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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#91

Post by beaconstudios »

mFixman wrote: post #81
beaconstudios wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the UK, junior is £20-40k, mid-level is around £40-60k, lead can be around £60-100k. Very rough numbers, and adjust upwards slightly for London. The big money is in contracting in the UK, which would be our accessible FAANG-equivalent.

FAANG in London pays ~£200k total comp for a senior engineer. There are also a couple of local non-FAANG companies that pay similar salaries.

I can believe that, I just don't have any personal experience because I don't live in London, and wouldn't really want to.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#92

Post by m_ke »

gonehome wrote: post #79
paxys wrote: post #16

There's a huge difference between early stage and mid-late stage private companies. For the latter, you are almost always getting RSUs rather than options, so you don't have to pay taxes out of pocket to exercise them. It's also wrong to automatically consider all stock grants to be worth $0 just because you can't immediately sell them. If Stripe or Databricks offers you a million dollars worth of shares today it'll…

Agreed - Silicon Valley exists in part because of 500k-5M$ payouts to employees happening all of the time from private options. Not trying to value that is a mistake.

That's the myth that keeps the whole thing going. For every successful exit that makes employees rich there's a 100 failures and acquihires.

You should judge these deals based on expected value.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#93

Post by jsjohnst »

beebmam wrote: post #85
missedthecue wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or are labor unions in Europe just that much less effective at bargaining? Ah yes, the famously powerful US software engineer's union.

My point is: it seems to me that it is possible that labor unions in Europe are less effective at bargaining than individuals in the US, but I'd like to see research. I didn't intend to imply the US software industry is unionized; the US barely has any union jobs in 2021.

> the US barely has any union jobs in 2021

In software, sure, but to say there barely are any union jobs in the US currently is wildly inaccurate.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#94

Post by Rapzid »

rootusrootus wrote: post #31

In other news, if you aren't in the valley or working for one of the big tech companies, you're probably making 100-150K as a mid/senior developer. There's a pretty sizable leap.

Probably but not necessarily. Don't aspire to be most software engineers if you don't want to get paid like most software engineers haha.

I'll add a data point. I live in a 90 COL index city(I don't live in a 90 area though) and will clear >300k this year total cash comp at a non-FAANG company working remote. Earlier this year I had a 200k base salary offer for a staff full stack eng role at a startup(that just raised a bunch of money). The money is out there.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#95

Post by erehweb »

Say you have $400K of public company stock that vests over 4 years. How much is this worth? (ignoring time value of money for now). $400K? But if the stock tanks then you likely have the option to get another job, so you are less affected by the downside than the upside. How should that factor into your calculation?

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#97

Post by dllthomas »

gpt5 wrote: post #75
azinman2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the cost of living is wayyy lower

Does it matter if you are comparing one year of living in the valley? You don’t need to buy a house for that.

It matters a whole heck of a lot, but not enough to invalidate the statement.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#98

Post by plorkyeran »

bpodgursky wrote: post #35
VRay wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I’ve worked with a lot of people who didn’t hit it big with stock options and suffered ruinous tax liabilities in some cases.. Zero is probably too little, but if you’re being paid way under-market in cash and having to dip into that to exercise options and pay taxes, zero might actually be a good middle ground between the best and worst cases

There may be cases I'm missing, but afaik you never *have* to suffer ruinous tax liabilities from stock comp if you're willing to just eat the gains as raw income (making the (often smart) gamble to hit LCTG is what will get you in trouble).

It is very difficult to run into ruinous tax problems with publicly traded companies, but it's possible. There's a delay between the vest date and when you can actually sell your shares. Normally this is just a few days, but if something dire happens your stock can still tank in this window. If $100k of RSUs vest and then drop to $0 in value before you can sell, you have $100k of income to pay taxes on, and can only credit $3k of your capital losses per year towards normal income.

It is very easy to run into ruinous tax problems with privately traded companies. If you exercise options you have to pay taxes on the difference between the strike price and the current fair market value, and in exchange you've gotten something which is very difficult to sell. You can avoid ever having any tax problems by just never exercising your options until a liquidity event, but that often means letting them expire unexercised.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#99

Post by cosmodisk »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #80
jiggawatts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the... s%&#? Half a million a year for a developer or architect is bonkers. That's the equivalent of AUD 800K a year. That's more than what the Prime Minister and a cabinet member put together make here! How can that possibly make sense? For that kind of money you can easily hire 4 senior developers here! Any company "hiring local" at those prices isn't exploring their international staffing options properly...

Facebook seems to be aggressively searching for remote workers outside of the US if my inbox is any indication. I imagine others in the US are too.

How does that work with the recent 'they need to return to the office' + anyone remotely working for Facebook outside the US will never make hundreds of thousands as a developer.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#100

Post by sbuccini »

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