Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out of the woodwork to tell you that their brother’s girlfriend’s roommate makes $400k at Facebook, therefore it is an average compensation in Silicon Valley. That is far from accurate.
Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.
FAANG + Microsoft + Uber + Airbnb hire thousands and thousands of engineers in the Valley and Seattle every year. 400K is L5-L6 salary (senior engineer, first level manager). There are a TON of engineers making that money. They are not really outliers, and FAANGMUA is also not really outlier considering Google itself has 80K employees and Amazon and MSFT have over 200K employees.
I work at Google, used to work at Amazon, and had an offer from Microsoft.
From my experience, Google/FB pay much more than Amazon and Microsoft if we're talking about total compensation so I think it's a little more rare than what you're saying.
I don't think it's that easy to hit L5 either. My teammate is amazing and had like 8+ years at Microsoft before joining Google but was hired as an L4.
For most SWEs, L5 would be the last level they ever reach in their entire career..
One thing to consider is the runaway stock market. It has a huge effect on total comp. Yes, Amazon has lower base salaries than FB/GOOG, but they've always been pretty generous with RSUs and their stock is damn high right now. There are no doubt many engineers there making those $400k figures by virtue of having been granted RSUs when they were half as valuable as they are today. It may take a true outlier to get hired today and immediately be making that kind of salary, but it doesn't take much of an outlier for someone with a few years of grants to get that high.
> Yes, Amazon has lower base salaries than FB/GOOG, but they've always been pretty generous with RSUs and their stock is damn high right now.
Actually my salary was very similar at Amazon when compared with Google and my friends have similar salaries. The problem with Amazon is that their vesting schedule is very heavily weighted towards the 3rd and fourth year.
It's true that if you stay the entire time, that might work to your benefit since by that time the stock value may have increased greatly, but I'm not sure how much that should count since you could in theory just sell your RSUs and buy Amazon stocks if you wanted to.
My experience is that total comp at Google is much higher than Amazon but again this may be anecdotal?
I keep hearing about the FAANG companies and I have to wonder what can I do to make my proactiveness pay off in getting into the running for job interviews? I feel like it's easier to get their attention as a CS student seeking internships than as a self-taught mid-level developer (which I am).
I have interviewed on two separate occasions by Amazon, and only contacted by Microsoft (submitted some forms, but they never called me back). Both times, it was from an internal recruiter making first contact with me. But when I try to reach out to them first (applications or LinkedIn), nobody answers.
Are these FAANG companies usually recruiting candidates on the basis of "don't contact us, we'll decide if we want to contact you"? Other than knowing an acquaintance that works in the company I see no other way to get into an interview more quickly.
The signal to noise ratio in the hiring process is horrible. I work at one of the FAANG companies and do a lot in the hiring process. I can tell you that getting a phone screen off of a resume that you submit is a crap-shoot. There are people applying to positions they aren’t qualified for, people applying to positions they have no idea what the role is (blast a bunch of resumes out and see what sticks), and genuinely qualified people who suck at writing a resume (and probably go unnoticed as a result). As a result, there are probably a lot of good candidates that don’t even get looked at because they are lost among the noise.
My best advice is find someone who can submit your resume as an internal referral. Those carry a lot more weight (at least where I work). However, make sure that person is someone you know and is comfortable “vouching” for you. These referrals are looked at more favorably since the thinking is that it’s somewhat of a known quantity.
I can only speak from my experience with Amazon. I sent a resume in for a job at Lab126 since I'm an embedded guy with an EE background, no CS except 21 years doing embedded software. I never heard from Lab126, but the AWS team got back to me. After failing to pass all the test vectors of the coding test, they gave me a phone interview. I did OK at best. They flew me up for an interview and proceeded to ask me CS algorithm questions on a whiteboard for 6 hours. I didn't get the job(and probably would have turned it down otherwise, since it involved being on-call), but it surprised me that their screening process was so bad. Nowhere on my resume did I indicate having any knowledge of CS algorithms, yet it was seemingly vital for the role. Strangely enough, I did study up on virtualization implementations(KVM/Xen), but no one asked me a single question about that(despite it being listed as vital on the job description).
No, they're voracious recruiting machines. It is certainly possible to get hired by writing into a webform; it's not a particularly effective way relative to others, but it works enough to justify them sending those leads to recruiters.
Other than knowing an acquaintance that works in the company I see no other way to get into an interview more quickly. You should certainly cultivate an internal advocate. In no circumstance will that be worse than applying cold; it will often be better.
