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Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

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Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#401

Post by justonepost »

perl4ever wrote: post #394
mceoin wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is now illegal for employers to ask about past salary: [first article I googled] https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/salary-history-la...

I'm not sure how laws like that help if an employer has access to information about past salary so they don't have to ask. There is an Equifax service that keeps track of past jobs to some extent. It isn't necessarily accurate or complete, but it exists - https://www.theworknumber.com/

It’s not legal to use in California after the bill becomes law.

(b) An employer shall not, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, seek salary history information, including compensation and benefits, about an applicant for employment

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#402

Post by skgoa »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #326
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…

> 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. Are you kidding me? I go and check salaries on Glassdoor and find out that about $85k/year is still the standard here in Boston for junior and mid-level engineers. And you're telling me that a median of $134k/year in the Bay Ar…

Yes. Salaries in the SF bay area and NYC are ridiculous. Unfortunately cost of living expenses in those areas are ridiculous as well, which makes it far less worth it to move there for the average person than one would think.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#403

Post by skgoa »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #163
celdon25 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. Being "just" an employee is not a fair deal anymore.

It's not. And the moment employees collectively figure this out, founders won't have a choice anymore. Not if they want employees.

Yeah, but there seems to be an endless supply of startup success story fan employees ready to be exploited.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#404

Post by skgoa »

seattle_spring wrote: post #285
jfornear wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COL multipliers for San Francisco are about 1.8x...

People that say it's 3x to 10x seem to think they deserve to live in the same 5,000 sq ft mansion that they have in nowhere, Indiana.

Ah, so cost of living comparisons shouldn't use the same lifestyle in both places, got it.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#405

Post by fpisfun »

These types of posts and the ensuing comments drive me crazy because they have mentions of very high salaries (for example people talking about 400k total compensation, etc) but sparse info on what type of developer positions actually pay this. Grouping all software developers as if they are the same makes no sense to me. It's been my assumption that developers working in machine learning, and other related areas, tend to command the highest pay? I can't imagine that people are building basic CRUD apps and making $300k a year, for example?

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#406

Post by angarg12 »

oppositelock wrote: post #374
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…

Only use these statistics as a guideline, and negotiate the hell out of your compensation, even at a startup. You would be shocked at how much leeway companies have in compensation if they need your skill set. I've worked at preeminent silicon valley companies, middle of the road ones, and startups (been doing this way too long I guess). I've managed to sign for almost 50% over their initial offer a couple of times.…

I keep seeing how recent graduates of top schools command very high salaries, and I wonder, has any company done a large scale study comparing the performance of graduates from different 'tier' schools? What about the performance after a number of years?

I am really curious to see the difference in performance between two fresh graduates of different schools, and the difference after 2,5,10 years experience.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#407

Post by hello_newman »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #378
atomicUpdate wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By working with others, you've obviously benefited from learning from others. And even if you have spent your career alone in a dark office, the company has spent time paying you to learn from your mistakes. Why it is strange for the company to expect you to pass along anything and everything you've learned to other developers, junior or otherwise? The stranger part is that you can't recognize that teaching other peo…

I absolutely recognize the fact that everyone learns from others and having a space to do that and people who are willing to invest in others is great -- my problem is that it's a requirement and not a differentiator. Not every good engineer is a good teacher and not every good teacher is a good engineer. The two things are almost orthogonal in my opinion. The kind of teaching you mention in the second paragraph is s…

> I disagree that it's a differentiator between juniors and seniors though.

Whole heartedly disagree. For myself, whether it's in the context of software engineering, sales, management, graphic design, etc, _the_ key differentiator outside of skill in weighing a mid-level or senior candidate is their ability to share their knowledge and inspire other members of their team through mentorship and knowledge transfer.

I think you're looking at this from a more selfish angle, with thinking that hiring someone who's good at "teaching" is a benefit only to the company because they get a free trainer.

It should also be noted, there is a big difference in "teaching" and mentoring. And it's also the human element of giving back...i guarantee when you were starting your career there was a more senior person who trained and mentored you.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#408

Post by csin »

ykler wrote: post #387
trhway wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it is really so easy, just become a founder. you've missed the important point. It isn't for everybody. I specifically mentioned that it is already successful people with a lot of good connections. Thus such a startup is just the next step in the career progression. For a plain engineer, like me for example, who can't make even a CTO/VP of engineering of a small company or a Director/division Chief Architect/etc. at…

OK, sorry that I misunderstood you. But for what it's worth, lots of people with no connections have bootstrapped or gotten into incubators and then gotten funded or just hustled and got funded. For instance, just yesterday I talked to a woman with no connections or track record who got seed funding for her startup, but it took her over a year of "making friends with investors". Obviously it is a lot easier if you ar…

You wanna be careful with your usage of quotation marks in context of woman. You make it sound like she slept her way to a startup.

This is 2017, the year of Harvey Weinstein.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#409

Post by richardknop »

pm90 wrote: post #71
htormey wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meet a number of people at Apple in this category (i.e 20-30 years + experience). At a certain point salary tends to flatten out unless you go into management or do something incredibly specialized.

Why do these engineers not switch jobs? Wouldn't inflation actually reduce what they are earning if their salaries do flatten out?

Because most of them can't. Only so many of senior engineers can become managers (because of obvious mathematics, management is a much smaller fraction of overall jobs available). Most of them get to a point their salaries flatten out and there isn't any advancement they can do. At that point that usually have paid off mortgage and kids so they are content just having better work life balance, doing 9-5 work & collecting their paycheck, not caring too much about advancing from that sweet spot.

Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level

#410

Post by lostboys67 »

JonFish85 wrote: post #79
whataretensors wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how little equity in startups engineers get. Don't settle for common stock, it's 95% of the time worthless. And if it isn't you should be a millionaire for your risk, definitely not less than RSU compensation at megacorp #3.

"Don't settle for common stock" Unless you're a C-level employee, you're not going to have the choice. And even then you're probably still not going to have a choice except in very rare cases (e.g. Uber's new CEO might have some decent protections). If you're "just" an employee, you're going to get laughed at if you demand anything besides common stock.

Interesting in the UK companies cannot use shares with different rights in employee share schemes
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