Ask HN: How much do you make at Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Netflix/Google/Microsoft? There was a proper discussion on it about two years ago. Recently a similar thread was posted, but not to many response. I do not work at any of the above. I work at a fintech company and make 80k + Bonus (Europe) with no equity (12 years experience, senior dev). |
Also, which country in EU?
And Ireland. :)
Hi from Amazon's shit tier.
* How can I get an interview? It seems simply sending my resume through the online portal will not work because I don't have a stellar academic record or much experience.
* How can I figure out what to apply for? I have experience in UI but does google even do that? I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around. But I don't really care what I work on.
* How and how long should I prepare for the interview? I am working through the Cormen's algorithms book but I don't really have a solid CS education. And I hear that they just want you to know everything. So should I just go back to school?
* I have heard that one way is to participate and excel in coding competitions. Should I then focus my entire energy on this front? Or will this be misguided?
I wouldn't recommend going back to school. You already have a Master's in Physics, which should give you all the math background you need to understand CS algos. I'd even encourage you to start to "translate" your Physics knowledge into code.
Google, FB, Microsoft, et. al. are more concerned with your ability to explain CS concepts at a whiteboard than your degrees.
Have you considered SpaceX? http://www.spacex.com/careers/list
They are usually very interested in cross discipline candidates.
Once you are there, I'd say the best way would be to find someone in your network who works at google, and get referred. If you don't know anyone, make contacts through various channels.
Is this you personal experience?
I know for a fact that almost no one I interviewed with bothered to look at github. Some even admitted that asking for github is just a formality and that they don't have time or resources to evaluate it objectively.
I also concur that getting a referral from an any employee that you might meet is the better than just blindly sending in your resume, though not as good as a strong referral (i.e. someone you've had direct experience working with before). You will get more attention from the HR side and the employee referring you will have a better idea of what teams will be relevant than the HR people will.
If you think you have talent in that area you could spend the next two years working in that area, then apply
> I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around
Be careful with that kool-aid, it's toxic in high doses.
Considering how many times we've warned you before about posting comments that break the HN guidelines, I should probably ban your account for this. But we'll give you another chance. Please don't break the guidelines again, if you want to keep commenting here.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why European developers earn significantly less than virtually all their American counterparts, even in high cost of living areas (like Scandinavia)
I do understand you specified you work for a startup, but even at one of the many established regional consultancies dev salaries tend to cap out at around $90K IME.
Is it the lack of lucrative VC funding, the prevailing sense of egalitarianism at all costs, the abundance of (comparatively) well paid middle managers, all of the above or something else entirely?
edit : changed wording
As an example: would you tell a colleague "on the same level" as you that you're making $300k, when he is making $50 or $100k? That's either 1) an excellent way to get fired, because now everyone wants $300k, or 2) an excellent way to piss off your colleagues. They will start looking for a new gig immediately.
I agree though that we would, on average, be better off if all of us agreed to share salaries publicly.
First: because it is socially unacceptable.
In the US culture, talking about one's salary is taboo. It is rather as if someone were to post naked pictures. Sure, you are an enlightened person and you probably wouldn't hold it against them. Much. But you'd find it a bit weird. Americans try hard to hold to the illusion of a classless society and treating everyone equally, and hiding salary is an important way to do this. It also allows people to not feel cheated, if they don't realize that others are making more than they are.
Secondly: because my company might not like it.
US labor law actually REQUIRES that employees be permitted to discuss their salary with each other, which is why companies do not forbid discussing it, and to be clear: my company does NOT have any policy against discussing salary. But it is to the company's advantage to be a bit vague about salaries. Cynically one could say that this permits them to pay each individual the minimum they can get away with without having to deal with a sense that this is unfair. As a representative of my company, they would probably prefer that I talk about work conditions and company culture rather than specific numbers about the salary we pay.
If I were a more suspicious person I’d chalk it up to a cabal of employers trying to suppress wages...
* Avoiding jealousy from people that might know the poster * Avoiding becoming a target for scammers or kidnappers
Also why does HN not support basic formatting?
