Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.
In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that.
I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k.
I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky.
Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.
I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher:
TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL.
Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either.
Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)
Interestingly, Dublin ranked 19th in the Economist's 2018 Worldwide cost of living report, whereas London came 30th.
Not everyone is ready, able or willing to start a new life somewhere.
And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.
Yep, anecdotal but time is just so much more valuable in my 20s than the extra (taxed) money. The sweet spot atleast for me is a 3 day work week. Pays enough and it has a decent balance.
I could never trade this situation for a US dev job even for 3-4x the salary.
And time is incredibly valuable, if only because for most of us enjoying time is the whole damn point of working. I find playing with my kid or traveling or working on side projects much more fulfilling than my day job (which is fine, but ultimately just a job)
I agree that the salaries are lower, but also tax is a fair bit less in the UK than some EU countries. When I did the math on paying UK taxes vs registering in France for French taxes, the take home would only have been ~50% of net salary on the French system.
However Ireland was where I got a visa, and now that I'm here it's not bad.
Principle architect on £150-200k is entirely usual in the smoker.
Source: I'm a junior engineer being paid in the mid 30s, most of the seniors I know make well north of £60-70k.
You can get lead roles for 100k+ at least in London without having to go to finance.
I've seen most mid level roles in London go for between 50-60k.
Outside of the capital is very different.
I have many friends with the same years of experience as myself, and similar tech stacks. They're working for smaller organisations across the south of England and on roughly £28-30k with few/no perks past the standard UK pension payments.
I think a lot of people are underpaid in the UK (including the parent poster), in particular those at smaller companies and smaller consulting agencies. However I imagine it's less of an issue in London.
On QoL, I have a 2 bedroom flat in a nice area within a 15 min walk of tech employers. This is equivalent to owning prime real-estate in San Fransisco.
Once an engineer start working on the continent, I would imagine that it would be hard to go back to Britain solely for monetary reasons.
In London a senior engineer will get at least £60k (depending on what 'senior' means and how many currently hot languages you list on your CV). I know people in obscure parts of the country, with next to no tech scene, who aren't far off that.
The real money in the UK is in contracting though, or go to the dark side and work in finance.
Also, it doesn't really matter to me since I'm a US Citizen with no cheap Visa route.
I could probably double my salary again moving to the US but I don't want to stay in a place that doesn't have a solid route to citizenship. The TN visas being temporary, non-dual intent and not allowing my spouse to work. Maybe my company will transfer me on an L1.
Also, there was as story on the BBC today about a firm that can't hire software engineers even offering 100k in compensation (which is pretty good for the UK). I rarely see postings for positions that pay this much. London salaries seem to cap out at around 60k which is peanuts considering how expensive the city is.
Also, quality of life matters and should be factored in.
It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.
Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down?
Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.
50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash.
5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage.
In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue.
Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.
I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(
Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.
This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.