The Foobar coding challenge seems to work really for Google, for whatever reason.
Go to Google and search "python list comprehension" in a bunch of different tabs. Make sure it's exactly that. If you have an extra 's', or if you do "list comprehension python", it's not gonna work.
If you go through the first 3 levels, then they'll ask you to send in a resume.
Admittedly, I only know results from the perspective of students, but I know several people who were initially rejected that got callbacks after finishing Foobar.
In 2018, this is kind of sad, judicious combinations of generator expressions and list comprehensions is so much more interesting (use lazy and eager evaluation where it matters)!
Anyway, I did that search in 20 tabs and didn't get anything.
Unless you make a name for yourself somehow, the best way to get recruited to FAANG's is to get hired for a summer internship, perform well, and then get hired. Another way is to attend the job fairs at your Uni and see if you can score an interview.
I wouldn't worry too much about getting into them though. SE's are in high demand across the Valley; expand your horizons and interview with some of the late stage startups and other SE companies as well (e.g. Atlassian). They will provide amazing compensation as well as being a smaller company where you can have a bigger impact. Once you build a few years of experience delivering products, your problem will be rejecting 99% of the recruiters that reach out to you lol.
Seriously as a CS student, you really just have to get a job where you can learn and write actual code and watch your career soar.
FAANGs receive massive volume of applications, so it can be very difficult to receive a call back from a recruiter. I had a Facebook recruiter tell me that their acceptance rate is "way lower than Stanford", which, if you think about it is not that surprising. Anyways, the best way to get a call from Google or Facebooks is to find someone to refer you.
I guess I might phrase it something like, if you're going to make L5 it is probably the result of excessive competence. If that is you, you will get their faster cutting your teeth in at least a few different startups. Develop judgement and a variety of experiences.
Excuse me but the median senior software engineer at Microsoft does not make $400k/yr in TC. Same goes for AMZN. There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them (facebook, and google do however). Go checkout Blind if you don't believe. Or ask your friend at MSFT.
And like someone else said, first level managers are more like 250-350k range, not 400k, yes even at G and FB.
Uber and Airbnb don't pay that much either. Sorry I don't count paper money as real money.
> There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them (facebook, and google do however).
None of the companies in top tier tech can afford to pay substantially less than any of its competitors. That's why they're "top tech".
If what you said was true, and FB or Google paid a lot more than say MSFT or AMZN, then all the best senior engineers would eventually leave the latter for the former, and only the bottom talent will retain. Then the latter won't be top tech in any meaningful sense.
In reality, FAANG are grouped together because they pay about the same and can compete with each other for the same level of talent. Other companies are in this category, just not as famous.
It's quite a well known fact in the Valley that FB/Google pay much better than MSFT/AMZN...and yes the best (or lets say a lot of them) engineers eventually do leave for FB/Google...AMZN has huge turnover. MSFT on the other hand is more of a rest and vest type of place with nice work life balance so not as many people are leaving.
No, he’s correct. MSFT pays a lot more in the Bay Area than Seattle because the cost of living is so much lower in Seattle (no state income tax, housing, etc) that they can get away with paying a lot less.
My total compensation went up by ~80% going from MSFT to FB (but my housing costs 3x in the Bay Area vs what I had in Boston so it’s not as large an increase as it sounds).
> There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them
This claim is false.
There are a lot more than "a handful" of companies paying $400k for senior engineers. MSFT will also pay you this amount in the Bay.
Overall, top tech pay about the same. You say FB pays better than MS in Seattle, and perhaps that is the case (as I stated above, I'm mostly familiar with the Bay, not so much with Seattle). In the Bay, the pay is very similar. There could be many reasons why FB would pay more than MSFT in the Seattle: for example, MSFT has a huge office there, and FB probably only a small one. So it's a pretty wise strategy for FB to offer larger pay for the small amount of positions they have there, and in this manner poach some of the best talent in Seattle, while for MSFT it would be prohibitively expensive to raise salaries across the board at Redmond.
That still doesn't change the big picture, which is that top tech pay is largely equivalent, outside of a few anomalies here and there.
No, they do not. Again, obviously you have never worked at a FANG company otherwise you would probably realize this. It's quite a well known fact in the Valley that FB/Google pay much better than MSFT/AMZN.
FYI, I got offers from FANG companies, specifically the ones you mentioned. There used to be a gap, but on the last round the AMZN numbers were effectively the same as Google's. My guess is that over the last few years they faced the necessity to pay equally.
