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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#581

Post by bmn__ »

toast0 wrote: post #450
beebmam wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

If you're a European developer and underpaid, are you going to start your own company to do the same work but sell it yourself and take all the margin? Probably not, from comments I've seen here, it takes an awful lot of work to make a legal business. In the US, it takes minutes to incorporate, and even less time if you don't care to incorporate and just want to file a Doing Business As to use a separate name. Busine…

> are you going to start your own company to do the same work but sell it yourself and take all the margin?

No, but not because it's supposedly difficult to incorporate; I did this once and it only took filling a one page form, waiting 10 minutes in queue and paying 20€ with a bank card.

It's because instead of programming then time would be frittered away with customer acquisition and asshole management.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#582

Post by rsanek »

m_ke wrote: post #308
kyawzazaw wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is round C or D too late?

All of the rounds have shifted a bunch lately and companies are going public sooner than they used to. What I really meant was that you should join companies that are on a clear path to have a major exit within the next 2-3 years.

What companies are exiting within 2-3 years of raising a Series A, B, or even C? Strongly disagree that companies are going public sooner, if you compare when eg msft / goog went public vs airbnb / uber the market cap is radically larger and the companies are much older.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#583

Post by mym1990 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #559
mym1990 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like those 2 points are just excuses(no offense but plenty of people would kill for a chance to even go to college)...if you were to go back would you hold off graduating college until after the recession? It sounds like you are extremely proficient in the technical space, are you good at negotiating and/or identifying where the value is? There is really no reason for someone to stay on a linear pay progressio…

A lot of research has been done on how the recession stunted career growth for anyone who graduated into it. Effectively anyone who graduated during it got passed over for the people who did graduated right after it. Leaving the people who graduated during it in underemployment and unable to move on because companies were more willing to hire people who were fresh graduates than people who were underemployed. So yes,…

Yes, I mean hindsight is 20/20 and no one could have really predicted the fallout from and during the great recession. It generally sounds like you are doing fairly well now, and that is a fantastic accomplishment. Realistically speaking there are few times in our lives where we have 'almost no choice'. The truth is that you didn't see a choice that was appealing to you, but that's just my 2c, and with inflation nowadays the 2c is worth even less hahaha.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#584

Post by johnqpub »

f3d46600-b66e wrote: post #311
johnqpub wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Seattle so the situation is a bit better than the valley. But here's a breakdown: L6 at Amazon, single, no kids: ~$400K TC $33,333 per month gross About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA. $8333 per month Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan. $3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit compli…

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.

I own a 1500 sq ft townhouse that I bought in 2017 for $480K with $80k down (all from RSUs, which if I had kept in AMZN would be worth... a lot more). My mortgage (refi'd in 2019) + HOA + taxes are $2500 a month.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#585

Post by johnqpub »

suzzer99 wrote: post #477
johnqpub wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Seattle so the situation is a bit better than the valley. But here's a breakdown: L6 at Amazon, single, no kids: ~$400K TC $33,333 per month gross About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA. $8333 per month Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan. $3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit compli…

FYI - HSA is also basically a SEP IRA you can cash out when you're 65. A lot of people I know never plan to actually spend any of their HSA on healthcare until they're 65. https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/wealth-management/hsas-a...

Yeah, that's what I actually do. I didn't want to scare the non-Americans even more than they already are with our insurance :D

Note I didn't even get into IRAs, 401k, Megabackdoor Roths, etc.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#586

Post by metalliqaz »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #112
metalliqaz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no kidding. I was shocked at the numbers in this article. A 15-year engineer in aerospace gets you ~120k.

I don't know if this was anomalous, but I was making a smidge more than that in the aerospace industry with 5 years experience

what region, if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#587

Post by metalliqaz »

hasdf wrote: post #352
jurassic wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised. I'm guessing the aerospace industry is relatively stable in size (we don't suddenly need a lot more planes, spacecraft, or weapon systems than in the past), so employers in that industry don't need to offer big compensation packages to lure away scarce employees from competitors in order to enable that growth.

from talking to friends I think its more that there are really only 2-3 viable employers in the US, so there is little option to jump ship for higher salary. This keeps salaries artificially low. For example a friend of mine worked at raytheon, jumped to lockheed for a raise, back to raytheon for another raise, and then back to lockheed. You can only do that so many times before companies stop hiring you. Whereas in…

There is a lot more to aerospace than just the primes (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics). There are thousands of smaller companies that produce the parts and services that are used for the big projects.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#588

Post by da39a3ee »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #569
da39a3ee wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you didn't mean to use that word but it's not about "explaining" them: you have to be able to write the code to solve a given problem, on the spot. The problem might require a familiar technique such as breadth-first search but it will need to be adapted; the problem is likely to be slightly different from anything you've seen before. It's true that at the staff interviews i just did, LC was not required but at…

I meant explain. I see explain as a superset of implement. I have met lots of people who can implement but not explain. I didn't mean a simple explanation, I mean actually going into depth about things like algorithmic complexity, memory usage, etc. As an interviewer (granted not at FAANG) I see no value in you just proving you did an algorithm on Leet Code. You could just be passing it through rote learning. I want…

> I mean actually going into depth about things like algorithmic complexity, memory usage

OK, I agree that's definitely something the candidate should be able to do. I'm just trying to point out to anyone reading that it won't be sufficient to explain an algorithm. You have to actually write code to solve a given problem. That's not the same as regurgitating code you remember from leetcode, so please don't think that. You have to apply techniques that you've learned. It's not easy, and it's not intellectually shallow.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#589

Post by m_ke »

rsanek wrote: post #582
m_ke wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the rounds have shifted a bunch lately and companies are going public sooner than they used to. What I really meant was that you should join companies that are on a clear path to have a major exit within the next 2-3 years.

What companies are exiting within 2-3 years of raising a Series A, B, or even C? Strongly disagree that companies are going public sooner, if you compare when eg msft / goog went public vs airbnb / uber the market cap is radically larger and the companies are much older.

Seed rounds got larger and moved down a bit with a rise in "pre-seed" rounds.

Thanks partially to SPACs and direct listing we've had a boom in IPOs the past two years. (https://www.wraltechwire.com/2021/10/01/biggest-ipo-boom-in-...)

Before 2018-2019 the common wisdom was to stay private as long as possible because Softbank and other late stage firms were willing to throw a lot of money around in private rounds. Now VCs are trying to throw their companies over the fence as soon as possible.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#590

Post by renewiltord »

vincnetas wrote: post #555
renewiltord wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the two options is saving 125 lives / year at GiveWell’s current estimate. In ten years, you will have saved more than Oskar Schindler did during the entire Holocaust. But of course you have taken one path to the Trolley problem and Schindler (who joined the Nazi party) has taken the other. Now it remains to be seen whether history remembers Oskar Schindler the Nazi Party member or user vincnet…

i doubt that Schindler was weighting his options of joining nazi to be saving jews. it was after he joined he saw whats happening and acted in good faith. so he was saving lives not because he joined nazi, but because he mostly could not be not saving them. this is tangential to slavery where slave owners where treating their slaves very well, but fundamentally they still were slavers.

Ultimately you don’t want to save the 125 kids a year. That’s fine. But that’s the active choice you’re making by choosing no FAANG over FAANG plus donate.
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