Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

levels.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 91 posts

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#81

Post by txcwpalpha »

pascalxus wrote: post #77
txcwpalpha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. Lol. No, it isn't. It is absolutely mind blowing what the general tech industry thinks "scraping by" means. The median household income in SF is less than 100k. At 200k, you make more than twice that. If you're just "scraping by" with 200k, then I can't even imagine what people making less than the median are doing.

The Median houshold in SF has a rent controlled apartment and no kids (roughly 70% or more is rent controlled). If that's not you, you will have hard time.

>If that's not you, you will have hard time.

Only if you're a buffoon with your budget. A non-rent controlled, very large apartment in SF proper will run you $3-4k/mo. You can even bump that up to $5k/mo if you really wanted to go luxurious or pay for a 2-3 bedroom, and you would still be under the recommended "30% of salary goes to housing" metric. If you purchased a typical 30 year mortgage on a $1.5million house, you would still be at only 40% of salary spent on housing, and that's with an entry level salary! Most people cannot even dream of affording a home until they are in their 30s.

An entry level worker being able to afford a sizable home and still take away several thousand dollars a month in savings is so well off compared to the vast majority of Americans that it's outright insulting to say that they are anywhere even remotely close to "scraping by" or "having a hard time".

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#82

Post by username90 »

geebee wrote: post #41
txcwpalpha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. Lol. No, it isn't. It is absolutely mind blowing what the general tech industry thinks "scraping by" means. The median household income in SF is less than 100k. At 200k, you make more than twice that. If you're just "scraping by" with 200k, then I can't even imagine what people making less than the median are doing.

Child care in San Francisco, the kind that goes from 8am to 6pm, runs over $2500 a month. That's not ultraluxe, that's pretty standard fare, and my estimate is probably on the low side. A 3br house in an unfashionable but largely safe part of town is probably well over $4000 in rent. Again, that's not a high estimate. If you have 2 kids in daycare and are paying a mortgage or even just renting, you're looking at $9,0…

Do you send your kids to daycare when you have a stay at home wife? Those numbers doesn't make sense, either your wife stays at home so no need for daycare or she works and earns money covering for the daycare costs and likely more.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#83

Post by username90 »

grammarxcore wrote: post #8

I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are also very expensive cities to live in and around. 200k in the bay area is scraping by whereas 100k in the Austin area gets you a house in a reasonable amount of time. Are there any plans to provide adjustments like that?

Pittsburgh is not that expensive, you can get two bedroom apartment in the middle of the city for $1k a month and they still pay huge salaries there. So the CoL adjustment is not that big, you get a little less in low CoL than in high CoL, the main driver of these large salaries is the company and not the location.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#84

Post by lhorie »

umvi wrote: post #36

Obviously San Francisco and New York City have the highest salaries... they have the highest cost of living. Can we get a list adjusted for cost of living?

Depends on who you're living with. When I first moved to SF, living in a dorm downtown w/ shared bathrooms/kitchen among some ~50 people, I was paying $1.8k/mo. Then my wife and kids joined me, and we moved to a "proper" place in outer richmond. The cost for 2 bed + 1 kid in preschool went to 6.5k/mo. If you're single, you're probably looking in the range of 3.6 - 4.5k for a 2 bed rent, or half of that if you can get a roommate. Transit runs you about $80-100/mo. So if you're young and cheap, there's a lot of opportunity to build up a bank.

On the other hand, If you are married w/ toddlers and your spouse is on a non-work visa, you're gonna have some tougher luck w/ COL.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#86

Post by einpoklum »

These salaries is kind of obscene. But then, the conduct and social impact (in the US or outside of it) of many of these companies is also kind of obscene: Lyft and Uber employ pseudo-freelancers for very low effective wages; AirBnB are keeping apartments out of the regular rental market in favor of jacked up per-day prices; Facebook tracks everybody and shapes (to some extent) their consciousness and knowledge of the world; and so on.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#87

Post by senordevnyc »

pascalxus wrote: post #79
senordevnyc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm just a random internet commenter and thus you could be forgiven for thinking I'm making things up, but I just got an offer from a smaller public tech company for a senior / staff level position making almost $400k in first year comp. I'm pretty confident that after negotiation we'll land a little over $400k. And recruiters at several other tech companies where I'm interviewing have told me they can match o…

If you can get 600K at FB or Snap, you must be a top 3% candidate, according to FYI.levels, right?

I mean, I don't know? To be fair, I have not gotten an offer from either of those companies. Maybe I never could. But I did get an offer from a company that competes with them for talent and it's roughly at the L5 level at Snap and E6 level at FB. Looking at levels.fyi, I'm seeing $550k - 575k, and given that the offer I got was about $50k higher than the data levels.fyi has for the company in question, I don't think hitting $600k is crazy, especially if you have competing offers.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#88

Post by geebee »

senordevnyc wrote: post #64
geebee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you studied extensively for the technical exams? I've tried, and I've gotten interviews at several of the FAANGs as well as some desirable mature startups, but I fail at the technical screeinging stage. Not sure if I've tanked it or was close, but I get the "no hire" call or email after take-home projects or whiteboard exams. Btw, to give you sense of it, I'd have no trouble finding a loop in a linked list, prin…

How many tech screens and interviews did you do? I cast a pretty wide net to start, so I was in the loop to some degree at a bunch of companies over the last ~7 weeks, which was exhausting. But I didn't really think I had much shot at these bigger tech companies, honestly, so I interviewed at a ton of NYC startups too. The practice was really helpful. I haven't totaled up my stats, but this is roughly how things went…

Thanks for your reply! Your pass rate is quite a bit higher than mine - I'm 0/2 on projects, probably 2/5 on interviews (I'm only counting the in-person interviews, don't have a problem with phone screen level). Some were much easier than others. I think my most recent interview was a couple years ago, though, haven't done much of it lately. I do agree with you and the other reply (mdocherty) that it is a bit random and you only need to connect once. That said, it's not totally "free", there's no real point (for me at least) in going into these without substantial prep.

At my google interview, I asked for 3 weeks. My lunchtime "interview" (this one is unscored, just a chat) told me that he had requested and studied for 6 months! Seriously.

Now, some of that may seem nuts, but if you really don't know much about data structures, algorithms, binary arithmetic (or are very very rusty on it), I can see how a stretch of studying would be good for you. But once you have, it starts to feel like re-studying for your midterms. Still, for $250k and up, with growth potential... yeah, I can see why people are willing to keep going through the washing machine.

Lastly, I suspect you're just a little better at this than I am. I think I'm in range, but it's a little more of a stretch.

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#89

Post by matt-attack »

0xBABAD00C wrote: post #56
matt-attack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to think there will be a correction (because in so many ways it seem obnoxious), but frankly I don't see the need for their skills falling anytime soon. Tech drives everything in our world, and specifically, software.

What kind of defeatist mentality is this? There should be a correction in the other direction, if anything.

Meaning, software dev salaries should go up at these companies?

Re: Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019

#90

Post by swat535 »

As a Canadian Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience.. I think this list is comical..

I've managed to barely squeeze 120k-130k CAD (90-100k USD) out of big companies here (e.g Shopify). I'm not sure if having free medicare is worth losing 2-300k...

Oh and I've tried applying for remote positions in the US and I get the good ol compensation skewed based on COL mantra.

Post reply on HN