These salaries are incredibly high for someone who never worked at a tech company in the valley. What's the general consensus on whether these salaries will increase, decrease, or stay the same in the medium term (i.e., next 5-10 years)?
I have worked with brilliant software engineers who have expressed thoughts such as "personally I think I'm being paid too much". It's just crazy to me that this attitude exists, and I'm sure it's encouraged by people who don't think like that at all.
Levels.Fyi further biases towards new grads. A more representative sample would likely move the median higher. And most people are at the low end of senior after five years, if that.
Let me reiterate that: the median silicon valley swe has under 5YOE.
To be fair, I have 12 years of experience, 9 of that in mobile dev, but all of it is self-employment experience. Comp is just insane at the top companies.
- base salary (cash)
- sign-on bonus (typically a large one-time equity grant that vest over 3-4 years)
- a raise each year (cash)
- an accompanying equity grant (which also vests over 3-4 years)
Where the whole thing seems weird to me is that they seem to be comparing pre-IPO options/RSUs to actual stocks as if they were apples-to-apples. This matters because the fraction of an amount that is attributable to equity is typically large (sign-on total value is a few times the amount of base salary for a year, for example, so I wouldn't be surprised if these numbers were 50-75% equity)