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

Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

drive.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 614 posts

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#91

Post by perl4ever »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #21
glglwty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A senior position in the doc will probably get you ~2M in savings by 35. How do you retire with that?

Even at a meager 2% interest that’s $40k a year. That’s a comfortable wage in much of the USA, especially if you’ve been camping in an RV for a decade to retire.

I don't believe anything I read on HN about the lifestyles of the SV elite, but I think this scenario is comical if it were representative.

You get paid well into six figures but have "to camp in an RV for a decade", and then you retire with a $40K income. You could have just gotten a $40K job at some place* that didn't kill your soul! In ten years, you'd be making at least $60K. And if you burned out for whatever reason anyway, you could go on disability.

*by place, I mean either employer or city.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#92

Post by chillacy »

eru wrote: post #36
i0exception wrote: post #20

Salary negotiation is pretty one sided today with companies holding all the cards. Better visibility into numbers will definitely help level the playing field. Collecting offer letters is an interesting way to build trust in data. What's the incentive for someone to upload their offer letter though?

> Salary negotiation is pretty one sided today with companies holding all the cards. What makes you think companies hold all the cards? Especially in tech.

It's not all the cards but companies (recruiters) usually have information asymmetry on their candidates. Sites like levels.fyi are a good remedy, with the right info and counteroffers you can negotiate salaries/sign-on bonuses up by pretty large amounts.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#93

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

meritt wrote: post #80
huehehue wrote: post #53

What I'm taking away from this is that many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. I've been through the SF/NYC Senior SWE interviewing gauntlet twice in the past three years, and received 10+ offers at half this rate. Levels claims to be checking offer letters, which is great IMO. It's really hard for people to know they're being undervalued when the employers are low-balling and the self-reporter…

> many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money. The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent, as it's simply unrealistic to impossible for many firms to compete. Not to mention they app…

>> Not to mention they apparently pay many people these sort of salaries to do basically nothing [1]: they've decided it's better to simply retain talent than risk them going to a competitor, regardless if they provide any value or not.

I don't think Google is purposely ok with some of their employees doing basically nothing. I've heard the theory that companies pay for some top talent who don't generate value just to prevent them from going to competitors, but is there any hard evidence for it?

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#94

Post by chillacy »

glitchc wrote: post #27

I believe what is needed is a salary and stock breakdown, just like levels.fyi. You can’t pay the rent or buy food with stock.

Levels.fyi has this on their main site. But RSU vesting at public companies is a lot more humane these days (unless you work for Amazon).

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#95

Post by choppaface »

Another point of reference: here are some offers recently aggregated on Blind. In 2019, I got an offer almost identical to one of those listed below, and a friend got an offer a little higher than listed below. So I believe the reports are legit.

While the raw salary data on levels.fyi is useful, other context about the candidate & team is pretty important. For example, my friend has no college degree but matched to a very profitable / well-funded team, so he got a relatively larger stock award. levels.fyi probably has a pretty good estimate of how each company assigns base salary bands to the now "standard" four levels (junior, senior, staff, decorated).

It seems sign-on bonuses grew a lot in 2019. Several posts for Facebook new grads getting $100k sign-on bonus.

LinkedIn

Senior

* 185 base, 10% bonus, 300k - 400k for 4 years stock, 60k sign on

* Total Comp: 294 - 319 / yr

Staff:

* 210 base, 15% bonus, 600k for 4 years stock, 75k sign on

* Total Comp: 411 / yr

Senior Staff:

* 230 base, 20% bonus, 1M for 4 years stock, 100k sign on

* Total Comp: 551 / yr

Facebook

Senior:

* 210 base, 15% bonus, 700k for 4 years stock, 80k sign on

* Total Comp: 437 / yr

Staff

* 225 base, 20% bonus, 1.1M for 4 years stocks, 100k sign on

* Total Comp: 570 / yr

Google

Senior

* 195 base, 15% bonus, 750k for 4 years stock, 100k sign on

* Total Comp: 438 / yr

Staff

* 220 base, 20% bonus, 1M for 4 years stock, 120k sign on

* Total Comp: 544 / yr

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#96

Post by perl4ever »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #62
tempire wrote: post #5

If this is for real, _everyone_ I know is getting completely screwed. I have a hard time believing any of these numbers. If I earned any of these amounts for 2-3 years, I could live off the interest for the rest of my life.