I respect your decision not wanting to discuss your salary publicly. May I suggest a throwaway? :)
It does, for a suitable basic definition of “basic” (it supports italics and preformatted monospace code blocks).
I think it's largely an aesthetic preference to focus on text content rather than distracting formatting that results in not supporting more. Aside from a decent formatting option for distinguishing block quotes, I don't really see any more formatting as being desirable, and even that is more to avoid people being tempted into using code blocks for blockquotes than because there aren't tolerable ways to present them without special formatting.
I've always chalked it up to HN's unchanging, simple aesthetic and interface (or, "ain't broke, not fixing")
You can block format with 4 spaces, but this isn't always ideal since it doesn't line wrap
We seem to be caught up in an uncomfortable hybrid world where salaries are sort of related to performance, but not really. If we just chose one way or another, that would sort out a lot of problems immediately.
It´s not really a problem as far as I know - and at any rate it definitely benefits employees.
I know at Google there's supposedly a big internal salary sharing doc started by Erica Baker, and she wasn't fired for it (although her manager was supposedly quite unhappy).
Funny, I know of American corporation which operates low cost center over here while paying 30-40% of American salaries and forbidding the employee from sharing its salary for 10 years (sic!) in the employment contract.
According to this law: https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act employees can talk about things that matter to them, salary being one of them. And the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) includes pay secrecy language in contracts as illegal, and even if you sign an NDA, it is still your right to talk about your salary.
The consequences for violation aren't usually very serious, so companies aren't too worried about violating the law, unfortunately. They usually have to provide back pay to the employee and/or offer the employee their job back (if they were fired). Obama signed an executive order that increased penalties for companies contracting with the government: they can lose their contract.
This law doesn't include contractors, ag workers, employees of federal, state, or local gvmt, or those employed by interstate rail and airline companies.
It does cover you if you aren't in a union.
Violations should be reported to the NLRB and they'll investigate it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policie... and https://www.govdocs.com/can-employees-discuss-pay-salaries/
The response to this should be: "Good for them! They should look for somewhere that will pay them what they think they are worth."
I believe that is the whole point behind sharing salaries, to help level the playing field and help people who got low-balled on their offer to realize this.
US tech companies can scale into a ~$21 trillion economy between the US + Canada, with barely any adjustments for culture & language. From there they can then use their considerable footing to push into any number of other foreign markets and press the scale further.
Most software businesses benefit immensely from such scaling.
If you're a Scandinavian tech company, doing something like that is far, far more difficult. It caps the upside for most companies. That's not unique to Scandinavia of course, it's true about almost all other countries / areas, other than China. US & British cousin cultures have a slightly easier time as well in general, as they can often immediately tap right into the US as an early market. That's why eg Shopify was able to so quickly scale itself, despite the smaller size of Canada's economy, they're doing a monster business in the US. Tech companies that have pulled that off coming out of Scandinavia are still semi-rare, such as Mojang or Spotify (Mojang famously was able to use the global scaling to immensely reward its employees).
- $60k/year is a lot of money for most people. Median household income is £24k - and people are generally more worried about whether they're better or worse off than the people they know than in absolute terms. In the UK most good careers cap out at £50-60k - maybe £10k more in London. Growing up, I always considered 6 figure salaries to be out of reach. - It's not necessarily about being _content_ with earning that much. Unless you're willing to move to the US (most people aren't), you have to find someone who'll pay you more than that, whether for programming or for something else. If you're unable to get more money then it's better to be content with what you're getting! - A lot of people I know put a lot of value in work life balance. I have a friend who's under 25 but has already cut their hours to about 75% because they would prefer free time to extra salary. From limited experience this seems a bit at odds with US work culture. - Yes, I think in large part it's down to less VC funding pushing ludicrous amounts of money into the ecosystem. - The recent performance of the £ vs the $ has made a significant difference when comparing to the US.
I think this was poor wording on my part, as it implicitly assigns blame on the employee. I've edited my comment to reflect that I'm more curious as to why the market as a whole compensates devs less.
* The job market is a lot more scattered than in the US, there are fewer hubs concentrating software jobs. This dilutes competition.
