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Comment by bushbaba | Hacker News Reader

Even that seems low. New college grad going to a large tech firm can make 200k these days.

I think that's only true if you pretend the equity grant all vests in year one. In reality it takes some time, so you won't get that amount until after several years at the company.

I think it depends on if it's like Facebook or Amazon. FB probably is paying $200k or close to it for first year vesting only. Amazon, probably not.

Amazon has a back heavy vesting schedule and the first two years you get a large prorated signing bonus to get market rates.

you’re wrong about that

And that’s not representative of most of the 2.7 million developers working in the US.

Check out comp for most “enterprise” jobs at banks, insurance companies, SaaS companies or even many YC companies.

MSFT starting TC is ~250k.

It quickly decays to around 150-180k; the refreshers and bonus are lousy <L63 at MSFT.

"quickly" being 4-5 years?

Quickly being, 1 year and can go lower after 3 years if you don't get a SSA.

Don't know what an SSA is. But I've seen flat/gently-increasing payout curves over 4 years, ~250k each.

I worked at MS for 3 years after undergrad, My first year was 221k, 180k, 191k and would've been ~185k for Y4 then 160k after cliff.

SSA is Special Stock Award given arbitrarily (M2s are not sure or have any say in who/how much to be given) but believed to be used for retention by HR. Annual stock refreshers for <L63 at Microsoft are in the range of 0-20k vesting over 5 years.

I chose to move to Amazon then recently Apple.

false

e: really for HN i would think people had a better sense of the market, i am seeing wrong statements all over the place

L59 at MS is absolutely not paid $250k

e: I know for a fact TC for a new hire in 2019 straight out of college with a BS was 250k, just because it doesn't match what you have seen doesn't make it wrong

So given the followups to this post, by "a" new hire you mean "one particular" new hire, not "a representative" new hire. Which, sure. There are highly sought-after candidates who get absolutely ridiculous offers in most markets. But the starting TC at MSFT is not at all "250K" under any normal interpretation.

(For context: I've seen new-grad-adjacent offers break 400K at FAANG for particularly in-demand candidates in the past, but I'm not going to claim that the starting pay at any company is 400K. It's not).

At the hedge funds and prop shops, it is 400k if not more.

At a handful of them, sure, but the ones I got offers from didn't match what I had from FAANG.

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software...

There are 100 pages of salaries for level 59 reported here. If you made $250k starting, you would be in the 99.5%-ile. So yeah, not common at all.

I don’t doubt that TC for some individual new hire you know was $250k but that is different from your claim about starting TC, you can easily look at the levels.fyi bands, and I know multiple people at Microsoft that are paid less than $200k out of college.

FWIW i was also paid $250k by MS out of college, but that is because I worked for a subsidiary. It is not the starting TC at MS proper.

Not everyone starts at 59.

And it's on you for assuming the definite article, I only meant the indefinite. (A MSFT starting TC is...)

You are in such poor faith that I am not going to keep responding. fwiw, assuming the definite is the standard native english way of interpreting that sentence.

You clearly have little to no experience with the diversity of Microsoft new hire compensation packages. That's ok, you aren't expected to. But when someone makes a claim that new hires "can make"[1] 200k+, and someone else backs it up with data from personal experience, don't come flinging your ignorance around and accuse others of acting in "bad faith". Instead, sit back and learn. Maybe ask a few questions.

And I'm a native english speaker. But I've never felt I had to stick to the "standard" way of doing things. You shouldn't either. Certainly not when reading text you can't be sure is pulled straight from Strunk's.

I just realized you might be getting so emotional about this because you claim you also made 250k straight out of college and want to feel superior in some way?

[1] "Can make". Not "all make", "must make", "will make", "should make", or even "expect to make". "Can make". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37115731

Median is much lower, but I know a few ~$230k. Basically top school/good internship/competing offers.

Far cry from the starting pay being $20k above that, which is blatantly false.

agree, totally! but also worth noting that there are a bunch of freshers who get paid more than "principles" in non-tech companies.

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