Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you make more than $200K? What did you have to do?

117 pointsamagicalsunday94 comments

Having been writing software for over 10 years, I recently learnt that a friend has been making more than $220K for the past several years (similar background). I'm at $170K and always thought I'm getting paid really well (I'm an engg manager + programmer in bay area, Java expertise).

Curious if people here make more than $200K - what your role/salary/experience is.

How did you get your high salary? How have you been raising it? Do you plan for it, or does the company reward you automatically? Do you switch jobs a lot?

Side curiosity: how much do execs (such has CTO or VPE make?)

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I make about $275k (145 base, 35 bonus, 90+RSUs) as a designer with strong technical and product management skills. For example I can write you a basic Android front end and also a PRD while tangling through legal and security.

I am an individual contributor and just about to begin managing. However I unofficially lead a team of 20. There are still 4 levels above me that can be paid upwards of low millions dollars before entering executive titles like VP.

I'm 30 and it took running a startup, then pushing high profile products in a big 3 company then launching net new products and running as a solo entrepreneur within the company.

At the upper end, it's not about just being a manager or even being good. It's about how well you can create new opportunities that are strategically valuable for the company.

Honestly, I think of myself as just getting started, as I aim to reach 1m+ total comp per year.

> I am an individual contributor and just about to begin managing. However I unofficially lead a team of 20.

How common is this? I'm in a similar position, albeit a smaller group. I've gotten pushback on a management title, but I think I've largely negotiated the unofficial duties into my salary, so I don't mind much. I make $250K (base and total) at a non-profit.

> I make $250K (base and total) at a non-profit.

This is pretty intriguing. May I ask how common this is? I have imagined non-profit careers to be in the <$150k range and not comparable (compensation-wise) to tech companies/startups.

In general I think there is a discount to working at a non-profit. I'd expect a salary bump if I went back to industry. That said, I think it is not uncommon. Non-profits span a wide range of organizations. There are well-funded non-profits like the Gates Foundation, Simons Foundation or the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, medical research institutes and research hospitals, health insurers, and leading museums. Non-profits report salaries of officers, highly paid and key employees. Have a look at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer [0]. Look for IRS Form 990. It's pretty interesting. As tsunamifury says, if you can demonstrate strategic value to the organization you will be in a strong negotiating position.

[0] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/

If you a natural entrepreneur this is pretty common. You also don't tend to care if it's official or not, as long as the product goals are met and you are compensated for making them happen.

Currently making ~$300k/year in total comp.

31 years old. 5 years of experience as a hardware engineer, and 2 years as a software engineer (back-end).

Master's degree from Stanford.

Practice hackerrank, cracking-the-coding-interview, read a programming/architecture book every few months, till you can ace programming interviews and understand your field really well.

Living in NYC, where the financial companies have driven comp levels really high for software-engineers.

Working at a big-4 software company.

Currently at my 4th company. Interview and negotiate aggressively at many different places every time you switch, so you can get 20-40% increases.

Don't know how much this helped me, but do a side-project and blog about your experiences.

> NYC, where the financial companies have driven comp levels really high for software-engineers

I disagree, majority of financial firms see tech employees aka 'IT' workers as a cost center. After '08 there is a major focus on cost cutting as overall industry is not doing well. With the exception of a few high risk and small (few 100 people) hedge funds you barely would see someone with 5-7 years of experience touching 200k salary.

Do you mind if we contact? I just graduated from school with hardware engineering degree and experience on software engineering. I would love to have a conversation with someone who is ahead on my field and can tell me more on how to improve. You can reach me on twitter same username if you will. Thank you.

what's your base salary?

probably $150k like everyone else :) If you're base salary is $200k and you only have $100k stock/RSU's, then there's a problem somewhere...

I have the opposite question for people here: what drives you to more money?

A very expensive house costs a few million dollars, which you should afford quite easily, especially if you have a partner making a decent amount of money. Children and their education cost quite a bit in the US, but even that shouldn't cost a lot. A few expensive holidays per year plus retirement money should be easily doable.

So, basically, why do you want/need more money?

"A few million"... say $3M?

So a down payment would likely be $300K-$600K.

