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Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#81

Post by krschultz »

pyb wrote: post #76
hamburglar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth it. Don't worry, it took me weeks too. It really helps if you are the kind of person who actually likes doing the dumb algorithm exercises. I accidentally did something clever by interviewing at a handful of small companies I wasn't very interested in first, so I got to warm up the interview-question region of my brain.

I regularly hear these rumours, but the only actual datapoint I ever found is not that encouraging ... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aXboiWp...

Check Glassdoor, Payscale, etc for better data than that.

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#82

Post by SecConsult »

chatmasta wrote: post #73
SecConsult wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found critical flaws in systems 4 previous pen test companies didn't find. I found bugs in a security camera DVR platform for a big company, I found critical flaw on numerous custom web portals, I found all these bugs after they went through at least one pentest by another vendor. I usually don't miss bugs in pentest and/or source code analysis. When I analyze malwares, I usually do it quick and I analyze them exte…

It's clear that you do have value, and it's easy for you to prove it. But how did you get your foot in the door to even have the chance to prove it? Were you invited to pen test? Did you offer your initial service for "free" to prove your worth?

First you need to work for established infosec companies. They get pentest projects every day, easily. You can't be like them day 1. So when you work through those companies and do pentest for a client, show yourself. In our team, maybe 10 people were working with me on pentest projects, but if you ask clients now after years, they probably ONLY remember my name, because they know and understand who did what. So after years and years of good reputation, it's super easy to expand your client base, do for yourself, ask for top $, reject offers might be a dream salary for some. But just like everything else, you start slowly and gradually "level-up"

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#83

Post by pyb »

krschultz wrote: post #81
pyb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly hear these rumours, but the only actual datapoint I ever found is not that encouraging ... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aXboiWp...

Check Glassdoor, Payscale, etc for better data than that.

FWIW, Glassdoor mostly matches the 1 datapoint above (which was £45-65k) https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Google-London-Salaries-EI...

The averages being, in my area: SDE £61,668 SDE III £64,190 Senior SDE £84,307

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#84

Post by eecks »

jordanb wrote: post #24
krschultz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick question, who are the "Big-4"? I count Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft at a minimum.

I see "Big 4" on r/cscareerquestions a lot. It seems to have been invented by that sub as some kind of mythical club of golden programmer employers. It came from accounting/consulting where there are four really big consulting giants: (KPMG, Earnst & Young, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Deloitte). Interestingly enough, the above aren't known for being particularly nice employers. On the sub the inclusion in the "big f…

I honestly never hear anything about Adobe. MS seems strikingly average and Twitter seems like a place I wouldn't want to work.

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#85

Post by eranation »

krschultz wrote: post #11
eranation wrote: post #7

I have a friend who is a cloud architect at a big-4, he is making a little more than $300k in total comp in NY (base is lower, a lot of RSUs etc), but he is more than just an engineer. He has a friend at another big-4 in NY, also a cloud architect, he is making $400k I think that the $1 million package is incorrectly calculated. This is perhaps the total package for 2-3 years, including signing bonus (vested over a c…

Quick question, who are the "Big-4"? I count Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft at a minimum.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft originally (Or Apple instead of MS depends on who you ask) but this usually also included companies that are very competitive and pay a huge salary package, e.g. Apple, LinkedIn, Netflix, even Twitter although it is far from the same market cap as the others in the list. So I mean "top tech companies", sorry for the confusion!

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#86

Post by eranation »

hardcandy wrote: post #52
eranation wrote: post #7

I have a friend who is a cloud architect at a big-4, he is making a little more than $300k in total comp in NY (base is lower, a lot of RSUs etc), but he is more than just an engineer. He has a friend at another big-4 in NY, also a cloud architect, he is making $400k I think that the $1 million package is incorrectly calculated. This is perhaps the total package for 2-3 years, including signing bonus (vested over a c…

I know of 3 SD4/principal engineers at Amazon who are making $1m/year. I believe there are only about 150-200 engineers at this level in the entire company, so it's obviously a hard position to get. Anyone with experience building out cloud infrastructure has been a hot commodity given all of the companies that are entering the market. Remember that you don't just get a great engineer but you also get the years of ex…

I guess people who wrote a seminal paper on cloud computing, who do research on Xen OS and distributed computing, and generate Amazon savings / product offerings that make them billions, then they should definitely ask for more than a million.

