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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

#261

Post by learc83 »

cm2012 wrote: post #32
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…

Out of curiosity, what does the data look like for the top 10 most elite colleges vs all other colleges? My guess is all other colleges combined look more like boot camp data.

The top 10 elite colleges don't graduate enough students, and employees from those schools don't make enough extra to have that great an impact on base compensation.

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

screye wrote: post #110

I am not sure about these numbers. These base estimates are much higher than what sites like Levels.fyi and anecdotal numbers I've collected from my new grad peers. At the new grad level, Base salary numbers are $125-135k:Google, $105-115k:MSFT,Amazon,FB. The base salary numbers at other unicorns don't sound much different either. I am not saying that TB's numbers are wrong. But, there has to be some reason for the h…

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by freyir »

halis wrote: post #64

That's sad. For the senior levels, you can almost make that much in St. Louis.

Bay Area tech companies are also matching this base pay with RSU's, and total compensation should be roughly twice this. If companies are offering that much in St. Louis, sign me up.

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

#264

Post by freyir »

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.

If I'm being cynical, TripleByte left this out on purpose. From what I've heard, they're mainly linking developers up with startup roles that don't pay much more than this (except perhaps in monopoly-money equity).

Of course, you'd be better off going to FANG or a (soon-to-IPO) unicorn where you'd make double these amounts with RSUs factored in. But if you can get in there, you probably don't need to go through TripleByte.

Then again, TripleByte also created https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html so maybe I am just being cynical.

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

#265

Post by draw_down »

esoterica wrote: post #34

Base salary is a pretty useless statistic in tech. Almost all higher paying jobs are going to have a large component of the compensation in equity or discretionary bonuses.

People make this much money in base salary, believe it.

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

#266

Post by lsc »

out of curiosity, how come you measure base, rather than total comp? are the bonus and RSU comp pretty similar among top-tier companies?

It seems like only comparing base makes it harder to compare smaller companies (which usually give you all your comp as base) with larger companies (where 30% seems to be rsu and bonus)

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

#267

Post by geggam »

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…

No degree for me, in your 91st percentile

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

#268

Post by mcv »

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 studied AI but never finished it. Dropped out just before starting on my Master's thesis. Bachelor's didn't exist here at the time, so no degree. I only once encountered a job where this was a problem. By now, my CV is much more relevant than any degree.

I've also seen people graduate who couldn't do anything, so a CS degree is not proof that someone can do the job, and not having it is not proof that someone can't. I think university education is still extremely valuable, and I'm glad I've had it, but more for what I learned than for the piece of paper.

That said, salaries in Amsterdam, with or without degree, are far lower than the $130k to $150k described here.

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

#269

Post by Grustaf »

badfrog wrote: post #247
Grustaf wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know how to get a programming job at a hedge fund? I have a finance background, ran a tiny algo fund and is currently doing Swift development at a FAANG company, would love to combina my passions!

If your current FAANG role is listed on LinkedIn, you're probably getting a ton of messages from head hunters. Just start asking them if they can get you an interview at one. The hard part is that there are only like 4-5 trading firms that have a reputation for great technology, and their size combined is like 1% of FAANG size, so there just aren't that many openings.

Yeah that makes sense but I actually don’t have it on LinkedIn, apparently we’re not allowed to for secrecy reasons. I still get a lot of unsolicited messages but almost nothing finance related so far...

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

#270

Post by Grustaf »

hermitdev wrote: post #230
Grustaf wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know how to get a programming job at a hedge fund? I have a finance background, ran a tiny algo fund and is currently doing Swift development at a FAANG company, would love to combina my passions!

Networking and recruiters, mostly. I spent 9 years at a hedge fund in Chicago. I started a year out of college. That job, the reputation and that I lasted nearly a decade, and left of my own accord have opened numerous doors for me, and I only got the job because of networking (my best friend from college worked there and vouched for me, and he was there because a college friend of his sister worked there and vouched…

Thanks for the reply. Yes sure, that’s the way to go. The trouble is that I don’t even live in the US (I’m Swedish), so I’m sort of disconnected from that world. I do have one or two friends that went into HFT and similar, but only in Europe and I’d rather work in NYC right now.

Any tips on firms that even have those kinds of positions, I can always cold call a few to get a feeling for what they might be looking for.

My theoretical physics degree is from the best university in Sweden, but that probably doesn’t go very far in the US...

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