Let's say $400K income.

NerdWallet says that even at $600K down with under $2K of monthly obligations, you're still "stretching" to get to $2.25M, so "afford quite easily" seems a bit questionable.

Money in itself was never my goal.

I always wanted two simple things in life: 1.) To be great at doing something that creates value for others. (sense of duty) and 2.) To be compensated equitably for my work. (sense of fairness)

If you do both of those and succeed, you will make a lot of money during your career. Some people just want to do #1--Linus Torvalds would be a great example--which I'd agree is a more noble, though he's certainly not starving.

As far as what money's good for, it gives you options. It means you can take risks in your career and play the long game. It means you don't have to work a bad job or keep your head down if people are being mistreated. It means your partner doesn't also have to work long hours to raise a family. It means you can start your own business or invest to make a little dent in the world. It means you can retire early if you get burnt out.

Material things are nice but you can have a very, very nice material life with an upper-middle class job. Beyond that, most things are really overrated. I used to like material things a lot more when I didn't have much money. Now that I have plenty, I don't bother much with them. A lot of those purchases came from status insecurity or trying to buy fulfillment. In my first job out of college, I leased a fancy BMW. Now I drive a decade-old Toyota.

IMO feeling "rich" is feeling like you don't have to do anything--your life is entirely on your own terms. It has little to do with buying stuff.

Wife (no job), kids (2), high rent (or living in a rural area, which is not nice for various convenience reasons).

I would love to earn more money. Then again, I look at the post, shake my head and have a salary at about 30% of the GP's target (numbers, not currency. Not in the US).

With 100k+? I'd be comfortable forever. Maybe the US is that much more expensive.

You'll start understanding it when your family grows.

I used to have only one mouth to feed, my own, and I was making 25% of what I make now. I was living quite comfortably.

There are five of us these days. I make 4x what I used to, and it's still not enough. The various costs you can't avoid (healthcare, housing, food) have gone up faster than my income. Every year, the kids spend more money than the year before. Even without the actual goods getting more expensive (and they do), the kids eat more as they grow, their clothes get more expensive, their extra-curriculum activities get more expensive. I can't wait until they start begging me for a car or other really expensive stuff.

The typical COLA raises, if you're even lucky enough to get those these days, do not cover those type of cost increases. Not even close.

Are you American? Speaking for myself, I don't have a safety net aside from my family. So I need to be responsible for my own healthcare, potential children's education, and retirement.

Some people are born under lucky stars, or believe that life will provide, I'm unfortunately am not of that camp, so I want more money for the unpredictable future.

Why not?

Say your job requires a certain level of effort and pays 100k. An offer comes your way from a similar employer, requiring the same level of effort, but pays 120k. All else being equal, why would you stay and miss the 20% bump?

Even if you have no debt, significant retirement/future-life savings, are living comfortably/within your means, what rationale would drive you to avoid earning more?

Ultimately, you're still investing a minimum of 8 hours a day working on something. You may as well drive up the ROI on those 8 hours as quickly as you can while you still can.

1. To be able to live well and pursue my hobbies without a partner or cohabitant.

2. To travel comfortably. More generally, to be able to seek out distant experiences without fear.

Down payment.

You need 500k post tax which is almost 1 million in pre tax saved income to get a nice home in a decent neighborhood in the Bay Area. That is a huge chunk of change.

I would be very interested to see an AskHN dedicated to this question.

If you are already at $170k, you are doing good (even considering you are in the Bay Area).

Like it was mentioned here, focus more on the value you bring to the company, always make decisions like you own the company. If I were the owner, this is what I would do ...

It is a whole different perspective than thinking about "how much can I personally make". Once you get comfortable thinking in that mode (may take a couple of months & years), things will get clearer and you will be able to elevate your thinking and see the forest. It will then get easier for you to talk about "business" and negotiate your pay relative to what you bring. You may realize you are in the wrong company as getting paid $200k is not possible where you are.

If you keep looking around your peers and "at your level" (aka, why is he making more than me), it is definitely easier but you will not elevate your game and get to CTO/VPE.

I've had a few years when I made over $200K. I expect that whatever years remain in my career will all be above that level. Instead of participating in the usual -size war, I'll try to focus on the "what did I have to do" part.

