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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

#71

Post by ryandrake »

munchbunny wrote: post #12
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”.

I generally consider comp numbers on public forums to be a bit like salaries on dating profiles. Even if you're not inflating the number and even if you're anonymous, there's a status drive to "round up", and the ones open to talking about the numbers generally know their numbers are pretty good. I trust Triplebyte's data to be more representative because it's not one internet identity at a time stating their own num…

These data also align well with other aggregations of self-reported salaries at glassdoor.com and salary.com. While you can nitpick about methodology or “base vs total”, these reports are at least better than anecdotes posted on message boards for internet points.

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

#72

Post by bluedino »

ams6110 wrote: post #35
danielparks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the boot camp thing is signaling. We don't quite know what to expect from boot camps yet. I'm a high school drop out with no diploma. It's never come up during any hiring process in the 17 years I've been doing this. That said, I've only had two long term jobs. I spent years doing contract work, and I mostly got contracts by word of mouth. I've been on a number of hiring teams, mostly at Puppet. I was also…

Did you ever need to provide a resume/CV? If so were you honest about your education? Did you just omit it?

I've had companies ask for high school transcripts. What the heck.

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

#73

Post by yellowstuff »

pageandrew wrote: post #43
djakjxnanjak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very relevant for people working for startups, much less relevant for those working at public companies where the stock can be sold the day it vests. Standard vesting starts after a year cliff, but it’s common to get a large signing bonus which makes up for it. Plus some people are getting offers with no cliff. I worry that some really skilled developers may be looking at these stats and not realize what they are giv…

Unless you go to a FAANG you're basically going to be accepting compensation close to what's listed here. If you're at a FAANG and get those massive stock packages, then you can really start getting close to the $300k+ total comp packages that people talk about.

Hedge fund programming jobs in NYC pay a significant annual cash bonus, I believe 50-100% of base salary is standard. From what I can tell $250-300k is pretty standard total comp for senior software devs. I'm just a programmer, probably a hiring manager or recruiter would have a better sense of the market.

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

#75

Post by DevX101 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #23

Recently made a switch from Seattle to NYC and was actually a bit surprised that the salaries in NYC were lower. People at my job didn't really believe me, so it's nice to have some numbers to back up my feelings.

Not that surprising. Seattle is HQ to two of the largest sofware companies in the world, with 1/3 the population of NYC. Wouldn't be surprised that the supply/demand gap for qualified engineers is greater in Seattle than NYC

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

#76

Post by kwindla »

_throwawayyyyy1 wrote: post #56

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 ba…

I haven't hired in Boston in a few years, so my perspective may be out of date, but it definitely was the case up until 2014 or so (my most recent concrete experience making job offers to candidates in Boston) that Boston salaries for engineers were lower than SF and NYC.

That seems mostly to be a supply/demand thing (which is tangled up with local culture norms, too, in complicated ways). There is much, much less VC funding in Boston than in SF and NYC. But a great supply of engineers because of the universities. And there's no equivalent to Microsoft+Amazon (Seattle) and Wall Street (NYC) pushing up both demand and top-end base salaries for experienced engineers.

Also, you mention that your search was 18 months ago. In SF (and I think Seattle and NYC, too) the job market is crazily engineer-favorable right now. I'd bet there's been 10% inflation in average base senior engineer salaries in SF in the last 18 months. That would match your $145k against ~$165k (rather than $181k).

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

#77

Post by rifung »

esoterica wrote: post #45
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…

> 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. The sample set of people using TripleByte is not going to be remotely representative of the market for developers as a whole. Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters…

> Candidates with stronger resumes are not going to be using third party recruiters to spray their resume around; they are going to be applying directly to the companies they want to work at or getting headhunted by the companies themselves.

Why are those mutually exclusive? I like to think I have a decent resume and would apply to companies directly but if I can get more offers using Triplebyte why wouldnt I? Isn't their draw that you don't have to interview at individual companies but can use a streamlined application?

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

#79

Post by robrenaud »

_throwawayyyyy1 wrote: post #56

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 ba…

I don't think it's a Boston problem. Perhaps a company selection problem though. Have you tried to interview at Google (Or facebook, amazon, apple, netflix, microsoft)?. If that 20+ years is actual work experience, as opposed to coding up BASIC games during middle school, I am sure you'd get offers at 300k+ total annual comp at those places if you passed the interview.

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

#80

Post by dilyevsky »

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”.

No it doesn’t confirm that because it’s just base (ie useless) and 200k+ is basically norm in sfba at this point.
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