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

triplebyte.com

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

#51

Post by rambleraptor »

bluedevilzn wrote: post #7
themagician wrote: post #3

It’s so interesting to see actual data that confirms what most people might suspect, instead of what you see here on HN where people talk about $200k+ base being “not that unusual”.

The data is on average base salary. Nearly half of my total comp is stock plus guaranteed bonus. That's how my total comp is $200k+ with 1 yoe at a low CoL city.

That seems very unusual for a low CoL city. It seems like there's an unbelievably large gulf between high + low CoL cities (far more than CoL would account for)

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

#52

Post by beneichler »

echevil wrote: post #38
garyguo110 wrote: post #4

It's nice to know what a competitive base salary is for an engineer but when negotiating an offer I think you really should be looking at Total Compensation. RSU, Stock Options, Bonuses all play a very significant role when looking at offers. Especially if you work at one of the large tech companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) the stock grants are a VERY large portion of your compensation.

That would be a lot more interesting but it's also super hard to compare equity for public companies and different stages of startups. It probably makes better sense to split the companies into different categories and then do the comparison in the same category

(this is why we did it this way)

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

#53

Post by JoshTko »

cm2012 wrote: post #31

This just shows how game changing bootcamps and the like are. People with no software background can go from no experience to a job paying 130k a year with a year of training. That's downright miraculous.

I'm not sure that this is what this data means. This report seems to be based on a very specific dataset of Triplebyte registered accounts. There are probably far more bootcamp grads that do not work as a developer and/or not registered on Triplebyte that are unaccounted for. Even bootcamp sites are probably inflating their salaries by only reporting those that graduates AND got a job in SWE.

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

#54

Post by rayvd »

beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Don't think I disagree with Bryan's take, but to be fair, he's generally pretty down on the whole higher education thing across the spectrum, not just for Computer Science.

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

#55

Post by beneichler »

wellreally wrote: post #28
beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Do you have this data for management roles as well? Could be helpful for career planning.

in the case of our salary tool, you can get a general sense by looking at the higher experience-level buckets. People absolutely do hire managers through Triplebyte, but we still associate roles primarily to technical areas because that's what our screening is best at

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

#56

Post by _throwawayyyyy1 »

I'm in Boston & went through an intensive FT job search here about 18 months ago. I'm a mobile developer with 20+ years total experience in desktop, backend, web+mobile, product management, started my own company, etc.

Worked with lots of recruiters, personal network etc., felt like I really got a sense of what the salary landscape is here. Some facts:

- I was leaving a job at a hot unicorn startup that paid $125K base and I was told I was one of the highest paid engineers on staff (20+ engineers)

- I received 2 offers during this job search (was very selective else could have gotten many, many more)

- First offer: IOS developer at very large consulting firm for $120K base (with possibility of small bonus).

- Second offer: IOS developer position that was comparable in interest to first. Decided to "shoot for the moon" and ask for $145K. They agreed, and that's where I'm (happily) working now.

According to this study, SW engineers with my level of experience in these cities are making $181K on average! From what I could see that's just not available here to the rank and file, "average" experienced sw engineer. That salary would be more like top-of-range here.

Am I doing something wrong? Is Boston really that different than Seattle/NYC/SF?

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

#57

Post by archgoon »

beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Is this salary or total comp? It's not specified which.

Total Comp figures are important, and differences in effective take home pay will be hidden if you only list salaries.

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

#58

Post by john_petrucci »

beneichler wrote: post #2

Ben from Triplebyte here, I'm the engineer who built this tool from our offer data. The finding that most surprised me was that the mean salary for an engineer without a college degree is only $3k (~2%) less than for those with one; this gap is much smaller than in the labor market as a whole. One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in o…

Do you have similar data for companies outside USA, specifically Canada? Salaries in Bay Area, Seattle and NY are quite higher than other tech hubs, but I want to know what the differences are from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver. From my research, data outside the US is very limited and outdated.

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

#59

Post by realbarack »

BonesJustice wrote: post #46
beneichler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are base salaries - we have data on equity and other compensation factors, but those factors are difficult to meaningfully compare in an anonymized way. Triplebyte works with over 400 companies, including Apple, Dropbox, Instacart, and numerous early stage companies (including many YC companies). The Open Positions section on the salary tool page should give a pretty good feel for the kinds of specific roles an…

Seems a rather glaring omission—as a software engineer in NYC, roughly 55% of my total annual compensation comes in the form of a cash bonus. Since total compensation tends to vary more significantly than base salary, I would continue showing the salary-only graph by default, with an option to toggle total compensation as a second series.

Wow, over half? Is this a finance company?

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

#60

Post by tantalor »

echevil wrote: post #38
garyguo110 wrote: post #4

It's nice to know what a competitive base salary is for an engineer but when negotiating an offer I think you really should be looking at Total Compensation. RSU, Stock Options, Bonuses all play a very significant role when looking at offers. Especially if you work at one of the large tech companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) the stock grants are a VERY large portion of your compensation.

That would be a lot more interesting but it's also super hard to compare equity for public companies and different stages of startups. It probably makes better sense to split the companies into different categories and then do the comparison in the same category

That's easy: equity in public companies is worth $something, equity in private companies is worth $nothing.
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