[HN Gopher] Tech compensation in 2021
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Tech compensation in 2021
Author : mjgardner
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-10-14 21:33 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobian.org)
| Zaheer wrote:
| Co-Founder of Levels.fyi here. As Jacob points out, the market is
| _extremely_ hot right now. It feels like salaries are inching up
| slightly each month. We 're working on improving how numbers are
| updated and working on weighing recent salaries more heavily.
| Would really encourage everyone to submit their compensation on
| the site. We also have some relevant discussions with recruiters
| from FANG type companies on our team in our community.
| paxys wrote:
| I haven't been able to get a clear answer for this so hoping
| you can help - what are companies' appetites for matching
| existing stock grants for senior hires? Say someone gets a
| FAANG or "hot startup" offer, but has $800K worth of stock
| (mainly due to price appreciation) at their current company
| vesting in the next year, is a direct match out of the
| question?
| i1856511 wrote:
| How many people go into programming now simply for the money?
| More than 70%?
|
| What percentage of programmers would still be programmers if
| competitive salary was not a concern in life, and people were
| free to simply pursue their passions?
| zz865 wrote:
| I'm not sure if its good to get in now while the market is hot or
| wait for January when it'll really take off.
| KronisLV wrote:
| As someone who works in an Eastern European country, i also did a
| writeup on how much i've made over the years and how that figure
| has changed, while working for a local company:
| https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings
|
| In short, this year i'll probably make around 18k Euros, in
| total.
|
| I guess that just goes to show how different the situation is
| depending on where you live and where you're employed.
| gpt5 wrote:
| It's crazy to me that you can basically make a lifetime of
| earning doing the same job in Silicon Valley
| azinman2 wrote:
| Except the cost of living is wayyy lower
| beebmam wrote:
| Why are these numbers so massively different across the world?
|
| Do European companies generate that much less revenue? Or are
| labor unions in Europe just that much less effective at
| bargaining? Or is productivity that much lower in Europe? (I'm
| not sold on any of these)
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US
| tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make
| less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which
| disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor
| productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still
| has a culture where software engineers, cloud
| architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys
| and the people who really matter in a corporation are the
| finance people and upper level executives.
|
| Europe also suffers from a brain drain to the US (and Canada
| to a smaller proportion). Many of Europe's best and brightest
| software engineers have already emigrated to the US, leaving
| behind the less productive ones.
| cryptoz wrote:
| > Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk
| taking and ambitious individuals.
|
| This seems backwards to me. A society with higher taxes
| typically has better social safety nets, better
| infrastructure, less corruption, etc. Higher-tax societies
| _incentivize_ risk-taking, not the other way around,
| especially for "ambitious individuals". When there is more
| structure and support around, more people are able to take
| a leap.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| There are effects in both directions - there's both less
| upside due to higher taxes and less downside due to the
| safety net.
| beebmam wrote:
| It seems to me that risk taking is probably deeply
| cultural, and is also likely effected by both policy and
| economic status (collective and individual status). It's
| probably hard to know how to quantify all of these
| different effects, but I hope some people are trying to
| research this!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| There's probably a big difference in the _kind_ of risk
| taken. The safety net might lead to starting a coffee
| roastery vs a VC-backed tech company that will create a
| thousand jobs and massive advertising revenue.
| mikem170 wrote:
| What you said may be true for an individual, but not
| necessarily a small company. Because of socialist
| regulations and taxes a small company may have higher
| startup costs and it may be difficult to lay off
| employees, which makes hiring someone more risky, along
| with expanding the business.
| amelius wrote:
| You can't take risk with money you already paid your
| taxes with.
| Ginden wrote:
| Safety nets provided by European countries are intended
| mainly for not ending homeless.
|
| If you are running business, your loses are opportunity
| costs. Eg. you have already 100k EUR yearly salary and
| you decide to try running startup. If it fails after 5
| years, so you didn't get any money from it (eg. you had
| to paid debts at the end), you probably lost 500k EUR in
| opportunity cost.
|
| Progressive taxes incentivize risk taking in lower and
| lower-middle class, because you are protected from "total
| failure", but disincentivize risk taking for upper-middle
| and upper class, because expected rate of return is
| lower.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Wouldn't you make more as a remote contractor? Even on Upwork?
| akvadrako wrote:
| I'm not sure about Upwork, but certainly on better
| contracting sites like A-Team, Moonlight and Toptal. It's not
| even necessary to have a network.
| rhacker wrote:
| The actual pay isn't going up. The value of the dollar is
| dropping very quickly.
| VRay wrote:
| Man, every time I think I've finally caught up to the market
| rate, I find out I'm behind again
|
| I'm a senior FAANG coder making 350k TC, and it looks like I
| should be able to net 400-600k at this level if I go to Apple or
| Google. Hoo boy, looks like it's leetcode time again...