First, I had to be willing to learn. Everything. Constantly. Whatever I knew was never enough. There was always some new specialty, some new technique, some new tool. I didn't waste time on puttering around with these things for their own sake, but nor did I balk at picking them up just because they were unfamiliar.

Second, I had to take risks. I changed specialties. I took jobs at companies, or with technologies, that had uncertain futures. I bit off more than I was sure I could chew. It's much easier to make these kinds of leaps by switching companies, but it's not unheard of to do it within the right kind of company either.

Third, I put in the effort. Part of this is developing depth as well as breadth. Neither alone is sufficient, you need to develop both which means you need to recognize when to pursue each kind of opportunity. Also, nobody likes fair-weather friends and quitters. You have to show you can stay with the ship through rough weather, even if you don't always choose to.

Fourth, I kept myself sane. Charging hard can literally drive you nuts. You need friends, and hobbies, and sometimes you just need a break. I went part-time for a couple of years to avoid burnout. Sooner or later most people will hit that point. If they don't steer away from the abyss, they'll fall in - quite often right before they hit their best earning years. Dumb move. Learn to ease up on the throttle when you need to.

Staff engineer at Google pays pretty well. I'm somewhere in the $215-245k base salary range, with a 20-30% bonus target and equity comp that is roughly equal to my base salary. So all in all I pull down about $500k per year. I get a bit more if the stock has been going up, a bit less if the stock has been going down. We sell all our stock automatically as it vests, so the compensation is very close to being like cash. I have 8-12 years of experience and tenure with the company. (The ranges are partly obscured so that I can't be identified, and partly because I genuinely do not keep track at this point of how much I make.)

Didn't do anything particularly amazing to get here. Worked for a few good teams, and people liked the code I wrote, especially my management. I had very supportive managers who pushed hard for their people to be promoted when warranted. I don't have any special skills beyond being a C++ server programmer and everything that entails -- expert knowledge of debugging and performance on various levels, solid design and coding skill, and deep familiarity with many Google proprietary systems.

First off, are you talking base salary or full package? There is no such thing as $200k base salary for 10 years exp in java. You'd have to specialize. $170k/y base salary for an eng manager is right where you want to be.

If your talking about base salary + bonus + annual sotcks/RSU's then you're way below market.

I think you vastly underestimate the disparity in salaries in the marketplace, even when comparing experience and job description. A hiring decision is often more about paying what's needed to in order to get the people they want, and less about what an expected or average salary is.

There's definitely 200k base for <10 years in Java. I'm happy to assure you of that because I've seen it.

Not to sound like an asshole, but there probably is. There probably are roles paying $500k a year doing exactly that. Not many, but they will be out there for certain people.

Yeah I've seen positions offering 200k base salary for less then 10 years experience with java.

First thing first. I am FANATIC about people calling me 'programmer' or 'Java Programmer' or even 'coder'.

Even though I DO code and I DO write programs, I never define myself as such and promptly call people out when they call me that.

I focus on the value I bring. It can be Java with Hadoop and it can be deploying a Kubernetes cluster or writing a React application. I solve problems in a creative way.

I am making more than 200K. I don't work for the big 4 (or 5 or 50 or 100 or even 1000)

Recently switched jobs. Making 200K base and around 280K total comp.

Recently, to be honest, I am really less focused on the numbers. I live in SV and those numbers make no sense. I would be more than happy making 150K and saving and investing more money than I am able to right now.

I run a company that collects compensation data. We do have a lot of people making well over $200K, though its much rarer in pure salary form. Most of the people in our database with masters degrees and a few years of top-tier experience make in the $120K-$160K salary range, but including stock options and bonuses, a lot of people are easily passing $300K at top companies in mid-level engineering and product roles.

I'd be happy to do some custom data pulls for anyone if anyone has any specific questions. If you want to explore more of the data yourself, check out https://www.transparentcareer.com

Senior eng manager at one of the big tech companies, been there about 10 years, 20 years total experience, high performer, work in a non bay area office.

~$300k base, ~100k bonus, ~$500k stock, per year.

