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Comment by ubertoop | Hacker News Reader

> , or even software developers.

lol. really? what software devs are making 250k a year?

Don't forget, this is HN. I'm with you: where I live it's very typical for a software developer to cap in the mid-$100k range. I would wager that the eye-watering numbers you see from FAANG developers is atypical for _most_ software developers in the country. And that's totally fine.

This is very common in SV. Many junior/mid-level engineers at FAANG companies beat this figure (when accounting base + stock + bonus).

How big is stock though?

In NYC a senior dev makes that much or more in finance, and in a startup probably closer to 140-160 with bonus and fuzzy-numbered stock options. I don't count my stock options ("units") as anything worth anything at this point, not because I'm cynical but because there's no clear valuation.

All things considered I'm suddenly feeling underpaid - I know many quite senior folks barely breaking that.

>fuzzy-numbered stock options

We aren't talking about stock options, we are talking about concrete RSUs with real valuations.

A Staff Engineer at Google can easily be vesting $200k in stocks alone each year.

Staff is even one level above senior.

It's true that they make a lot of money, so do the owner of a SME or a director in a large organization. It's not a position most employees will ever attain in their lifetime.

Directors are equivalent to staff +1 or staff +2. Staff engineers are usually equivalent to 2nd level middle managers, with 1st level are managers of teams that are just ICs). Jr Engineers can be 30-50% of an engineering organization. So it's not that impossible.

Director (L8) is two levels above staff engineer (L6) in Google. But promotions get exponentially more difficult after L5, particularly if you intend to stay as an IC.

I meant director as a general title in corporations, not google specifically.

RSUs are easily going to be half or more, unless large bonuses are involved (which does happen). Keep in mind RSUs aren't options.

I wouldn't say "easily". The shit offer I got from Google past year was about 60% base salary. The non-shit offer I took from Twitter is about 55% base.

Why didn't you use the good offer from Twitter to push Google up?

Well, the good offer came a couple months after I rejected the Google offer, and it was for one level higher (which I didn't think Google was going to budge on).

> fuzzy-numbered stock options

That's true for non-public companies, but stock options at a publicly traded company like Google or Apple are much easier to value.

Stock options are distinct from units. They have a clear value, current market value, discounted by your fear of the future.

Juniors definitely don't make ~250k. Mid level, maybe. Senior, definitely.

Some junior engineers do (most don't). There was this thread from a while ago [0] where someone negotiated a 300k offer. I believe they were a new/recent grad.

Most of the time it's due to having some leverage (multiple FAANG+ offers).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057514

If your not incompetent, its pretty much guaranteed you will reach sr in 5-8 years. It's the levels after sr that are the hard part.

L4 to L5 is no cakewalk. you have to be rock solid in the core SWE disciplines and have excellent communication, organization skills, and very good leadership skills too. looking at the stats, promoted as a % of total for L4 to L5 just makes it into the double digits and only a little over a quarter of all SWEs are L5.

the SWE ladder requires/expects for an L3 to get to L4 by makes no such requirement to ever get to L5.

That is why you don't play the promo game and get promoted via interviews at other companies. When you reach staff, that is usually when you have to practically start playing promo games. Not everywhere is google with their slow promo processes.

Also career and personal skill wise, it's good to see how other companies work. Pay is in many ways determined by your negotiation skills, and that is empowered by creating better BATNAs via interview skill.

L3 won't, but L4 at Google will easily. And you can get promoted from L3 to L4 in a year in ideal circumstances.

Actually with another FAANG offer L3 can pull that salary if they compete hard enough

Meanwhile, I got an L4 offer from Google last year that was below that.

Well, Amazon and MSFT will not provide offers for new grads that will even match the entry level Google offer. So that leaves FB who isn't paying new grads as much as they used to. There aren't too many companies that will give offers that will allow you to negotiate to 250 which is really high.

I did HR at one of the FAANGs (the alphabet one). This is not true.

What is not true? That new employees make this much? The standard new grad offer at Google is about 180k (and you can negotiate 50K+ more with the right counter offers) for your first year and average L3 makes 210k.

$250k total comp is pretty common for software engineers with a bit of experience. I’ve found Blind is the best place to get actual TC numbers. But even outside of the Bay area and outside of faang $250k should be your target at this point if you’re software engineer with ~5 years of experience.

