
Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up) - llambda
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Programmers+Salaries+at+google+250k+and+up
======
patio11
HN has a curious relationship to money some of the time.

a) Many of us watched our classmates go into management consulting, investment
banking, finance, medicine, law, etc. These are all fields where $250k is not
exactly outlandish for a 29 year old.

b) We have a lot of friendly, accessible fellow posters who write computer
code and are financially very successful.

c) We talk about $X million valuations and $YY million acquisitions and $Z
billion IPOs the way catering company owners discuss the price of tomatoes.

d) We have heard many credible people complain of how difficult it is to hire
and retain engineers. So difficult, in fact, that they'd pay $10k+ just for an
introduction or $50k+ for an actual placement.

e) We understand incentive structures and equity grants exist.

f) We routinely read industry news like "Google and Facebook in heated war for
talent", "The going rate for an acquisition-to-hire is $1 million per
engineer", "Four large technology firms were engaged in a gentlemen's
agreement to conspire against their employees until the government told them
it was cartelicious", "Productivity per engineer is going through the roof",
"Company Z supports Q00,000 paying customers per engineer", "Efforts of
individual engineers have succeeded in adding millions to billions of dollars
of value to some companies", etc etc etc, and generally seem to be at least as
savvy as C-students in Microecon 101.

and yet

g) Talk of engineers receiving wages above some magic threshold is met with
disbelief, scorn, and a wee bit of jealousy.

It isn't hugely interesting to me what any particular person at a particular
company is making, but is $250k an outlandish total compensation number? No,
it is clearly achievable. Do you have to be programming demigod to achieve it?
No, compensation moves along with several different axes and programming
ability isn't the main one. Is this anecdote a freak of nature which we'll
never see again? No, signs point that this will become increasingly more
common over time.

~~~
cletus
Spot on.

(d) in particular is worth stressing. There is no difficulty in attracting and
retaining talent. There is simply an unwillingness to pay them what they're
worth and give them an environment in which they'd want to work.

Supply and demand. It's pretty simple.

Yet so many (typically business types) want to treat engineers as an
interchangeable cost center. "5 years ago an engineer cost $100k so I refuse
to pay more than $100k now to keep my costs in check".

The fact that it's taken this long for engineers to be recognized
(financially) for the huge impact we have and the vast differences that can
exist between individual engineers speaks volumes about us. As a whole, we're
just not as good as the business guys at this compensation game and, a lot of
the time, it's not our primary motivation. Give us something interesting to do
and stay out of our way and we're happy.

~~~
veyron
The reason why business types see engineers as cost centers is because
engineers have positioned themselves that way. Engineers pushed for higher
salary in lieu of the variable upside.

What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for
more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see
programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures even if the company is
seeing hard times, but that won't improve the situation. Most of those
business types you mention see engineers in the same way that engineers see
themselves: wanting a large, stable paycheck. The business types shoot for the
large end of year bonuses, which in general only get paid if the company does
well (ignore the TBTF banks for a moment)

As an example of what I mean, most celebrity endorsements are lump sum
payments plus a very small variable upside. William Shatner, taking a longer
view, pushed Priceline to compensate him (for his celebrity appearance) in the
form of equity, and now he's laughing his way to the bank. In this case, he
was willing to take the risk.

~~~
Woost
This isn't as simple as "push for equity". There are plenty of companies where
equity makes no sense (say, a private consulting company, or a company with no
plans to sell a la 37signals)

What other options are there? Guaranteed end of year bonuses? Commissions in
the form of profit sharing?

~~~
nikcub
It is funny that options are now so associated with a company exiting that we
totally forget that their original purpose was as an efficient mechanism for
profit sharing

~~~
tptacek
I was thinking exactly the same thing, about the parallels between speculative
bets on appreciation and dividends.

------
googlethrowaway
As a point of data, I work at Google and am at a similar point in my career.
My base salary a year ago was $136k, but there was a companywide 10% raise
last winter, and now my base is $150k.

You get a cash bonus each year that's around 15% of your base, but if you're a
superstar it can be double that, or if you're a total disappointment, it can
be nothing. But if I perform as expected, that's another $22k.

Finally, I was granted 300 shares of stock that vest annually over four years.
So each year, I get 75x the value of a Google share. GOOG is trading around
$600, so that's another $45k.

So my total annual compensation this year will be $217k. If I were bragging to
an ex-employer, I'd probably round up to "a quarter million" too. :)

~~~
fake_handle
Adding to the data pool:

I'm also an under-30 engineer making ~250k in the Bay Area (at a publicly-
traded gaming company, not at Google). My company has six pay grades for pure
engineers; I'm at the second highest. My 2011 comp breaks down as follows:

* 166k base

* 45k bonus

* 35k stock grants (RSUs)

Note this does not include 401k matching, stock purchase plan, healthcare, or
any other quantifiable perks.

When I took this job a year ago, I had a similar offer from a prominent NYC
startup: ~220k (150k base, 30k bonus, 250k options over 4 years using offer-
time valuation). I was 26 at the time.

For added context, I did not attend an elite school. I did not complete my
undergraduate degree. I'm smart, but not extraordinarily so (800/710
math/verbal SAT). I interview well. I have a "disruptive" skill (cloud
expertise).

~~~
Selvik
Isn't a perfect math score very hard to get, something like the upper 1%ile?
Do you know your IQ? I'm scandinavian and could do a traditional
finance/consulting/management/accounting thing in my home country but the
software industry seems far more fascinating. I'm afraid my 120 to 125 iq
means I'm too stupid to do well in SV though.