I have friends working at MSFT in the Bay and their current pay also falls in line with the numbers mentioned in this thread. Of course, they're senior engineers.
Google pays the same pre-tax in Seattle as in the Bay Area, at Bay Area rates in each case. So it's also between companies even within the Seattle context.
(Or at least that's the official line. I haven't examined any de facto pre-tax pay disparities between the two locations. But at least they don't adjust comp when one transfers between those locations, or between either of them and NYC; whereas they do for relos those areas and significantly cheaper areas.)
Source: personal memories of policies from 3-5 years ago, which could have changed but probably haven't.
I didn't say median. I said it is L5-L6 comp, which doesn't make it a median as I assume most engineers will be in L1-L4 band. That said, it is not an outlier either. And won't be surprised is 20-30% of engineering and PM orgs are making that money.
Also, Uber and Airbnb gives RSUs which are not paper money. I am confident that an IPO for both these companies are inevitable.
RSU's in a company that hasn't gone public are not very liquid... not paper money, but definitely not worth face value. Take that value and cut it in half or 1/4.
You picked .5 or .25 as the multiplier. If it's still 2-5 years until a public offering, it's also quite possible for the multiplier to be closer to 1.5 or 2.
Everybody has a different assessment of how likely each outcome is, so everybody has a different expected value.
Anecdotally, I know plenty of 66s and 67s at Microsoft that are pulling $300-500k in TC. Microsoft’s stock rise has also made this decade extremely nice for grants.
Course, with the average house going for $1 million in Kirkland, they have to spend it.
Most of the employees are certainly making less, becomes pretty obvious with the http://levels.fyi salaries per level (only starts going above 400K after L6 @ Google & FB)
Most people who think of 400K (or even 200K in some previous discussions) as "outlier pay" are probably just not familiar with big tech pay and how much revenue they earn per engineer.
It correlates with how much a business will be ultimately willing to pay a developer, if they have to.
If I'm making a $1M profit on you, I'll be willing to pay you up to a high fraction of this amount if I have to. Financially, even if I pay you $950K, I'm still making money. Assuming my business scales, I'd hire as many engineers like you as possible, and pay them the same. Why not? I'm making a profit for each one. Great deal for me.
Of course, if you're willing to work for $100k, I'd rather pay you that instead. Hell, I'd rather you worked for me for free!
If I'm making a $1M profit on you, I'll be willing to pay you up to a high fraction of this amount if I have to. Financially, even if I pay you $950K, I'm still making money.
Where does the money come for dividends, taxes, and overhead?
If there is enough supply of engineers at the same quality, no one will pay more.
Obviously, I'm keeping it simple. My point is, profit per engineer does have a lot to do with how much I'm willing to pay that engineer. I'd rather pay as little as possible, but if necessary, I'll pay almost as much as I make in profit, because I'd still be making money.
Agreed. SV is different from the rest of the markets, and it is the main reason why it attracts so many engineers from all over the country (hell, from the world).
Although I don't regret the time I spent outside of SV, from a financial perspective as a single young engineer, it absolutely, 100% makes financial sense to consider opportunities in SF that compensate you so well.
>Agreed. SV is different from the rest of the markets, and it is the main reason why it attracts so many engineers from all over the country (hell, from the world).
In my case, SV is so different that it actually made me want to leave. Personally, I can't recommend SV to anyone if monetary wealth isn't the only goal.
"Thousands and thousands" is an exaggeration, particularly considering the portion that is churn between them. There are over 3.87 million software developers in the US[1]. I would be shocked if even 10% of them are employed by the companies you mention Nationwide, let alone just in SV and Seattle. Of that, a minority pull down the massive TC you cite. I think that certainly qualifies as an outlier.
Furthermore, the headcounts of the really big companies, particularly Amazon and Microsoft, are inflated by non-engineers. Citing them doesn't really say much.
The other thing that people seem to forget is that a lot of people calculate their FAANG Total Comp with the value of the stock today, not on the day they were given to them.
This simply because you could have yourself bought those stocks at the same price back in the days.
You cannot include the increase as part of your total comp
This in some case makes a huge difference, especially now, where all the tech stocks have gone to the moon.
I believe that a lot of 400k$ packages would actually be no more than 250k$ if calculated correctly
FAANGS give you RSUs, which are cash equivalent. When I am referring to 400K, I am referring to "total cash in hand" at the end of the year. Generally the comp you get quoted when you get hired is $200K base + $200K in RSUs based on hire date's stock price. So in today's frothy stock market, you would at least earn $400K and possibly more.
that's what I'm saying. I'm clarifying that the value of the RSU is when you got them at the time of the offer. Not at the time you sell it or vest it.
