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The main reason for this is RSU. The base salary at those companies is not much more than rest of industry. But at senior levels the RSU matches or exceeds the entire base salary.

Other companies have a hard time matching this. Startups try but the common wisdom now is to value those at zero. It seems only public traded companies stock is now considered as having value. And only public SV tech companies give these massive RSU to engineers. Other public companies don't do this. And they are not willing to match the RSU amounts with cash. It's possible this situation will only exist as long as this bull market. When the stock market bear comes, will these tech companies continue the massive RSU? And if not will they replace it with cash?

There's a point to this if you get a good startup job offer, but probably 95% or more of startup job offers are terrible. "You'll earn 50% below market, but if we make billions, your options will be worth a few hundred K per year once we have a liquidity event." No thanks.

For big companies that pay market rates, stock can be valued, and GAAP actually requires it. So they're not saving any money on paper paying you in stock. Your total comp is their total comp.

Usually, when you get a good offer including stock, it's from a company with worthwhile stock. Most startup offers aren't worth it even in wildly good scenarios.

But they are totally taking on all the risk and hard work. YOu just have to work insane hours for half of your worth with the risk of getting fired. That's no risk at all compared to being a founder, you should be grateful they gave you that (pre-dilution) 0.015% as employee number 1. After all you get ot build something great!

Which is funny, given that much of their risk is probably just to reputation, if they are funded from angels and operate as a LLC, or whatever.

I always assumed founders put at least some of their own money into the venture. Isn't that the norm?

Were I a VC I wouldn't back someone without skin in the game.

When you are north of 150k in base that's already considered pretty high for a lot of these other companies.

Then you add in stock, bonus, etc... Adds up to a huge package.

RSU = Restricted Stock Unit, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restricted_Stock_Unit

I'm in the first camp, and there are people who think we are ridiculously underpaid. "If you're so good, how come you haven't hit seven figures?" is something I've heard a couple of times already. So there is a tier above us too. Go figure...

I've heard of several engineers at the bigger companies who make 7 figures, but basically they are not only engineers working on active projects but are also putting their names on patents.

It really reminds me of a power law distribution : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law

Some are very well paid/employable/competent, but the vast majority are not. Many people think the job search should be like a normal/Gaussian distribution, most people rambling about the mean. But it's not that for the searcher nor the employer; the employees you want are to be paid on a power law, and the jobs you want are as a common as a power law.

Curiously, this works for populations of cities, star luminosity, start-up success, and many other things.

> I know it's considered bad negotiation

it's not. the more assertive you are with your compensation requirements, the more likely you are to get paid what you want.

i don't know where this crazy idea of "don't tell anyone what you want to be paid" came from, it sounds like some real amateur hour nonsense that will get you passed up in favor of someone who is more straight forward with the entire process.

imagine trying to buy a product or service, but nobody will tell you how much it costs, but instead tries to subtly hint that you should name your price.

> imagine trying to buy a product or service, but nobody will tell you how much it costs, but instead tries to subtly hint that you should name your price

There are tons of products that don't have a listed prices, just a "call our sales representatives". Heck, the job listings don't list salary expectations, even when they're cold calling you.

"call our sales representatives" means they'll tell you if you call. i'm guessing you never call, because you don't actually want to talk to anyone, which is exactly what they're trying to do: filter you out.

It can mean: "you want to know the price? Well, that depends... How much is it worth to you?"

Among plenty of other things

Value-based pricing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing

Best way to increase margins when the perceived "worth" is variable and it's a seller's market. Not so optimal in a market where you as a seller are in a buyers market.

> they'll tell you if you call

...or they expect you to haggle. Or the price depends on who you are. Or the price depends on how close they are to getting their sales bonus.

They'll make you offers going from most expensive to cheaper, also it's a filter in order to lure in people who believe the product has value. You could say is a subtle way of asking people if they value the product highly, basically asking people to name the price even though not directly.

Slightly related. I openly share my salary information with all of my friends in tech, 90% share their history back with me. I refuse to let social mores depress my wages or those of my friends. I recommend all engineers do the same.

Ok, how much?