~~~
brianm
No, you are not. The more damning trait would be believing you are not
qualified because of a test administered when you were 8 years old (or worse,
believing the results of any IQ test administered after that).

There are certainly brilliant folks around in the valley, who can grasp
concepts faster and more deeply than seems human, but they are a significant
minority.

The prime requisites for success as an employee in the valley are still:

1) Good judgement (which tends to come from accurate self-reflection and
critique)

2) Love of learning (so it takes you a couple hours or even days to grok
redis's failure modes instead of 20 minutes, who cares -- the question is are
you going to learn it (and every other useful thing that comes along, for
years))

3) Basic sociability (the valley is a small world, everyone knows each other,
if you are a jerk life will get more difficult).

For a much more eloquent description of how to thrive as a programmery type in
the valley, consider
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html> but translate
research into "generally useful skills for building stuff."

"You and Your Generally Useful Skills for Building Stuff." :-)

------
cletus
Let me add some perspective to this as both an engineer and a Google employee.

The first thing I'll say is this: people lie about their incomes. They even do
this anonymously (Glassdoor, etc). Not that I'm calling (or even suggesting)
this a lie but be very careful believing anyone's salary claims unless they
show you an original offer letter, employment contract or a W-2.

I'm not even sure if they're simply bad at math, lying to themselves or lying
to others. Whatever the case, they lie.

With respect to Glassdoor and similar sites, another problem is different
people have different ideas of what "salary" means. Does it include stock?
Actual bonuses? Expected bonuses?

Likewise it's a skewed sample. I kinda have my doubts that many
principal/distinguished engineers have the inclination to accurately report
their incomes on such sites.

That being said, my experience in the outside world is that your salary
quickly tops out as a senior engineer, architect, whatever. The only way to
increase it is to move into management.

While you can move into management at Google, you can go very far (in terms of
career and compensation) being simply an engineer if you're good at what you
do, get things done and have a lot of impact.

This compensation can take many forms (vested stock, base salary, annual and
periodic bonuses, etc).

Also, Google realizes that after you've been here awhile you become
increasingly valuable. This is true for an engineer no matter where you work.
The cost to a company of replacing someone who has worked there for years is
huge (both in recruitment costs and getting them up to speed). Google is
simply the only company I personally have worked for that seems to both
recognize this and build it into the compensation system.

This really is a great place to work. That alone attracts and retains an awful
lot of people. You can also get to work on some very large problems and
systems (another draw card). The fact that Google does (or can) pay you very
well is just icing on the cake.

~~~
rudy750
Do you or anyone else know how much/little Google outsources their development
work? I was having a discussion with a fellow engineer about the outsourcing
model and innovation.

~~~
cletus
Outsourcing? Not even a little bit. Not only that but AFAIK contract engineers
are incredibly rare and nonexistent in many product areas.

This isn't to say that Google doesn't have partnerships with external vendors.
We do. But engineering in general is a core competency, something far too
valuable and of strategic importance to outsource.

~~~
shazow
Are we counting Google Account Managers hiring third-party contractors to do
ad-hoc work for major clients?

[https://groups.google.com/d/topic/pylons-
discuss/asqBrrEEhNo...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/pylons-
discuss/asqBrrEEhNo/discussion)

~~~
skybrian
There are exceptions. But for software engineers who contribute to Google's
(non-open source) code base, Google pretty much got out of using contractors
around 2008 or so. Some contractors became employees.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10107141-93.html>

------
raldi
Speaking as a Google engineer: There are three components to compensation
here. Base salary, annual cash bonus, and stock grants. When he says he "takes
home" $250k, he probably means the sum of all three. When the author says he
thought the average Google salary was $130k, he might be referring just to the
base.

Most of the comments in this thread are similarly ambiguous. If you post a
comment, please be clear about whether you're talking about base or total
compensation!

~~~
stef25
Without wanting to sound stupid, when you talk about salaries do you always
mention the amount before or after tax? Here in Europe it's almost always
after tax.

~~~
div
I'm from Belgium, and I've never heard people talk about their salary after
tax.

edit: to answer your question, the 250k is before tax.

~~~
stef25
I'm Belgian too. So if your Brut salary is 3k and your Net 1.5K you say during
discussions that you make 3K? Everyone I know does the opposite.

EDIT: Actually I see what you mean. In the above scenario I would never tell a
friend I make 3K but during salary discussions and in writing I guess you
would quote the Brut.

------
garethsprice
This is very dubious - the Glassdoor stats at
<http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm> have 1,500 entries
for Software Engineers that max out at $190k and average $100k.

The position above, Senior Engineer, averages $130k.

There doesn't seem to be an incentive for 1,500 people to understate their
earnings by 50%+ on an anonymous poll, especially a poll of engineers at one
of those most engineering-centric companies in the world, where corrupting a
dataset would likely feel akin to high treason.

Not inclined to trust second-hand information from one individual - sounds
like they're either working at a much higher level than regular programmer,
inflating their salary by including perks/stock/etc to make it seem higher, an
extreme outlier, or just lying (people who tell their friends how much they
earn in casual conversations also sound like the kind of people who would
inflate that number).