Individual contributor engineers at the same job level / experience at our company generally make a little more, compared with people on the manager track.

If those numbers seem shocking, keep in mind that the most reliable way to get wealthy is not to gamble on a startup, but to get your way into a Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc., and stay there for a decade or two.

Which makes sense, since those are the companies making all the profits, and give generously back to retain top employees.

I make $190k base:

$190k base + $10k signing bonus + RSUs = ~$300k total comp

> what your role/salary/experience is.

Senior full-stack engineer. Located in SF.

> How did you get your high salary?

Interviewed at many companies and received multiple offers. Kept every door open, made sure the company/team knew I was excited to join, and moved the negotiations and base salary forward. It helped a lot to have an existing open offer when companies asked what I was making previously. This anchored their starting offer.

> How have you been raising it?

Switched jobs my salary increased by $10k, $40k, $10k, and $60k. Contracting for 4 years increased my yearly income to $330k. The biggest raise was interviewing at 10+ companies and choosing the best offer. Got a lot of rejection emails too.

> Do you plan for it, or does the company reward you automatically?

I never received a substantial raise without switching companies. Larger companies with lucrative bonus programs might be different.

> Do you switch jobs a lot?

First company I stayed 5 years, second 3 years, third 1.5 years, fourth 6 months, fifth just started a few months ago.

Out of my friend circle I'm not the highest paid engineer. A friend just accepted a senior engineer position a recent IPO company making $210k base. Another friend is an eng. manager at a finance company making $1m but not sure if that's base or total comp.

Wow, that shrinking time spent at each company is the interesting part. It almost seems like a dawning realization that it pays big to keep moving. I wonder if it reflects a larger trend, and if so, what does this flux mean for the future of the job market?

Are you sure you don't want to stay in your new job for 3 months?

I'm at $95k Canadian. These threads make me feel bad.

Location? If you're cracking $200k, you are likely in a major city, silicon valley, etc, and the cost of living is pretty outrageous. Either that, or I am severely under-paid.

Toronto

$70k, Aberdeen, Scotland, with 15y experience. Primarily a .NET dev and team lead, but I'm a good generalist. Haven't had a meaningful raise in around 4 years due to market conditions.

This is pretty much the ceiling for dev in Aberdeen, and the way things are just now in the oil industry I count myself lucky to have a job!

Makes me feel bad also, until I think of the living costs in US big cities. I would really like to see an European version of this thread. Probably the bar would be set somewhere around EUR 100k?

The living costs of some Canadian cities are also very high. Both Vancouver and Toronto are currently experiencing a housing bubble that has made housing extremely expensive. At this point a software engineer in Vancouver is certainly priced out of being able to own a detached home. It is unlikely a duplex or townhouse would be affordable either.

About £500/day is fairly common in London for contractors.

Well, except for London or Switzerland then definitely 100k should be the benchmark.

I'm at 30.857k USD/YEAR (remote from Thailand to CA/USA) .. oh wait! I quit and is unemployed for almost 3 months now. How should I feel!

Better than my Canadian teacher salary, 40-50k base, 20 - 30k after taxes. Looks like CS-like jobs are better money than working with kids!

Under half that in Tokyo. Love the city though. All things in perspective..

almost $70k. London, UK. 4 years of exp.

less than $70k. London, UK ;/

Here, let me help you feel a bit better:

Less then £38k, Oxfordshire

To clarify what people are saying: 200 k$/yr+ in base salary is rare (but not unheard of) in SV/NYC for programmers. It usually implies some degree of specialization beyond "Java programmer" ("highly available systems expert" being an example that I know has garnered that base salary.)

200 k$/yr+ in total compensation (ie, salary + bonus + RSUs, at a public company where RSUs are liquid) is much more common. I personally received that as a SDE II at Google, with 4 years of experience, and from my understanding, I was not in any way an exceptional case.

I've made a little over 200K for the past few years, but my problem is how to keep it and build wealth from it. I store a fair amount in home equity, 401k, etc. but any time I've tried anything in the stock market I've lost my ass. But to answer your question, I will echo a lot of people and say "specialize". My brother made a lot of money in the 00's by becoming the last expert of an obscure database product used by local governments.

