
Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours - stepny
https://blog.step.com/2016/04/08/an-open-source-project-for-tech-salaries/
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FmrAMZN_TA
<Former Amazon> I won't go on about the work quality at Amazon, there are
plenty of other places to read about that.

It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for
excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year.

Therefore, these comparisons should really take that into account. Amazon MAY
look higher than Microsoft (for example) but because you only see 20% of your
total vest the first two years, and everyone in the company makes a max of
$160k with anything else bringing you up to market rate being a yearly
"bonus", you likely won't see the majority of your earnings. </Former Amazon>

~~~
beamatronic
Just to clarify - do you mean the expected year-over-year retention is 50%
meaning that if 100 people are hired in a year, then 365 days later, only
about 50 of them will still be there? How much of that is because they are
leaving or being let go?

~~~
FmrAMZN_TA
When I was there, managers were guided to PIP (performance improvement plan)
to make these numbers. Whether that meant grinding people into the ground,
natural attrition, or making up excuses to out people - I saw all of them
happen.

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cpprototypes
It's unfortunate that this practice of giving almost the entire base salary
amount as additional stock (RSU) has not spread outside the bay area. In other
regions (such as LA, NY, Seattle, etc.) engineers only get base salary and
sometimes a very small bonus. These base salaries are often competitive with
the bay area, but the lack of the enormous RSU makes the total comp often 2x
or more worse.

EDIT:

After writing this, I was curious how the BLS calculates wages. Here is the
answer from their FAQ:
[http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview](http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview)

    
    
      The following are excluded from the collection of OES wage data:
        Attendance bonuses
        Back pay
        Clothing allowances
        Discount
        Draw
        Holiday bonus
        Holiday premium pay
        Jury duty pay
        Meal and lodging payments
        Merchandise discounts
        Non-production bonuses
        On-call pay
        Overtime pay
        Perquisites
        Profit-sharing payments
        Relocation allowances
        Severance pay
        Shift differentials
        Stock bonuses
        Tool/equipment allowances
        Tuition repayment
        Uniform allowance
        Weekend premium pay
        Year-end bonuses 
    

This means that BLS data is basically garbage for software engineers. And it's
somewhat harmful, because companies probably use this trusted government data
to check market rates. Even if a company has good intentions and wants to pay
market rate, if they use this data they won't realize just how little that is
compared to the true market rate.

~~~
pyrrhotech
It's strategic because they know that most candidates barely know what an RSU
is and salary is the main factor they will take into consideration. So
companies can get by with paying the workers half what they'd make at Google
and still make it seem competitive because the salary may be the same.

~~~
cpprototypes
I think another factor is the salary sites such as salary.com, payscale,
glassdoor, etc. These sites often don't include RSU in comparisons among
companies. If it was included, many could see just how underpaid they are and
there would be more pressure on companies.

~~~
ryandrake
My guess would be at the vast majority of tech companies that are not called
Google or Facebook, RSU compensation is a tiny add-on to your base comp and
wouldn't move the needle much.

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eulji
I would be more interested in data that shows how much money an engineer takes
back home (net income) compared to the rest of the world.

eg Software Engineer from Atlantis earns 100 000 USD but pays 55% of tax so
takes home only 45000 Software Engineer from Middle-Earth earns 60 000 USD but
pays 10% tax and takes home 54000

etc

~~~
stepny
We're not quite there yet with the data we have :). Anecdotally though, it
seems like companies in Europe pay less and take out more taxes.

~~~
trelltron
Maybe, but on the flip side, I finished Uni with about £20k debt, in the most
benign from that debt can take, and working in software I immediately earned
more than that per year. I also never had to care about medical bills (still
don't) because of the NHS.

Just want to point out that there is a good reason for the higher taxes.

~~~
binarymax
Not to mention the higher level of vacation time. Starting allocation in the
UK is about 25 days plus 11 bank holidays. In the USA its typically 10 days
plus 9 public holidays.

~~~
timoth
The legal minimum in the UK which just about everyone is entitled to is 28
days paid holiday assuming a full time job [1]. That can include bank holidays
which are 8 per year for the vast majority of the population (1 or 2 more for
Scotland and Northen Ireland I think).

For example, my first job was 25 days + 8 days of bank holidays and then you
could earn up to 5 extra days if you stayed with the company long enough.
Other jobs were all 22 + 8.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-
rights/entitlement](https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/entitlement)

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dsmithatx
Amazon keeps asking me to interview and everyone tells me it's a terrible
place to work. After seeing this compensation via equity I'm thinking it might
be worth it. Anyone work at Amazon and loves it or think it's really worth it?

~~~
yannickt
One of the tables has this important piece of information at the bottom:

"Amazon's vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, and 40% over the 4 years"

This is a significant deviation from the industry standard, which is to have a
one year cliff, and have stock vest month-to-month afterwards. What happens if
you leave in the middle of year 3?

~~~
loeg
"Backloaded." Amazon's average retention is 2-3 years so they mostly don't
have to pay that out. It's pretty horrific for individual employee
compensation.

If you leave in year 3, you lose 80% of your signing grants.

~~~
tamana
Amazon has front loaded cash signing bonuses.

