In other news, if you aren't in the valley or working for one of the big tech companies, you're probably making 100-150K as a mid/senior developer. There's a pretty sizable leap.
Tech compensation in 2021
31–40 of 631 posts
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#32I honestly find it hard to believe that there are a lot of jobs available offering those kinds of salaries. Especially when we are talking about working remotely from outside the Bay area and for average size companies.
I think there are multiple tiers as far as salary. He is really describing the top two tiers. But the majority of jobs are not quite in those top two tiers.
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#33As 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.
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
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#34As 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.
Wouldn’t you make more as a remote contractor? Even on Upwork?
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Base comp probably... but the OP is discounting equity almost entirely: > and those are likely to be the kind of complex instruments that I treat as a gamble, not guaranteed salary Idk, opinions vary, but the majority of my early startup total comp in my career has been equity payout. Maybe I just got super lucky, but I think this is too firm a stance and tips the scales against non-FAANG too heavily.
Ah, I’ve worked with a lot of people who didn’t hit it big with stock options and suffered ruinous tax liabilities in some cases.. Zero is probably too little, but if you’re being paid way under-market in cash and having to dip into that to exercise options and pay taxes, zero might actually be a good middle ground between the best and worst cases
There may be cases I'm missing, but afaik you never *have* to suffer ruinous tax liabilities from stock comp if you're willing to just eat the gains as raw income (making the (often smart) gamble to hit LCTG is what will get you in trouble).
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#36The best way of doing this is to just use levels.fyi and ask on Blind (which is a toxic place, but a bit of toxicity is needed to maximize tc).
Maybe Glassdoor.
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#37Man, every time I think I’ve finally caught up to the market rate, I find out I’m behind again I’m a senior FAANG coder making 350k TC, and it looks like I should be able to net 400-600k at this level if I go to Apple or Google. Hoo boy, looks like it’s leetcode time again…
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.
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#38As 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)
It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still has a culture where software engineers, cloud architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys and the people who really matter in a corporation are the finance people and upper level executives.
Europe also suffers from a brain drain to the US (and Canada to a smaller proportion). Many of Europe's best and brightest software engineers have already emigrated to the US, leaving behind the less productive ones.
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#39Co-Founder of Levels.fyi here. As Jacob points out, the market is extremely hot right now. It feels like salaries are inching up slightly each month. We're working on improving how numbers are updated and working on weighing recent salaries more heavily. Would really encourage everyone to submit their compensation on the site. We also have some relevant discussions with recruiters from FANG type companies on our team in our community.
Re: Tech compensation in 2021
#40How many people go into programming now simply for the money? More than 70%?
What percentage of programmers would still be programmers if competitive salary was not a concern in life, and people were free to simply pursue their passions?