[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb a...
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Silicon Valley stays on top as tech salaries climb across U.S.
Author : samizdis
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-03-03 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| opportune wrote:
| My theory for why "AR/VR" is so much higher is that those
| engineers are mostly just working for Facebook on Oculus, and FB
| has high pay.
|
| Also telltale sign someone's not plugged into SV - looking at
| salaries rather than total comp. Then there are two further
| schools of thought: granted vs. vested compensation. What was
| your offer + refreshers at grant value + expected bonus vs. what
| are your initial grants and refreshers actually vesting at + what
| is your real bonus.
|
| On one hand, you could say that vested comp mostly reflects the
| outcome of the equity lottery and doesn't have anything to do
| with what is actually the going "market rate". On the other hand,
| vested comp is what the person is actually earning. And because
| of that, it's also their opportunity cost if they were to switch
| to another job, which in a way does become the market price for
| that person (at that point in time). Although once appreciated
| grants fully vest you can hit quite a cliff.
| eweise wrote:
| One data point. My salary was basically stagnant 2005-2015 then
| started going up. Last couple years increased quite a bit.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Seems to be in line with the general stock market trend for
| tech sector.
| whorleater wrote:
| interesting how different this is from the salaries at large
| companies on levels.fyi. annoyingly, the dice URL is broken
| currently, so I can't verify the underlying dataset.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah huge information asymmetry as people are used to looking
| up "salary" versus "total compensation"
|
| these salaries are 1/3rd to 1/10th of what people actually
| make, and thats not a statistical outlier with the stock
| appreciation over the last few years
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, that sort of RSU appreciation can go away
| overnight. (To be clear, RSUs still have significant value
| even if they don't appreciate. But a lot of the really big $$
| people have been making over the past 5 years or so are
| because of stock gains.)
|
| ADDED: It's a difficult problem to solve with one number
| though. Base salary hasn't been very representative of total
| comp at the big SV tech companies over the past few years. On
| the other hand, there's not necessarily reason to believe
| that the past 5 years or so will be representative of the
| next 5 years--even if RSUs and bonuses are still relevant to
| a certain degree.
| vmception wrote:
| Those stock gains absolutely are negotiating leverage as
| much as the same person's prior or competing salaries would
| be, so I don't think it is productive to draw a
| distinction. Open to discussion.
|
| An "L5" position is very similar to what is written on
| Levels.fyi and Blind, no matter what macroeconomic factors
| made it so across the board
| ghaff wrote:
| Sure, absolutely relevant as a backward looking measure
| to offer a potential new employer a baseline--to the
| degree you want to share it. Certainly, when I last got a
| new job, I handwaved a bit around "counting bonuses etc."
| when giving a salary. (Was a private company so no
| stock.)
|
| On the other hand, the fact that your comp could drop by
| $100K next year because your company's stock was flat or
| a bit down is probably at least somewhat relevant.
| majormajor wrote:
| > On the other hand, the fact that your comp could drop
| by $100K next year because your company's stock was flat
| or a bit down is probably at least somewhat relevant.
|
| Sure, but that applies to cash-comp too, for companies
| paying big cash bonuses instead of equity.
|
| If the overall economic environment turns downward, your
| share grants if paid in equity are gonna be worth less
| than in the last 5 years, and if paid in cash, your cash
| bonuses are likely to fall off as well.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This Dice stuff is hard to believe. I have literally not made
| that much in base comp since 2014 (no matter what my visa
| application says). It's like way low.
| wikibob wrote:
| The only real data on the internet for tech compensation is:
|
| https://levels.FYI/2020
|
| https://candor.co/offers
|
| https://blind.com
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yeah I wish they had mentioned what those are supposed to be
| exactly. Is it average? Median? Entry-level? Senior?
|
| In my experience, the SF value on the chart seems to match
| entry-level developers, and the other values on the chart are
| _above_ what senior developers make elsewhere. If you 're a
| developer in Detroit, maybe you can make 90k, but I suspect
| you'll have to settle for closer to 60k.
|
| Looks like Dice is based in NYC. Maybe a bit of cross-coastal
| rivalry pulling our apparent numbers down so we don't steal all
| the NYC devs? ;)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Perhaps there is a bimodal distribution? Eg large public
| companies or older well funded startups in Silicon Valley can
| afford to pay more than the (many?) other companies
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| They intentionally leave out equity pay too. That way you
| manager can say you're making "industry standard" competitive
| pay at 1/2 of what others are actually making.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| IMO, it's not useful to look solely at salaries. My salary and my
| compensation are radically different numbers. My salary is
| approximately $200k/year, but my compensation is closer to $650k
| this year. Most of the engineers I know view their salary as only
| part of the picture.