* The job market is typically less fluid. This translates into more job security, but also a certain complacency.
* Europe hasn't seen the birth of many very-high margins software companies, generating millions per developer (off the top of my head I can think of SAP maybe, but that's B2B).
* Consequently, there's also less recognition for software developers, and their perceived value is lower than that of mechanical engineers for instance.
* Also, outdated management style is still fairly prevalent as you noted.
* VCs have no reason to push for salaries higher than necessary. European startups pitch cheap engineering as an advantage compared to being based in the Bay area.
I don't think egalitarianism has anything to do with our salaries. We might see the value in higher taxes, stronger labor rights, and a narrower income inequality. But I've never met a software developer who thinks they should inherently be less paid than say, a lawyer.
> Basic supply and demand. As long as you manage to hire developers, why pay more?
I know of several companies (Norway) that are almost desperate for more talent - to the extent that they are turning down lucrative projects. Nonetheless, I am also not aware of any of them making significant changes to their compensation. I can only theorize as to why this is, but my sense is that it has to do both with a fairly static billing structure that doesn't scale with experience, and concern for parity within the organization.
That sounds a bit silly. If you're doing so well you need to turn down contracts, why not look further out for new talent, attract people with generous relocation/signing bonus, and then give everyone a raise once your marginal revenue is increasing?
It's what the market pays. If I say I want $120k, I won't get a job.
I do actually know devs who make this much with ~5 years of experience, but they made the conscious decision to forego the large consultancies for smaller shops with less overhead.
One observation I made in Scandinavia is that the billable rate for tech professionals (including designers) appears to be more or less static. Customers pay roughly the same hourly rate regardless of whether a dev / designer has 2 or 20 years experience, so the most consistent path to higher compensation is to drop layers of support / management (with freelance being the highest).
The tax rates are much higher there too.
That's fair, and I'm aware there are always outliers. For added reference, starting tech salaries in Oslo, Norway are around $50k (cost of living comparable to Seattle or DC). Perhaps more importantly, there's much less upward potential - senior devs rarely earn 6 figures USD unless they're freelancing.
It's broadly true that wages tend to be "sticky downwards", and that it's much easier to not give something than to give it and then take it away.
As you correctly noted, there's much higher job security in European markets relative to the US. This also means that companies might be reluctant to over-extend themselves in good times, for fear of having no effective way of regulating salaries downwards in a prolonged slump.
Total 2018 comp will be around 550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split if GOOG shares remain constant. Historically they have typically gone up meaningfully over the course of any given year.
The cash component includes base salary and bonus.
-What tech skills sets do you have? Do you need a MS/PhD at your level? If not, does it help?
In school we learn the standard algorithms/data structures material, but I want to expand my horizons and begin learning what is applicable to industry.
I am very curious to learn what someone at your level has skills in. I'd like to pick up something not taught in school and begin hacking away on a project that will help me... which leads to my next question
-What are good beginner resources/tutorials you recommend to learn these skill sets? Are there any good projects you can point me to?
-Just curious. Does "550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split" mean you make ~247,000 base + ~302,500 in stock options? I am not too familiar with how compensation is broken down.
The algorithms stuff is useful. More useful than it seems. It comes up often in many engineering jobs. Perhaps more importantly at your stage in life, it will get you an internship.
Do internships. If you miss the one you really want, think hard about why, then try again. Internships are the best place to start into my next piece of advice.
Specialize in something valuable while you're in school or once you start into your career. Jobs I might look for if I were entering the work force today:
- Image processing or other noisy data handling.
- Robotics, especially something requiring interdisciplinary skills like control theory.
- Deep learning techniques are all the rage; you'll be much more useful if you understand how they work and can build novel topologies. Being taken seriously here will likely require a portfolio (maybe graduate work).
- Systems programming is an unending hellscape of horrible problems. Some people seem to enjoy it.
- If you have a knack for it, security. It takes a certain deviousness to think of new ways to misuse things. It takes a wizard to do something like Meltdown and Spectre.
It doesn't really matter what you become a domain expert in as long as it's valuable. It does matter that you don't treat "domain expert" as a fixed target.