Give up trying to beat the market, just call it a day and invest in a S&P 500 index fund. Hedge funds and money managers that get paid $1m+/year can't even beat the S&P 500 in the long run (20+ years). The only one that has beat the S&P year in and year out is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, but even now he admits his conglomerate is so big it will be tough to do that in the future and he also recommends a low cost S&P 500 index fund instead.

www.bogleheads.org

I'm at $160k in the Valley (lead developer with engineering management focus & high quality developer background, originally hired as just an engineer at this amount), but I could easily flip the switch to make over $300k if I want (I have turned down offers greater than this) - I'm very happy where I am right now is my caveat, as my workplace checks every single mark I have as desired/nice to have except compensation.

Earlier in my career I would job search & up my compensation through job hopping. I always had done some substantial open source work on major projects (several of the 150 most starred on GitHub), but I accelerated my work in open source at one point and demonstrated the high quality & unusually high volume I was able to output, while still having a full time job & not doing open source during work for the most part. That experience, along with the volume of accomplishments I have from my work experience, has resulted in excellent dividends for me, as it has allowed me to have my pick of engineering jobs for the most part (whether it'd be a founding engineer, principal engineer, or director of engineering role). I picked my current job very carefully after getting laid off from my previous job (and I was already checked out and actively interviewing at other companies by that point because I was fed up), ending up with a company I still am at almost 2 years later, longest I have been at a job.

I started my career late though - I only am 3 months removed from 4 years in software engineering, after dropping out of a PhD program in math and a stint in the Marine Corps. I did not program prior - I was actually desperate for any job.

Obviously a throwaway.

I worked at a Series C startup in the Bay Area as an architect. I made about 450K in total cash comp + lots of options.

Some of the executives were clearing over 500K a year in cash.

How did that turn out?

200k US$? I am from Germany, currently working in a company and studying at a university (both in the fields of computer science). To be honest, I never thought about how much I wanna earn in 5 or 10 years, but 200k US$ is super high.. Or am I missing something? I don't know how the US tax system works, but is this, what you can spend? Or is it 200k US$ minus taxes? I am kinda confused right know, can somebody help me please? :D

Yes, I assume we are talking about gross earnings before taxes.

Thank God, already thought about moving to the USA

In California, after taxes, you take home about 60-70% of your gross income depending on deductions. It's a lot of money, but property in San Francisco is going for at least $800k right now.

If you want a further breakdown on numbers, linkregister and I came up with a fairly solid breakdown a while back for a new grad in SF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13009702

Note that $1200 gets you a room in a shared flat. If you want your own one-bedroom apartment, it's probably averaging $2500/mo right now.

The US is still the one of the best places to make a filthy amount of money. For that, we trade job security, healthcare, and decently-priced universities.

If you want to earn more you should still move. In Germany base salary is pretty much your salary as the variable part is pretty limited. Here in SV it is just about half of your salary if you work for a while here. It will also pay with experience that will make you much more 'valuable' for companies outside of SV when you move back at one point.

Another option is to just go to Switzerland (e.g. Zurich). You still have German/similar culture but will earn salaries like here in SV with much less taxes. Similar cost of living but after you payed your basic needs everything else above is just a lot more to safe for your future or enjoy life with (and if you invest in stock you don't even pay a cent for long term gains in Switzerland which makes it even more attractive the more you accumulated over time).

$350k total with $160k base as CTO of medium sized company (350 employees)

I got a masters degree, started as a junior at a small company and stuck with it for 15 years.

There is a difference between the mindset of an employee working for a paycheck and an employee considering the success of themselves being tied to the success of the company.

How much money did the company make because of your contributions? What can you do to make the company worth more?

Are you forming relationships with people outside of the company that will enable the company to hire more qualified people or become better by any metric?

Are you applying your skills in a way that shows others in the company how to do their jobs better?

And so on.

You are not being paid because of your computer programming ability, you are being paid because you can provide worth to the company with this knowledge. If you are unable to find a way to apply these skills the company will keep you on, giving you a chance to find yourself and keep things going but the people that make more money than you are likely the ones that enable the company to make more money.