I make ~$200k in an affordable city not on the coast. I could make $300k - $400k in NYC. I write and maintain programs for finance.

How do you get a job in finance while not on the coast? Remote work? Work in a branch? Work for a regional outfit?

My money is on Charlotte NC, or perhaps Austin or Dallas if Charlotte is considered the coast somehow.

200k in those areas is obviously quite good but not life-altering money. You'll need to work 5-10 years before you become a millionaire.

Anesthesiologists in that area can make up to 600k.

live on the coast for a while, build/augment your career and social circle, and then move somewhere else and keep your job(s).

note this plan actually involves dedicating years of your life to something without a guaranteed payoff or clearly defined steps, which is why it seems like such a mystery to most people.

Yes, I think that "rule" came about to have people avoid price anchoring against their own best interest. However, why not use the price anchor in your favor? It does take some confidence and ability to walk away, so in a compromised position I see the merit. But generally engineers are in a great position in the marketplace.

It's not crazy if you don't have a good idea of your market value. It's not "don't tell anyone what you want to be paid", it's "make the other side go first, just in case I'm wildly undervalued and the range is higher than I can imagine".

And I've been part of many enterprise software purchases where getting to a cost depends a lot on budget and perceived depth of pockets. Final prices are usually 50% of the first price you can drag out of the vendor, but I've seen up to 90% discounts.

You're right on both counts, as long as the market values are relatively well known to all parties. When it's murky, you're better off letting the other side go first. Sounds like you're very in touch with your own personal market value, so it's not an issue for you.

> Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of replies: "I don't believe this at all, Glassdoor proves you are wrong, nobody I know makes that, blah blah" and "bro that is totally normal".

That's the thing. On one side, you have people who at least have a bit of publicly available data to point to (although sure, one could point out flaws in salary.com and glassdoor.com). On the other side, you have random people saying "Bro, you're totally wrong, lots of people make $400k." Even if I didn't have a dog in this race, I know which side I'd believe.

I know people who are making mid six figures working for Google-tier companies. But I don't think there are very many of those kinds of people - hundreds, maybe. And these are people with highly specialized skillsets in addition to their software development skills - pattern recognition, for instance. You're not going to get a job like that because you know Python really well.

Asking a software developer "Why aren't you making $400k?" is a lot like asking a random mid-level manager why he isn't the CEO of a Fortune 100 company.

> I know people who are making mid six figures working for Google-tier companies. But I don't think there are very many of those kinds of people - hundreds, maybe.

This is the thing that annoys me the most about these conversations. Some people take a few outliers and use them as proof that the rest of the bell curve is [ bad at negotiating | incompetent | lazy ]. Drives me nuts. I can name several multimillionaire business owners. Nobody's going around saying your bootstrapped one man startup should be raking in multiple millions of dollars a year or there's something wrong with you.

These "HN salary" threads would be a lot less annoying if those guys would just admit "Yea, $300K or $400K is super rare, for outlier folks out outlier companies who have outlier skills," rather than the usual "Lots of people make that! Just negotiate better, bro!!" bluster.

I make $400k as a software engineer, and I can tell you it's pretty rare. We're probably talking top few percent of engineers (in terms of compensation) living in a select number of areas.

I think it's possible only a few dozen companies can do this.

These are median numbers for Amazon/Google/Facebook/Microsoft https://blog.step.com/2016/04/08/an-open-source-project-for-...

I still don't believe the $250k figure :)

I make exactly half of that here in Florida (a fairly low cost area) as a senior dev and my salary has definitely plateaued (and I haven't had a raise in a few years).

I know I make more than most of my peers and local recruiters scoff when I tell them my current pay (I had to talk my current employer up about $30k just to match my salary at my previous employer to get me to switch -- and they only did so because they were quite obviously desperate).

H1B data is public. You can see exactly how much they are offering H1Bs, which most people assume to be lowballing. The median for Google is $127K, but that includes junior engineers. Sort by salary to see the senior roles.

And then remember that this is just base salary. Usually, the RSUs are almost equal to the salary when granted, and sometimes double in value over the four years they vest.

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...