| websap wrote:
| 500K is the new 350K in 2021.
| VRay wrote:
| I wish I could get a company to just give me 15 weeks of paid
| vacation instead.. alas
| aynyc wrote:
| Ding! That's what I want!
| m_ke wrote:
| Yeah I know a lot of FAANG people getting 500-600K packages.
| Makes it hard to even think about startups.
| Fordec wrote:
| Yeah that's not a "competitive" difference any more, that's
| approaching levels of annual compensation nearly a full seed
| round for a whole startup.
|
| I used to buy into the whole risk vs reward of startups, but
| the numbers are far too biased towards founders and big tech
| salaries now for any individual contributor actually paying
| attention to the market to think about a startup job.
| websap wrote:
| Depends on your definition of Startup, late stage companies
| like Stripe and Databricks are definitely matching/beating
| these offers.
|
| Mid-stage companies like Convoy are also going very high, but
| there is an upside with those companies.
|
| Don't know much about early stage, but a few of my
| acquaintances are moving from FAANG companies to early stage
| companies to play the lottery.
| m_ke wrote:
| I'm a founder taking a significant pay cut and worked at
| early stage startups before that. Had a few hot new ML
| startups try to recruit me and their offers are nowhere
| near what my friends at FAANG are making.
|
| Last time I was looking for work 8 years ago the gap was
| nowhere near this large.
| websap wrote:
| Not sure about founders, but if you're looking to hire
| top talent you need to pay them, give them the promise of
| meaningful equity. Software engineering is one of those
| professions where you don't work a 9 - 5 job. I'm
| constantly thinking about problems at work, while i do
| mundane tasks like cleaning my apartment, or doing the
| dishes.
| paxys wrote:
| There's a huge difference between early stage and mid-late stage
| private companies. For the latter, you are almost always getting
| RSUs rather than options, so you don't have to pay taxes out of
| pocket to exercise them. It's also wrong to automatically
| consider all stock grants to be worth $0 just because you can't
| immediately sell them. If Stripe or Databricks offers you a
| million dollars worth of shares today it'll be foolish to say no.
| VectorLock wrote:
| I wonder how having so many companies moving to remote-work are
| changing this equation.
|
| I've been asking people how much they'd take a pay cut to go for
| full-remote and most people say 10% is a no-brainer.
| websap wrote:
| Nah! I wouldn't take a pay cut to go remote. In fact, I'd
| expect the following: 1. Yearly stipend to upgrade my
| workplace. 2. Quarterly paid trips to meet my teammates either
| at off-sites or conferences.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The company doesn't need you. Plenty of people will take a
| paycut to not live in HCOL.
| ggregoire wrote:
| > Chris can expect to make $300k at a non-FAANG company, but
| nearly double that if they're willing to compromise on that "no-
| FAANG" stance
|
| Ok but aren't the expectations for a Staff+ SE way higher at
| FAANG than at non-FAANG? Or we assume Chris already got the offer
| from FAANG and so it's just a personal choice?
|
| Those articles and discussions about salary always assume
| everybody is able to work at FAANG. Or that a title at non-FAANG
| automatically transfer to the same title at FAANG.
| bgirard wrote:
| The expectations might be higher, but you have access to a very
| high caliber infrastructure and mentors that increases your
| productivity. So onboarding might be a big leap during the
| transition period. But I think that explains more of the
| difference than a skill gap. Lots of great Staff+ SE decide to
| work at non-FAANG.
| paxys wrote:
| Exactly. Someone saying they are Staff+ because of their
| current role at an Akron startup and actually getting an offer
| for Staff+ from Google or Facebook are very different
| situations.
| btheshoe wrote:
| The best way of doing this is to just use levels.fyi and ask on
| Blind (which is a toxic place, but a bit of toxicity is needed to
| maximize tc).
| VRay wrote:
| Blind is a real hive of scum and villainy, but at least you can
| get real numbers from real people
| websap wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? Levels.fyi and Blind are great
| tools. Blind is toxic because posters are obsessive about their
| TC, but I feel that's a side-affect of not letting people talk
| about money in their real lives, so they need to be anonymous
| and vent.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Those really only cover giant tech co's though. Clearly it
| would be better and more accurate to get real data points, but
| I think the approach the article describes works well if there
| isn't a bunch of public data for a company already.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| I got a reasonable amount of value out of skimming Blind
| during a recent switch from big tech to a more niche role.
| The amount of signal definitely drops (as does the signal-to-
| noise ratio) but it was still useful to a certain extent.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| The outliers are pretty tough to get significant data for.
| Also my sense is startups tend to pay towards the 50-75th
| percentile of radford (read: not great) cash comp and balance
| with equity lotto tickets that the author values at zero.
| While startup equity is obviously not worth nothing, he is
| correct in noting it's quite tricky to negotiate since
| there's an inherent information asymmetry there as well.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Maybe Glassdoor.