In terms of extracurricular work, find an open source project that's got engagement from companies with lots of senior people (Kubernetes would be a good example, it has many very talented people working on it). Fix open bugs. Fix the onboarding experience. Start with trivial things and go from there. Don't get dismayed when you end up with hundreds of review comments, that's how you learn.
Regarding compensation, the split is approximate. The cash is both salary and an annual bonus paid out in January. The stock is actual stock, not options, so every month some number of Google shares show up in my brokerage.
At what level do most engineers plateau at Google (meaning most people are unable to go past it)?
Senior (one level below Staff) is deemed "career level," and if you just want to build stuff it's a good place to stop. Staff involves a much more substantial leadership and coordination component, and that requires both the skill and desire to take on that sort of work.
[1]: I believe this is a relatively normal entry point for people either just out of school or with 1-2 years experience.
Grew up interested in computers, learned a little BASIC.
Took two intro CS courses during undergrad at an Ivy League school, but majored in the humanities.
Years later, attended a bootcamp.
None of this took place in MA.
Currently 100k + 5k (bonuses, i've gotten 20k bonuses here in the past but those days are gone). Roughly 35-40 hrs/week with only two week-long crunch times in about 3 years.
I currently have offers for 135k + worthless equity (startup) and 110k (non tech company). Waiting to hear back about a Systems Engineer role offering in the 100-125k range (hot tech company).
Part of changing gigs at the moment is to plan to take on additional work on the side to increase my compensation. Not possible in my current role.
I started off making 60k as a developer and not even that long ago...proving value added 40k on to my salary quickly, but honestly I negotiated poorly. I left at least 25k on the table starting.
For level comparison at different companies, lots of people point to http://levels.fyi
Here is a compensation poll for amazon employees only based on job title and level with 161 responses: https://goo.gl/V9QKHh
The total compensation rages I have heard for Amazon are 145k for new grads, 170k-230k for SDE 2, 250k-350k for SDE 3, 400k-600k for principal engineers. There are 2 more levels after that but have not really seen any data for those levels.
Here are Facebook's total compensation numbers quoted from "fmwf":
E3: 107K-125 Salary, 40k stocks a year, 10% bonus.
E4: 140k-160k Salary, 70k stocks a year, 10% bonus.
E5: 170k-195k Salary, 120k stocks a year, 15% bonus.
E6: 200k-220k Salary, 200k stocks a year, 20% bonus.
All Facebook numbers assuming expected performance if you kill expectations you get more (25%-200% more shares).
Also from said forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFIC...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984
For reference, Google's ladder goes: SWE II -> SWE III -> Senior SWE -> Staff SWE -> Senior Staff SWE -> Principal -> Distinguished.
I really dig the gig, they treat me like an employee but pay me like a contractor. I tend to take 5-6 weeks of time off (unpaid) so I tend to make $160,000-165,000 at the end of the year.
My background is about 10 years of tech experience. Working on React currently. CS degree.
Total comp (base + bonus + stock + signing bonus amortized over 4 years) is 185k. Higher than expected because of recent stock increases & I negotiated with competing offers.
TC next year will be closer to 200k.
(throwaway account)
34 years old, approx 7 years experience. MS stack.
$125k plus annual bonus of approx $9-10k. 2019 hoping annual salary pushes the $135k mark.
ETA: 5yrs exp, Dev III in logistics; $95K/year, ~$6k in stock, insurance fully paid by company.
I would make around 240k if my initial stock grants hadn’t nearly doubled in value since I joined. I will probably actually make less money once my 4 year grant runs out, all things being equal.
5 years total experience.
Base salary: 190k / yr base salary, ~6k / yr performance bonus
Equity Grant: ~$125k stock grant, vesting twice in four years, so ~$31k/yr stock presuming I stay for all four years
So - total annual compensation (excluding healthcare benefits and our 6% 401k match) is about $216k annually.
Also, I’m curious; I read figures like $400-600k... Is that actual salary you see on your wage slip or wrapped up in that are things like healthcare that you never “see” normally?
I’m curious because these figures are astonishingly high and I’m wondering 1) how on earth do startups find devs 2) how on earth there’s any developers over 30 when you can become a millionaire and retire early.