This is a good data set to calibrate in larger orgs or an industry. You should be within a std deviation I would say for your role. Software engineers are lucky in that we can work across industries.

Do you mean that you actually don't believe it? As in, "I think that's a false statement"? Or do you mean that you're jokingly in "a state of disbelief", as in… surprised or taken aback?

I have friends in low cost areas that make around what you're describing. They don't continue doing that because of willful disbelief, they understand that they could move and make 2.5x their current income. They just like the lifestyle. Which, totally makes sense to me. It's an amazing lifestyle.

Perhaps somewhere in between. While $250k sounds high for a pure code-slinger, I'm willing to believe a few companies (Google, Microsoft, et. al.) choose to pay a small number of their top devs that kind of money.

On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin) that I can't imagine it would be difficult to fill those same positions at a significantly lower salary (or total comp, whatever -- I've never held a job that pays equity or bonuses in any non-trivial amount).

The competition is fierce? Must only be a SF phenomena. My side of the country doesn't feel that way at all. Seems like there's way more jobs than qualified applicants over here.

Still the same problem of most being unwilling to pay for talent, but those who are still aren't having THAT easy of a time.

Nope, most senior devs at such companies are pure code slingers or small team leads. The "select few", which I interpret to mean people who can architect or lead large projects, start at 400k or so and top out at undisclosed millions.

Believe it. I'm based in Austin, and a few years ago was making about $125k as a senior dev when Apple came calling. They wanted me to move out to California which I didn't want to do, so to blow them off, I did a small calculation (cost of living, california taxes, etc) to arrive at the conclusion that at the very minimum I'd need $180k for that move to even start to make sense for me.

The recruiter explained how they could easily pay me a $140-160K base and give me about $40k in RSUs to get me up to $200k if I was the right candidate. I'd never heard of RSUs before that and he had to explain what they were to me.

The easy with which it was offered definitely helped me understand why $250k in total comp was definitely something that could be done at the bigger tech companies

> On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin)

This is so much the exact opposite of everything I've experienced that I have a hard time believing it. Finding good developers is near impossible, we regularly interview people for months before finding someone halfway decent. And the last time I looked for work I had several offers for remote positions at east coast companies, which makes it hard to believe this is a regional thing.

What sort of work are these great devs doing that is not in demand?

Is your company one of the hot ones right now where developers are lining up?

Assuming not, what's the compensation for the job? Have you tried posting the compensation for the job publicly?

The reason I ask is because as someone who works for one of the big 5, I don't even consider companies outside of the big 5 or top startups. As "cynicalkane" said: "Much of the industry is not only unaware of reality but refuses to believe in it. This includes real engineers who do real work at real companies and comment actively on Hacker News. $250k for a senior engineer is just completely outside their reality."

Are you offering 250+ for senior engineers? If so, broadcast it and people will interested. Else, I'll assume you are going to just offer non-market rates and waste my time.

I agree fully. It may look like there's fierce competition to someone who has failed repeatedly, but here's what it looks like from the inside: In my experience at three of the big tech companies, we extend offers to everyone who meets the bar. It's never a case of "we have 3 strong candidates, so which one do we choose?". If we have 3 strong candidates at the same time, we attempt to hire all 3 - attempt meaning in competition with other potential employers. If we have 3 weak candidates, we don't settle for the best of the current options - we hire 0 and we wait for more candidates. If you're not getting hired at AmaMicroGoogBook it's not because there's a surplus of great SDEs and some other candidates edged you out for a limited number of seats - it's because you simply didn't make the hiring bar.

Absolutely true. Of those I've interviewed at Alphabet, only about 1 in 7 has gotten an offer. You'd be surprised how many people do really terribly in onsite interviews. Phone screens are even worse.

Where I used to work in the Midwest, we tried to have a similar hiring bar, but just couldn't get as many people. The best we hired were as good as anyone I've worked with in SV, but the worst... well, I won't get into that.

as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin

No, no, no. Not even close. At my last gig, we would interview for months to find a decent candidate. We were no AmaFaceGoog, but our pay was decent and the work was interesting. The supply (here in the Upper Midwest), definitely does not outstrip the demand!

