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Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

triplebyte.com

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Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#301

Post by kmonsen »

mercutio2 wrote: post #290
deepsun wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible explanation is that business just don't see much difference between junior work performance and senior work performance. I have 15 years of experience (both huge companies and own startups), but I keep wondering what if it's really the case: that there's simply no difference for company success? When I hire people myself, I only see value up until mid-seniority. From there what matters is just discip…

There is a huge difference between high performing senior engineers, and high performing junior engineers. But lots and lots of senior engineers aren’t high performing. They’re still moderately more valuable than junior engineers, but not immensely so. People calling themselves “senior engineer” are usually referring to years of experience, not to whether their management chain consisently sees them as high performin…

Also that senior engineer can be high performing in one situation and not in another. And it is not always about the job. Some trouble at home and can't sleep well? Not going to be a top performer for long.

What I mean is that it is hard to give a number to a person. Sometimes they shine, sometimes they don't.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#302

Post by kmonsen »

monaghanboy wrote: post #270
didnotinfact wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I don't know why anyone would even get out of bed for these numbers. Between base, bonus, and stock a senior engineer at a large, profitable company (Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) in the Bay Area will be grossing over $400k. The startups are offering similar base salaries, no bonuses, and 1/1000th or less share of a company that in all likelihood is worthless or, at best, illiquid. That's real…

>I guess startups only recruit the irrational? There are plenty of rational and not necessarily fiscal reasons why someone would prefer to work at a startup than at BigCo.

There are, but compensation is probably not one of them.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#303

Post by kmonsen »

Impossible wrote: post #90
compumike wrote: post #2

(Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.) I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior. One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startup…

Different people also I different expectations of senior. I know people a year or two out of bootcamp that have senior engineer titles. Likewise I recently interviewed with Riot games and was told I wasn't a senior engineer and was a good mid level candidate with 10 years game industry experience, and with my title being senior software engineer at time. Granted the responsibilities of this role sounded more like lea…

Maybe the person out of boot camp just performed better or were in a role that was better suited? Years of experience is not everything (I wish it were at my age :P)

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#305

Post by geggam »

sidlls wrote: post #228
geggam wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you have kids

My wife and two kids and I didn't start getting ahead of our debt until we moved out here.

On a single income or double income ? I can see double incomes getting ahead of the cost of living.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#306

Post by gwern »

karthikshan wrote: post #206
1001101 wrote: post #69

> We've found that engineers are at a fundamental disadvantage in salary and equity negotiations. They always know less than the hiring manager. This is unfair. I'd be interested to know if they are motivated not just by a sense of fair play, but also if their commissions are tied to salary.

I think triplebyte's commission is 25% of first year salary, but that doesn't mean the people behind triplebyte are solely motivated by larger commissions.

If one wanted to speculate about bias, I think it could go either way. It's similar to the real estate agent problem: while at first glance TripleByte is incentivized to get their candidate the highest possible salary to maximize that commission, they also get no commission if the candidate doesn't accept any offers or the offers get withdrawn (presumably? I can't see how else it could work), so like a real estate agent, they want to cycle people through as fast as possible and focus on recruiting as many people as possible rather than optimizing each person's offers. The former is pro-employee but the latter is pro-company. It's not obvious to me how this would work out on net.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#307

Post by trhway »

zcrar70 wrote: post #296
trhway wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>shouldering the extra risk of a founder founders give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup) while employees give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup). Did you notice any significant difference? I mean there may be difference between megacoprs and numbers of years at t…

Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.

What i see around, ie. friends & acquaintances, is at some point, usually after a good stint at one or a couple places a midlevel manager/executive decides "time to make next level of money", and together with several like minded guys and established good connections they pick up some investors from a line up of the investors eager to get in, and the rest is a well defined process. There is no risk, no giving up of any live, reputation, etc. There is only improvement on all of these fronts. If their venture doesn't make it big, it will be acquired with a nice premium and they would end up somewhere at the same or higher positions anyway. One such is already a unicorn in a pretty short, even by SV standards, time. List of the advisers/investors and other involved people of another such venture, started pretty recently, is impossible to read while maintaining steady breath :)

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#308

Post by humanrebar »

firstplacelast wrote: post #297
bgentry wrote: post #28

I understand that it’s hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality. RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Even the salary figures themselves look low and are probably heavily skewed by an overrepresentation of underpaying startups. My base salary ~4 year…

Software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot. When you live in a society built around greed, it is imperative that you push to collect as much of the value you create. Unions can be extremely helpful. SWE would be the perfect people to build new custom solutions for unions to get around many of the negative externalities caused by unions. However, people don't want to unionize while they still have leverage…

I'd be more interested in a guild or craft association than a union. I don't find collective bargaining, closed shops, standardized pay schedules, and some other features of unions to be compelling.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#309

Post by meddlepal »

humanrebar wrote: post #308
firstplacelast wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are shooting themselves in the foot. When you live in a society built around greed, it is imperative that you push to collect as much of the value you create. Unions can be extremely helpful. SWE would be the perfect people to build new custom solutions for unions to get around many of the negative externalities caused by unions. However, people don't want to unionize while they still have leverage…

I'd be more interested in a guild or craft association than a union. I don't find collective bargaining, closed shops, standardized pay schedules, and some other features of unions to be compelling.

Agree. I'd much rather we organize the same way lawyers with their Bar Associations operate.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#310

Post by elliotec »

tezzer wrote: post #260
sidlls wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even about skill at CS. I have no problem in that regard. I just see it as a stupid, irrelevant hazing ritual.

Unfortunately the CS trivia is necessary. In a previous job I interviewed people who snuck past the phone screen and would have wasted a ton of interviewer time if some CS-101 questions hadn't exposed near total ignorance of the highlights on their resume. My favorite was the guy who applied for a job as an air traffic routing researcher and after 20 minutes of computational geometry questions said, "Wow, tough, do y…

> Unfortunately the CS trivia is necessary.

No, it isn't.

If you interview at NASA, the CS questions being asked better damn well not be trivia.

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