Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by davidjnelson » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #281

davidjnelson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very location dependent. In Florida, 150k is great for a principal engineer. In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Also, the faangs of the world do pay twice as much in total comp.

> In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Maybe if you work at google. But you have an extremely skewed view of job salaries, if you describe 150k as "terrible". Yes, FAANGs pay a lot. But the vast majority of developers, even in san francisco, do not work at FAANGs. 150k, is just around the average salary, for a senior engineer, actually.

I would say principal at most companies maps to l6 at google. In Mountain View that pays $560,000/year total comp on average according to levels.fyi

Non faang pay for principal engineers in Mountain View could be estimated roughly by using stack overflow’s salary calculator. Mountain View, react, typescript, aws, postgres, linux, 20 years experience, no degree lists $187,000 for the 50th percentile.

I think the discussion gets confusing because as an industry we suck at describing levels of the technical track in a portable way.

I do know senior engineers making 150k in the Bay Area. I also know some making 750k.

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

#292

Post by reidjs » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 1:51 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #226

reidjs wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To counter this, I know dozens of people working as FAANG devs from app academy & hack reactor.

Any chance of a breakdown by company, numbers or boot camp if you have time?

No just anecdotal, a bunch of people from my cohort work at google and friends now. Obviously the boot camps highlight these grads and it’s worth pointing out many had CS degrees

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

#293

Post by sonnyblarney » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

mattnewport wrote: post #161

sonnyblarney wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely based on my 'gut' (though I've been around): 1) SF/NY/Seattle salaries are skewed by really rich companies 2) Yes, there a big uptick as it's more competitive, FYI cost of living is much more. 3) The salary I think has a selection/sample problem that probably over estimates. My bet is $150K for an experienced dev at a normal company in Boston is probably somewhere in the league of normal. Consider that salarie…

I'm not sure about this characterization of "destination cities". The primary reason developers move to Seattle or SF is pay and career opportunities. The primary reasons for leaving are things like cost of living, commutes and lifestyle. Vancouver by contrast is more of what I'd call a "destination city" - people move there for the lifestyle and location (surrounded by ocean and mountains) and leave because of the c…

California and NY are absolutely aspirational places.

They are mythologized in news, song, film and TV.

Try to recruit someone to Toledo, Ohio vs. SF with the same cost-of-living-adjusted-pay and there's no comparison.

California is a place where people 'want' to move. NYC has been branded as the 'centre of action' for almost a century now. Just the other day I was reading about how artists feel they need to be located there for brand purposes.

The only people who 'aspire' to move to a regular city are those in smaller towns in the immediate vicinity, i.e. in rural Ontario, Toronto is an 'aspiration' it's 'the big city'. (Also, Toronto is an aspiration for a lot of migrants worldwide but that's a different story).

SF and NYC have access to a global talent pool.

Toronto has access mostly just Ontario.

FYI I worked at a 'big name company' in Waterloo Ontario and it was really hard to bring people in, especially Americans for whom Canada it seemed may have as well been the arctic. Those few we did bring up, often kept their 'primary residence' in the US, or otherwise felt they were doing a 'tour of duty' and would otherwise want to go home.

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

#294

Post by pmalynin » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #228

pmalynin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers look pretty legit. This is coming from a new grad with multiple offers.

Would you be willing to share the companies that pay above 130 base for their median or even 75th percentile new grad in the Bay Area ? (assuming the bonus, signing and stock are in line with that of the Big-N companies)

I can give you more details if you email me.

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

#295

Post by handoflixue » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #233

handoflixue wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that when it comes to writing code , technology changes fast enough that after a decade, you've hit a pretty clear plateau. You've got the fundamentals down, and you're a master of your current language. There's a lot of managerial things you continue to learn, but that requires you to be in a position with enough political capital to actually stop history from repeating itself. It's only useful knowing tha…

That's assuming the company you have the experience from values titles. Ive worked at some that dont. A junior dev has the same title as the most senior dev: Developer. You cant tell from the title alone that one is making 80k and the other is making 500k+. Ive seen other companies go to the other extreme where the titles get ridiculous. Titles aren't a great indicator, in my opinion.

Fair - I meant title as a proxy for the work that's actually being done. My point was mostly that raw experience is only meaningful up to a certain point.

To be a bit longer-winded:

If you want to get paid more, you have to demonstrate value. Even if you only ever write the same CRUD apps, you'll definitely improve for the first few years, and it makes sense to pay more for a developer who isn't still busy making their first mistakes.

Past a certain point, though, raw experience isn't automatically a value add. If you're still just writing the same CRUD apps, you cap out a certain point. Now you need to demonstrate that you can contribute to architectural discussions, get involved in system design, or help with project selection/management. If you think you deserve the big bucks for that level of highly experienced work, that's totally fair, but you need some way to demonstrate it - whether this be tiles held, references, or having literally written the book on the topic. You can't just lean on "years of experience" anymore, because it's no longer well-correlated to value-added.