|
| I'm also a firm believer in sharing compensation numbers openly
| and transparently as a mechanism for increasing worker
| negotiating power. Talk with your peers about their wages, share
| your salary, post updated numbers to levels.fyi on the regular,
| etc.
| twox2 wrote:
| Is the rest RSUs? Only a select few that work for big publicly
| traded companies get to benefit from those...
| closeparen wrote:
| Working for small and privately held companies implies a
| major opportunity cost
| discobot2 wrote:
| Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple all have more than 100k
| employees, this is close to the full SF population, so
| doesn't look like "select few" to me.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| RSUs and bonuses, but yes, for the past decade for me about
| half of my compensation has been stock grants.
| enra wrote:
| Also people forget you cannot compare equity compensation just
| based on quoted value between companies. Even public companies
| have different growth trajectories.
|
| Equity always carries added upside (and downside) value.
| Earlier you join the company, more risk there is, longer it
| takes to pay off, and but also more equity upside you have.
|
| Google stock has 3x in the last 5 years. Equity in company 5
| years before pre-IPO can increase in value 20x. Equity in a 1-2
| old startup can increase 100x or more sometimes.
| pugworthy wrote:
| I wonder how common it was for companies to not give out any
| raises due to economic changes from the pandemic. It depends I
| suppose on what the business is and what the impact is.
|
| Our Fortune 50 company late last year announced no raises based
| on the annual review cycle because of "things", but did give out
| bonuses. Of course then we had record earnings announcements
| recently, so it's not clear what the "things" were.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Depends entirely on the company. I switched jobs during the
| pandemic, the new company has constantly been hiring, I got a
| huge salary/benefits boost, and I got an end of year raise and
| bonuses. As I was heading out from the previous job, they sent
| out an email saying that hiring was frozen, salaries would be
| frozen (no raises for anybody), and retirement contribution
| matches would halt. I've had some friends furloughed and some
| also get new jobs. Probably comes down to how the employer was
| affected by changes due to the pandemic
|
| (in case anyone wants to ask, I don't reveal personal info
| online, so I won't be disclosing any company I've worked for)
| chris11 wrote:
| Same here. My employer is fortunate to be doing well. I've
| heard we are seeing some really good applicants. But they
| want to compete with top tech companies. So initial offers
| are going up, they are still giving out raises, and benefits
| have improved.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| > _so it 's not clear what the "things" were._
|
| "Things" are easy to work out. Just follow the money.
|
| Management gets far more RSUs and options and this means they
| are incentivised to do or say anything they think might push up
| the stock price.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Several companies I know seemed to lie and use Covid as a
| convenient excuse to not give out raises (or give shitty
| bonuses, etc) to save money in the short term. Meanwhile hiring
| and earnings don't match up to those actions.
| gricardo99 wrote:
| That's a fairly cynical take. You may be right, at least in
| some cases, but I also think it's reasonable for any
| executive to look at the unprecedented situation with a high
| degree of uncertainty and reign in spending on all possible
| fronts. In hindsight perhaps cutting back salaries/bonuses
| wasn't warranted, but that doesn't mean it was all planned as
| a scheme to boost profits.
| [deleted]
| jacques_chester wrote:
| I'm cynical because apparently reigning in spending can be
| done instantly, but handing out bonuses, raises or equity
| seems to be a very long and difficult process involving a
| lot of some-day-soons and any-day-nows and then perhaps-
| next-years.
| posharma wrote:
| This is so misleading. In silicon valley total compensation is
| touching 400k+/year on an average for experienced professionals.
| They should've at least consulted something like levels.fyi
| before publishing and looking dumb.
| Impossible wrote:
| If you read it as base only, not TC it seems accurate.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| The _average_ is probably lower than most people think, while
| the 80th and 90th percentiles is probably much greater.
|
| Remember they also include the H1B body shops. To get an idea
| of what these places are playing you can look at the open data:
|
| https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=Software+Engineer&cit...
| kar5pt wrote:
| Do you have a source that says the average experienced engineer
| in Silicon Valley makes $400k/year?
| lacker wrote:
| That number is too high. If you restrict to the FAANG
| companies, though, it is only a small overestimate. See
| https://www.levels.fyi/ and select Google. There an L5
| represents an "experienced" engineer with at least 4-5 years
| of experience, and total comp is $350k. Apple, Amazon,
| Facebook, and Microsoft are similar.
| ska wrote:
| > If you restrict to the FAANG companies,
|
| But then you are talking about a small minority of even SV
| salaries, and a tiny minority overall.
|
| The real issue as noted elsewhere is that the distribution
| is at least bimodal, and many conversations get derailed by
| confusion around this fact.
| kar5pt wrote:
| Yeah, my point is that's only true for FAANGs. Not the
| average engineer.