Whoa, so I have about 20 years professional experience (19-39), 10 years non-professional (ages 8-18), what should I be making right now? Because it's not 250

Yeah, same here (nowhere near 250). This thread is depressing. ;_;

I used to see salary threads like this and be depressed too, but don't be. You not getting paid what you're worth does not mean you are not worth more. Next time you go out and interview be bold. Absolutely some companies will balk at a high salary requirement, but others will take it seriously. Even if you don't get $250k you'll get closer than you think and do much better than you are right now.

I was making a lot less not long ago. Then I went to an interview, knocked it out of the park, and when the ask TC reqs I just said $250 would work, and they made it happen. This is not in SF-area or NYC either.

Thanks, and good advice about being bolder with future salary asks. :)

That money does not come without cost: competitiveness at work, imposter syndrome, unreasonable deadlines, on-call rotations. Not to mention that you'll very likely be working for a mega-corp trying to improve some abstract metric for your division by 4% so they can sell more ads for more dollars. I don't know what your current situation is, but consider carefully what you would be giving up to get those dollars.

That's good perspective, thank you. <3

Yeah that parent comment was highly delusional. That’s not Sr. Dev money in northern Virginia / MD / DC which is definitely above median across US.

You could easily touch around 250k total comp at one of the FAANGs. Depending on location and company:

~150k salary

~15k bonus

~100k stock

Good 401k match

This is the average of anecdotal evidence I have seen from friends and acquaintances with around your experience.

If you manage to get a job at Google, Facebook, Apple etc, you should expect to be making north of $200k.

You should. I had the same realization not long ago. Small companies and start ups will have a hard time getting there but any publicly traded tech company should definitely be giving you total comp approaching that range.

Honestly it really depends on skillset, location, company, project history. You've got 10yrs exp, I'm guessing you're a strong senior engineer (which again, overloaded term, but IMO it means you can solve problems on your own and can unblock your teammates vs. block them) - I'd ballpark 175 -> 225. Go to a FAANG and you can stretch total comp up into the mid-250s.

If your skills and what's shiny in the market right now are all concentric, you can add 100k's on top. (Just left FB on the internal React team? Been on Netflix's recommendation model team? SRE working with core Kubernetes? Cha-ching!)

At Google or FB you’d earn upwards of 300-400K in a senior role. I don’t think being on the shiny stuff t your previous company will help unless you’re known in the industry, as in you’re brought out as a Distinguished engineer or similar VP/ equivalent IC role - source: I interview at a FANG.

Experience matters (much) less than being able to survive a day or more of whiteboard algorithm questions. The other option is sliding into something development-adjacent that's paid better than developers almost everywhere except FAANG (management, software architecture, that kind of thing) so might pull almost that much comp, and has interviews that are more about speaking well and job-relevant experience & knowledge than memorizing Introduction to Algorithms and operating for hours on end under a microscope. Also don't be old (30+) and without some existing FAANG or otherwise "impressive" employers, or it'll be assumed you've been wasting your life, your experience must just be "one year repeated x times", and you don't belong.

I'm trying to work toward the tech-adjacent side because developer comp tops out around 150k or 160k total in my area—and the top end of that's usually got one foot in management. Remote comp seems similar, unless you can do the hardcore algo interview thing—and even some of those don't pay especially well, if they're offering remote and feel like they're already doing you some kind of favor.

In my experience remote jobs (especially at smaller companies) seem to care more about your experience and ability to do the job than the Leetcode trivia questions. And although "impressive" employers might help, they're definitely not a prerequisite. Most engineers working remotely have never worked at a FAANG type company.

What is "Blind"?

The Blind app used for anonymous work discussions: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blind-anonymous-work-talk/id73...

https://www.levels.fyi/

Get promoted once at google / Facebook and you should be there. Promoted again and you’ll be 300-350k

$320K at Amazon this year. I’m 32 and have been here 7 years.

> $320K at Amazon this year. I’m 32 and have been here 7 years.

If you don't mind, can you please share how much net you project to save this year after all taxes and expenses? Sorry if this is a little weird but as a poor person I'd imagine expenses to go up with higher income for ordinary people resulting in not that much (proportionately) savings.

I’m not the grandparent commenter, but my total compensation this year is roughly the same, so I thought I’d chime in with my savings:

$28.6k - 401k contributions & match

$112k - RSUs after tax

$14k - Monthly emergency fund contributions from paycheck (yearly total)

~$16k - Bonus after tax

My expenses really haven’t increased in line with the compensation. The picture would look different if I had a family, but I’m in my late 20s. I suppose I could eat high quality sushi daily, but I’ll settle for weekly.

Somewhere between $150-160K.

