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Comment by mrshoe | Hacker News Reader

That this is currently the top comment reinforces the author's hypothesis that many software engineers underestimate how much they could make at a large company.

> 250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really?

Yes, really.

> Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines.

Nope, not true.

> So I think this article is spreading a myth that there is guaranteed piles of money to be made by working at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

Have you worked at Google, Facebook, or Apple for 5 years? If you do, and you're a decent programmer (not a rock star, but a solid contributor), you'll find there are guaranteed piles of money to be made.

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Firstly, everyone not working in the Bay Area can ignore these figures because they are bloated due to cost of living (3K for 1BR/1BA apartment) and competition for talent (from startups and peers).

Secondly, people are ignoring the fact that RSUs at the 3 companies mentioned (and a few others AMZN/MSFT) have grown substantially in the past 5 years (about 125-150% on average) and is the biggest factor in these "surreal" figures.

Broken down into base (110k starting common at BigCorp), RSUs (initially 100-150K over 4 years) and bonus (10-20% base comp ), these numbers would make more sense. First year total comp is close to 145K-170K. By the time you are a senior engineer (mid-level) and assuming this took 5 years, your base comp is close to 135-160K, with refresher grants (and accounting for market performance) your RSUs probably hit 100K/year, bonuses at 30K bringing total comp to 265K-290K.

I happen to work for a BigCorp in SV (close to 1.5 years now) whose stock is performing poorly, hence my total comp is 160K (110K base, 25K bonus, 25K in RSUs/year). But if we had FB/AMZN/NFLX type of stock performance, then my comp would shoot up to 185K without any promotions.

Err, this is not accurate from my experience. I work at a large company (not one of the 'big 4 tech though) ,remote, in a medium cost of living locale and my salary is what your total comp is. I would get a huge jump if I went to one of the big 4 in the bay area.

Forgot to note that I am fresh out of college.

Location is one of the core factors of this article. I'm 3 years into my career and still make less than half the starting rate at BigCorp in SV.

How much is your rent?

This style of reply is not constructive. How can we know with certainty whether or not you have a reasonable shot at making 250k/year after five years of working at Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft?

Provide an anecdote, links to articles, etc.

Throwaway because I don't want my salary history to become public.

I spent 5 years at Google. My AGI (as measured by the IRS) during my time there went $130K, $200K, $280K, $280K, $300K, $356K (for my last 5 months there...it also includes unexercised stock options for the last 5 years, though). The bump to $280K was upon promotion to senior SWE; the one to $200K was largely because of a generous stock refresh grant.

Also throwaway for obvious reasons. What you say sounds totally in line with my experience:

I am Senior SWE at an Alphabet company. Came to MTV in middle of 2015 from a company in the midwest where I made over $200K last year (much of this was profit-sharing bonus), and I was definitely at top of the market for my city.

My total compensation for this coming year (based on current value of GOOG, obviously this can vary) is projected in the mid-$300Ks. (Some of this is initial GSUs vesting, so it's slightly inflated). With the difference in cost-of-living it should be about equivalent to where I was last year. Too soon for first refresh grant, so I can't speculate about where it may go from there.

I've already gotten a larger raise and bonus than I expected, seeing as I negotiated a better offer than they originally gave me. My manager has been talking with me about what I need to do to get to promoted Staff level.

So yes, there is money to be made in SV, at big companies.

One more datapoint from Google (non-Bay Area office):

$75k (partial year), $182k, $254k, $360k

and then I left for a start-up where my total package is $50k. No less happy :-)

That is because you have shitloads of cash.

what part of the stack did/do you work on (machine learning/AI, infra, web services/APIs, frontend, other)?

When you say unexercised you mean unvested, right? Can you redo the numbers and break-out the vesting stock?

Also, since the thread is about making decisions about your career, considering compensation, why did you leave Google?

By unexercised I mean unexercised. Stock options vest continually (well, usually monthly or quarterly usually, after the 1-year cliff); when they've vested, you have the right to exercise them, and they're considered your property. You only exercise them when you choose to, and it's at that point that you're taxed on the difference between the current stock price and the strike price.