I don't know a single person at Google who makes less than $180k in total comp, and that includes new grads. If you are more senior in any way (e.g. graduated college 2 years ago instead of just now), you're looking at >$200-220k, and if you're actually Senior Software Engineer, you're looking at $250-300+k total comp in a year.

Really, don't let the base salary numbers fool you. RSUs is where it's at.

> I don't know a single person at Google who makes less than $180k in total comp, and that includes new grads.

I assume this is MTV/SVL/SFO/NYC? I'm sure you can find new grads who make less than that in other offices. At least I make less than that as an L3 in SEA

SEA is in pretty much the same bracket when it comes to compensation. I've heard some rumors that recent new hires have been getting less stock than people in the past. Are you also including bonus (15-20% of salary)?

Sadly, yes =[ Comes out to be ~150k total. Honestly I don't mind I feel I am lucky to work at Google =]

"here in Florida (a fairly low cost area)"

Let's say you work in downtown Tampa and live 30-40 minutes away. You can get a 4 bedroom 2500 sq ft house for $350K. That's about 3 years salary for you.

Now let's say you get a job at Facebook and want to find a similar house, about 30-40 minutes away. I think it will cost you upwards of $2M. You need to be making $670K or more to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses.

Your quality of living and long term economic prospects are probably significantly better where you are.

> to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses

And when housing is the same fraction, the disposable income after that fraction is removed is far, far higher. As Bill Gates says, once you can afford the $30 burger, there's nowhere to get an even more expensive burger.

Bill Gates needs to update his quote, I don't think $30 is where burger-technology has topped out these days

More than that. If you make that kind of money you're going to pay a higher percentage of it in taxes.

FWIW I'm roughly at the mid-point between those two figures and not at a Big 4 or similar. I have no RSUs, stock, bonuses, or other such things, it's all base salary. My base salary is higher than any of my developer friends who have full time jobs, but my total compensation is roughly upper quartile due to their add ons.

Yeah I see this as well. Some recruiters will name a number less than my current comp, and be completely astounded that I am already making that much.

Who are the competitors to AmaFaceGoogFlix? I'm based out of nyc, and the common logic here is that dev salaries start maxing out in the 150-170 range. If you go to a hedge fund, you can get more, maybe pop 200. But for more than that? You have to go to AmaFaceGoogFlix.

If you're working for finance total comp (if not base salary) is definitely going to rival the biggest tech players. From what I've seen 150-170 base is the minimum for senior devs then you talking bonuses or stock for at least another 25-50%. If you're working for a hedgefund you're talking bonuses of X00% so it almost doesn't make sense to compare base salaries.

The startup story, at least in nyc, is pretty different. Best I can tell few of those players are willing to even try to compete on a base salary (or total comp) with any of the larger players.

This is a relatively small sample size, ymmv etc.

$250k base or $250k INCLUDING stock??

The second one, but if you're not thinking about salary in terms of total comp, you're doing it wrong.

Sure, but $1 of stock isn't worth $1 of liquid assets. It may be worth more than $1 in the long run, but when you're first handed it, you have to undervalue it, compared to hard cash.

I'm a theoretical millionaire several times over, from stock options in startups that suffered the fate of the 99%. You can obviously put more value in the stock of a SV megalith, but even then, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

Stock from a public SV firm is almost as good as cash, and comes with a large amount of lifestyle intangibles.

If you sell it as soon as you get it then it's good as cash. As for the lifestyle intangibles, does having to live in Los Gatos or Gilroy if you want to raise a family count as a perk?

> $1 of stock isn't worth $1 of liquid assets

Er, why not? Only difference is I have to pay a $5 trading fee on Schwab to turn stock into cash. So I guess $10,000 in stock is worth $9,995 in liquid assets.

> even then, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

Only if you hold the stock. Which nothing forces you to do. I can (and do) sell all of my tech company stock on the day it vests and buy other assets instead.

I think you must have the wrong mental model of how RSUs work. Nothing forces you to hold the stock once it vests. It's yours, you can sell it and do whatever you want with the money.

Usually when people at a public company say "I make X", X is the sum of base salary, cash bonus, and the value of RSUs that vest in a year.