~~~
gujk
Why do you think perks and stock are not part of compensation?

~~~
vidarh
They are, but consider that they are very volatile. When I worked at Yahoo, my
stock added an equivalent of about $50k/year to my total compensation for the
period I worked there. But I was lucky - I joined at a low and left and cashed
out all my options with Yahoo trading at one of its highest amounts of the
last 7-8 years.

At the same time I had people working for me who had 10 times as many options,
but had been in the company for ages and received the vast majority of those
options before the crash in 2000. As of this year, the couple of those people
who are still at Yahoo will have options worth maybe $30k-50k total from 10+
years of employment that are over water, and their older options will start
expiring soon.

Of course Google people receiving new Google options now are currently in a
better position, but estimating the value of options grants over time is
tricky.

~~~
endtime
I'm not sure Google gives out options...I think they generally give RSUs.

~~~
vidarh
The issue is the same in principle - just less extreme in that barring a total
meltdown you have an easier time assessing the lower end value of the package.
But to take the Yahoo example: When I joined, a share was worth about 1/10th
of the strike price of the bulk of the options of several people that worked
for me. 1/10th would've been a lot better than getting nothing, but still.

------
nikcub
A few months ago I heard a first-hand account from within Google of a
developer who was paid a $1M annual bonus, a team that divided a cash and
stock bonus between them that was worth $1m+ to each team member, a PM who was
paid $40M (and another who got ~$20M IIRC) not to go to Facebook and many
other similar stories from Google that make $250k a year sound rather normal.

The theme is that Google has upped compensation in the past 12-18 months in
order to retain top talent, with a lot of cash bonuses and base salary
increases since competing against Facebook stock options with Google stock
options isn't a fair fight any more.

Edit: apparently they also don't like developers talking to each other about
this (although team bonuses are highlighted within the company), since they
don't want developers interviewing with Facebook or another co. just for the
purpose of getting some cash out of Google.

------
veyron
I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as
a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund.

My programmer friends at hedge funds (all between 22 and 26) are averaging
500K salary with 100K bonuses (note: as a programmer, base is much higher but
bonus is lower). So if google isn't paying those types of numbers to people,
then money cannot be the only factor at play.

~~~
Selvik
What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or
similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get
those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)

~~~
stuntprogrammer
CS/STEM. Need not be Ivy League but it certainly doesn't hurt-- though I know
a team or two in the top tier that almost have a preference for non-ivy league
:-)

To be a quantdev or quant, an MFE is far more useful than an MBA.

------
SandB0x
It seems like we're missing some important information. I'd be interested to
know what he did before going to Google - i.e. he didn't go there straight
from university. So he worked for Jacques, then left and some unspecified
stuff happened in the middle, and now he's at Google. What did he do in that
period that made him so valuable?

------
wtfcisco
Maybe I can shed light on why some of us are "shocked" about this number,
while others seem to think it's no big deal.

I work for Cisco, which is certainly not considered a Google or Amazon, these
days, but still a fairly respectable place. I'm a software engineering doing
embedded work for the last three years out of my BS in CS. I got hired on at
$73k with 300 options (now underwater).

I have had consistently good reviews, though only given one promotion and one
raise - with a whopping $79.5k in salary afterwards. A bonus is typically 6%,
though this year I've got the highest rating possible, so I had a 12% bonus.
I've been given RSUs once, at a value of about $10k, though the stock price
dropped and they are sitting at around $5000 now.

So, my yearly compensation is about $90k or so, though they've jacked up our
medical costs, taken away free drinks, raise prices in our cafeteria, taken
away the home broadband reimbursment, etc etc since I've been here.

So, Anyone need an embedded engineer with a network security focus?

~~~
danssig
Polish up that resume and start the search (the easiest way IMO is via
contracting agencies, since they only make money when you do). Everyday you
spend working below your market rate is a day you leave cash just laying on
the table. You only have so many years you're going to be able to earn, I
wouldn't waste them.

------
gwillen
This smells funny to me. From everything I saw when I worked at Google,
Glassdoor had the salary range right. For all the guy's self-deprecation, if
he was really making $250k, even after bonus and stock, he must have been
promoted multiple times, or hired at a fairly high level.

~~~
nknight
Haven't there been several stories in the last ~year about outrageous-sounding
salary wars between the likes of Google and Facebook?

The average for "good" developers at Google might have shot up recently.

~~~
surt
Exactly. I've talked to a couple of internal recruiters at Google, and they
assured me that if interested, my demand for a $300K total salary package
would be no problem for a senior engineer. They didn't even hesitate or ask to
get back to me. They were clearly authorized to match that level on the spot.

------
asknemo
I too recently lost a co-founder to a Valley company of similar size.
Considering that he is very green, not exactly the best in our startup and
that we are based somewhere with rather low pay for engineers in general, the
offer he received was very hard to believe for everyone. It's hard to convince
people to stay when those work in Valley could be as interesting without the
stress and come with a big fat cheque.

------
bluesmoon
I recently interviewed with several companies, and my experience shows that
including bonuses, this isn't an unrealistic amount to expect. I had only one
offer that ended up under $200K and that's only because the company didn't
have a bonus program at the time. Many of the offers were much higher.

It was a really had choice to turn them down to start my own company, but I
figure that being my own boss had some value, and being able to create
something that was completely my own vision was more enticing. However, at the
same time it gave me some confidence that if my startup didn't go according to
plan, I did have a decent fallback.

------
shin_lao
$ 250,000 a year must include stocks, bonus, 401k and healthcare. As is, it
doesn't match the insider information I have about Google's salaries.