| Impossible wrote:
| Yeah $400K is high L5. Not uncommon, but slightly above
| average. It's possible that if you average all engineers
| you'd get something close to $400K, but L3 and L4 salaries
| would bring that value down. In surveys L5 makes up the
| majority of the engineering workforce in these companies,
| and L3\L4 have a bigger representation than L6+, so it's
| unlikely that the average TC is $400K.
| lhorie wrote:
| Probably also worth highlighting that L5 at google is a
| much wider range than other companies. For example, at
| Uber, there's two separate promotion tiers (5A and 5B,
| with the latter being far less common than the former)
| that more or less overlap w/ Google's L5 range, while at
| Microsoft, google's L5 range would overlap with a good
| portion of 3 separate tiers (senior SDE to principal
| SDE)[0]
|
| [0] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Uber,Google,Microsoft
| &track=...
| aphextron wrote:
| Bay area comp is massively bimodal. FAANG tier folks are
| certainly making that much, but they are a tiny fraction of the
| market. Most senior devs at smaller companies and startups are
| making under $200k.
| closeparen wrote:
| Companies in the tier of Stripe, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb,
| Pinterest, LinkedIn, Robinhood, etc. pay that much at senior
| levels. Often better than FAANG.
| lhorie wrote:
| AFAIK, the difference between the two tiers comes down to
| public companies that pay equity with real stock vs those
| who are not public and cannot offer comp in the form of
| liquid equity.
| opportune wrote:
| Several of those companies are not public. They are
| indeed offering paper money, but if you trust valuations
| during fundraising rounds (and given how late stage
| Stripe, Robinhood are) it's a pretty safe bet.
| jcims wrote:
| Curious what SRE/TPM/security roles are making. I have turned
| down two different security job offers from FAANG companies
| because the comp was even or a net loss over my current role
| at midwest orgs each time, and that was before factoring in
| CoL.
| codingslave wrote:
| Technology done well is more valuable than ever. Companies not
| paying up for their developers are going down the tubes.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| The standard conversation that happens around such posts:
|
| "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is
| rent, but SV still comes out to be more profitable"
|
| "Salaries in USA are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is
| healthcare, and there's no social safety net"
|
| "Salaries in FANG make smart people work on optimizing for clicks
| instead of doing something more beneficial for the world"
| throwawinsider wrote:
| In Germany I earn 30k but my kids attend free public school and
| I can sleep knowing they won't be shot one day.
| vmception wrote:
| when the deepest financial discussion from the general
| population is about cost of living, I rest assured that I have
| no competition
| dang wrote:
| You're quite right. I wish we had a more reliable way to
| downweight such generic responses, which reliably recur on
| every story related to an ongoing theme. HN threads are much
| better when they have interesting diffs.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| Of course I need to downweight this subthread too, because
| metageneric is a subset of generic, plus meta is its own issue.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Makes sense. My goal with the comment was to shortcut the
| stuff that's already been discussed.
|
| I wouldn't necessarily call this topic "generic". The
| "gravitational pull" you mention seems like a product of
| "number of people affected" x "how much of a relatable
| concern it is"; employment compensation scores high. Apple
| launches are another example of this.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| On balance, anyone remote before the pandemic and traveling the
| world has probably had a better life than someone with the same
| skills making double the salary in SV. Just the reduction in
| poop on sidewalks speaks for itself.
|
| Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.
| astrange wrote:
| San Francisco isn't in Silicon Valley. They're just
| pretending.
| dang wrote:
| Scene_Cast2 should add this as a fourth element to their
| list.
| stack_underflow wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that the people making these counter-
| arguments seem to completely ignore (or don't know about) the
| ridiculous amounts of equity that $big_tech_co's are handing
| out.
|
| Yes some of those points can be valid, and I understand that
| not all software companies hand out that much stock or are
| private and therefore it's harder to depend on, etc. But maybe
| it's just the bubble of tech that I've existed in within the
| PNW, but tonnes of people in my circle have built FIRE-level
| wealth by just having been driven enough to put up with
| bullshit interviews and staying long enough to get their stock
| grants.
|
| I can say personally I definitely wouldn't have made it to
| where I did financially had I stayed in Canada, or it probably
| would've taken me at least 15 years instead of ~5.
|
| If you're the type of person for who money can solve a lot of
| problems, I always suggest considering this as an option. It's
| solved ~90% of the problems in my life and has bought me years
| of time to be able to do what I actually want in life.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Equity is great when the stock market is booming, but when it
| decides to drop off a cliff every decade or so for whatever
| reason I'd prefer if my actual salary didn't go with it
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The thing is, it's very hard to get rich without some sort
| of equity. Maybe it's not equity in public companies, but
| almost all wealthy people get to that point by owning
| something. Whether that's stock options in a startup or a
| general partnership in a hedge fund or a medical practice
| or a piece of property that gets developed.