You can hold it to reduce taxes right?

Not that I'm aware -- how would holding it reduce taxes? I'm not sure I understand.

Long Term Capital Gains Tax treatment when you sell (20%) after at least one year vs regular Income Tax treatment if you sell right away.

Yes, but that's only on the capital gains. You still pay income tax on the value of the equity when it's granted.

If the stock is $100 when it vests, you pay income tax on $100 per share, whether you hold or sell. It's exactly the same as if you got paid that money in cash and then decided to buy shares (after paying tax).

If you then hold and it goes above $100 while you held, you pay capital gains tax (short or long-term, depending on how long you hold) when you sell.

Again, exactly the same as would happen if you bought those shares yourself with a cash bonus. Getting shares really is the same as cash, for tax purposes.

No. RSUs are not stock options. They're taxed at their current value when they're given to you.

Right, I was assuming sjg007 was talking about tax treatment of the capital gains if you hold onto the stock after the RSUs vest.

I still don't get how there's any way holding it instead of selling it reduces taxes.

If you sell on vest, you pay income tax and 0 capital gains. If you sell after vest, you pay the same amount of income tax, and possibly nonzero capital gains.

Yes, I think the clarification needed was that you can reduce capital gains tax rates but not income tax rates.

But you don't have to hold $company stock to do that. You can sell on vest for 0 capital gains, then buy diversified index funds and hold those long term.

And that's indeed what I do! ;)

There is no clarification to be made. There is no way to reduce taxes on RSUs by holding onto them longer. When $100 of RSUs vest, you get taxed on $100 of income. You can either keep the stock or immediately sell it with no further tax event related to that initial $100 whichever of the two options you choose. If you keep the stock, it is equivalent to having bought $100 of stock at that instant. Psychology aside, the hold versus sell-on-vest decision should be predicated entirely on whether you would have bought that amount of stock with your own cash at its vest price.

Well... if it's worth $X when it vests, you pay income tax on $X. If it's worth $Y when you sell, you pay capital gains on $(Y - X), presuming you held it longer than a year. If it was less than a year, you pay income tax on $(Y - X).

At least, that's my understanding. I'm not a tax accountant, though. This is not financial advice.

THat's not as true when we are talking about stock from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc... The risk is dramatically lower.

Ahhh, that explains it. When the market crashes, you become plebs like the rest of us. Except you'll be living in the most expensive place in the country.

right, because RSUs go to 0 in a stock crash.

Not really. At worst you lose a couple of years of growth in prior equity grants but your yearly refresher will be bulked up significantly to account for the diminished value of the stock and voila, pleb no more...

Yup, if the stock goes down, and you get a bigger (# of shares, not $$) refresh, if it goes back up to where it was before, bam, you've got it made. If you're lucky, you'll have enough for a down payment on a house....

Only for people who didn't sell on vest... stocks are a liquid asset just like cash; nothing forces to keep the shares you're paid with.

And then there is a third that those in AmaFaceGoogFlix are completely unaware that the tier above them pwned them long ago, governments.

Perhaps it's the major league baseball that doesn't believe in the minor league baseball ;)

That tier distinction is way too fluid in my experience to claim it as a real thing; a large (not small) number of people I know who've worked at or work at Google easily belong in the 'minor leagues', but it's just an over the top confidence even arrogance, often combined with a lot of years of sticking with tech, that got them their job. Seriously, a lot of mediocre developers if you add a bunch of years (or a post grad degree), maybe a month of leetcode if they haven't already, and double their ego can a get a job there. (New hires get assigned to the uncompetitive, boring projects at Google, so there's that negative compensation too).

Btw talking about total comp and not base salary is highly misleading. Yeah sure, by that standard with recent valuations I'm making >250k at a post Series A startup.

Yeah well, that's what happens when you base your interview around algorithm trivia.

It is only misleading when you are talking about startups that give non-liquid equity. The difference between you and me is that I can sell my stock literally the moment it vests at pretty predictable price, while you can only use valuation to price it, are probably affected by liquidation preferences, and don't have buyers lined up for your stock.