Let's be realistic a minute, $ 250k/year is a lot of money.

~~~
aantix
250K is a lot of money depending on where you live.

You can't take simple things for granted in the Bay Area. Want to raise a
family of four and actually have three or four bedrooms, you're looking at a
million+ dollar house.

250K is what you should be shooting for if you have goals such as these.

------
mmahemoff
Google's one of the few big companies that's smart enough to let engineers'
careers progress without forcing them over to a management track.

------
nateberkopec
Economics!

During a boom time, wages rise. Wages are "sticky", meaning they lag behind
the current state of the economy. Wages for programmers have really gone out
the roof in the last few years due to lack of US computer science graduates,
stingy visa provisions, etc.

In a few months, the funding wave will start to level off and dip, but wages
will still be as high as ever. That's the crunch. Winter is coming.

EDIT: Think about it this way: in 2009, a 1M seed got you 10 engineers for a
year. Now it gets you 6, maybe 7. Ouch.

~~~
3pt14159
Economics again though!

In 2009 servers were more expensive, and programmers handling your cloud were
both less experienced AND had inferior tools. There is a small funding glut,
but 7 vs 10 isn't a fair compensation. It's more like 7 people that work 20%
more effectively, so 8.4 vs 10.

------
dev_jim
I'm not sure why people find this so unbelievable.

The revenue per employee at GOOG is $1.2M in a very high margin business. That
means some of their best developers, the guys whose products generate all the
revenue, take home only 20% of the pie. In finance, this would be laughable.

Corporate America baffles me sometimes.

~~~
Joakal
Which areas of finance? From what I understand from some finance people is
that they don't take away as much either.

There's also an oversupply of labour in the city though.

------
anonsalaryqtion
I've been meaning to ask some of my founder friends about this.

I've casually heard that Google and Facebook have driven the starting salary
for Bay Area developers up above $150k/yr for college kids with no experience.

I'm a talented 25 year-old web developer who jumped from contracting to full
time a year ago. I received a $110k/yr (not eligible for bonus) offer. The
people I asked at the time said it was a competitive salary and not worth
negotiating.

Now I'm wondering if it's time to move on. I see boxes in on job applications
for "expected annual salary" and I don't know what to put. I know the money
you save when you're young is what allows you to retire/start a company/etc.,
and want to make sure I'm being paid competitively. At the same time, I don't
want to misread the market and come across as out-of-touch on one of these
apps.

Guys, what's the going rate for a talented front-end web developer in the Bay
Area about 4 years out of school?

~~~
patio11
_I see boxes in on job applications for "expected annual salary" and I don't
know what to put._

"Negotiable", "Market rate", etc. That box is asking you to compromise your
negotiating position. There is no legal or moral stricture that says you have
to oblige them.

 _The people I asked at the time said it was a competitive salary and not
worth negotiating._

This makes me angry. Of course it is worth negotiating. What would have
happened if you had said "That is an interesting number. How would you feel
about $115k?" Answer: in all probability, you'd be a couple thousand dollars
richer now for _three minutes of work_ , the worst possible outcome would have
been accepting the offer at $110k, and nobody at your company would care
either way because the difference is bat guano to them.

~~~
xiaoma
> _the worst possible outcome would have been accepting the offer at $110k,
> and nobody at your company would care either way because the difference is
> bat guano to them._

That's a pretty unimaginative worst possible offer. The company could pay you
115k, resent it, and use it as justification to give you various shit-work.
I've seen that happen to a friend and it actually hurt his mid term learning
and career growth.

It's also fairly common for a company to simply choose to fill the position
with someone who's less troublesome.

If you have an exceptional value to offer a company then, you have significant
room for negotiation. If your skill is a common commodity, you likely won't.

~~~
tptacek
Any company that treats you like shit because you negotiated a 5k bump over
their first comp offer is a company you are better off not working for. And,
please, read that sentence again.

The worst case scenario is that you accept their first offer and don't find
out until you've spent a year and a half of your life working there that the
company isn't worth working for. _That_ is the worst case.

~~~
xiaoma
There's a difference between giving someone extra work, likely "shit work" and
treating someone like shit. More than one employee at excellent companies has
been assigned more work due to having a higher salary than colleagues at the
same grade. This is an easy, even somewhat logical rationalization for a
manager to make.

The "worst case" you put forward is still far from convincing. In work, black
swans are generally positive. If a typical job has a value of x, most will be
between .8x and 1.2x, but a few will be 10x or even 100x. Outside the
military, where death is on the line, -100x jobs are very, very rare compared
to +100x jobs.

Wasting a year and a half in a ho-hum environment is not as big a price as
missing a once in a lifetime opportunity due to over negotiation. In the
opposite vein, the amazing opportunities often come at a reduced salary. How
much less would Warren Buffet be worth today if he'd tried to negotiate a
higher salary with Benjamin Graham instead of doing the exact opposite?

~~~
tptacek
I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot:

If your employer treats you more poorly because you negotiate a better comp
package, you shouldn't be working for them; they are a bad employer.