My salary is $160K (that’s the max your salary can be at Amazon). The rest of my compensation (remaining ~$160k) is in restricted stock unit vests. I save 100% of that $160K after taxes. I max out my 401K from my salary. I also save 30-40% of each paycheck.

My husband and I don’t eat out 11 months of the year. The 12 month is a vacation where we travel within the US for a week vacation. Even then, we don’t go to expensive restaurants and will look for good deals... I mean my husband will open the McDonalds app on his phone to get a buy 1 get 1 Big Mac coupon. We don’t spend eating out... it is unhealthy and a bad habit.

We don’t have a car - so living in downtown Seattle, no expensive car tabs or parking. Also no fuel costs or car insurance payments. We paid off student loans and so there’s no debt. We pay for that with high rent ($2400/month excluding utilities).

Our only splurge is we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and we might get Disney’s new service. Our apartment is upscale (by our standard). Our furniture is nicer.

You called yourself a poor person - I’m sure you know this, but income is not a measure of wealth. We’ve built up some investments and liquid savings over the years, but I know coworkers from previous teams and other friends who earn just as much or more than us but also have $15K/month mortgages and are house broke or have expensive drinking or general spending habits where they end up saving practically nothing.

You don't sound like you have children which means you save a lot of money that way and you guys together make a metric crap ton of money compared to the average person. Sounds like you're trying a mustachioed lifestyle. I wish you all the best. $2400/mo isn't a huge housing cost btw. Especially when living in a city.

This is at Silicon Valley/software companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Facebook, etc. Most developers will be above 150k-200k there, especially accounting for bonuses and stock which are considered as part of compensation.

But this is actually rare across the industry as a whole in the US, and extremely rare when considering other countries. It's nowhere near as common as the heavily skewed HN comments will make you believe.

FAANG? It's actually pretty common to get compensation packages in that range

565k salary+bonus. Java/c++ dev at HFT in Chicago.

The FAANGs are starting new grads at these levels now. 150K base salary, 100K+ RSUs vesting per year, 30K+ bonus targets per year will get you there and then some.

That's too high for Google at least, that's L4 level salary/stock.

Most senior+ level engineers at top tech companies (ie FAANG but not exclusive to those companies at least in total comp).

I was offered 300k to work at a hedge fund in Connecticut a couple years ago. It's not unheard of.

The good ones are making that when you account for compensation, perks, and stock grants.

This isn't unusual at all for top talent.

Ask your recruiter, you'll be surprised.

The 1%.

levels.fyi

These numbers are self reported so I wouldn’t index on them that much - most numbers I see there for Amazon are on the higher end and give the appearance the higher end of the scale is the median... which is inaccurate given that some of the pay bands are pretty wide.

I get the sense that those numbers might include the value of stock increasing, but that's the only site that's had numbers within 10% of the offers I actually got after negotiation.

I've found levels.fyi to be pretty accurate. For hard numbers you can compare with salaries reported on green card PERM applications (which exclude stock amounts.) Netflix pays all cash and only hires at senior and above so should be comparable:

http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Netflix&job=&co...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix&track=Software%20Eng...

I wouldn’t trust online, voluntary, self-reported salary “data” even a little. No more than any other form of e-bragging. Everyone who posts online makes $350k, drives a Ferrari, and has a supermodel romantic partner.

Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense.

> I wouldn’t trust online, voluntary, self-reported salary “data” even a little. No more than any other form of e-bragging. Everyone who posts online makes $350k, drives a Ferrari, and has a supermodel romantic partner.

Filter the visadoor results with job=software to see only the software developer salaries. These range from $280K to $850K, have a mean of $373K, a median $370K, 24 of 66 are at $400K and above.

This is very much the same ballpark as the self reported average salary of $433K on levels.fyi (I'd expect PERM figures to be slightly lower than average for the company as a whole since I presume they would normally be filed in the first year of employment.)

This strongly suggests to me that the levels.fyi self reported salaries for other companies are also ballpark correct.

> Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense.

47 of 66 in the visadoor figures make $350 and above. While I would expect Netflix's average to be higher than other comparable companies this is because it hires only at Senior Software Developer level and above. Facebook and Google certainly pay their senior and above developers in the Bay Area similarly, albeit with a different RSU/salary mix.

The numbers are actually a low for Google in MTV.

What is your academic bg or experience that you are getting such amazing offers?

Average junior devs in Bay Area.

A lot, especially on the West Coast.

Who _isn’t_ at this point?

(Well not me, but..)

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