Many of my coworkers would auto-exercise-and-sell their options immediately as they vested. If I'd done this then it would've added between $15K-$60K for each of the first 5 years, but the last year would've been about $130K instead of $350K (I benefitted significantly from the stock price appreciation of GOOG, even if I did screw up nearly everything tax-related).

I left Google because five things happened within a year or so: #1 I started feeling bored at work #2 My existing project ended and I couldn't find one that really excited me #3 I passed a million bucks in liquid net worth #4 The outside tech world started entering what seems to be a period of high uncertainty and #5 I started thinking seriously about marriage & kids and realized I only had a few years left. So, in the spirit of YOLO and with immediate financial concerns taken care of, I figured it was time to do some things I'd always wanted to do.

> I figured it was time to do some things I'd always wanted to do.

Does that mean you decided to do the startup thing or that you decided to take time off?

Startup thing.

does it vary by what part of the stack you work on? The impression I've got is that Google tends to value infrastructure engineers more than others (like frontend engineers).

Not to my knowledge. I started in frontend but had touched every part of the stack (including infrastructure and some ML) by the time I left.

I suspect its pretty certain, it certainly held true when I was working there and that was before Google was 50K employees. The flip side though is you may not make it to 5 years. A lot of employees don't (which is less commonly talked about) but Google has always tried pretty hard to not retain people who weren't providing what they considered an appropriate level of contribution.

So if you start working at Google, and you make it to 5 years, then yes I'm sure you'll be making $250k+ total compensation.

> A lot of employees don't

And what is your evidence for that?

I hope it's not an estimate for the average time an engineer has been at Google, which is clearly not the same thing.

I don't know if it is still true but there was a lot of data available during the 4 years I was there to watch this in "real time". Lots of data sources and a number of people interested in the question. You couldn't easily pull apart terms vs quits but at the end of the day it amounted to the same thing.

I'm currently still in school, and I personally don't know anyone who is making $250k/year five years into their career. But I have seen new grad offers that make that number seem reasonable. One of my friends is a really smart developer who got several offers from places competitive with those companies. I don't think they really had much full-time work experience. The first year total comp in one of their offers was around $200k. A 25% compensation increase over five years seems reasonable to me.

Edit: It does kind of depend on how you value stock/RSUs in your compensation package. Most of the offers they got were from public companies that were well run. So I personally would not be extremely worried about the stock losing most of its value before I was able to sell.

At FB, my first job out of college, my W2 income was: 110k (started midway through the year), 300k, 350k.

Harvard/Stanford/MIT?

Anecdote: I've been at one of those companies for three years, and made about $250k this year.

After college,

2 years of startup @ $90k, worthless stock (one of the first employees), long hours. Learned a lot, but definitely underpaid in stock.

FB @ 2014 - $230k/yr = $150k base + $50k stock / yr + $30k bonus.

FB @ 2015 - $480k/yr = $200k base + $200k stock / yr + ~$80k bonus.

Getting into the senior levels at FB/GOOG does indeed get you 250k+ easy.

Friends at FB who joined the same day as me, but fresh out of college: $200k+ / yr right now.

If you're talking about total compensation, 250k is on the low end. Base of $140-190k is common. Add to that $10-30k of cash bonus and $100k of stocks.

Stock bonus for Sr Dev at microsoft is up to 30% of base(vested over 5 years). That won't hit 100k even if you are at fifth year. Is it typical for google, facebook to give 100k in stocks per year (assuming they vest more a less over same 5 years or so).

It's not like they give you 100k RSUs automatically each year, but I think the math tends to average out so that that is basically what is happening.

For instance you may get 100k-150k initial allotment and suppose you get promoted in 18-24 months, they will likely give you a refresher of 150k-225k plus whatever bump you got on your salary. It's also important to note that the refreshers don't have the one year cliff of your initial grant, it starts vesting immediately.