The value of an unvested RSU is a very tricky thing. I had to try to value my potential RSU benefits when I got divorced. It's not the same as a stock option where even if you leave, you have an asset that you can still purchase at the contract price. RSUs are little more than a promise that at point in time X, company promises to release Y stocks to you. I'm pretty sure you could argue that RSUs have zero value until released to you.
RSUs are guaranteed money at big tech companies. I have never heard of any MAFANGs rescinding their RSUs. In fact, when shopping for a house in SV, my mortgage lender also took unvested RSUs in account when deciding how much to pre-approve me for.
The stock could have gone down also.
Total comp cannot take the upside of the stock.
You could have invested in the same stock and receive the same upside also. This is part of the luck in being in the right company or pick the right stock. That's why Total comp should be the number you got with the information you got at the time of the offer
Yes it can. I don't say my total comp in a given year was my salary and the target performance bonus. I say it was my salary and my actual bonus. Stock comp is much the same.
The median T5 Google eng does not have 200k base. (It's less than that)
and lol bonus is not 200k. Bonus is 15% of base. Not sure where you are pulling your numbers from but Facebook is very similar. Most senior devs at big tech are not making 200k base (more like 150-190k). It is more like top 20% making that base. But base doesn't matter. The money is in the RSUs anyway.
I'm obviously including RSU in the "bonus" portion, in addition to cash. There are also companies who pay these kind of total bonus figures in cash, but in big tech it's typically paid in stocks.
I'm pulling these numbers from direct contact with recruiters in these companies, and in some cases job offers.
Incidentally, there's an anonymous reply from a Facebook engineer under one of my other comments in this thread. His total compensation last year was $450k.
The median employee at FB is making $240k. We can safely assume the median engineer is making more than that.
I never claimed that median engineer is making $400k. This entire thread is about the senior engineers and their payout after 4-5 of working at a company like FB vs at a startup.
If you could do good work as an engineer at a startup for 4-5 years, pulling $400k at FB is very realistic for you. With the median being $240k, it's not going to be a whole lot less.
I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup.
Bottom line: if you can stick it out as a senior engineer at a startup for the 4-5 years it takes your options to vest, then you can realistically pull $400k/yr at FB. Except at the startup, you'd make maybe $180k base, and your "bonus" would be your bottom-preference 0.01% equity that would almost certainly be worth 0.
> I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup.
I think there has been a common disbelief among many commenters on this forum about engineers making that high compensation. There really isn't any upside to trying to convince others of this reality. Its easier to mock you here than to face the facts that many are losing quite a lot in opportunity cost by not working in SV. So its natural you will face a lot of animosity here.
No one doubts that some developers are paid that much. What they doubt is that that compensation is normal. To me, the argument implicitly seems to be over the definition of what's "normal" rather than the actual existence or non-existence of highly paid developers. Of course highly paid developers exist.
That's really just a distinction without a difference. The point is that for reasonable definitions of normal, this is true. Some people don't believe that. Sure not every engineer takes home that much, but its also not only the top 5 or 10%, its significantly more than that.
What evidence do you have that significantly more than 10% of engineers earn more than $400K?
Are you talking software engineers? Software engineers in the Bay Area? Software engineers in the Bay Area working for a subset of companies?
I suspect the reason this 'debate' exists is that we are not specific enough with our language to make our meanings clear to one another. :)
To me it's difficult to tell whether the commenters here are disagreeing over the objective reality of compensation distributions or the subjective reality of what counts as 'normal'.
>Software engineers in the Bay Area working for a subset of companies?
Yes, to be clear that's what this argument was predicated on. Someone said "A significant percentage of SWEs at FANG style companies take home more than 400K per year" and other people said "I don't believe you.
No one ever said "A significant portion of all swes everywhere make more than 400K." That would indeed be a silly statement.
Specifically, this was the statement that started this thread:
>400k is not unusual for a senior engineer working at big tech for several years in the Bay, Seattle, NYC, or even a city like LA
That statement is objectively true for practically any reasonable definitions of "not unusual".
I'm trying to learn the truth. The previous commenter made claims about the distribution of comp. No doubt they had reasons for believing that claim. I want to know their reasons so I can update my own beliefs.
