Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

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Total comp for a non-senior engineer in Austin is somewhere between $75-90k, nowhere near your $110k number, that's senior engineer territory."

OK, that's fair. I haven't been a junior engineer in Austin, so I'm estimating from what I see on hiring sites.

$130k is at the top of the SF range for a junior engineer, too, so let's call it a $40k spread. That's still entirely consumed by the difference in rent and taxes.

"Also $250-$400k is the norm for senior engineers in big companies here in the Bay Area."

On this point, you are absolutely full of it. You're talking to a "senior engineer", formerly in the Bay Area. Real-dollar compensation for elite people can get that high, but most people aren't elite. Also, I don't count future value of Magic Stock Bux as salary (nor should you).

Comments about retiring at $some_young_age are treated with the same respect as when they were coming from 20-somethings in 1998: put up actual numbers or shut up. Internet People have been ambiguously bragging about their early retirement scenarios since the internet supported bragging.

A new grad offer from Google comes in at an all in compensation of approximately 150K/year. Facebook is marginally higher (or significantly higher for returning interns).

That's 105-115K base, 25-30K in stock (which is real money in this context), and 15-20K in annual bonuses. Most people also get signing bonuses that can range from 15 up to 100K (no, seriously, Facebook sign-on bonuses for returning interns are ridiculous).

All in that means 160K up to 250K in comp your first year. No, really.

Stock refreshes, laddering, and performance make it much more difficult to calculate overall compensation after that, but just as a point of comparison, the "standard" Google offer for someone graduating in 2015 (or maybe 2014, I can't remember) came with 250 shares of stock vesting over 4 years. Averaged over the past year, that's around 50K in stock. Plus a base salary that should be around over 120K, and an average bonus breaks 200K. And that's assuming no stock refreshes, and no promotions.

Granted, "working at Google" isn't average even for SF, but still.

How much lower are Google's offers in Seattle or other cities? After all, what matters is comparing like-to-like.

Other than Seattle and NYC, there's a notable difference. It's not 50%, but its there. And I'll admit that Seattle is probably the best value place to live.

That said, those jobs at $bigCo also make up a smaller portion of the job market in every other city. In the bay area, something like 1% of everyone (not just SWEs) works as a SWE at Google, Facebook, or a similarly paying company. Seattle is similar, although with Microsoft and Amazon instead. While there are some jobs that pay six figures in Atlanta or Austin, they're fewer and further between.

As a result of this, I know lots of people who make 150K+ all in comp in the bay area and Seattle, and no one who breaks 6 figures in, say, Austin (all at a Junior/New Grad level).

I'll admit Seattle is where I have personal experience, and that it may not be representative of other non-SF cities.

I mean, my earlier analysis (another thread) just used the compensation figures from the fine article. Maybe those figures are an inaccurate comparisons of the two cities. If we can find a better data source, I'd be happy to re-run with those numbers. Ditto on the housing cost numbers.

It's certainly possible that one could put aside slightly more money in SF than Austin off a much bigger comp package for the same role.

Anyway, Google and Facebook are just two employers. Clearly the average junior compensation is somewhere lower. I made a lot less than that as a junior employee, but it was a few years ago, not in SF, and not for Google or Facebook.

Unfortunately there's a lack of reliable data, but from the offers I've heard, of my guess would be that someone making 100K in Austin would be making 50% more in SF, and possibly making double if they got lucky. That may in part be due to my familiarity with the area though, but again, I know more people in SF making 200K as right-out-of-college-kids than I know people making 100K in Austin.

As far as Seattle goes, I think that the state tax makes up for most of the comp differences, and housing is cheaper there, so its a better value if that's all you're optimizing for.

Which end of that range do you consider "that high?"

Anecdote for anecdote: most of the people I know who are in the 3-5 year experience range are earning closer to $200k/year than $140k. In my bracket (>10 years) it's closer to $250k than $200k for average senior developers (in which bucket I place myself).

Also $40k is not consumed by the difference in rent and taxes. At most about 85%-90% of it is (say, $20k for rent, a generous $15k for taxes).

The low end of that range starts at the high end for a mid-level engineer, and goes up into VP and director levels.

Again: I count only compensation that is liquid. Magic Stock Bux don't get marked to market, and "bonus" is a number that can fluctuate dramatically from year to year. A mid-level Googler might be making $250k in a good year, all-in, but their base salary is a fraction of that, you won't get nearly as much outside of the big tech giants.

I went to a bootcamp and myself along with all of my closest friends at the bootcamp hit that 130K number in SF on total REAL comp.

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