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Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure there are more distinguished engineers and other senior engineering roles paying $750/year in total comp at Google/Microsoft/Apple etc. than there are neurosurgeons.

Not to mention tens of thousands of average developers that got lucky with stock options and became millionaires where a doctor of same age is still slaving away as a resident with 24-hour shifts and abysmal pay ($50-$60k year for surgical residents, according to google).

The market (not society) is treating us developers pretty well.

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>The market (not society) is treating us developers pretty >well.

I am on the East Coast (outside of NYC, though), have been in the software business for 20+ years and know a lot of smart /accomplished people.

I don't know a single software engineer who makes more than $200K/year in a senior engineering role, as an employee. (We are comparing salaries, not consulting income or stock options here, which can disappear very quickly).

It would be nice for you to step outside of the bubble you live in SV, every now and then :-)

Please include stock grants, because otherwise it's a silly comparison. With that included, I know a lot of people in SV, NYC, and even Pittsburgh who meet that bar. Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft -- all of these places pay over $200k total compensation for senior engineers. A grant of shares of GOOG or MSFT every year isn't likely to completely disappear within the vesting period...

Stock grants for non-executive employees are rather rare (at least on the East Coast).

And even then, once the bubble pops, if you don't sell (there is usually a vesting period), they could be worth much, much less than today. Remember 2000-2001?

I'm confused about this "east coast" thing. Many of the major tech companies that compensate in cash+RSUs operate on the east coast at some scale or another. Heck, in Pittsburgh alone, you can pick from Uber, Google, Facebook (Oculus), and Apple, of the "really big tech companies that give their employees RSUs". You'll find similar options, no pun intended, in NYC and Boston, at minimum.

As I said: The rolling vesting offered by most companies means that you're selling stock every year after your first. So if you ignore the first year (or pretend that it's poorly compensated), it's not that shockingly bad.

I am not in SV (but still on the West coast) and I know several software engineers making more than 200k/year. That includes stock grants, because it's ridiculous not to when the stock is in a public company and can be immediately turned into cash.

> stock options

RSUs in an established big company are much less likely become worthless overnight. Core part of your compensation at Amazon/Facebook/Google/etc...

The barrier to being neurosurgeons is much higher than a software engineer. The average Neurosurgeon will make on average more than than top 1% of engineers. You can look at pure statistics and get that result.

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