Here in Canada entry level SWEs are getting paid 60k-70k CAD (45k-55k USD). It's worse in Europe. These numbers are absolutely mind boggling. Even with a higher cost of living and California income taxes, you still have at least 100k of free money to invest. It's no wonder so many people apply for jobs at FAANGs. A job at a FAANG is practically a ticket to early retirement.

NY state pays all IT people (with a 4-year degree) $56K to start currently. Of course, you get a pension(!) and good health insurance. Private sector companies often don't pay much higher, and have much worse benefits.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#97

Post by thatsenough »

meritt wrote: post #80
huehehue wrote: post #53

What I'm taking away from this is that many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. I've been through the SF/NYC Senior SWE interviewing gauntlet twice in the past three years, and received 10+ offers at half this rate. Levels claims to be checking offer letters, which is great IMO. It's really hard for people to know they're being undervalued when the employers are low-balling and the self-reporter…

> many (most) companies are grossly underpaying their engineers. No, that's simply unfair to the companies who don't have billions of dollars in free cash flow or effectively infinite amounts of VC money. The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war which has a side effect of creating an oligopoly on talent, as it's simply unrealistic to impossible for many firms to compete. Not to mention they app…

> The top firms have gotten themselves into an insane bidding war.

That may be true, but there's more to it than that. The first wave of successful IPOs (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, etc.) caused a spike in housing prices as employees purchased houses. On top of that, companies have added tens of thousands of new jobs, without proportional growth in the housing supply. So housing prices are now absurd, and these companies need to pay more so their employees can buy smallish houses on the peninsula at $1.5-$2.5M a piece and have a middle-class quality of life.

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#98

Post by chao- »

saagarjha wrote: post #83
ameen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I get paid lower than an entry level engineer while managing, developing and maintaining the entire web presence for our company - public site, e-commerce store, etc. I get paid 1/50th of what the company made in e-commerce sales (similar amounts through other channels). I can’t quit and prepare for a job interview as I need to maintain visa status. And my workload averages ~60h/week.

I'm curious: you've chosen to tie this pretty closely to your real world identity. Aren't you concerned at all that a company that you're beholden to and is willing to underpay you will just let you go if they find this?

It sounds like (guessing based on phrasing) ameen is the only, or only senior, technical staff member? Why would they let them go? If I were a cartoon-villain, mustache-twirling higher-up for said company, what this post tells me is that the situation is currently working, that my employee knows the score, and they don't seem liable to do anything about it except complain on the internet. In a really evil way, wouldn't it be reassuring to them?

I should be clear, I sympathize with the situation and hope that ameen's employer is not cartoonishly evil, and instead would maybe even realize they have improvements to make. But just thinking about possible outcomes of someone venting on the internet, firing doesn't seem like one that makes any sense.

If they are such a central team member to an ecommerce operation, likely the company feels equally stuck with them (e.g. how many sales would be lost if the site went down while looking for a replacement, and would the company even survive that?).

Re: Top Paying Tech Companies by SWE Level

#99

Post by chillacy »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #65
HenryKissinger wrote: post #52

$175,000 at Oracle for an entry-level engineer? I mean... just... wow. You could retire at 35 and not have to work for the rest of your life. How hard is it to get these jobs?

Not that hard depending on your natural cognitive ability. Just grind leetcode questions. For higher level interviews, also study up on systems design questions.

I think that's underselling things. These companies have very low admit rates, and leetcode is pretty tedious. That said though, divide the compensation difference by 200 hours of studying and it probably works out to a worthy investment.
Post reply on HN