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Comment by paxtonab | Hacker News Reader

Wow, you aren't kidding when you say Netflix pays well!

Oh my god, $350k for a senior software engineer? I'm absolutely floored.

That's not an unreasonable total compensation level for senior engineers in the bay area.

Remember that Netflix does not typically offer bonuses, stock grants, etc, and just pays people a salary. While most other big tech companies (eg, Google) have salary as 1/2 to 3/4 of your total compensation, with the remainder being bonus and stock grants (or options). So in the Google table here, you will see far lower salaries than Netflix, just because at Netflix, your total comp is almost entirely salary. I suspect that the Google H1B's are getting stock grants and bonuses that will increase their compensation substantially.

I'm not an H1B, but I'm speaking from experience. I'm a senior software engineer at Google, and I'm starting at Netflix in a few weeks. My total comp will be in the same ballpark at Netflix as my current total comp at Google, but will move from salary + bonuses + stock at Google to being almost entirely salary. I'm excited that I might actually be able to do my own taxes in the future.

Reasonable would be anywhere close to average. $350K is very much an outlier. It has to be. For every "senior software engineer" you show me making $350K, I'll show you 20 making less than $100K. $350K is insanely great, we're talking top-2% territory.

This seems to happen all the time in the comments here. Someone points out some insane top salary they found at some insane top company, and a bunch of people chime in with comments like "Oh, that seems pretty reasonable actually". It doesn't seem reasonable. It's not anywhere close to any median or mean. It's the far right of the distribution.

Find any company on Glassdoor where $350K is anywhere close to the center of the bar for "senior software engineer". I'll then eat my words.

So Senior Software Engineers at Google make about 250k in total compensation.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-Engin...

Now, 250k isn't 350k, but 350k is the high end of Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, and that's what Staff Software Engineers at Google make.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engine...

Staff Software Engineers are "extra senior engineers" that are on the same HR level as engineering managers. I don't think Netflix makes this distinction.

Isn't it better the Google way? You will be taxed less since you can keep the stock for 1+ year and get taxed at the Long Term Capital Gains rate. Being almost all salary will get you taxed to death.

My Google stock comes as RSUs (well, they call them "GSUs"), and it is taxed as if it were income as it vests.

Options gets hit by AMT tax when you strike them(assuming your total income puts you into AMT). You're going to be screwed either with RSUs or options by taxes just little less with AMT.

not so because options and RSUs mean that until the vest you don't get ownership of the stock. So if you keep it for an ADDITIONAL year then you get taxed long term on the _additional gain_.

Basically options and RSU = normal income

Compare them to Microsoft for equivalent-sounding positions in CA, interesting...

Really not that much when you take out the taxes, food and housing premium of the area. That is what should floor you as well

You are utterly and completely incorrect.

$30,000 a month is a fantastic salary. No ifs, ands or buts.

Yes, considering that is the equivalent of a minimum wage yearly salary every two weeks.

    Monthly Gross Pay $29,166.67
    Federal Withholding $8,195.61
    Social Security $1,808.33
    Medicare $422.92
    California $2,831.70
    SDI $262.50



    Net Monthly Pay $15,645.61

5k can get you a nice place in SV (maybe even less)

Even if you have kids you can probably save something like 5k/month, which is good.

it's better than that because social security tax will be capped four months in.

It is still pretty good. If you figure the housing premium between the Bay Area & a "normal" city is $1.5M vs $300K for roughly the same "middle class" house, then the monthly mortgage difference is about $5500, or about $66K/year.

So that $350K is equivalent to $284K in a "normal" place. Even being really conservative, and figuring extra costs (private school tuition, because even that $1.5M might not be enough to get you good schools, extra CA taxes, higher insurance rates, etc), we're still at an equivalent of about $250K. And that's a lot better than most people could get in any "normal" metro area as a Software Engineer.

It is still a lot of money.

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