Top Paying Tech Companies of 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Top Paying Tech Companies of 2018

levels.fyi

36 pointsnnd33 comments

Why did this get flagged? The numbers aren't correct?

Pretty sure that they are all wrong. The levels, description, years and titles do not match.

Don't expect to go from new graduate to senior engineer in a glimpse.

Having just finished recruiting for new grad positions in SV with my peers, I can say that the new grad list here has approximately consistent numbers with what we’ve been seeing

Well time will tell, but as a new graduate coming out of the top schools I would expect to make minimum of $120 with additional perks(in the valley).

Even in this economy, you may want to reevaluate your expectations.

I live in the east coast in the suburbs of Baltimore. Mostly happy re: cost of living here though a new townhouse runs from $300 to 600k. I bet similar housing there is over a million to millions. How and who are able to buy such costly housing? Thus, I thought these salaries could be legit... could then see software devs out there being able to afford a townhouse.

The numbers on glassdoor seem a lot lower. Not that glassdoor is a representative portion to be able to really compare.

I got a kick out of this: "Senior Engineer / 3+ Yrs of Experience"

Crazy industry we work in.

It is a title inflation. I look around recently and see that most of my team-mates are now senior SDEs. Everyone of them has been working professionally 3 - 4 years max. When I joined the company 10 years ago, it would take a tremendous effort to get promoted to Sr. SDE. Now it seems that I have to aim to get to Staff SDE pretty soon because of the inflation.

My theory in the title inflation is because of the following causes (my speculation, may not be true): 1. Immigration laws have gotten tougher for H1-B. Companies now inflate the title to be able to justify the hire and extend visa for SDEs coming from other countries. I think it is pretty tough now to extend visa for Chinese/Indian nationals. Some of the SDE in my team went back to China to get visa and a couple of them got stuck there over a month for the visa to be approved. 2. Competition among bigger companies: if one big company inflats the title to Sr. SDE, it would get pretty tough for that SDE with only 3 - 4 years of professional experience to get the same title in another competitor. Effectively, the company satisfies the SDE with a slight raise and a newer title and also makes it harder for she/he to jump ship.

Senior Engineer is L5 at Google, not L4. They got all the levels wrong.

The people who filled this are either trying to inflate their titles or they were too gullible when HR sold the role.

It'd be interesting to see the top-paying tech companies outside of the Bay Area, not on the west coast, and not in the US.

comp.fyi may have the underlying data but it's not sortable by location. One would need to download the Google spreadsheet and run it through a geo database, since location is given as "City, State" (and no country).

It might well be similar. I'm at Google in Munich, and they seem to have a decent-sized compensation advantage over 'regular' local companies here.

Yeah because avg salaries in germany for IT related jobs are just around 50kE. Not that hard to compete...well the taxes would kill your income anyway beyond certain point.

The discrepancy of salary based on geography continues to widen. Top of the market salary for any kind of position where I live is around $150k unless you’re a C-level. Thankfully housing also reflects this gap as you can buy for $100-150/sq ft here. This is in Jacksonville, FL.

Yup. If your priority is a big house, cheaper areas are definitely better. More expensive areas have their own advantages, though: better for paying off loans, saving for retirement (assuming you're okay eventually moving), or for non-CoL affected goods like travel or electronics or media.

I touched on geography in another comment, but another idea to show this data would be to normalize it somehow for region. E.g., divide salary by metro area median income.

In case anyone wondered if this is related to Pieter Levels (like I did). The name levels is explained in the meta description:

"Levels.fyi makes it easy to compare and contrast different career levels across different companies."

So a 5+ staff engineer making more than a surgeon. Fun times.

Above $200k is what I would expect in Silicon Valley starting out of school. Can't imagine how one could survive more so thrive with anything under $200k in the valley.

I'm guessing Lyft isn't offering stock and other nice perks like FB and the other big tech companies who pay a lot less then Lyft?

> Can't imagine how one could survive more so thrive with anything under $200k in the valley.

Is this serious or sarcasm? The bay area is expensive, but as long as you're okay living in an apartment, it's not that crazy expensive. Even 100k would be fine.

According to this, the median household income in SF is ~97k: https://www.businessinsider.de/weath-maps-cities-san-francis...

The _low income threshold_ is 117k: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/28/fam...

[deleted]

Indeed. People seriously exaggerate... when they have to live with a flatmate in a bedroom flat.

While he is exaggerating earning that much money and living with a flatmate is hilarious. It just shows how insanely inflated are the prices / salaries in the valley.

I can easily afford 860sqft apt for 300k $ while earning just over 60k $

I figure with the numbers they are quoting, they are offering private stock with a certain valuation (409A), and including that in the number. I hear they are going public in 2019 too, so that might go up or down depending on how the IPO goes.

The numbers are listed as compensation, not base salary. I assume these are "all up" numbers including stock and bonus. 400k base seems steep, even for an L5 at Google or Netflix.

Not really. I've heard of those numbers being thrown around for Netflix.

That's hilarious that gives you a fairly competent team of 10-60 developers in Eastern Europe

OK, I'll bite. That's an insane leap. I would have taken you more seriously if you had said 10-15, but 60? The numbers don't make any sense.

Eastern Europe is not a place with the same levels of salaries and costs of living. From a relatively expensive Czech Republic to cheap Romania and super cheap Bulgaria and Ukraine.

My thoughts exactly.

Netflix is the only company of the “FAANG” that does all-cash offers. The comp in all others includes a fair amount of stock/bonuses/etc + base salary

I prefer all-cash offers.

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