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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#451

Post by m_ke »

Jensson wrote: post #430
gonehome wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Facebook was the F in FAANG it was a private company (as were the others obviously). The IPO was only in 2012 - a large number of people became millionaires. The same was true for Snapchat, Asana, Roblox, etc. The same will be true for Stripe, Robinhood, and others. A subset of those people go on to become angel investors themselves. FAANG pays a lot and there are outliers, but most FAANG employees are not cle…

They are a big lottery ticket. Lottery tickets doesn't have 0 value but you can't count on them having more than 0 value. Lets say you could choose between 1% chance of getting $20 million and 100% chance of getting $1 million, what would you choose? You'd pick the $1 million every time, since it is really easy to transform $1 million into a bunch of risky investments if you prefer the low probability big pay-out, wh…

Exactly, except these days with the way compensation has shifted at FAANG it's more like 1% vs 100% chance at 5mil in 5 years.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#452

Post by mobiledev2014 »

tubby12345 wrote: post #439
mobiledev2014 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By no means did I imply I did. I offered an alternative to “grind lc” to somebody who is underpaid. I did not say this was how to get the maximum TC

But how is an alternative? It's half the money. Reminds of a Russian joke: daughter asks mom for milk. Mom says sure there's a pale of water underneath the bed

The person you’re replying to has nearly 3x the yoe and significantly lower TC, pretty simple. And like you say, there are always people in these threads saying “good TC doesn’t exist where I am.” Finally, you’re assuming everyone wants to work for FAANG.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#453

Post by pyuser583 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #90

20 years experience, two books under my belt, and lead architect (with a CTO title) on several good sized projects and most I have ever gotten in $175k... every time I see an article like this, I think I am doing something "very wrong" I live about 40 miles outside of Boston. Edit: Looking at levels.fyi for Boston that actually puts me above the median[1]. Why the heck is Boston so low compared to other markets? Edit…

Ok I have but a fraction of your experience and make more. And live in a much lower cost if living area.

I’m extremely mobile. Not like permanently move mobile. But I’ll take contracting work that require me to move to NY or London or whatever. Very job bumps my salary up. If I have to switch continents I will.

Home is always my low cost of living place, and in practice I spend the majority of time there.

I know most people aren’t like this. And most people don’t have spouses who tolerate this.

My wife is either very understanding, or maybe she just doesn’t like me that much.

But if I’m like, honey, I have to move to Austin a for six months, she’s like “Ok, just be home for Thanksgiving.”

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#454

Post by Cd00d »

LindyTalker wrote: post #361
throwaway2016a wrote: post #90

20 years experience, two books under my belt, and lead architect (with a CTO title) on several good sized projects and most I have ever gotten in $175k... every time I see an article like this, I think I am doing something "very wrong" I live about 40 miles outside of Boston. Edit: Looking at levels.fyi for Boston that actually puts me above the median[1]. Why the heck is Boston so low compared to other markets? Edit…

I taught my friend to code in a year and he did one of the intensive bootcamps. First job ever. A healthcare company in NYC is paying him 155 + 20% bonus. You're getting hosed

At the same time, I see mostly listings for director of data science or vp analytics at a ton of small businesses or startups that require a PhD and 5 extra years experience offering a cap of $80k.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#455

Post by pcmoney »

seoulmetro wrote: post #440
pcmoney wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure but the track record of American Tech Companies speaks for itself. Wanna know what the truly passionate programmer does? Ship things that make money. If they don’t they are a hobbyist not a professional because it isn’t a profession for them.

No. Truly passionate programmer doesn't ship at all, they create work for themselves. Earning money or not does not recognise the difference between hobby and profession. Ironically a lot of hobbyists make money and very few professionals work for free.

I guess if you redefine what programming is you can say that. It is literally just finding efficient and maintainable ways to shuffle 0s and 1s so a computer does something a user wants it to do. Thats it.

