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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

#81

Post by archgoon »

caprese wrote: post #62
archgoon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is specified which, it is just salary. read the article? they talk about that specifically and yes, it is underwhelming that we still don't know "how much software engineers actually make"

This isn't an article. It's a graph. I didn't see the "About the Data" section when I looked at it the first time time. I was looking in the wrong places, as it is below the generic position advertising part and assumed any further info on the page was unrelated to the graph.

Thanks for letting me know the data is present. :)

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

#82

Post by dilyevsky »

korethr wrote: post #18

Interesting to see that this is not a normal distribution. The modal salary is closer to $135k, the median $146k, and as we see labelled, the mean at $149. Not the idealized bell curve taught about in statistics class. That long tail on the right side is pulling the mean up and away from the mode and median. Honestly, I'm not sure why I expected a classic bell curve instead of a long right tail. Edit: playing with th…

It’s likely bi- or multi-modal with secondary hump masked away due to sampling skew or something

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

#83

Post by wildmindwriting »

_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 also work in Boston and have done so since 2010. My experience has been the same as yours. A little over 15 years of experience, worked at a fairly well-known Boston startup, now in a VP level at a digital agency and I was also shocked at the kind of salaries indicated here. I don't feel I could command $180,000 in Boston even with all my experience.

You're not doing anything wrong. I just don't think Boston pays these kind of salaries (yet). We've got a burgeoning tech scene here but compensation isn't at the same level. When I was looking to relocate back to Denver a few years ago, Boston salaries were much higher than what I was seeing out there.

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

#84

Post by cm2012 »

JoshTko wrote: post #53
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.

But still - an appreciable amount of bootcamp grads are factually making this amount of salary. Even if it's not the average, it's still amazing.

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

#85

Post by jcadam »

Years of experience tops out at "8+"? An engineer that started working at 22 is barely 30 by the time they reach that experience level. Is 8 years really the point where additional experience ceases to have a meaningful effect on salary? Or do these three cities (SF/NYC/Seattle) just do a pretty good job of expelling software engineers after they attain their first gray hair?

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

#86

Post by cm2012 »

gtirloni wrote: post #11
ar_lan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing I've noticed between those w/o a CS degree and those with a CS degree (at least from an elite college) is the first job opportunities. Coming from a school with a very established CS program does provide a huge advantage for your first job because companies actively seek you out and give you an advantage far more than you would get if you're the one putting yourself out there (w/o a degree).

There's also the case of dropouts that start college but find so many job opportunities more exciting and just leave.

This is my case. By year 3 of college, I had a 70k a year job in marketing (which turned into 300k a year now). There was no need to finish those last credits.

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

#87

Post by Redoubts »

BonesJustice wrote: post #49
jalgos_eminator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should, but it looks like triplebyte was explicitly ignoring that because it would add too many dimensions to the graph and those benefits are hard to value. Stock options are not a liquid asset, and their value can change wildly and unpredictably. Ask all those programmers around in 2001 how much their options were worth.

In NYC, and in the financial sector in particular, total total compensation often includes cash bonuses, while stock components are less common compared to S.V. Without insight into total compensation, these numbers are only minimally useful.

Agreed. This is leaving 50% of total comp out of the equation.

-e- not to mention, it's the portion that varies the most with experience and internal performance.

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

#88

Post by _throwawayyyyy1 »

robrenaud wrote: post #79
_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.

I think it's possible - yes. But I kind of qualify those employers as "elite" here, and very competitive to get into - not average.

And if you want to count my pre-teen years coding BASIC games, total experience jumps significantly!

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

#89

Post by chris_va »

_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 know the Google SWEs in Boston tend to get paid (net comp) much higher than that for senior positions, though I am not very familiar with Boston.

On the west coast you'll usually get paid a significantly higher salary in Seattle/SF than most of the other cities with any tech presence (e.g. Portland, LA, San Diego, etc).

Salaries are tied to cost of labor/employment, which varies by city. It is generally correlated with cost of living, though (otherwise people move away), so it balances slowly minus network effect adjustments.

FWIW, I thought the SF numbers in that article were low for mainstream companies, but high for startups.

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

#90

Post by maccio92 »

jcadam wrote: post #85

Years of experience tops out at "8+"? An engineer that started working at 22 is barely 30 by the time they reach that experience level. Is 8 years really the point where additional experience ceases to have a meaningful effect on salary? Or do these three cities (SF/NYC/Seattle) just do a pretty good job of expelling software engineers after they attain their first gray hair?

It's the latter.
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