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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

levels.fyi shows $498,910 in total compensation for a staff level SWE at Google. Different companies compensate using a different blend of cash and equity. At a public company like Google, it's all liquid. Similarly, an E6 at Facebook gets $576,886.

These are also roughly speaking first-year salaries. You can expect a refresh grant equal to 1/4 of a new-hire equity grant each year vesting over 4 years, plus a staff-level can get a signing bonus of $50-100K.

After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

It's probably not 380K base, which is very high, it's likely 300K base + 25% bonus target = $375K, give or take. That's not hugely more than any of the mega-caps have been paying in cash comp for staffie's for like 5+ years.

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> After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

Refreshes exist but this is a total lie. I'm staff at Google. Nobody at L6 is making $1M in annual compensation, even if they have their sign-on equity and three refreshes. Let alone $2M.

Ok so I'm speaking from personal experience and network.

The point is that 3-4 years tenure is enough for significant appreciation in equity, especially in the earlier grants. Let's work an example, for someone who started 3 years ago.

- May 2019. -

Base: $225K.

Equity: $880K grant = 785sh @ 1120/share = 220K.

Bonus: $60K.

Total: $500K.

- May 2020. -

Base: $236K.

Equity: 196sh @ 1428/share = 280K.

Equity: $220K grant = 154sh @ 1428/share = 55K.

Bonus: $63K.

Total: $634K.

- May 2021. -

Base: $247K.

Equity: 196sh @ 2411/share = 473K.

Equity: 39sh @ 2411/share = 94K.

Equity: $220K grant = 91sh @ 2411/share = 55K.

Bonus: $66K.

Total: $935K.

Trust me, if they've been there for 3-4 years, they're making more than 1M in total comp. If you back my example out to someone who started in 2018, those refreshers easily push them into 1.2-1.4M, and factor in promo grants?

The original grant runs out after 4 years. You don’t just infinitely accumulate a higher annual comp through refreshers.

Okay if the stock price more than doubles in two years then yeah you can end up making a lot of money. This is why it is foolish to use vest price rather than grant price when discussing compensation. It isn't actionable information.

And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019. You can't use todays numbers for past cases. And then you are choosing a peak pay before it drops dramatically after the sign-on grant ends. And after all that, you aren't even at 1M, let alone "easily 1-2M". With literally everything being used to pump numbers up, you don't get to where you cite.

So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

> So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

I couldn't disagree more. If half your total compensation is derived from stock, then you better be looking at yourself not just as an employee but as an investor. And part of that means making projections.

The point is that it isn't repeatable. Saying "oh I made bank investing in Tesla" is not useful information for another person making a decision now. Similarly, "Google stock went up dramatically between 2018 and early 2022 is not useful information for somebody who has offers in hand today from various corporations because they have absolutely no way of predicting future stock growth.

It's not about assuming that past performance equals future performance. With that attitude, nobody should invest in anything.

It's about bringing an investor mindset. Do your own analysis, make your own projections. It's literally half your paycheck, you owe it to yourself. It won't perform the same, sure, but your job as an investor is to analyze the quality of that investment. Will it go up or down? How much?

Whatever you vest is ordinary income. It's your compensation. Just because it's not fixed in advance doesn't mean it's not total comp! Don't pretend otherwise! :)

An effective investor mindset is to buy the whole market and forget it. Doing your own projections and trying to choose a particular company based on your belief that it’s stock will go up 150% over the next few years is a thing that virtually zero people can do effectively.

Except that you are literally investing a large chunk into the company you are going to work for. So while you may take that approach with your discretionary income, you are taking a different stock-picking approach joining a company that offers equity compensation. Unless you join Netflix.

So while you're saying one thing here, you're actually doing another.

I don't have data to prove you otherwise, but I don't think 880k would be not possible as the initial stock grant for L6. FB gives that to E5 now so I am not sure why you think L6 can't get that even in 2019. The initial stock grant bands haven't changed that much. I even got 400k as the initial grant in 2017.

Disc: Googler.

> And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019.

Note that Facebook certainly was.

L6 @ Google, personal AGI last year (not counting capital gains or spouse's income) was just over $900K. You forget the massive stock-price appreciation between 2020 and the end of 2021. If you were granted $400K/year in stock compensation in March 2020 it was worth over $1M/year in Dec 2021.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I do not think it is useful to use grant price when discussing comp with other people because it is not actionable. People joining Google today cannot rely on another 200% stock growth.

And even if you managed to hit your sign on grant at just the right time, you still were below the proposed “easily 1-2M”.

Totally accurate and valuable information based on people in my network.

You can make a lot of money working as a staff engineer at a top tier company.

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