I have made no claims so I don't understand why you are asking me for the answer. I'm trying to learn the answer! :)
Beyond "I work at one", there's not much I'm willing to share, but suffice to say that when the majority of the people who work at these companies are saying something, perhaps they have reason to believe it is true.
There are also past threads on reddit and hacker news which include anecdata that points to such compensation being reasonably common, but again that requires believing anonymous internet people.
Yes I know the median is making $240k. The median eng is probably doing 250-360k. You do not work at a startup for 5 years straight out of college and then goto FB making 400k a year. A few do, but the median engineer does not.
200-300/yr still doesn't get you less than winning the startup lottery as an early employee. So it's better to get that than risking getting only half.
$400k salary is decidedly not average for non-principle engineer salary at Amazon, Google, or Facebook.
The thing is, part of my job lets me see some outlier salary data for AI jobs and uh, I see the extreme right end of the salaried with-benefits spectrum hit a base cash comp around $300 with bonuses to $400.
Now, if we're talking, "With stock, benefits and maximum bonus included" then yes, $400k is high end but not absurd. And if you're talking a lot of work as a contractor I'd expect more.
Just to add another data point. I'm a Google L5, and make nowhere near $400K. My RSUs would have to quadruple in order to even get close to that. I think your idea of a normal L5-6 salary here is a vast overestimate.
Because if not you're RSU grant is grossly low (since I'm an L3 who isn't fully refreshed and if my grant quadrupled, I'd be nearing 400K, and my grant isn't exceptionally high).
Make a reasonable estimate - what do you think is the total number of people earning in the range of 400K at FAANGMUA? How about in terms of percentage of engineering staff?
Do bear in mind that it takes almost 10 years of steady relevant experience to get to that level (L5+). As another commenter points out, 8 years of solid experince only made an L4.
Here's how I've seen it work, and this is specifically relevant to Bay Area compensation (although it prob works the same in other markets, just scaled down). You come into either one of:
- top tech company (i.e. FAANG)
- high growth, public, mid-sized tech company (e.g. top enterprise cloud companies)
Your base salary will be between maybe $130K - $160K. And not just for engineers, technical product/program/project managers make this as well. Your bonus will be 15-20% of your base, so another $20-30K, bringing your total comp minus RSUs to $150-200K. Your first RSU grant will prob be worth $100K per year once you start vesting. If you are a top 20% performer, you will get another grant within the next year or two.
After you've been at the company for three or so years, you will have multiple RSU grants starting to vest. Once you stack these RSU grants on top of each other, your total comp can easily reach $400K for some period of time.
A couple of caveats/risks with this comp structure
- it seems companies are much more willing to throw more RSU's at you than a significant base salary increase.
- as long as the markets are rewarding growth vs profitability, the RSU's will continue to flow
- if the market crashes, the whole comp structure may crumble.
Someone coming in straight from college can realistically expect L5 in 6-8 years. Back in the day, you used to get basically kicked out if it took longer than that.
Even coming in as an L4, you can plausibly expect L5 in 2-3 years.
> Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.
But why not?
Obviously you shouldn't only hire $400k-TC engineers. But if you're going to hire a team of 5-10, wouldn't it make sense to hire at least one more-senior engineer to help lead and mentor the more-junior ones?
When I was an early-stage startup founder, I was told by various advisers* that $150k should be the absolute upper limit on engineer salaries, and that I should try to talk engineers down to $110k or even sub-$100k by selling them on the "vision". I was told I should make up the difference in equity, but also that I shouldn't give an employee more than 1% in equity or maybe 2% for a "rockstar".
Do the math here. A company raises a typical seed round at $6M valuation cap, and is offering 2% over four years (considered VERY generous!). Even if we pretended that was preferred stock rather than common, it's worth $30k/yr. So you're trying to hire senior engineers while offering less than half their previous total compensation.
What ends up happening is you hire people straight out of college or away from other startups. But you cannot hire a senior Google engineer.
In my opinion, a tech-oriented startup should plan that exactly one of their first 5-10 engineers should be a senior engineer for whom they offer a salary of $200k-$250k and equity of 3-5%. Aim to poach an L6 from Google with this offer. (But only hire one such engineer early on. A team with too many senior engineers can be even worse than a team with none.)
Or alternatively, make sure one of your co-founders is such an engineer and is able to focus their time entirely on engineering, not other founder duties.
* Advisers all say different things, often contradictory. It's probably best not to listen to them, TBH. Yes, that advice applies to this comment as well, and even this footnote. Have fun.
Startups require crazy hours and solid dedication. If you put that into a career at a big software company, even with average talent, you will reach the level which yields that kind of money.