Now there are good ways to do that and bad ways and we should take pride in our work but lets not pretend when we say “programming is an art” that we mean like a real art. Laying tile and drywall is also an “art” but people don’t care unless its part of a building.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#456

Post by f3d46600-b66e »

xyzzyz wrote: post #356
f3d46600-b66e wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to purchase a home, you probably need to replace 2k with 4k-5k/month for a mortgage on a home (30 year loan) + ~1k/month in property taxes. Add two kids, each 2k/mo/child in daycare. That's 7k/month extra. Still leaves you a nice chunk though.

> with 4k-5k/month for a mortgage on a home (30 year loan) + ~1k/month in property taxes. That’s if you’re buying $1.3M house. There are plenty of good houses to be had in Seattle for $900k.

I haven't been looking, but i was under the impression that you could have some ... Last year, not in the recent months?

Maybe you are right, then the math changes, but only slightly?

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#457

Post by jmtulloss »

neckardt wrote: post #423
mkhpalm wrote: post #407

If you're offering fabulous compensation packages that exceed the President of the United States for common software engineers with a little experience... wouldn't you want to use that to your advantage in your job postings? Every time I read an article like this I go looking for official numbers to validate what is being said. I'm not saying companies compensate poorly in SV. I just find it difficult to differentiat…

www.levels.fyi will get you a salary range for most companies. Based on my own compensation and that of trusted friends the real numbers are actually a bit higher than what's on levels.fyi right now. (Seattle) When you apply the best thing is to just be clear to the recruiter what you will accept. If you tell them you won't accept less than $200k any good recruiter would tell you whether that's reasonable or not. If…

This. levels.fyi is quite accurate both in first-hand data and when discussing salaries with folks that are coming from companies represented on the site.

I speculate that one of the things that makes it hard to square with market data is that levels.fyi leads with total compensation which will include stock based comp. afaict people report their stock comp differently, sometimes it's the original offer value and sometimes it's the value at that time (which might be years after the grant was given). Since things are really going up right now... it can lead to some big numbers. These numbers are still real, but not necessarily what you would see in an offer.

The salary numbers, however, are spot on in my experience.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#458

Post by H8crilA »

Jensson wrote: post #413
skeeter2020 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does staff even mean when in his previous example someone with 5 years experience is "mid career"?

It is a measure of skill. Senior is when you are good enough to lead a team with your technical skills, staff is when you can lead a team of seniors. Typical people reach senior level after 5 years and never reach staff level, so a typical engineer would still be senior even after 20 years. It is a bit silly to label those senior, but that is how the industry decided to label things. If your company is more strict th…

Spot on, maybe just an explanation of what "skill" means here: it's not just technical skills, beyond the "lowest terminal level" political skills matter more and more.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#459

Post by mkhpalm »

jmtulloss wrote: post #457
neckardt wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

www.levels.fyi will get you a salary range for most companies. Based on my own compensation and that of trusted friends the real numbers are actually a bit higher than what's on levels.fyi right now. (Seattle) When you apply the best thing is to just be clear to the recruiter what you will accept. If you tell them you won't accept less than $200k any good recruiter would tell you whether that's reasonable or not. If…

This. levels.fyi is quite accurate both in first-hand data and when discussing salaries with folks that are coming from companies represented on the site. I speculate that one of the things that makes it hard to square with market data is that levels.fyi leads with total compensation which will include stock based comp. afaict people report their stock comp differently, sometimes it's the original offer value and som…

I agree, the salary numbers look pretty spot on for me as well.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#460

Post by [deleted] »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #216
jiggawatts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the... s%&#? Half a million a year for a developer or architect is bonkers. That's the equivalent of AUD 800K a year. That's more than what the Prime Minister and a cabinet member put together make here! How can that possibly make sense? For that kind of money you can easily hire 4 senior developers here! Any company "hiring local" at those prices isn't exploring their international staffing options properly...

Because they have thousands of applicants for every position and basically infinite amounts of money, so they hire only the best.

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