Not over $200k but just for a point of reference, I'm close to where OP is at with maybe ~half the industry experience (non-manager). Not at GoogAmaFaceAppleSoft. I imagine I could possible get more at one of those.

IC full stack 180k(base)+40k(bonus)+50k(rsu). Did not switch a lot of jobs. This is not the highest salary offer I received, but I liked the tech stack so chose this one.

Didn't negotiate or didn't get them into bidding war to get this salary. I thought I'd maintain good terms when joining them so didn't share my other better offers.

But in bay area, these numbers don't make any sense. I pay about $3000 in rent and $2000 in tuition fee as the school district sucks. So in reality my salary might be equivalent to about $100k in any other places.

Side question: What is the current average rent per apartment in SF/SV? What's the current average income? This report from 04/2016 states around $118k/year for income, probably base, and $4,5k rent: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/san-franc... - What do you think - still up to date and realistic?

With a roommate and no rent control monthly cost is 1500-1800. For a studio ~2500. 1br closer to 3000. 3 bedroom homes for a family are easily 6k+.

If you are young and don't mind living with others or in small spaces you can save a lot here. This usually ends with children where families frequently move to cheaper locales like Austin.

SF: my 1br+parking is $2500 a month in the mission.

Been a Googler for >8 years, currently among top 10% of engineers at Google.

Base: >200K, Total comp (w/ bonus + RSU): >500K

Total comp number counts RSUs which are going to vest in 2017, at the current GOOG price of 825+. If GOOG tanks, total comp would go down accordingly.

Didn't have to do anything special, neither I am a rockstar/ninja like Jeff Dean or Amit Singhal - just worked hard, made sure to be on a team with good people, avoided bad managers (lots of data sources within Google to figure out who is a good/bad manager).

Mate, Care to elaborate? I got offer from goog but something seemed off about the manager. He is of Indian origin. I have offer with total comp of 1/3 of what you make. But, I want to make sure that I am on right team and right manager. What are things to watch out for good/bad managers?

If you think a manager being of Indian descent is a relevant detail, you're probably not a good fit for Google, or any software company really.

>the manager. He is of Indian origin

I am surprised why this comment is not flagged yet.

Senior eng in big 4 can easily earn these money...(or in bank sector)

Probably don't even need to be senior for +$200k total comp at Big 4.

SWE at Post IPO in SF, Currently making (~150K Base) + (~200K from stock option proceeds at current stock price) + (~20K from RSU bonuses) = ~370K but will vary based on stock price fluctuations.

I got pretty lucky honestly. Joined a pre-IPO company at a good time so I ended up with a relatively low strike price. People I know who joined only a few months later make a fraction of what I do from their options because the valuation went up a lot shortly after I joined. Company went public 1 year after I joined.

Bay area, early 30s, making $200k base at non-public ~200 person company. I was an early engineer at the company and have done significant work that has directly contributed to the success of the company.

Get good at what you do. Try to maximize the direct impact your work has to the company's bottom line. You are more likely to be compensated well when you are working on a core product.

Once you have demonstrated your value you can ask for more (don't be afraid to ask if you think you deserve it).

Around 400, depending on the yearly bonus. Programmer at one of the big tech companies, 10 years. As best I can tell I got here mostly by doing my best to solve whichever problems were most important for my team. I feel pretty lucky. I never worried much about compensation and have never negotiated or asked for raises nor have I been forced into management. I think there are others who have done exactly what I have done and haven't been rewarded as much.

I don't think it's luck that this happened to you. All companies with HR departments that care about attrition should compensate their employees fairly. If you weren't, I suspect you would have left.

Contrast this to a small engineering firm my friend worked for with high turnover. Skills and contributions had little influence in compensation and instead the strongest influence was how much an engineer initially asked for.

Let me ask the same question a different way. How do you make more than $150K outside of California or New York in another (cheaper) city that is known for good tech jobs?

I'm thinking about a city on this list that is not on the West Coast?

https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-softwar...

I make $250k as the CTO of a smallish company: 50 to 75 employees, 10 of those software engineers. I work primarily remotely.

