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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

These are not normal base salaries even for senior programmers in the bay area. The 60th percentile for senior software engineers is around $180k per year in the Bay Area. Total compensation is commonly $200k or more, easily, but not base. Outside of the Bay Area, even in NY, Chicago, etc., base salaries are lower. In most places they're much lower--below $100k.

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In large companies, there's another factor to consider, which is that if you're a few years into the company, the stock grants that you received a few years back and that are still vesting now are now possibly worth a lot more... your total yearly comp increases quite a bit if your company stock did well for the few years you've been with them.

Those are not nett salaries are they? So keep in mind in Europe it can be 5k times 2 times 12=120k.

(How to use asterisks here?)

A 50th percentile base salary for a senior engineer in the Bay Area is around $150k-$160k per year. Most companies offer a cash bonus (10%-15% of base); including this puts a typical cash compensation total for a 50th percentile senior engineer is between $165k and $184k per year. Most companies offer stock, but the grant and value of these varies wildly. Public companies' stock is actually worth something but you have your places like Google where RSU grants are a huge portion of salary and other places where it's closer to the cash bonus portion of salary.

This is all gross, pre-deduction salary; not salary net of taxes, deductions, etc.

Base salary is a ruse. Median total compensation for qualified experts in the bay is currently $450-750k at reputable firms. Everyone knows this. Any company offering less is simply not in the running and is staffed by absolute morons and won't make it. So sad to be them.

What's your bar for "qualified expert" in this context?

Their linkedin profile says so.

I can't say I've seen people talk about their net salary in Europe, but we do typically galk about monthly salary. (Even if they did say net salary, paying an effective income tax of 50% would be quite exceptional; I would need to make a bit over $300 000 for that in Sweden, which is insanely high.)

"How to use asterisks here?"

There is a Unicode small asterisk: ﹡

And some other variations: ∗ ＊

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

If you surround an asterisk by spaces it works fine: a * b * c * d

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