If negotiation costs you a "once in a lifetime" opportunity, the opportunity
is "once in a lifetime" in the "boiler room pump and dump" sense, or the "late
night infomercial" sense. A year of your life, however, is priceless.

~~~
xiaoma
> _I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a
> shot:_

Your previous comment was only four sentences, one of which was an exhortation
to read the previous sentence twice! I'm sure your implication wasn't
intentional, but I find the suggestion that you aren't speaking simply enough
for me to understand your reasoning offensive.

It's not that your explanation was too complex. I just don't agree with it.

It's _rational_ to demand more from someone who you pay more. If one employee
of a certain job-title asks more money than his/her colleagues who have
equivalent skills, then expecting that person to handle more work or less
desirable work that comes to the team is rational. It may not be optimal in
every case, but it certainly doesn't make the manager's entire company "a bad
employer".

There are many good opportunities in life that can come from not being
maximally greedy. Some are once in a life time, some are more commonplace. One
need only read biographies to find examples.

~~~
tptacek
No, it's not rational to demand more from someone who you pay more.
Negotiations are two-sided.

If, for your $5,000 pay bump†, the company decides they'd like you to be
closing 35% more bugs than every other employer in your pay band, they can
demand that in the negotiation. You can then make a decision about whether or
not the bump is worth the concession. If it isn't, you can decline the job, or
you can negotiate the concession, or you can decide to accept the previous
offer.

It is (word chosen carefully:) _alarming_ how bad engineers are at
negotiation. Beliefs like yours (aggressive negotiation entitles an employer
to maltreat employees later on down the line) are _alarmingly_ common. They're
simply not true.

The detail-shackled brains of nerds†† seem unable to get past something here:
no matter what employers say the feel about negotiations, surely they can
register the tenor of the negotiation in the back of their heads, and then
ratchet their expectations appropriately. Surely, nerd engineers think, that
must occasionally happen. Answer: yes, it does happen. _AT BAD EMPLOYERS_.
Good employers understand how salary negotiations work and allow for it. The
best employers even account for how bad engineers are at negotiations and go
out of their way to help educate candidates (Fog Creek, for instance, once
said they often "top up" the best offers some candidates receive --- that
should function as a big red flashing light to those people that they didn't
negotiate well enough).

I am not telling you that employers won't do irrational things if you
negotiate hard with them. I'm telling you that if they do, you should run run
run away fast, because that's the canary in the coalmine. Those employers are
also going to dilute the shit out of you, call you in to work on weekdays,
swap your tolerable manager out with some douchebag they hire from a BigCo to
increase productivity, lock you into a regimented COLA-based incentive comp
plan, slash your health care benefits 8 months down the road, and never _ever_
improve the hardware you're issued.

Don't believe me? Think of it this way: the best engineers are
disproportionately _likely_ to negotiate aggressively. Employers that get
vindictive about negotiation don't get to hire those people. Why are you
interested in working at an employer that shuns the best talent?

(Hiring manager, one of many at my company, speaking here.)

There. You got a prolix response from me. Happy? :)

† (about which Patrick is right: its a rounding error, and it's the kind of
rounding error that --- unlike, say, a better- but- out- of- spec laptop,
which might incur a huge companywide "new laptops for everyone" shitstorm ---
is particularly easy to concede to a new hire.)

†† (see my about:)

~~~
_delirium
I'm more familiar with how BigCorp engineering works than startups, but I
haven't heard of a place that _doesn't_ use pay in performance reviews in some
way or another, maybe unofficially, the idea being that what constitutes "good
performance" for someone making $200k has to be a higher bar than for someone
making $100k, or else why would you not just hire more of the $100k people?
They have to be doing more or better work to justify their higher cost, which
should then get factored into the review. Not necessarily closing 30% more
bugs or whatever; it could just be that they're the go-to person for the
hardest problems, or a repository of institutional knowledge (for long-term
employees), but it has to be _something_. I would guess $5k doesn't register
on that scale to get you kicked into a higher bar for reviews, though; $115k
and $120k look like roughly the same kind of compensation tier.

~~~
tptacek
Current pay is used in salary reviews everywhere. But that's obviously a
terrible, _terrible_ reason not to negotiate today. How can you possibly be
worse off in a salary raise negotiation than by having the money you deserved
_at entry_ held by the employer as a concession _at your employment review_?

The go-to person for the hardest problems (who you generally want to be) is
usually not chosen by the person who controls you comp, but in either case
it's reflective of your title, not your salary, right?

~~~
xenophanes
Thank you for your comments in this whole thread, tptacek.

~~~
tptacek
Um go me!

Some errors in my previous comments:

I meant "call you in on weekends", not "weekdays", and I meant "at your
performance review", not "at your employment review".

------
thibaut_barrere
A lot of people seem to find this incredible (from my twitter feed), but I
don't, really.

I know a couple of people running brick-and-mortar shops (think: selling
furniture etc), or lawyers, or other professions that earn just as much too.

~~~
impendia
_Someone_ \-- and indeed, looking at the real estate ads -- a lot of someones
-- have to be running up the demand for $1M++ houses throughout Silicon
Valley.

------
rachelbythebay
At Google, Sr. SWE makes about $155K if female, about $180K if male. Base
salary. Bonuses and refresher grants are also skewed accordingly.

These are 2011 numbers, personally researched.

~~~
lsc
From what I've seen, as an outsider with a lot of friends that work at and/or
have interviewed at Google, they seem to have some serious issues with
sexisim, issues that go beyond a pay gap. They are trying, but man, they are
not doing so well, and they are losing out on talent because of it.

~~~
rachelbythebay
So check this out. I finally have a data point to use to prove this. I've been
out of there about six months. One of my friends recently transitioned male-
to-female. This is a unique opportunity to find out, right?

She is now being passed up by people visiting her team's cube to ask about
things regarding the service. Their default response is to go ask the guys in
the cube instead.

"Welcome to my world", I said.

