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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

See business school graduate placement numbers too. Declines in finance and huge upswing in tech (particularly the huge web software companies)

Follow the money!

(I think it's wise for students to be doing this.)

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The big money is still in finance, unless you manage to build a successful business.

There now exist options in engineering which are comparable with those in finance, and importantly, there is now a credible case that engineering is one of the best median outcome career paths for a bright student who is willing to push whatever lever and turn whatever knob required to get to professional success. Stanford undergrads with their degrees still wet are getting $1X0,000 offers from AmaGooFaceSoft. That's roughly comparable to management consulting or the anticipated returns to early-career finance majors.

When I graduated, back in the mists of history in 2004, you'd be crazy to assume that a 5th year engineer salary package would be approaching $300k. There was a huge salary gap in finance's favor on day one, it got bigger every year, and it exploded once the financiers started to hit their 30s. That gap has narrowed considerably, at least for folks on that trajectory in their 20s. (I'll confess to not having a great understanding of what it looks like to be a 32 year old at Google. I mean, any 32 year old at Google who was with them in 2004 is now a multimillionaire several times over, but I don't know what the reasonable modeling is for expectations for being 32 in 2024.)

The folks who think they're going to be in the top 10th of engineers AmaGooFaceSoft hire this year in terms of career success 10 years out now have a reasonable expectation that that will be as lucrative as a top 10th finance career.

The gap is closing for the first few years of engineering vs finance (first 3 years of comp in finance is definitely a lot lower now vs 2007, whereas first 3 years of comp at GOOG post 2009 has exploded), but the gap grows as you approach your mid 30's. When you're getting to $300k at GOOG, your buddy is over $500k at GS as a VP (VP is middle managemnt in high finance and iirc the high fliers get there in 6 years). Fast forward a few more years, and you're making $500k at GOOG and the buddy is well over $1MM. The gap will continue to grow in size exponentially thereafter.

I guess $300k vs $500k is much improved compared to $1X0k vs $500k that we would have been looking at a decade ago though :P

In addition, perhaps the parity is better when you compare median results rather than upper quintiles.

Btw, first year management consultants make nowhere close to $100k (though they can make up for it with Starwood points and frequent flier miles on United -- no joke). You'll only top $100k once you're an associate, which is after your 2+2 (2 years as an analyst, 2 years of bschool). Only 3-5% of the analyst class goes straight to associate. Students who enter as an analyst are doing it primarily for the great education and training McK/BCG/Bain give you, and definitely aren't making the choice based on monetary incentives.

What jobs make $300-500k at Google, I assume upper management positions?

Plenty of software engineers make this as well. (you must include equity which is often not reported in surveys)

Mid-career median at Google is $141,000.

Average at Goldman Sachs is $400k iirc.

I keep hearing all these high numbers getting thrown around a lot. Is $300K really the typical pay among, say, 5th year Google engineers who joined out of college? If so that's pretty amazing.

I really wonder that too. Places like salary.com indicate a much lower median.

Does it include equity?

Why should it? Most software engineers don't have significant equity i.e. equity that creates a cash flow equal to 100% of their salary annually. I only make this comparison since 141k is median at Google and you are saying lots of software engineers make 300k.

Standard new grad package at Google gives you over $120k worth of equity over 4 years, and I think additional $30k a year is definitely worth mentioning. For more experienced people it's obviously even more, and if you manage to stay for 4 years, the next stock grant will probably be significantly higher to keep you and your acquired inside knowledge inside the company.

30k != 300k

Do you get approximately 150k/yr of equity in the 5th year?

I think a lot of us are trying to understand the "300k/yr" part.

I wouldn't doubt to much that maybe a few people are getting paid that, but I doubt it's the median.

At companies like Google or Facebook, you expect to get 10-15% salary raise every year for the first few years, and around 10-15% annual bonus. Assuming that after 4 years, your equity doubles, the $300k figure seems to be pretty accurate for the fifth-sixth year of working there.

Yes, so $300k puts you in the top 3%, $380k puts you in the top 1% of earners nationwide. The median salary of presidents of private Universities is $400k. If you start at a salary of 150k and get 0.15 raises annually for 5 years, yes your will make 300k a year, but I'd be very surprised if this is the experience of general employees. Google has 50,000 employees. If you paid them all $100k, that would be 5 billion roughly equivalent to Googles costs.

Early in my career in software I was making six times what a high end, new Camaro cost. That might be $300 K now.

Early in his career, Bill Gates was making millions of dollars.

I never saw any convincing data on HN to back up the claims - it's always an anecdotal data point here and there. My guess is that a small fraction of the engineers actually make the stated figures, and confirmation bias leads HNers to believe that's the median pay.

Gates was making millions when he licensed DOS -- he was quickly worth $300 million and because he owned a big fraction of Microsoft.

When I was making six times what a new Camaro cost, I was just a 'worker bee' on a salary working on mostly military applied math and software around DC.

I didn't think that the income was so great: A new, two story, traditional, center hall floor plan house on a 1/4 acre lot cost three or four times what I was making. So, I didn't really have money enough to buy a house and support a family.

For $300 K in Silicon Valley, there is considerable question if that is enough to buy a nice house, say, 1/4 acre lot, two car garage, full basement, good insulation, central HVAC, four bedrooms, two baths, powder room, walk in closets, LR, DR, eat in kitchen, family room, deck and support a family.

I don't think the "median outcome" for a CS grad is to work at AmaGooFaceSoft, though.

Nor is the median outcome of someone entering finance to be a VP at Goldman. But bottom 50% programmers can still take well-paying jobs with good hours.

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