No you absolutely won't, unless you luck out and end up on a good team. Big companies are notoriously bad about rewarding hard working and talented engineers. That is in fact one of the main reasons people leave them (including yours truly).
Nothing. In all my years ( 13 ) software engineering, the people who made the most were the ones who could sell. And I don't mean like "sales engineer", but rather who could sell their projects to team members, bosses, etc. Making money really comes down to being able to sell
A) actual, i.e. what you've built or
B) potential, i.e. what will you build
And then to get rich you need a multiplier on those things. But just being a good engineer, in general, does not get richly rewarded. If you show me a pure engineer who makes 1 million, I can show you a founder who made 100x from his work.
I'm just pointing out that its not absolute. So in general I recommend being open to switching jobs/companies until you find and environment that you personally find enriching, both professionally and financially.
Some of my most mediocre acquaintances have jobs at FAANG/Big N. You don't have to be exceptional to land a high comp job there, you just have to be exceptionally tolerant to BS and mindnumbingly boring work and be willing to grind interview prep.
If anything, landing a job at an unicorn is much harder cause they care about things like culture fit, enthusiasm, esoteric FotM frameworks, and entrepreneurial spirit.
Trading one anecdote for another: I've met plenty of mediocre engineers at unicorns. Every company has its own flavor of BS and "mindnumbingly boring work."
My company isn't well known and the 200 or so engineers who work here have an average all-inclusive compensation north of $200k (many see above $225k).
You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Every one of my friends who is a senior software engineer, including myself, at a decent-sized company has a total compensation between $300-400k per year. One of my good friends has a total comp of $650k, with almost $300k base salary. I have friends at Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Apple, etc. We all share compensation information with each other.
My friend at a startup is ready to quit because he's only paid $170k for the last 5 years and he regrets not staying at Apple because the shares he left on the table were worth over $1M now. He is now 0/2 in startups, both of which you have heard of, and he's very frustrated.
400 is starting to push into standard deviation territory but 300 (total comp) is absolutely right in the center of the bell curve for a mid-level engineer (not a rock star), from everything I've seen and heard both first and second hand. In the valley, anyway.
That's where I am. I'm pushing $300k total comp at Twitter as a senior SWE out in Colorado.
Before this I was first employee of a startup that eventually sold to Google. Even if I'd stuck around for the acquisition I'd have gotten $0 from my stock options—employee options were wiped out completely. Why put up with that bullshit when a big publicly-traded company will reliably deposit large sums of money into my bank account every quarter and I don't have to work crazy hours?
The usual way is that all the investors, who hold preferred stock, get paid before all the employees, who hold common stock. If there's not any money left over after the preferred holders get paid, the value of employee equity is 0.
how did you get that much? Hired as senior with a lot of rsu? is it mostly rsu after the jump the last few weeks? If I got to senior I wouldn't be making that much based off what Im being told about comp increases. I must have gotten a shit deal when I joined lol
After your startup and Google experience, you were hired as an SWE1? Also, curious if the experience of the startup or subsequent integration was perhaps more valuable than the opportunity cost.
I never went to Google, I left the startup a year before that happened. That startup was pretty much my first job out of college and I was there for about two years.
In that specific case, I believe the startup was worth the opportunity cost. I was coming from San Antonio, not exactly a tech hotbed, and from a small liberal arts school nobody's heard of. I'd interviewed at a bunch of companies out the Bay and was rejected by all of them. A friend was an investor in TechStars' seed fund for their San Antonio program and he put me in touch with the founders of one of their companies. Those guys took a chance on me and hired me on a contract to solve some scaling issues while they were still in the program.
Once they graduated and raised a series A, they brought me on full-time. I worked remote for another six months after they moved the company up to Boulder, eventually following myself. They let me go after about two years but during that time I gained a ton of StackOverflow reputation for Scala and Akka, which led me to one of Twitter's open source advocates who made the intro for Twitter's Boulder office. That was back in 2015. About a year later the company sort-of sold to Google, who then fired almost everyone and re-sold the IP (or something, it was weird and I wasn't there, but my investor friend gave me some of the details).
So, in my specific case, the startup was worth the opportunity cost because my opportunity cost wasn't that high. I didn't have a six-figure SV job as a backup, but I was able to leverage the risk I took into that sort of job.
From what I’ve heard, SpaceX pays pretty poorly. Extremely long hours for below-average aerospace salary. Surprised to see you mention them, but maybe they’ve improved lately.
Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.