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Comment by vecinu | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not talking numbers on the internet.

I can respect that.

It sounds like you actually were promoted a couple of times since relocating and now you're in a leadership/director position. I'm not surprised your salary increased.

But honestly, I find it hard to believe you can match a senior level salary here in the Bay Area at a larger company.

A standard offer for someone that is not really "gifted" is $160-$190k base + $100-$150k/yr RSUs.

You're really able to pay people over $250k?

And I'm not even including 401k matching, ESPP, healthcare, discretionary bonuses and annual incentive bonuses.

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The promotions are the reason to job hop, aren't they?

That's always why I moved in SFO. Wisdom I always received was every 2-3 years it's time to move out and up. It's served me well. I think now I'm "career" as we like where we live and I want to build something in my division.

And yes, we easily offer that. Why is this a surprise? Our costs are lower and our clients are largely the same as they would be in the Bay Area. Our major markets are national and international. We don't discount our enterprise level systems and new tech for having been developed in fly over country, and we have a MUCH lower cost of doing business. Physical plant is CHEAP here as are our taxes. This results in more capital available for HR, and we consider human capital our single most important investment.

Our entire strategy is built on innovation and we do that by hiring the top talent we can. That means offering top tier compensations.

Like dkfmn said, it's surprising because most companies just adjust salaries to cost of living and try to get away with paying the least they can.

I applaud your approach and would love to one day work for your company as it sounds like a great place to work since you actually appreciate your human capital.

I also agree on the 2-3 years hopping, it's a great strategy.

It's probably surprising because most companies design compensation programs that are normalized on [talent and geography] rather than talent alone. Sounds like your company has a more holistic approach and that's likely a strategic advantage for hiring.

Side note: SFO is the airport, SF is the city.

I'm used to calling metro areas by their major airport callsign, then again I fly 2-3 times a month, minimum.

Fair enough, as long as you don't tag us SQL :)

(SQL is the IATA and FAA identifier for San Carlos Airport, near the Oracle headquarters half way between San Francisco International (SFO) and Palo Alto (PAO))

Correct... but there was also a bad joke in there.

Oh, good joke, just wanted to make sure everyone got the double entendre (I assume everyone here knows Structured Query Language, but San Carlos is a fairly small airport, isn't it)

Yes, completely tiny, but great if you'd like to rent a Cessna for a few hours. I'm sure the extra detail helped a few people :)

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