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Comment by s_t_away | Hacker News Reader

Adding mine, all at Google:

  2008: Base  $90K, Total $110K
  2009: Base $110K, Total $170K
  2010: Base $130K, Total $330K
  2011: Base $200K, Total $590K
  2012: Base $220K, Total $680K
  2013: Base $220K, Total $830K
  2014: Base $230K, Total $980K
  2015: Base $240K, Total $990K
  2016: Base $250K, Total $1.2M
  2017: Base $250K, Total $1.4M
  2018: Base $265K, Total $1.5M
  2019: Base $280K

(edited for formatting)

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The total is after bonus only? Or..?

Any advice for others? Isn't it notoriously difficult getting hired at Google?

Do other non tech positions at Google pay as much?

What about positions like QA?

Total includes bonus and equity (which makes up the bulk of it, especially in later years). So some of the increases are also just reflecting increases in GOOG from grant to vesting.

I'm a software engineer. My impression is that pay for PMs (product managers) is very similar, although I couldn't say for sure. Not sure about other positions. And for QA specifically, I believe a lot are hired through a vendor so I imagine it would be very different.

I don't know if I have particularly useful advice. I think honestly it's a mix of happening to be good at what I do, working hard, and being in the right place at the right time (both in terms of ending up Google and being on the teams/projects that I did which helped me rise quickly).

The only thing I would say is that I very much did not go in expecting this or with the idea of optimizing for it. When I joined at the end of 2007, Google was already post-IPO and it wasn't clear (to me at least) that there was "big bucks" to be made there. At that time, it seemed like going into finance or to a startup was the way to go to optimize for that, and I thought I was leaving a bunch on the table picking Google over those. I do think it helped working with the mindset of doing what I truly enjoyed instead of "doing it for the money".

What is the nature of your work within SWE?

Just curious, which level? L8?

Hired at L3

How much more work do you do at every level? Do you feel like there's an optimal level to reach for your time investment / pay ratio?

For me at least, there was little correlation between level and pure number of hours worked. In general, I probably worked the most hours in the first year, mostly because I was just out of college and didn't know any better. These days, I would say I probably average around ~50 hours a week.

But there is definitely more "stress" as you go up levels. You have more responsibility, the problems get harder and more ambiguous, more people issues to deal with, etc. Part of me misses the "L3/L4 me", when all I really had to do was come in, work on relatively scoped technical problems, and not worry about a lot else. But I think I'd also probably feel bored after a while if I somehow managed to went back to that.

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