|
| All equity comes with risk. Doubly so for the type of
| equity that generates a lot of wealth. Stability is nice,
| but expect to pay through the nose for it. The only real
| exception I can think of are people with exceptional talent
| in an exceptionally in demand skill. E.g. Tom Brady or
| Linus Torvalds or a world-class neurosurgeon.
| ghaff wrote:
| This is mostly an argument for people who have either gotten
| a lot of equity at large public tech companies--at least some
| of them--and/or just had a lot of money in equities,
| including large public tech companies, over the past 10 years
| or so.
|
| Even if someone hasn't won the FAANG lottery, there are a lot
| of folks, including those that aren't collecting SV-level
| comp, who have done pretty well being well-invested in
| diversified equities.
| riantogo wrote:
| For those outside Silicon Valley why might think, "you could live
| like a king with that kind of money", here is a potential home
| you are looking at ($2M, 1200 sqft, 7 rated schools):
| https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...
| dilyevsky wrote:
| You do realize it's the price of a lot? That house is a
| teardown
| legerdemain wrote:
| Somewhat visible in some of the outdoor photos: a railroad
| right-of-way is located _directly behind this house_ , with at
| least two trains per hour from early morning until midnight.
| splaytreemap wrote:
| And for those that aren't familiar with Caltrain, that train
| blasts its horn two or three times before each stop and the
| horn is so loud that you can hear it from a mile away. Living
| as close to the train as that house is would be miserable.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| _Conveniently located for commuters!_
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Palo Alto is a lot more expensive than most of the Bay Area, so
| this is a somewhat cherry-picked result.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| These numbers are ridiculously low. Here is what a typical FAANG
| setup pays you in the bay area (Source: I have worked in a couple
| of them):
|
| IC5 Eng (~5 yrs exp): $350k/yr all in (cash+stock+bonus) IC6 Eng
| (~9 yrs exp): $550k/yr all in IC7 Eng (~12 yrs exp and you are
| exceptional): $800k/yr
|
| As you go from IC5 to IC7, your stock and bonus goes up (as
| expected). A typical IC7 will earn around $250k in cash, ~25%
| bonus (on the base cash salary) and the rest in stock.
|
| Now those $2M houses don't sound too expensive right?
| opportune wrote:
| Worth keeping in mind lots of engineers in the bay area are
| working at startups for lower salaries (closer to median in
| this chart), bodyshops, and large companies that are not known
| for as good pay.
| zuhayeer wrote:
| One of the founders of Levels.fyi here - wish we were cited on
| here too! But we also did a pay report for 2020 with a breakdown
| of companies and locations which was covered in another IEEE
| post: https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-
| work/tech-...
|
| In our report, we account for total compensation including
| equity. Feel free to check it out: https://levels.fyi/2020/
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The first graph in the spectrum article seems wrong (eg some
| companies only have a bar for 2018 when they ought to only have
| one for 2020), and the interpretation doesn't line up with it
| either, but maybe they are referring to something different.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| Honestly your site blows away the competition. AFAIK you have
| the best data. Great work and bravo on making compensation more
| transparent.
| dangwu wrote:
| Agreed. I'm always shocked when I go to Glassdoor and see how
| wrong the compensation is.
| holoduke wrote:
| Glasdoor community are marketing representatives from
| companies and angry employees. lots of negativity and fake
| or wrong submissions there.
| [deleted]
| logicslave wrote:
| Your website has single handedly changed the negotiations for
| so many people. It was so hard to get good salary data
| subsubzero wrote:
| With regular chats with a few old coworkers in various FANGish
| companies(we talk total comp between us) the numbers are always
| solid at levels, I wish this was more widely known as companies
| want to keep pay bands secret to drive down engineer's wages.
| Good work on the site and thanks!
| [deleted]
| sharkweek wrote:
| I cannot believe how high tech salaries are right now in my city
| (Seattle) versus even three years ago the last time I had a
| "real" job.
|
| What would have been a low 100s salary three years ago is easily
| pushing over 200k now.
|
| This is all well and good except for when one of those folks
| tries to go to buy a house here and is outbid by 15 people all
| offering cash with 200k in escalation clauses...
| dcolkitt wrote:
| It's incredible to me that most of the surplus wealth generated
| by all of humanity's innovation in the 21st century has
| basically accumulated to property owners in the Bay Area and
| Seattle. This is only a slight exaggeration.
| savanaly wrote:
| Also incredible that it could have been predicted over 200
| years ago [0]. The law of rent, one of the most firmly
| established in economics, is that all the bounty of our
| efforts will accumulate to the holders of fixed assets,
| namely land and human talent.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent.
| sidlls wrote:
| It's misleading, too. Most of the surplus wealth has accrued
| to people who were already wealthy. They are property owners
| in these areas, perhaps, but that's incidental.
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