We all know that there are actors who make a million dollar per episode, but most of them don't.

I think that unless you are in the "I wrote the Dremel paper for Google" or "I'm Doug Cutting and I wrote Hadoop" or "I invented MapReduce" or "I created the Xen hypervisor" then don't get your hopes up for a 1 million$ package from Google/Amazon/Microsoft.

In any profession you can find top notch people who are making a million dollar annual salary. But usually it's the very top.

If there are 200 engineers at this level at Amazon, let's say there are 200 like this at Google and 200 more at Microsoft Facebook and LinkedIn, e.g. there are ~1000 engineers who make 1 million dollars salaries.

Let's say there are between 1-3 million software engineers in the US (excluding managers) - sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph..., http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/01/IDC-software-developers

so only 0.03 to 0.1% of Software Engineers make a million dollar salary. e.g. the 99.9 percentile or higher.

Now compare it with doctors, lawyers, brokers, and you'll see that this is nothing to be proud of.

There are about 100 actors who make more than a million dollar a year:

https://www.quora.com/How-many-actors-make-more-than-a-milli...

And about 60,000 employed actors in the US

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes272011.htm

So about 0.166% of Actors make more than a million.

More likely to make a million$ a year as an employed actor than as a software engineer? I don't know, but it's not that different.

The main difference is obviously the width and height of the pyramid...

Bottom line, with even $300K total comp, even in SF, I don't think life is too bad.

But don't get your hopes high for much more than $500K unless you are really going to cost the company a lot if you leave to the competitors, or if you move up high into management.

If you really want to make tons of money, and can sell, then move to sales, (or even presales).

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#87

Post by pacomerh »

DickingAround wrote: post #34
goldenkey wrote: post #14

This is a fucking joke guys. Programming is not the career job that will get you those kind of figures, if it does it sure as fuck will be more of a management position. Look guys, salaried work will never make you 'rich.' Believing it will is the same belief that a startup will succeed. You need to get out of the salary game and work for yourself or do consultantcy if you want big bucks

I think we should clarify on the definition of 'rich' before making that statement. For example, making $200k/year programming (easy for an unusually good engineer with 5 of experience in Seattle) should be able to save >50% of their income. I know more than one person doing exactly that. Do it for 10 years and you're generating 70k in interest every year along with your salary, which is enough for a person to retire…

Saving 50% of the income is definitely not easy

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#89

Post by smrtinsert »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #46

It's a joke. I can disclose that, in a recent past job as VP in a tech company, I had a very generous package which was a bit above $0.5M, all included (base, bonuses, options and RSUs) - then the stock went down (options became worth nothing, stock lost more than half its value), and the actual annual comp went down by about $70k-80k. I am sharing this here to benefit the discussion, please do not make a big thing o…

which tech company matters.

Re: Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer?

#90

Post by wallflower »

eranation wrote: post #86
hardcandy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of 3 SD4/principal engineers at Amazon who are making $1m/year. I believe there are only about 150-200 engineers at this level in the entire company, so it's obviously a hard position to get. Anyone with experience building out cloud infrastructure has been a hot commodity given all of the companies that are entering the market. Remember that you don't just get a great engineer but you also get the years of ex…

I guess people who wrote a seminal paper on cloud computing, who do research on Xen OS and distributed computing, and generate Amazon savings / product offerings that make them billions, then they should definitely ask for more than a million. We all know that there are actors who make a million dollar per episode, but most of them don't. I think that unless you are in the "I wrote the Dremel paper for Google" or "I'…

> If you really want to make tons of money, and can sell, then move to sales, (or even presales).

I know someone who is very successful. He was pushed into sales. After he sold his first CAT Scan machine (5% commission), he never looked back.

It all goes back to are you a cost on the balance sheet or bringing revenue in...

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