably fit in 5-6 interviews into a week.

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

#186

Post by jammygit »

danielparks wrote: post #15
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…

I suspect the boot camp thing is signaling. We don't quite know what to expect from boot camps yet. I'm a high school drop out with no diploma. It's never come up during any hiring process in the 17 years I've been doing this. That said, I've only had two long term jobs. I spent years doing contract work, and I mostly got contracts by word of mouth. I've been on a number of hiring teams, mostly at Puppet. I was also…

I envy you. University was not fun for me, and everything I know how to do was from skipping class.

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

#187

Post by jniedrauer »

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…

Self-taught programmer here. A long time ago, I lucked out with an internal promotion that helped me bridge the gap from support to engineering. Getting a foot in the door was the hard part. Ever since then, lack of a degree has been a non-factor during the hiring process. I've got years of experience and plenty of references to vouch for my abilities.

The only thing I feel like I missed out on compared to a CS grad is a better intuition for big O. I just don't have any use for it in real life, so it never really clicked. Good benchmarking tools are all I've ever needed. But it would be nice for my own intellectual gratification.

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

#188

Post by Cookingboy »

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?

This is base salary, a large portion of Google compensation is GSU.

A director at Google wouldn't be making much more than $200k in base salary, but their total comp can easily exceed $1M if you count stocks.

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

#189

Post by grigjd3 »

jniedrauer wrote: post #187
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…

Self-taught programmer here. A long time ago, I lucked out with an internal promotion that helped me bridge the gap from support to engineering. Getting a foot in the door was the hard part. Ever since then, lack of a degree has been a non-factor during the hiring process. I've got years of experience and plenty of references to vouch for my abilities. The only thing I feel like I missed out on compared to a CS grad…

I find Big O to be useful when designing solutions just to be able to quickly decide what data structures are appropriate for a task, though, admittedly, this doesn't come up that often.

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

#190

Post by seancoleman »

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! What a great tool. This is helping ensure we higher at market rates.

I think I may have found a tiny bug: the “all Triplebyte” dropdown seems to always reset the previous dropdown to “all company sizes” and visa versa so it’s impossible to have both selected to something other than the first options. Perhaps this is because data doesn’t exist for both? Maybe it’s just a slightly confusing UX.

It’s such a thoughtfully considered tool that I thought you’d appreciate my considered feedback.

Thanks!

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