~~~
lsc
I'd expect discrimination against transexuals to be much stronger than
anything else, so I'm not sure that proves anything about how women in general
are treated.

One of the things I notice is that the satisfaction levels of men and women I
know working at google, even normalizing for skill level, is vastly different.

You don't sound particularly happy; why are you still there? my impression is
that there are other places with cultures that are better at least in that
regard.

~~~
z303
My experience at work but not at Google, has been your standard sexism really
accounts for most of discrimination, which I've put down to being seem as not
a man. Yes you get get some extra problems being trans but way less than I
expected pre transition

------
keiferski
_Another effect this will have on the start-up scene is that if you build your
company in 'The Valley' that companies like Google will be competing with you
for talent. You may have an upside from being in the SV eco-system in the
first place, however you may find yourself paying a lot more for developers
than if you were in a place where parties with pockets as deep as Google are
rare.

Headquarters in Silicon Valley, development somewhere else might be a good
strategy if you want to keep the burn rate under control._

Any thoughts on this? Can a small startup compete with the Googles and Apples
in the Valley?

~~~
mseebach
While it might be harder to get good employees cheaply, you would expect that
finding financially independent co-founders would be easier.

If you have reasonable financial discipline, 5 years of $250,000 can easily
build yourself a war chest of a few years living expenses: the perfect co-
founder.

------
baddspellar
Does anyone know if they have an active program to cut the bottom performers?
If not, I suspect they have quite a collection of overpaid mediocre
programmers.

I worked for many years at a company that paid significantly higher than
average salaries. Even with a program to cut the bottom 10% per year, we had
quite a few people who were mediocre at best.

It's easier for a busy manager to hold onto the people they have than to hire
and train new ones. Paying high salaries is an easy way to do that if you have
the cash.

~~~
gujk
A company so toxic as to have a 10% attrition commitment is going to be filled
with employees trying to abuse the company as much as the company abuses them.

~~~
_delirium
I remember (but can't seem to dig up) some research that those programs harm
the productivity/morale of the _top_ performers as well, who end up being
unreasonably worried that they might end up in the bottom 10% somehow. Either
they underestimate their own skills, or worry that a bad review process will
undervalue them, so they end up spending a lot of time/stress worrying about
reverse-engineering how the review works and optimizing for its metrics,
rather than focusing on their real job.

------
ntoshev
Tl;dr: someone's ex-employee is now working at Google, says he gets $250k
salary and he's under 30.

Why is this even on HN, let alone #1?

~~~
oemera
I think it's on HN because such salaries will hunt talented or not even good
engineers down and if this happens it could be a really hard time for
startups. Let's be real for a second without engineers ideas are worthless and
if all of those good ones are at big companies which gives a out a lot of cash
what can you do as a startup? I don't it is bad as it sounds but it could be
tough and it could kill a lot of startups in future if this attitude by big
companies grows.

In the contrast: you don't have to start your company in the Valley to be good
and maybe it can save you a lot of headaches and money to not do so.

But at the end the source of this problem is different: the Valley just needs
more engineers to get things rolling.

~~~
davidhansen
It's absolutely correct that technical ideas are worthless without effective
implementation. That said, I strongly suspect that the current crop of
startups, as a consequence of being overcapitalized by the current bubble, are
also over-staffing their engineering teams. You don't need a dozen developers
to write a me-too photo sharing app.

~~~
oemera
I would go a little deeper and so that you just need those who are really
thrilled about what they are going to create. They need to believe into what
they doing. Those are the ones who make the difference.

I'm really curious about how far this game will go.

------
brown9-2
It's really dangerous to take one anecdote as data.

------
rayiner
This is a good sign. Market salary for a 30 y/o corporate lawyer in NYC was
north of $250k this year, and for a 30 y/o banker it was probably 1.5x-2x
that. Yet Google makes more revenue per employee than any law firm or
investment bank.

Professional salaries are a function of both objective factors (supply and
demand), and subjective factors. Engineers have long had a disadvantage on the
subjective side because it is difficult to quantize their contribution to the
revenue of the company. Hopefully signs like this mean the perceptions are
changing.

Like it or not, the Valley needs to pay more to attract top people. If you're
a science/engineering major at a top school at the top of your class, how much
would you be willing to give up to go into engineering? Prior to these recent
salary spikes, you were looking at making $30k less to start versus finance,
growing to $300k-$400k less by 30. It takes a lot of love and dedication to
turn that down for what is at the end of the day just a another job.

------
iradik
This article does not give a good feel of how smart this engineer really is.
The programmer says he feels stupid at google. Well, truth is often the
smartest people are often more humble!

Being the stupidest person among your peers is probably the best things you
can do for yourself if you want to learn. Who better to learn from than a
bunch of brilliant people!

------
Aloisius
I do not compete with Google for talent. Well, certainly not talent that I
want anyway. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of fine engineers at Google,
but they aren't startup engineers.

Because I don't compete with Google for talent, I, nor anyone I know, pays
engineers anywhere near $250k/year. Personally, I believe Google pays that
much because they have to just to keep people from jumping ship.

If you're an academic, I believe Google may be the perfect place. Your meals
are provided, there is always something intellectually interesting to research
and the stress level is quite low. The fact is, nothing you do as an
individual is going to make or break a $30B/year company and that has its
pluses and minuses.

Luckily for me and other startup founders, there are a whole lot of talented
engineers out there that don't find the slow, calm, quiet life particularly
appealing.

------
tryitnow
This is a nice data point. But if you want to know the real deal, don't talk
to fellow programmers. Talk to guys in finance who support the R&D function at
tech firms. We know all and see all, everybody else except HR only sees data
points. And are you seriously going to trust anybody from HR to interpret
numbers?

My advice: Do this work because you love it. But negotiate aggressively.
Programmers don't push as hard as other types of employees, there's no real
cost to pushing on compensation, just don't be a jerk about it. Read books,
blogs, etc on compensation negotiating tactics.

Bottom line: This compensation will not last and plans are already in the
works to put an end to it. I will bet money that 2-3 years from now people
will be wailing about the drop in programmer comp.

