The thing that hits me is the "$500k+/year in the valley".
Is this really a thing? Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Even factoring in my stock grants, I'm nowhere close to that number.
Is this really a thing? Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Even factoring in my stock grants, I'm nowhere close to that number.
Netflix median engineer pay is around $400 - 500k, because they only really hire engineers who would be E5/L5 or above. Apple and Amazon also pay this at the titles which map to E5/L5, as does Microsoft, Uber, Square, Snap, Pinterest, etc.
This does not include stock appreciation, but stock appreciation certainly helps inflate the comp even further.
Going further out from FAANG: if you include non-liquid compensation, many pre-IPO companies pay comparably (or better, with the tradeoff of uncertainty); including Airbnb, Stripe, and Snowflake.
Source: I earn about that myself, I have friends at almost all of these companies, and I have worked at or received offers from some. Also, see levels.fyi.
I can't tell you what you should do, but from a cost of living perspective: people who make at least $300k in SFBA or NYC will very often come out ahead compared to making maybe half that in a significantly cheaper area, despite the higher cost of living.
I'm in my 30's now, with a family. There is no reasonable amount of money that could convince me to uproot and go to the valley. Sure I could come out ahead financially, but at what costs? Commuting for hours each day, working long hours, living in a smallish house with no yard, high crime, high pollution, etc. Those are just some negatives, but there are of course some positives too. For me, my time with family is my most valuable asset, and I don't think I'd sell it for $500k.
Sure you could go there and make a lot of money and basically retire in 10 years, but I'd rather have those 10 years back in time at the end I'm sure.
* Commute/housing: you can afford a lot of house in a good location on $500k (or even 250-300k which might be more attainable).
* Long hours: varies a lot from team to team, and company to company. From my own experience, there's not a lot of correlation between long hours and salary, and a lot of people who work long hours do it because they want to.
* Crime: crime in the US is at historic lows, not sure what you're worried about here.
I include commute time into long hours. Many people I knew there, admittedly NOT at FAANG, would spend an hour or more each way on a bus or train, plus 8 or more hours working, that's a huge chunk of the day. I'm remote, if that helps give a frame of reference.
As for crime, I guess it's just culture shock. I've had people tell me not to drive, and if you do drive and park, to leave your doors unlocked and empty your car, or else someone will break the windows and take things. And I've seen the broken windows. That, along with being harassed by mentally ill folks, was just a big turn off to me. Though, this may just be more of a SF thing specifically.
There's outrageous equity offered by like 5 companies. Everybody else is getting stock option grants worth 5-10% of what Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are offering (the situation is a little different for Netflix).
> Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado?
Probably not, Colorado is great.
- Snap
- Lyft (though their stock is hurting right now, they still have top-band comp)
And then there's HFT, where $500k is probably considered average, but I guess that may as well be a completely different industry.
If we want to drop down to approaching $400k, you can add:
- Dropbox
- Square
Also I don't think Microsoft should be on your list unless you're specifically referring to LinkedIn's SF and Sunnyvale offices.
Note that getting $500k+ TC offers as a senior is still exceptional even in the Bay Area (look at levels.fyi). Netflix is supposed to be the most consistent when it comes to giving offers in that range (and all-cash too). Whereas if four senior engineers got four offers each from other companies on the list, they would likely range between $300k and $500k before negotiation.
What I wanted to emphasize, mostly, was that there exists a tier of companies that offer stratospheric compensation primarily through equity, but there are many more people working at other publicly-traded companies that offer RSUs that are worth closer to what you might consider to be a yearly bonus.
Man I'd happily take up one of those Google jobs, but being an embedded software guy, I'm not even sure what they'd want me for. It seems like a lot of silicon valley companies are a great place if you're a web dev, or use C#/Java all the time.
You probably won't end up doing embedded work though, just as a point of warning. I mean you might, but probably not. As sibling poster alluded to, there are some jobs closer to that area, but more likely than not you'll end up on some other team doing something completely unrelated to embedded.
It doesn't have to be a permanent thing though -
It does not take too many years of $300-$400k compensation to make your future much more free to pursue what you want. If you do FAANG for 5-10 years while saving aggressively and can't take any more of it, then you can go back to working on embedded software for a third of the pay and have a huge buffer for retirement.
You're in a lower cost-of-living location, and one where there's less competition; employers don't pay as much there because they don't have to. That said, if you like where you are, you might start by looking for remote work that pays better (from companies that don't say "we can pay you half as much because you're not in California").
Also, look for employers that have a robust technical job ladder for advancement; that's part of how you get a salary like that, and even higher. (I know software architects making 7-figure salaries.)
Like in retail, it depends on location, location, location; a regular developer will never make that much in Europe - remote (for a EU company) or not.
An interesting analogy is how many people uprooted and moved to LA in time's past to become movie stars, and how many succeeded.
Times are changing though and you can now apply to some major tech companies remotely, more will follow as Cali is now the hardest hit state and the desire to move their cools off.
It makes sense to pay a few that much so that you can have riches of people to choose from (and exploit?)
I've even seen this internally. If I want to go to another team, why would my manager use their budget or political influence to promote me when they can use it on someone who is staying on their team.
In a perfect world, your manager should not care and your company should not treat you any differently for looking, but this is rarely the case.
At my company, internal postings notify your manager when you apply, so there's no avoiding it. It's generally better to talk to them first so they aren't blindsided by the posting. Otherwise, if you don't get the new position that could create some friction with the existing one. My company can also trap you in your current position if they designate you as a "key resource".