I worry that some really skilled developers may be looking at these stats and not realize what they are giving up by accepting a job with the average salaries reported here.
If you're at a FAANG and get those massive stock packages, then you can really start getting close to the $300k+ total comp packages that people talk about.
I spent 9 years at a hedge fund in Chicago. I started a year out of college. That job, the reputation and that I lasted nearly a decade, and left of my own accord have opened numerous doors for me, and I only got the job because of networking (my best friend from college worked there and vouched for me, and he was there because a college friend of his sister worked there and vouched for him). Now that I'm "in", I can call up a handful of recruiters that specialize in finance to setup interviews inside of a week or so any time I want. Usually beginning of the year is the best time to interview (after theyve fired tje worst performers from the previous year). Recently, I was looking for a job after being let go in January. I had my first phone screen 3 business days after I lost my job. Accepted an offer after about 4 weeks without work. Actually accepted the lower base/higher bonus potential that also had better work/life balance and easier commute.
But, like I said: networking and recruiters. The hedge fund world is a very incestuous industry. Once you get in, lots of opportunities to move around as you meet people, they leave for new shops, etc. Education also doesnt much matter except to open the first door. I.e. a degree from MIT, CMU, Harvard or Stanford will open more doors without a network connection. I got in with dual BS degrees in engineering from a well respected, but not top tier tech school, with a referral from an employee. While there worked with some very talented people, few of which had degrees in CS. Worked with physicists, philosophers, mathematicians and English majors - all in a software development capacity. I'm sure there were other disciplines, but they escape me.
Any tips on firms that even have those kinds of positions, I can always cold call a few to get a feeling for what they might be looking for.
My theoretical physics degree is from the best university in Sweden, but that probably doesn’t go very far in the US...
The hard part is that there are only like 4-5 trading firms that have a reputation for great technology, and their size combined is like 1% of FAANG size, so there just aren't that many openings.
I remember reading a Google earnings report that said they had 90k employees in total. Assuming Amazon/Microsoft to be larger and assuming Netflix to be smaller, we can take Google to be the average. Of that, even if 50% was engineering, we'd only have 250k FAANG engineers worldwide. In the US, I'd guesstimate ~100k.
Without insight into total compensation, these numbers are only minimally useful.
-e- not to mention, it's the portion that varies the most with experience and internal performance.
It's riskier than cash but definitely real compensation and not the monopoly money that options end up becoming.
My current base salary is exactly the same as it was at my last startup, but my income has more than doubled.
Of course, you'd be better off going to FANG or a (soon-to-IPO) unicorn where you'd make double these amounts with RSUs factored in. But if you can get in there, you probably don't need to go through TripleByte.
Then again, TripleByte also created https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html so maybe I am just being cynical.
$250K is FANG compensation for an engineer with a few years of experience. According to NerdWallet cost of living calculator, equivalents are:
Manhattan: $314K
Los Angeles: $191K
Boston: $196K
Chicago: $157K
Miami: $152K
Denver: $149K
Philadelphia: $146K
Minneapolis: $139K
Atlanta: $134K
Des Moines: $117K
But a senior-level position in FANG should be closer to $350K and above. I think that becomes much harder to match as a commodity developer outside the Bay Area (it'd be $205K in Philly, for instance). And even if you did match it, and you're able to sock away X% of your income a year in both cities, the FANG salary leaves you with many more dollars in your bank account in a few years. You could always leave the Bay Area at some point, and spend those dollars in a low CoL area.
I'm not saying it's worth it. The Bay Area has a lot of downsides. San Francisco has become a crime-ridden cess pool in recent years. Commutes are horrendous if you don't live near work. And many tech companies in the Bay Area pay much less than FANG compensation (and I know from experience), which really makes it hard to stomach. But from a purely financial standpoint, it seems like the FANG developers are doing pretty well.
It’s in a top rated school district, 30 minutes away from where I work and we paid $335K for it back in 2016. Now, it would probably be around $385K. How much would a similar setup cost in San Francisco?
We bought it with the 5% down that the builder required to start, but we ended up even getting some of that back when we used an FHA loan that required only 3.5% down.