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

#296

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

davidjnelson wrote: post #291

stale2002 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the Bay Area, that’s terrible comp. Maybe if you work at google. But you have an extremely skewed view of job salaries, if you describe 150k as "terrible". Yes, FAANGs pay a lot. But the vast majority of developers, even in san francisco, do not work at FAANGs. 150k, is just around the average salary, for a senior engineer, actually.

I would say principal at most companies maps to l6 at google. In Mountain View that pays $560,000/year total comp on average according to levels.fyi Non faang pay for principal engineers in Mountain View could be estimated roughly by using stack overflow’s salary calculator. Mountain View, react, typescript, aws, postgres, linux, 20 years experience, no degree lists $187,000 for the 50th percentile. I think the discu…

Sure, if you are talking about engineers with 20 years experience, those numbers make sense.

But in the context of this conversation, IE people who use triple byte, we are likely talking about engineers with a couple years experience. (Yes, a couple years experience gets you the title of "senior" these days).

And within this context of engineers with a couple years experience who are using triple byte, I'd say that 150k is pretty alright.

You can see this data from the graphs that they posted, about how this is referring to people with a couple years exp.

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

#297

Post by bradlys » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #209

crowbahr wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle's tech market isn't super diverse. It's Amazon and Microsoft dominated with less of the startup VC culture that SF has. So you see 95% of those salaries are just MS/AMZ

I mean... FB alone has something like 3k engineers in Seattle. Google is almost done with a campus that will house 10k in addition to their already large Fremont and Kirkland footprints. Zillow, Redfin, Expedia, and others all have HQs in the greater Seattle area. Unicorns like Stripe, Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb all have offices here. You really think that, with all that, Amazon and Microsoft make up 95% of high salaried…

Maybe what they're trying to say is that it's the established big companies that are inflating the numbers. I'm not surprised by the numbers because I'm pretty sure big companies dominate the statistics. (And they pay similarly as to SF)

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

#298

Post by hermitdev » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #270

hermitdev wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Best advice I could give is to leverage the contacts you have. Not just your friends, but also potentially your professors. They might have more contacts in finance than you know. A lot of physicists end up working as quants in finance. You might have to relocate to London or Germany (not sure what the outlook is over in Europe currently - my experience is entirely US). Hedge funds and the like will generally sponsor visas in the US, but you might have to seek them out more than expecting to be actively recruited, especially if from a more obscure school (and I do not mean this derogitorally). Most HFs usually have a small set of schools they actively recruit from, usually top tier (perceived) schools in the US in either finance, math, physics or engineering.

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

#299

Post by freyir » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #274

freyir wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Tripl…

But even $250K in total comp wouldn’t allow my family to live the lifestyle that we can live in many major metropolitan areas in the US that have a much lower cost of living where just your commodity full stack developer with a few years of experience can make $135K - $160K.

Wouldn't it? What major metropolitan areas are you talking about specifically?

$250K is FANG compensation for an engineer with a few years of experience. According to NerdWallet cost of living calculator, equivalents are:

    Manhattan:    $314K
    Los Angeles:  $191K
    Boston:       $196K
    Chicago:      $157K
    Miami:        $152K
    Denver:       $149K
    Philadelphia: $146K
    Minneapolis:  $139K
    Atlanta:      $134K
    Des Moines:   $117K

So $250K in San Francisco should afford similar lifestyle as in other major cities paying $135K-$160K.

But a senior-level position in FANG should be closer to $350K and above. I think that becomes much harder to match as a commodity developer outside the Bay Area (it'd be $205K in Philly, for instance). And even if you did match it, and you're able to sock away X% of your income a year in both cities, the FANG salary leaves you with many more dollars in your bank account in a few years. You could always leave the Bay Area at some point, and spend those dollars in a low CoL area.

I'm not saying it's worth it. The Bay Area has a lot of downsides. San Francisco has become a crime-ridden cess pool in recent years. Commutes are horrendous if you don't live near work. And many tech companies in the Bay Area pay much less than FANG compensation (and I know from experience), which really makes it hard to stomach. But from a purely financial standpoint, it seems like the FANG developers are doing pretty well.

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

#300

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 11:56 AM UTC

freyir wrote: post #299

scarface74 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even $250K in total comp wouldn’t allow my family to live the lifestyle that we can live in many major metropolitan areas in the US that have a much lower cost of living where just your commodity full stack developer with a few years of experience can make $135K - $160K.

Wouldn't it? What major metropolitan areas are you talking about specifically? $250K is FANG compensation for an engineer with a few years of experience. According to NerdWallet cost of living calculator, equivalents are: Manhattan: $314K Los Angeles: $191K Boston: $196K Chicago: $157K Miami: $152K Denver: $149K Philadelphia: $146K Minneapolis: $139K Atlanta: $134K Des Moines: $117K So $250K in San Francisco should a…

I have a house in the burbs in Atlanta - 5 bedroom/3.5 bath, 3000 square feet, new build.

It’s in a top rated school district, 30 minutes away from where I work and we paid $335K for it back in 2016. Now, it would probably be around $385K. How much would a similar setup cost in San Francisco?

We bought it with the 5% down that the builder required to start, but we ended up even getting some of that back when we used an FHA loan that required only 3.5% down.