~~~
danssig
>This compensation will not last and plans are already in the works to put an
end to it.

Like the collusion big companies were already doing and got busted for? It's
going to get harder and harder to distort the markets with instant
communication. If anything is going to come to an end it's probably going to
be the absolutely ridiculous overpay that executives have been enjoying for
the last 20 years+.

------
socratic
Ignoring passion, does it make sense economically to join a startup in the Bay
Area?

It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area to
be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus +
equity. Over 30 years, that's a more or less guaranteed $5m -- 7.5m before
taxes from a single income. (Ignoring things like promotions and older
engineers possibly needing to retrain.)

If you're not an early employee at the next Google, or a co-founder of a to-
be-talent-acquired company, is it likely at all that you will beat those
numbers at a string of startups? And if you do beat those numbers at a
startup, is it because you're basically doing the same work you would be doing
at Google anyway, likely ads or infrastructure?

~~~
lawnchair_larry
_"It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area
to be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus +
equity."_

It's very uncommon. Less than 1%, for sure. The other 99% don't make headlines
on HN.

~~~
socratic
I may have a biased sample, but six out of my seven engineer friends 25--35
have salary + bonus + equity in that range or higher. The only one not making
that is at a very early stage startup. Even my friends making iPhone apps
independently are in that range.

------
drumdance
I've heard this is part of the reason Google is expanding in non-SV offices.
They can recruit someone right out of school, move him/her to Boulder or
Portland or Austin, pay them less and not worry so much about Facebook
stealing them.

------
there
_takes home one quarter of a million dollars annually._

did you really mean "takes home" as in, $250k after taxes and social security?

------
strlen
This is completely believable, if you take into account the bonus and the
RSUS.

Suppose the actual salary is $130k and 30% (at least that's what I heard
bonus): that already brings his salary up to $169k.

Now add RSUs: over the last five years, the average price had been
~$500/share. He will only need an RSU grant of ~650 RSUs (which sounds
reasonable, especially if it was granted in 2008/2009 when the stock price was
lower) to be at $250k total compensation. It could also be the case that his
base is higher, but he is only getting 15%-20% bonus, or didn't get as many
RSUs: there are many ways in which $250k is a believable figure.

Given the near certainty of Facebook's IPOs, what other private companies are
trading at on Sharespost and SecondMarket, as well as valuations/prices of
recently/upcoming technology IPOs, his total compensation is actually somewhat
_below_ what he could earn elsewhere.

Of course nobody working at Google (or Facebook, or any other serious
technology company for that matter) is it in purely for the money: otherwise
they simply wouldn't have be at the level of proficiency needed to be hired at
such companies. Taking a route optimized for maximizing _current_ income is
not the same as taking a route optimized for learning. _That_ is the reason
engineers will always leave Google and join startups (much like Engineers left
DEC/Sun/Yahoo/etc... to join Google), provided the startups are solving
interesting technical problems. Unfortunately, right now there's a dearth of
that.

Corollary: you'll never lure a Google-caliber engineer into an actual startup
(as opposed to a "certain pay off" pre-IPO company) with talk of compensation.
When I hear companies complaining about how difficult is it to hire "because"
of Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn hiring all the engineers, they're almost
always startups that are _not_ building interesting technology.

Another relevant point: there is no pressure for a software engineer to live a
$250,000 lifestyle. An enterprise sales engineer I know once purchased a used
BMW 540i. That seemed pointless to me: you can get better acceleration and
handling in in a Japanese car, if really want a BMW you could get a new
3-series (getting better handling and acceleration than a 5-series, along with
free maintenance for 50,000 miles). If you don't care for performance, you
easily spend 1/3 as much money on a Honda Civic or Accord. However, his
explanation made a lot of sense: he frequently needs to take clients out and
an executive class car certainly makes an impression that can close a sale.
I'd imagine the same goes for lawyers, management consultants and the like. A
software engineer can easily live on $40,000 a year and save/invest the rest
(for either a startup, early retirement or purchasing what he/she truly dreams
of e.g., a Porsche 911 Turbo if they're really into performance cars).

~~~
kayoone
The car thing is funny. In germany if you turn up in an expensive car at your
client, they think you already make enough money and want to get the price
down while in the US people think you are successfull and close a deal.
Different cultures i guess :)

------
feralchimp
The numbers in this comments thread are staggering.

------
teratau
I know profitable companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon typically offer
you more options and stock grants (in addition to cash bonuses) at annual
reviews or whatever.

Do (not yet profitable) startups do the same? From what I've heard, most don't
offer bonuses in the form of options and stock grants, but this seems kind of
weird to me. I can understand not offering cash bonuses if they're not yet
profitable, but it seems like if I do a great job, I should get extra stock
(since otherwise, basically the amount of stock I ever get is purely
determined from my status when I joined, which could be much different from my
status four years later).

------
dogfu
They have to. Some really talented engineers could re-imagine google search
fairly easily. At this point, they have to pay them not to jump ship and
become competitors. Google was both "the search engine" and "the best search
engine". They are rapidly becoming a shopping site and "karma whores" have
gamed their ranking algorithms. What you are looking for is no longer in the
top 3 google results. I wouldn't be surprised if facebook or Apple took a run
an their core business.

------
creativityhurts
'at Google I feel like I'm stupid most of the time'

Is that let's-pay-them-enough-not-to-leave-for-Facebook-even-if-they-don't-do-
much strategy still on?