| Etheryte wrote:
| While I don't have doubts about this being a good way to find
| rough outlines for compensation, I'm yet to find a reliable
| source of data for Europe. Has anyone else had better luck?
| DrNuke wrote:
| You may want to have a look at salary surveys from headhunting
| firms or placement agencies like Michael Page or similar.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| in the UK, junior is PS20-40k, mid-level is around PS40-60k,
| lead can be around PS60-100k. Very rough numbers, and adjust
| upwards slightly for London. The big money is in contracting in
| the UK, which would be our accessible FAANG-equivalent.
| Aromasin wrote:
| Either contracting, or alternatively, consulting. Companies
| like Cambridge Consulting and et al (please correct me if I'm
| wrong, I only know this through word of mouth) earn more in
| line with our US counterparts supposedly.
|
| Additionally, our country is much more focused on financial
| services. You can make 2-3x the average engineer salary
| there. The rest of the market seem content paying far below,
| and also content having an eternal manpower shortage as a
| result it seems. The vast majority of engineers I graduated
| with have ended up in sales engineer roles to be honest,
| where they can earn commission more in line with the salary
| they deserve at the cost of doing something they don't
| necessarily enjoy.
|
| It baffles me that companies are quite content to pay a half
| decent tech recruiter 70-80k, but continue to offer jobs to
| the engineers they are trying to hire at nearly half that.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Don't a lot of countries in Europe make salary info completely
| public? Seems like it should make creating aggregates even
| easier.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Only for public servants.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In other news, if you aren't in the valley or working for one of
| the big tech companies, you're probably making 100-150K as a
| mid/senior developer. There's a pretty sizable leap.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I honestly find it hard to believe that there are a lot of jobs
| available offering those kinds of salaries. Especially when we
| are talking about working remotely from outside the Bay area and
| for average size companies.
|
| I think there are multiple tiers as far as salary. He is really
| describing the top two tiers. But the majority of jobs are not
| quite in those top two tiers.
| zz865 wrote:
| > Chris can expect to make $300k at a non-FAANG company, but
| nearly double that if they're willing to compromise on that "no-
| FAANG" stance
|
| Is that really a good rule of thumb? FAANG pays double non-FAANG?
| rodonn wrote:
| It's not a good rule of thumb. There definitely are some tech
| companies that pay less than half of FAANG (especially among
| small startups and eng roles in less tech centric companies),
| but there are also a lot of companies that have similar
| salaries to FAANG.
| rodonn wrote:
| Levels.fyi has a nice chart showing salary ranges at
| different levels of seniority for a variety of companies
| https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Base comp probably... but the OP is discounting equity almost
| entirely:
|
| > and those are likely to be the kind of complex instruments
| that I treat as a gamble, not guaranteed salary
|
| Idk, opinions vary, but the majority of my early startup total
| comp in my career has been equity payout. Maybe I just got
| super lucky, but I think this is too firm a stance and tips the
| scales against non-FAANG too heavily.
| VRay wrote:
| Ah, I've worked with a lot of people who didn't hit it big
| with stock options and suffered ruinous tax liabilities in
| some cases.. Zero is probably too little, but if you're being
| paid way under-market in cash and having to dip into that to
| exercise options and pay taxes, zero might actually be a good
| middle ground between the best and worst cases
| bpodgursky wrote:
| There may be cases I'm missing, but afaik you never *have*
| to suffer ruinous tax liabilities from stock comp if you're
| willing to just eat the gains as raw income (making the
| (often smart) gamble to hit LCTG is what will get you in
| trouble).
| sulam wrote:
| The reason the poster arrived at this is that they are valuing
| stock options as $0. Of course there are non-FAANG companies
| with liquid stock, but this seems not to enter the calculation.
| If you were to consider those, you'd find that while FAANG pays
| well, it's not _that_ much of a premium.
|
| What's certainly true is that stock is a significant piece of
| the total comp at a FAANG and a startup is unlikely to make up
| much (if any) of that difference in base salary. For instance
| base salary for me as an L8 at Google is roughly 1/3 of my
| total comp.
| websap wrote:
| I think there are many other companies now paying or exceeding
| FAANG. Some of them are - Stripe, Databricks, Coinbase,
| Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Twitter (to some extent), DoorDash,
| Airbnb, etc
|
| We no longer live in a FAANG only world. FAANG companies are
| now trying exceptionally hard to hire talent. A lot of the
| FAANG perks were in-office, as the world continues to accept
| the remote first worker, they are only going to have a harder
| time.
|
| As I work from home, I've come to appreciate different aspects
| of my work, than what I enjoyed in-office.
| paxys wrote:
| Not really. I'm sure Google is paying double the salary of
| _some_ companies, but there 's a huge number of companies in
| the middle of the two as well.
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