Specialised, specialised, specialised. Then networked, networked, networked. Now consult and contract only. Work is usually okay, but my real enjoyment of tech happens outside of work hours now.

<25, outside US, no-remote work only.

Staff level at Google/Facebook/LinkedIn will give you ~200k base + stock + bonus without being 'specialized' like others claim here. E.g. for me at Staff level it's 200k base (>400k total with stock and bonus for last year) with ~5 years working as a Software Engineer. As a Senior at these companies you'll likely max out at 180-190k base but with stock + bonus you easily break 300k after your stocks starts vesting. The stock based part of your salary will increase more and more the higher your position gets. E.g. from the salaries I know it's perhaps 20-25k more base salary per level but the amount of stocks you get each year (or at offer time) will increase by a multiple of that while also depending a lot on how your work is perceived.

Of course, google has the highest salaries. If you're a staff at Google I'd expect $200k base. Same if you work in finance. Though, in most of the case you won't make $200k/y base salary with 10 years of exp in "java" or anything related to java technologies. Except if you're at the big 5 + financial/stock market related companies in NYC.

There are way too many people doing Java... It's easy to find and most of the contractors do java.

Even at series A+ startups 180-190k base for 10 years of experience is not that unusual and if you get less in SV I would assume you should get a pretty big part of the equity. No matter what I wouldn't count stocks/options in these cases and there's likely no bonus. But you see that even then it's already pretty close to 200k. So at least in SV I would say this is pretty standard for at least the top 10% of companies and likely much more pay this.

Edit: I general I think people complaining about the high cost of living really don't know how much you can earn here in SV after working a few years for a company. Especially equity gets underestimated by most people and it's comparing 'normal' salaries with base + perhaps a small bonus with the salaries here in SV which are after a while mostly based on stock (at least half of your salary often more after a few years and as long it's a publicly traded company that means real money not fake hopes). The houses cost much more here if you don't waste salary it's not that hard to safe for it especially before you have kids. And as soon as you're in the game with some property you have a great salary and fixed costs for your housing situation. I would n't bet on it but it likely also appreciates in value much more than anywhere in the US which is a nice side-effect. Just wanted to add this to make it clear that I think it pays to be in SV salary + experience wise and outdoors in general are amazing here so the quality of life is pretty nice here if you get into one of the growing companies or found your own after you saved enough.

Also there is a difference between 'doing Java' and being a Software Engineer writing code in Java (or whatever other language makes sense or makes you happy). For sure you can find people 'doing Java' but I wouldn't allow them to commit a single line of code into anything I care about or want to be associated with. It's not about how much code you produce (which 'doing Java' sounds like) but what quality you produce and how little code you write to make your project do what it should do. That's exactly where these two kinds of people differ. With 10 years+ I would hope a developer is in the second part and wouldn't hire someone still being in the first one.

Solopreneur here. Made $445K in gross revenue in the last 12 months. No employees, just a customer service contractor. Gross profit is around 85%.

16 years of experience as a developer, 2 years of experience running a company.

I live in Montreal and make 95K CAD. 10 years java. Not a startup.

graduated in 2009, found a sales job on craigslist at a startup, startup was invested in by Google, worked in another startup, got recruited by facebook, gg

From the other side of the table, anyone who is a big name in Deep learning will fetch big bucks (if we can afford it).

Facebook and Google pay 200+ total yearly compensation to most engineers with over 2 years of experience.

making 220k base salary, as an architect in bay area - about 20 yrs in the industry, 5 here in bay area - java/hadoop etc etc

I'm an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) for a Fintech startup based in NYC my base is $190000, with options + bonus my total compensation is probably closer to $300k. I've mostly worked in financial for large firms such as Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. I now solely work for fintech startups. My career started out as a traditional system administrator working on large Sun Solaris servers (2000 - 2006), I transitioned over to Linux (2007+) then picked up some Java, Python, SQL and I'm now learning Go and big data (Spark) and have a strong background in networking. I primarily get paid to automate and scale infrastructures these days -- my background is that of Google's definition of Site Reliability Engineering, 40% Code 60% infrastructure.

Damn, I should have gone into software instead of hardware.

It's really not very hard to crack 200. Finance and top tech companies all pay this

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