Do you have any idea if smaller companies and govt research labs sponsor?
205k total, 45k from stock
Is it possible to go from new grad -> first job -> Google? By that progression I mean what sort of background is required language/stack/etc aside from studying and practicing?
I wrote about my bad experience at one of the company I interned for. Some PR from the company comment on my review, I knew the PR guy cuz he goes around doing it to other reviews there and create fake reviews.
Anyway, I call him out on it said he's using ad hominem for one of his tactic in the comment. Other users comment and back my report up.
After a few week glassdoor deleted my comment and the comments that back me up, they left the PR guy comment up. I wish I could have screen shot it.
Eventually they did away with the comment system.
I don't trust them at all.
There are aggregate surveys from O'Reily and stackoverflow. I think it's pretty decent. O'Reily doesn't give raw data for their data science survey so I couldn't do any survey analysis to confirm it but they release their linear regression model.
Sounds like that was a positive step, wasn't it? Getting rid of the system that allowed the company to comment on your review?
This post is to get a (however small) current sample and it is purely to help me evaluate a couple of opportunities, no commercial interest whatsoever.
Here's what (I think) is important to know to help you -
Role
Your years of experience
Size/function of org, assuming you don't want to name the companies
Public, or Private (and what stage)
Base
RSU or Options w/ offer
Annual Bonus potential
I'm sure you don't want to entirely out yourself, but some of that info will help you get better answers.
A Developer will make anywhere between £35k and £50k depending on experience (this matches with what I saw when I was looking for a job a year ago)
While the PR guy was shady, realizing other people having the same experience via rebuttal and affirming my comment via their experiences seem much better.
I usually like having a dialogue/discussion. Glassdoor is where you can give anonymous reviews, mind as well have people annoymously have a discussion about said company.
It provides exposure to embedded systems, likely involves caring about communication protocols, sensors, etc. It might involve hard real-time constraints, and if you're really lucky it will also involve dealing with noisy data and maybe even a taste of applied machine learning.
That said, I could believe that all of the fun work is being tackled above the entry level.
The difference is that senior engineers do something resembling engineering. When not attending meetings, I turn coffee into emails and Google docs.
I was hired at one level above entry level.
I did have a period of 2 months where I was working 80 hour weeks, but it was due to a very unique confluence of events including a reorg, and highly abnormal from my understanding, but I was rewarded for it by getting a couple of extra days off.
I like you.
Get yourself a solid year long stint somewhere & the pay will be £100k - £150k
I make around £40k as a developer with 11 years experience, which seems about average for my city.
My total cost of living each month is around £930. That includes my mortgage.
The company where I was working before I made ~£29k as developer, some people in that company were on as low as £21k. The average was probably around £25k.
Contracting rates can be good, I regularly get calls about contracting jobs from recruiters with rates around £400-£450 a day for a 6 month contract. But then you have the hassle of looking for a new contract every 6 months or so. That hassle is just not worth it for me.
I get emails each day from a job place with jobs. Today the jobs are
C# .net developer - £30k - £45k
C# software developer - £28k - £35k
Senior python developer - £65k
PHP Developer - £35k - £42k
.NET Developer -£38,000 DOE
.NET full stack developer - £35 - £50k
Java Developer - Upto £65k
Javascript Developer - £30-£40k
These are all for positions with many years experience. I don't know where people are seeing £100k a year salaries?
The effect of price rises (council tax, travel, utilities, rent etc) combined with your salary remaining stagnant is nothing short of devastating over a period of 10-20 years.
Companies pretending that inflation doesn't exists probably contributes quite a bit to job hopping
Edinburgh vs. SF (~1.8x) :
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Edinburgh vs. Seattle (~1.3x) :
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Southern Europe is even worse. I was offered a role of Senior/Lead engineer (with over 10 years exp) for "maximum salary of 45k Euro". And was told by their recruiter that this is considered high for Spain.
A good dev would be £700/day and up, depending on experience, business line, hotness of their tech skills etc.
From an engineering point of view they kill it, they're one of the most visited sites in the world.