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Comment by deanmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

As a fairly average software engineer in Silicon Valley, now in fintech, I found the numbers thrown on Blind to be fairly consistent with the several offers I got over the years. I personally have received half a dozen data offers in those ranges, from FAANGs, public and pre IPO companies.

Senior engineer with about 5 years of experience or more should easily be around $250k base + $250k equity per year (slightly more if the company is more risky/illiquid, slightly less if the company is public/liquid). I’m talking about entering offer, without counting stock appreciation. Easy to surpass that as you get more experience.

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That’s a bit high. I’d say 350-400k TC is more reasonable. You’re not getting an offer for $500k as senior eng with 5 YOE unless you’re exceptional. Therefore, not “easily” obtained. Most of the data on levels would agree. Even with pre-ipo companies, you’re not getting 250k/yr in net asset value or whatever marker you’re using. Usually the 250k/yr with pre-public comes from them assuming the stock 10x’s. (A big if for many-many startups and a very long term game - salary doesn’t usually breach 200k/yr much either)

$500k is staff range and very few eng are staff at 5 years.

I just went through a series of interviews as well. The highest offer I got was 380K TC for 8 YOE. So, ymmv.

I agree with stock appreciation being real but don’t count on it. It can be very difficult to be at some companies even when you have the stock appreciation happening. I walked away from $1M+/yr because of toxic culture and environment. I’d only rely on what you can get reliably in the market. Relying on that appreciated stock is foolish and a quick way to misery.

You are highly compensated person. But, as per your own post history, you don’t like your job. You are working 70 hours and looking to quit. You are worried what could happen to your team and much more [1]

So, I am curious, did you optimize for short term or long term?

Fellow hackers, would you earn $1M for a couple of years or earn $200k-$300k for 10 years keeping 8-9 hours per week?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358610

You are absolutely correct, thank you for bringing that up. I don’t currently like my job due to large pressure and responsibilities.

But, I am reaching $4M liquid net worth very soon (it’s actually much higher than that if I count some pre IPO equity I have from a previous employer, but to not be disappointed I count it as $0) thanks to frugal living and this high compensation.

That affords me to pull the plug in my 30s and live in full independence. It’s a trade off I am willingly making and knowing I am financially independent brings me a huge amount of joy. I never liked working in companies, big or small, so I might as well get paid big bucks for it and then retire quickly and spend my days making/watching YouTube videos or reading books.

So yes, despite my previous rant you quoted, I still think I am setting myself up for long term success and I’d take this life again over one with a much lower pay and stress, because it’s not forever.

May I ask what your path to where you are now was? What programming languages and areas did you focus on while job searching?

Is leetcode + system design the ultimate way to get these interviews like TeamBlind says?

Those numbers are crazy! I’m currently in what many consider their dream job and working very reasonable hours (less than 40/week) in a great team/company.

I make good money but been really tempted by tech companies recently… can easily double my money :/, my company isn’t a tech company and cannot afford these kind of salaries in our margins.

Tough call.

These American/SV numbers are always surreal to me. I'm a CompSci undergrad in western Europe and I'll be looking at maybe €40k when I graduate, though I also don't live (and don't want to live) anywhere near The Big City.

and €70k as a Senior engineer which is also low in comparison, but the comparison is more complex if you give value to things like medical, pension savings, cost of life and housing, kids expenses like low to higher education and even non monetary things like WLB, job security or employee rights.

Also remember that US salaries varies a lot by location

For staff+ level engineers many SV companies do pay comparable salaries in Europe. I worked for one in a smaller Scandinavian city and had a base salary of $300k and approx. $1m stock yearly. It is hard work though especially due to the timezone difference. I resigned once I reached FI.

> the comparison is more complex

Is it though?

$150k+ salary seems to very much make up for all that in my mind.

I guess so, but but in much lower margins then expected

Maybe I am wrong but if I am above average for a Swede and have a relatively high quality of life then my American parallel should be rich, isn't she?

If that lifestyle suits you, you could do both: immigrate to the US to maximize your earning potential, and keep your EU citizenship for retirement and safety net purposes (e.g. major health catastrophe, …). That’s the path I took and I am fairly happy with it.

I do agree. Frankly speaking I'd probably make more money having a small kebab kiosk than a software developer in Europe. And then they keep complaining that the US tech companies keep eating European companies for lunch.

That number is insane to me. What companies?

That kind of number is more or less mandatory to survive in SF. Something like 150k is considered as "low income / needs assistance" by Housing and Development.

Agreed. Though in the unlikely event you don’t happen to want/have kids, you can make bank. I lived 10 years in the Bay Area, renting, without spending more than $40k post tax per year (I diligently track all my expenses and make sure nothing can escape from my account balance flow, so that’s accurate) and saving the rest. Always lived within walking/biking distance to work, by renting modest one bedroom apartments.

With kids you’re mostly screwed and have to pay for top notch housing, schools, cars for transportation, …

500k$ after tax is what, 300k$? Subtract 40k$ living expenses which is very much on the low end, and you end up saving 260k$/year. Assuming 5.5% real world market returns, takes 12 years to get to 4M$.

Stripe recently offered $550k to a generalist backend developer who is a dear friend of mine, with about 7 years of experience.

Another close friend joined Google recently as a generalist UI developer for $490k. 6 years of experience.

Last FAANG offer I personally got was from Facebook a couple years ago, for an SRE role at $450k (believe it was top of E5 band).

My current comp at a hedge fund is > $1M/y, as a tech lead working in infra SWE. Would prefer not to reveal my current employer.

https://www.levels.fyi is pretty accurate in my experience, maybe slightly pessimistic because offers have really picked up over the past year or so (not counting equity appreciation, I’m talking about entering offer).

That's incredible! Curious what kind of skillset / velocity you would define as "average engineer"? I consider myself "average" but I've only been working for about two years and have no clue how I'd start to fetch salaries like that. However, on the opposite coast in NYC.

By average I mean average, so you’re probably already good enough!

After two years it’ll be a stretch to get a massive comp like that, but you can easily get close to $300k total comp now at a tech company, and maybe $400k at a hedge fund. My suggestion is to apply and interview at both and see what you get.

I am always very active in these threads because I want fellow SWEs to milk opportunities while they are there, one day the market might turn against us so it’s important to make bank in the meantime.

I definitely need to sharpen up my interview skills, regarding the leetcode aspect at least. But thanks for the encouragement!

What are product manager salaries in the Fangs?

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