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Comment by electrograv | Hacker News Reader

> Hypothetical scenario: a reputable tech firm in SF or NYC offers $125,000 in salary to a mid-level

That’s not even what a fresh college grad would make in total compensation at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc, let alone “mid level”.

A senior engineer at one of those companies would make several times that in total compensation.

P.S. The biggest common mistake I see in salary comparisons is the omission of scheduled stock grants, which sometimes can comprise even the majority of one’s compensation.

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You can't just say "etc" after having listed pretty much every company which would compensate at that level. The only other one I can think of is Salesforce.

The vast vast majority of tech firms in SF do not compensate at that level; Yelp, Uber, Square, Twitter, etc, that list goes on. They're all right around that $125k + $5-$20k signing/moving + a fraction of equity for entry level, then scaling up ~5-10% for each position above that.

These Engineer 3/Senior Engineers at a place like Facebook making $400k total comp are, for the most, true stories. But it's not even close to representative of the bay area as a whole.

Well then, maybe the real reason “why you’re having trouble hiring” is simply that “you’re not paying market rate”!

If an engineer can get a job at one of these companies, and work on exciting & fulfilling work, what’s the incentive to work elsewhere if you get paid a fraction of what you’re worth?

I agree with the sibling comment about how it's ridiculous to consider "market rate" to just be the very high salaries offered at the handful of large tech companies. (Tech companies, who btw have the capacity to establish satellite offices at secondary hubs, and also sometimes do already.)

But also "work on exciting & fulfilling work"? Hasn't it already been established in previous discussions that the average engineer at Google or wherever may not be doing the most fulfilling of work, becoming a cog in a larger machine, as opposed at a startup? There's only so many roles that gives both high big tech pay and meaningful individual contribution.

> I agree with the sibling comment about how it's ridiculous to consider "market rate" to just be the very high salaries offered at the handful of large tech companies. (Tech companies, who btw have the capacity to establish satellite offices at secondary hubs, and also sometimes do already.)

With absolutely no offense intended, I've never been offered one of those FAANG-grade packages, so if you were, hypothetically, to try to hire me away from a present position, I would have to insist: fuck you, pay me, I won't leave things I already like to get the same middling compensation.

When did the definition of "market rate" become "what the top 20% of engineers make"? The "if" in your second statement is a big one, because the majority of engineers can't just get a job at one of those companies.

We may be talking past one another / misunderstanding. My apologies for my post’s vagueness: I was specifically talking about these “top-20% engineers”.

Because — A lot of the time when you see a company complaining about how difficult it is to hire “good engineers”, when you look closer, what you’ll really see is manager(s) (in denial) who really want to hire top-20% engineers at bargain rates.

That I can agree with. They are also frequently companies who don't need top-20% engineers, either.

> what’s the incentive to work elsewhere if you get paid a fraction of what you’re worth?

Because you’re spouse wants to be close to family and there’s no tech where family is located?

In early 2016 I had two offers as a Product Manager from companies here that everybody's heard of. They were making more than $10M ARR, obviously not FAANG. Offers were for $146k with a handful of options, and $150k with basically no options. One had moderate profit sharing (I modeled 10-15k annually). Healthcare ranged from decent to excellent. Total comp for both was under $200k.

FWIW I've been working in tech FT professionally as a line PM, head of product, developer, or founder since 2001 - 15 years at the time.

In other words his numbers aren't that far off. FAANG is a different compensation class but shouldn't be the base case as you can't do a comparison of FAANG in Raleigh to FAANG in SFBay/NYC.

What percent of engineers in SF or NYC are working for FANG companies? Most people aren’t working for companies that pay like Facebook.

I can't speak to SF, but NYC's big employers aren't just FAANG -- the big financials employ tens of thousands of software developers. Publishers employ thousands more.

Compensation is, broadly, very generous. They're competing with three of the FAANGs, after all.

Citation sorely needed. Goldman only raised new grad SWE salaries over $100k in the past year or so. They are currently barely above that. The other banks are the same. The only financial firms that compete with FAANG salaries either don't hire juniors or are even harder to get in to than the FAANGs.

As for publishers, please find me one that routinely pays anywhere near FAANG salaries.

EDIT: changed "SWE software engineers" to "SWE salaries". Oof.

What kind of bonuses does GS pay, and how much of it is really performance related vs. showing up every day on time?

(Serious question, not snark).

I don't know, unfortunately.

Obligatory "^ this." Perpetuating the idea that everyone who comes out of school with a CS degree will end up with such a comfy gig is a disservice to software engineers everywhere, particularly for those outside the United States.

As a mid-level engineer currently job hunting in NYC, the salary range for most non-FAANG companies (including most start-ups) seems to be $90-150k.

From my experience, the idea of "mid-level" and "senior-level" employees in our industry seems to be skewed to the left. Mid-level employees are generally 2-5 years into their careers, and senior-level can be anywhere beyond that. When you think of senior-level employees in other industries, you generally assume they have 10-20+ years of experience under their belt.

From my anecdotal experience the breakpoints in engineering experience seem to be:

0-3 years-Junior:You don’t know what you’re doing.

3-8 years-Mid-level: You think you know what you’re doing.

8+ years-Senior:You know that you don’t know what you’re doing.

At large companies, sure. The proliferation of startups really skew this on average. I know of many people who were "Senior Devs" at startups within the 1-5 years range.

Outside of SF, even FAANG pays considerably less. Canadian employees of the same frequently earn half that.

Software Engineers outside the US make less, full stop. Amazon has a COL adjustment for SF and NYC but it’s not as much as you might think. Not as sure about other companies but I believe Google is similar (they also have a small local office).

The best setup IMO is to work at a FAANG company outside the bay, it’s the best of both worlds. Supposedly Amazon pays p90 of market rate, but in my area it’s more like p99.

Source: live in PDX, work at Amazon.

I’ve heard that working remotely (full time) for Facebook, Google, or Netflix is nearly impossible though unless you’re truly indispensable to the company. This may be 1-3% of their employees that can actually leverage that option?

Not work remotely, work in a distributed office.

Startups pay like shit. Which is why they attract marginal candidates who could not get hired elsewhere.

This is a bit of a blanket statement. I believe it depends a lot on the candidates negotiating ability

Not everyone living in SF or NYC works at those companies...

not all of us work in 5 biggest companies. I tend to agree with the author and looking to relocate.

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