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Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

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Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#71

Post by QuercusMax »

jholman wrote: post #69
marssaxman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup stock is truly imaginary, yes, but even Google stock has the magical property that some amount of it stops existing when you leave, which everyone does eventually. ...unless they've stopped issuing stock with a vesting schedule attached since I was there, of course, but that seems improbable given the financial advantage it creates for them.

Okay, the stock in the 4-year stock grant is imaginary in the same sense that your future salary is imaginary. I mean, fine, call it imaginary if you want, but that's true of all pay. The Google vesting schedule, AFAIK, is 1-year cliff and then quarterly vesting thereafter. Which means that, past the first year, at most 90 days of stock is money that might vanish if you leave. I agree it'd be a lot nicer if it vested…

Google's vesting schedule is actually 1-year cliff then monthly vesting, but there are 4 blackout periods per year when you can't sell your stock (except on a monthly auto-sale program). Aside from that you're spot on.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#72

Post by marssaxman »

jholman wrote: post #69
marssaxman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup stock is truly imaginary, yes, but even Google stock has the magical property that some amount of it stops existing when you leave, which everyone does eventually. ...unless they've stopped issuing stock with a vesting schedule attached since I was there, of course, but that seems improbable given the financial advantage it creates for them.

Okay, the stock in the 4-year stock grant is imaginary in the same sense that your future salary is imaginary. I mean, fine, call it imaginary if you want, but that's true of all pay. The Google vesting schedule, AFAIK, is 1-year cliff and then quarterly vesting thereafter. Which means that, past the first year, at most 90 days of stock is money that might vanish if you leave. I agree it'd be a lot nicer if it vested…

Look: I ran those numbers, I made that choice, and going to work for Google was one of the few career decisions I can clearly call a "mistake". The stock was almost entirely imaginary for me because I didn't stay long enough, and I didn't stay because I had no other way to get out of the pointless, demoralizing situation I was stuck in. So, who cares what it could potentially have been worth if the world had been different? The world is what it is, and the money was, in fact, nonexistent.

This has been true of "total compensation" across my whole career: base salary is real, but stock has never amounted to anything significant. The companies whose stock is measurably worth something have turned out to be terrible places to work, and none of the startups have panned out. (Real Networks managed to be both, during the dot com bubble; the expected future value of my options peaked somewhere north of $1.5 million, before the crash, but I ultimately cleared $0. And was so glad when I walked away from that miserable experience.) So, I consider the value of stock in a "total compensation" package to be $0, and make my decisions now on base salary alone.

If it so happens in the future that stock "money" becomes real money, well, that'll be great, but I'm going to think of that like winning the lottery. It has no incentive effect.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#73

Post by cookiecaper »

aerovistae wrote: post #70
throwawaycomp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share a 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend and dog, in a very new building that's a 20 minute walk to the office. Rent and utilities sums to $3900 for the two of us. In a nice neighborhood in sf, you're not going going to pay less than 1600 for a room in a shared apartment, or for half of a one bedroom place.

That is so insane. $3900 for a 1 bed. (I know it's normal in SF; I'm saying SF is insane.)

In most markets, you can get a pretty good 1 bedroom apartment for between $900 and $1000 per month. Thus, the cost of rent in SF is around 4x the cost of rent in a normal market. You'll pay an extra $36k per year to rent in SF v. a median rental market. CA also has a much higher state tax rate than most places.

Worth keeping this in mind when you're comparing SF salaries with real-world salaries. If Google hires someone right out of school to work in SF at $100-110k, it's really like getting hired right out of school to work in a normal market at $60-70k, which isn't nearly as rare (but still pretty good for a brand new guy; in positions where I used to do hiring, we'd usually hire these somewhere between 45-55k).

I think the best way for a programmer to maximize salary is to work remotely for an SF company, getting paid an SF salary, and living in an area with a reasonable COL and (preferably) low-to-zero state income tax.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#74

Post by dcosson »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #68
goog_salary wrote: post #22

SWE, L6, 11 years experience, hired at L4 225 base, 90k bonus, 260k stock (grant size has been going up each year). Google gives fair increases on promo and even if initial salary was in the low end. Pretty common to get a high bump after a year if one negotiated badly.

Wow, that is much higher than I made as a level 5 in seattle. 175-185. plus half that in stock.