One thing I'm always curious about: most of these discussions seem to be targeted at college grads, discussing where they could be after their first 5 years in the industry. The sense I've gotten is that these big companies tend to compensate all new hires approximately the same, caring little about experience outside their company or perhaps one of the other big companies. It seems to me that smaller, less well known, companies are more hungry for experienced people, because they are relatively starved of people who can drive architecture, decision making, and hiring, and are thus more willing to take a risk on paying a premium for experience.

So my question is: stipulating that the numbers favor bigcos for fresh graduates, is the same true for people who already have that 5 (or 8, or 15, or 20) years of experience elsewhere?

At 3.5 years of experience Google offered me about double what I'm hearing for new grad total comp, so it seems that they value at least the first few years. Given the oft-cited ageism in the industry, I expect that tails off pretty quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years of experience wasn't worth noticeably more than 5 years.

People get $100k of stocks a year? As in, not RSUs - vested stocks? I suspect you're confusing the two, though I admit I'm not certain

RSUs are stocks. A grant of 1 RSU means that on the date it vests, the company will buy 1 share of its stock and drop it into your account at a major brokerage. It's considered compensation and taxed as income, though it's often withheld as bonus income.

My point was that inasmuch as they don't vest the same year they're granted, RSUs are nothing but a commitment that part of your compensation in the future will be in the form of stock.

If I grant you $1,000,000 in RSUs, vesting over 1000 years, is your annual income $1,000,000 ? No, it's $1,000.

Agreed, but I don't see that mistake being made often.

Generally what happens is a laddering of grants. 100k over 4 years. Then a year later, another 100k grant. Then again the 3rd year. And again the 4 year. Once you hit that 5th year, you are indeed seeing 100k in stock each year.

When people cite total comp, including RSUs, they only include the RSUs that vest in that year. At least, this is how the recruiters at the big companies talk about it, which is typically where total comp numbers come from. So a grant of $300k worth of RSUs vesting evenly over 4 years counts as $75k of compensation.

Obviously, it matters very much what the market price of the stock is. Your grant will be for a certain number of shares on some vesting schedule, not for a certain cash value.

Remember kids, stock prices don't always go up. Some stock prices go down, and sometimes all stock prices go down together. Those RSUs that, if fully vested, would have a market price of $400k at time of hire, may well be worth anything from $0 to $millions at the time they actually vest.

When talking about companies as well established as these the risk is a lot lower. In some cases since the goal is to give you a set number in compensation they will factor in a poor stock performance and give you an adjustment to make up for it.

Do you mean companies as well established as Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, and Netscape? Or companies as well established as Woolworth, Kodak, MCI, and Sears? Or perhaps you had in mind the New York Central Railroad, LTV, and Pan American Airlines?

Yes, it is possible that you will be given additional grants or options repricing if your company's stock price declines. Usually not, unless you're a key employee or top performer, but maybe. But that doesn't mean the price won't just keep going down anyway. To say nothing of the bonuses and raises you won't get, or the mandatory across-the-board 10% pay cuts, or the elimination of all the miscellaneous perks. At least, unlike the employees of many of the companies I named above, you won't have a pension you can lose too.

I know it's hard to believe. Intellectually, you can look at history and accept, know very well, that most of these companies will fail someday, and many of them probably in the very near future. But viscerally, you can't get it, because they feel invincible right now. But they aren't. Believe it[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braniff_%281983%E2%80%931990%2...

Over long enough period of course each will decline.But within 5 years risk is small.

Here's what my comp has looked like at FB over the years:

2012: ~75k (internship + first half of sign on bonus + relocation bonus)

2013: ~100k (salary for ~6 months + second half of sign on bonus)

2014: ~225k (~110k base salary + stock)

2015: ~265k (~130k base salary + stock)

I believe myself to be around average. From what I've heard about some of my peers' comp they sound comparable to this as well.

Yes it is, because its relative placement in the thread serves as a sort of poll on whether it rings true to people's experiences.

How is it any less constructive than the person he is replying to...?

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