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Comment by pdksam | Hacker News Reader

200k is too small, strong sde1s at Amazon get paid that much in hcol areas. Closer to 500k.

This, there's like a endless line of companies waiting to snatch OpenAI's employees right outside the door. $200k average comp at OpenAI would be laughable.

As a side, I am a bit shocked by these numbers. Is this an American thing? I understand myself to be good software engineer with good well rounded experience of 14+ years. Yet my income, in Europe, is really above 100k.

What I am wondering, for those earning 500k, how big is your work load/stress. Would this be a 9-5 job you leave at the office when going home. Or does a job that earns so much consume your life?

American SWE salaries can be insane, but I'm shocked at how low SWE salaries are in Europe.

I was expecting salaries to cool off a bit with the massive wave of layoffs across the industry, but from what I've seen, that hasn't happened.

Honestly, depends. Some teams at FAAMNG are really stressful and if you work on a Tier 1 service even with loads of SRE support you have to be working a fair bit. That being said, the pay is for design decisions at the higher IC level (senior or staff) and most people at that level are very smart. I’m not saying this salary is for 10x engineers or anything.

I would say 50% the work is harder and consuming and then 50% they can just afford to pay you more and lock up talent because of the wild margins on their products.

I’ve been through both horror (endless 100 hour weeks) and bliss (just attending meetings and not really stressing about much of anything) in that range. It’s highly variable.

Your standard of living might be comparable. Your retirement is taken care of, you have a reasonable amount of vacation, you have better job security, your health care, in most European countries, has much less hassle, and your property costs are lower.

I am seriously considering a move if my husband can find an academic job over there. The retirement won't be a great lure (fewer years in the system) but we almost have enough to coast from here, so it's about the rest.

Amazon has a terrible reputation for internal infrastructure issues, with "on call" being a truly shitty experience for employees. aka burn out over a year is common

Note that there's likely to be some variation per team, but Amazon is famously bad, so ... ;)

Taxes in the bay area can be insane - ~40% if I remember correctly. On top of that you have crazy-expensive healthcare, and crazy expensive housing costs.

~100k€ in (western) Europe may be comparable to ~200k€ in Bay Area.

FAANG salaries are so bloated because Bay Area housing costs are insane. Someone making 500k could put half or more of into their mortgage.

I've said it before on here, but I live very comfortably in Philly for a lot less than that.

I'd argue it's the opposite. We're coming off a decade of free money driving a second tech boom.

If interest rates stay elevated, and value investing becomes valuable again, it will be interesting to see how the tech space transforms. When start-ups have to compete with money market funds or even treasuries for investor cash, things become orders of magnitude tighter and more challenging.

> Is this an American thing?

Yes, though Switzerland approaches it. If you want to see how much people of various levels of experience get paid at different companies and in different locations go to levels.fyi

Americans get paid much, much more than anyone else.

These numbers are insane to me.

I'm 20 years into programming and a senior architect and lead on an enterprise project.

I don't even make that first number.

But I value certain things way more than other things, and my current job provides it. Fully remote, leaves me completely alone to accomplish what they need done (and I get it done), unlimited vacation, great benefits, zero pointless meetings (almost an empty calendar).

I'm sure these other companies offer some of that but 500k?! That is absurd.

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