~~~
robrenaud
I think it's likely an application of Dunning-Kruger.

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which ... the highly skilled
underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

------
kabdib
For someone with ~ 10 years of experience who has a very good track record, I
could see a total compensation package of that order.

Joe Shlub is not going to get this. But I've worked with very good developers
(e.g., guys at Apple who were instrumental in making whizzy stuff happen in
the Mac's graphics stack) who are worth this, and more.

------
codenerdz
I wonder how many of these non-Google $200K+ salaries are for developing in
non-Java languages/frameworks

------
vaksel
nothing is stopping these guys from coding something up after work/on the
weekend. Sure it'll take twice as long to release a project, but it's a small
price to keep getting $20K a month salary

~~~
vladd
Quite the contrary, you don't know Google's non-compete work-contract
provisions and, if any, how would they held up in court, so your statement is
quite speculative.

Besides, the last thing you'd want to do is to work after-hours and find out
your employer is owning the IP of your project (that's besides pager-duty and
other after-hour things your employer might make mandatory anyway).

Regarding taking twice as long, just imagine projects like Dropbox or Twitter
taking twice as long to get to the market - I doubt they would be competitive
in the same manner.

~~~
daimyoyo
I will preface this by saying I have never worked at google and have not seen
their employment contract so perhaps they've found a way around it but from
what I understand, California has well established laws in place protecting
moonlighting. As long as you aren't coding up a search engine or something
that directly competes with the company, you should be ok.

~~~
_delirium
_a search engine or something that directly competes with the company_

That's a _lot_ of things for Google these days, though. Not just search
engines, but also: local search, video streaming, webmail, contextual
advertising, maps, route planning, social networking, flight search, RSS
aggregation, collaborative document editing, machine translation, VOIP, web
browsers, mobile operating systems, app stores, programming
languages/compilers/VMs, web frameworks, cloud-computing services, etc., etc.

~~~
whatusername
Newspapers did a lot of things too. But it was Classified Ads that let them do
it. Once they lost that revenue stream -- every other part of the business
suffers.

------
matheusalmeida
I don't know if one can easily find a similar compensation given from an
European company... So, distinguished persons like Brian Kernighan or Rob Pike
should earn at least 1M$ ?

------
darylteo
Beginner level engineer - barely pushing 80k.

I'm working at the wrong place =(

------
barce
tl;dr There was a hasty generalization based on one dibious number made about
Google salaries being higher than Glassdoor's poll-based estimate.

~~~
Maven911
well based on several people on this thread revealing their total compensation
packages, the 250k number does not seem false.

..And I am incredibly jealous...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a
fraction of that? Even though my cost of living is less...I live in a major
metropolitain canadian city, I know of several people from Uni who moved to
the states in jobs like that.

~~~
hn_reader
>> ...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a fraction of that?

Asking myself the same question today..

------
CedriK
Hard to believe.

------
maeon3
The 250k/year is to keep these best of breed programmers from leaving. No
doubt their email inboxes are completely spammed with job offers. It's
capitalism, supply and demand. If Google could get away with paying them
minimum wage, they would. What prevents them from doing that is that their
company will crash and burn in 6 months if they did.

------
no4clipper
Could any engineer(with 1~3 years of experience) at Google NYC office share
some income information? How's the pay at NYC Google generally compared with
Mountain View?

~~~
wan23
I was a Software Engineer 2 at Google NYC, which is the level most new grads
and people up to 3 years or so of experience start with, and my base was 106K,
with the usual 15% expected bonus plus stock and options (though it seems like
they've moved to giving out more stock rather than options). Can't say how
that is compared to other offices, but I have reason to believe that I was
very close to the mean salary for my level.

------
iradik
I don't understand the article, the author says the current googler was one of
his "ex-employees" but he is "the guy he just met". Am I missing something
here?

~~~
jacquesm
"the guy I just met" can be someone you never knew before or someone that
you've just had a meeting with.

I thought from the context that it was clear I meant the second version.

~~~
iradik
This is just my opinion/rant.

I just met this guy. Idk just doesn't conjure up the idea of someone you once
knew. It's just loose language, that's why I was confused.

Also you said you recently met him, then you say you just met him. Which is
it?

"The guy I just met who was once my ex-employee." This sentence just feels
confusing. I can't tell you why but it does.

A simple "He" would be much clearer.

~~~
jacquesm
The verb conjugation is 'meet, met, met'. I can't help it, that's just the way
it is.

<http://www.verb2verbe.com/conjugation/english-verb/meet.aspx>