Surely Seattle salaries are lower because no state income tax and cheaper housing than the bay area?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#76

Post by kirovsergei »

marssaxman wrote: post #72
jholman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, the stock in the 4-year stock grant is imaginary in the same sense that your future salary is imaginary. I mean, fine, call it imaginary if you want, but that's true of all pay. The Google vesting schedule, AFAIK, is 1-year cliff and then quarterly vesting thereafter. Which means that, past the first year, at most 90 days of stock is money that might vanish if you leave. I agree it'd be a lot nicer if it vested…

Look: I ran those numbers, I made that choice, and going to work for Google was one of the few career decisions I can clearly call a "mistake". The stock was almost entirely imaginary for me because I didn't stay long enough, and I didn't stay because I had no other way to get out of the pointless, demoralizing situation I was stuck in. So, who cares what it could potentially have been worth if the world had been dif…

You didn't even stay 1 year? Honestly, if your normal experience is to leave your company in less than a year, I think you have some expectation issues to address. While I know google isn't the amazing dream land the news makes it out to be (I've worked there in the past), it's really not that bad. If you've quit that quickly -- and this has happened multiple times -- you should really try to re evaluate what it is you're looking for from your career and see why these jobs aren't working out for you.

To get back to the original point, treating the stock 4 year sum on the same scale as the salary doesn't make sense (though recruiters will pitch it like that). A more honest accounting is to look at the annual number, which is directly comparable to the annual salary and will give you the true picture of how much you make per year. 180k of stock really means 45k per year of stock compensation. For a company like google that's more or less equivalent to cash compensation.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#77

Post by marssaxman »

kirovsergei wrote: post #76
marssaxman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look: I ran those numbers, I made that choice, and going to work for Google was one of the few career decisions I can clearly call a "mistake". The stock was almost entirely imaginary for me because I didn't stay long enough, and I didn't stay because I had no other way to get out of the pointless, demoralizing situation I was stuck in. So, who cares what it could potentially have been worth if the world had been dif…

You didn't even stay 1 year? Honestly, if your normal experience is to leave your company in less than a year, I think you have some expectation issues to address. While I know google isn't the amazing dream land the news makes it out to be (I've worked there in the past), it's really not that bad. If you've quit that quickly -- and this has happened multiple times -- you should really try to re evaluate what it is y…

I got close, but no, I didn't stay quite a full year, and of course that's not normal! I don't think my bad experience at Google was entirely normal, either - certainly not compared to the experiences of friends who worked there before, whose glowing reports were what convinced me to give the place a serious look, or to those of friends who are happily working there still.

And yet - my Google experience was pretty much the same as the experiences I've had at other large companies. The pattern is that I go in thinking that a big company means big reach, big resources, and consequently big opportunities, so it'll be a chance to dig in, learn from the obviously smart and competent people who built whatever it is that made these companies successful, do some serious work, and level up my skill set - only to find myself stuck on some backwater project nobody cares about with managers playing musical chairs and no way to get out until I've slogged my way through some term of drudgery proving that I'm worthy of better things. Well, fuck that: life is short and I'm not here to waste it. Besides, I've never managed to work productively for very long at all without some internal motivation, and trying to slog through pointless work simply so that I can hang on in hopes of doing meaningful work at some point in the future leaves me feeling stifled, frustrated, and ultimately depressed. (Especially when the work in question is full of tedious, inefficient process that has nothing to do with the actual engineering, which was fortunately less the case at Google than elsewhere.)

At this point I can't imagine what it would take to make me consider working for a large company again.

So the risk of accepting compensation in stock appears effectively constant: you can trade the risk that the company won't go anywhere against the risk that you'll be miserable, but you can't count on any significant return.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#78

Post by gabbo »

dcosson wrote: post #74
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is much higher than I made as a level 5 in seattle. 175-185. plus half that in stock.

Surely Seattle salaries are lower because no state income tax and cheaper housing than the bay area?

Amazingly, they're not (at the moment at least). Seattle is a really great place to be at Google in terms of gross vs. tax and cost of living.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#79

Post by nycurious »

googler_nyc wrote: post #37

SWE III, L4, NYC 150k base, 40k signing bonus, ~27k yearly bonus, ~130k yearly stock 8 years prior experience before Google

Thank you. I'm interviewing there and was curious about this. When did you start there, and what was your initial salary, title?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

#80

Post by eecks »

throwawaycomp wrote: post #26

I was hired straight out of school in June 2013 in mountain view as a level 3 SET at 105K salary, 15% bonus target, and $100k of stock, vesting over 4 years. The next year, I was promoted to level 4, and got a raise to $134k salary. I also got a $35000 year end bonus, and 5k of other bonuses. This year, as a level 5 SWE, my gross income (unless Google's stock price changes significantly) will be $323k - 176k salary,…

Can I ask your working hours?
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