What you call "signing bonus" I call "guaranteed raise if you stay"

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lazyant
Needs a bit of definition for levels, I take Level 1 is straight out of
college, L2 is some (3-5 years) experience, kind of default, L3 "senior"
(internal promotion, really good experienced candidates) and L4 super-senior?

~~~
stepny
Thanks for the feedback :). L1 is right out of college, but the others are
based on different criteria. Quora has a pretty good post that describes the
levels at Amazon, which you can translate into our levels that we created to
compare across the companies. [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-different-
levels-of-softw...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-different-levels-of-
software-engineers-at-Amazon-com)

------
overcast
Is it a case of only people making the most money are more apt to report their
earnings?

~~~
stepny
We actually suspect that people who are paid less or are underpaid are more
likely to report their salaries. For example, it seems like Glassdoor data
skews low.

~~~
ones_and_zeros
I can sort of understand that as a signal not to interview at the company or
information for future potential coworkers to use during negotiations. A
rising tide raises all ships so to speak.

IMO sharing salary data is the perfect first step for some sort of software
engineers association/guild/professional body.

~~~
ben_jones
This may be an unpopular opinion but if internet forums and message boards are
any indication I don't want some omnipotent group of software developers
making decisions for the industry as a whole. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely and all that...

And perhaps more relevant to the thread, I know two types of people who talk
about their salary, people who make a lot and people who make a little. Their
is just so much bias present to me to give any credibility to these lists.
Take the google spreadsheet where the employee was fired, do you think the
engineers who thought they did better then their peers in negotiations listed
their wages?

~~~
ones_and_zeros
I'm not sure I follow but you may be misunderstanding me. I'm definitely not
advocating for an omnipotent group of software developers making decisions for
the industry as a whole. I can only assume you've seen that advocated for
somewhere else and are equivocating it with my post?

At it's simplest level I think something like the SAG or profession sports
players associations. Kept out of the way, stars can rise, and there if you
need them. It'd be useful to be able to have an organization that I can say
"Hey, I'm interviewing at Github, based on your verified compensation data
that you keep, what can I expect?"

The fact is, our employers share and buy each others compensation data
similarly for use in negotiations and when setting compensation. It only makes
sense that the parties on the other side of the table do the same thing.

------
shivsta
Holy crap, I didn't realize that starting salary at Google was $175K. That
seems a bit high for new college hires, but I suppose I'm comparing that to my
salary as a freshie sdet.

~~~
swalsh
Google is an "elite" company, almost every engineer there would be one of the
best hires any other company could ever make. Generous compensation is one
aspect to accomplish that hiring goal (amongst other things)

~~~
atom-morgan
> almost every engineer there would be one of the best hires any other company
> could ever make.

I'm going to say that's a huge stretch.

~~~
JanezStupar
At the scale they are at now I would expect they are pretty average.

With insane variances between the teams offcourse.

------
kevindeasis
Where do I put mine if I'm a recent grad who makes $0 and buried in crippling
debt?

------
javajosh
Would like to see a discussion of possible systematic bias. The "hacker" group
generally prides itself on a) creatively messing systems up, and b)
anticipating (and preventing) creative system mess-ups, I have to wonder how
accurate this data is. Sure, there's little incentive to lie - but there is a
small incentive, which is simply to mess with people. (And there might even be
another, which is to exaggerate income to encourage others to ask for more
money, which might eventually positively affect you.) I wonder if there is any
way to measure this effect, or eliminate it.

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ones_and_zeros
Wasn't there already a spreadsheet floating around HN with many thousands of
entries? Why a new one?

~~~
stepny
There are a bunch of spreadsheets. We consolidated and standardized the data
on a few of them, but we still have more to do. We clean the data, and then we
try to see what type of synthesized info we can provide back.

------
pakled_engineer
Would be interesting to see hours worked too, are those $200k+ bonus salaries
84hr work weeks with 3 weeks vacation you can never take or normal hours.

------
mtgx
So Microsoft offers half the salaries for levels 3 and 4? That's interesting.

~~~
loeg
Possibly a Bay area vs Seattle compensation thing.

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jpatel3
Here is the interactive version, explore and filter data to get more insight -
[https://tuvalabs.com/jpatel3/datasets/0df9f660770247d4a96313...](https://tuvalabs.com/jpatel3/datasets/0df9f660770247d4a96313c372b23758/)

~~~
stepny
This is really cool!

~~~
jpatel3
Thanks. I'll cleanup some data later and see if I can generate some nice
visualization which can lead to some conclusions :)

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ninjakeyboard
Ignores geography a bit I think. In Canada a good salary is 80-100k a year imo
(CANADIAN!).

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vonmoltke
I would like to see one of these analysis break down base salary versus total
compensation. I have never received less than 95% of my total compensation in
base salary. Neither has my non-technical wife. I have no idea what is
"normal" in that respect.

I'd also like to see a breakdown by market, as I have been led to believe that
my salary is only slightly below market for Dallas, but the median
compensation numbers posted in this article for my experience level are three
times what I make now, and it's depressing.

~~~
loeg
Base salary vs total comp data from the research can be eyeballed from the
first graphic in the article.

For anecdote, approximately 66% of my total compensation is in base salary.
When I first started working 5 years ago, it was 92%.

These numbers are probably skewed somewhat by Bayarea salaries, which have to
compensate a little for the high cost of living (compare for example
Facebook/Google to Microsoft/Amazon, which are primarily Seattle-area
employers). In general, I've found the Bayarea salary bump doesn't overcome
the Bayarea cost-of-living bump. So these salaries are only higher on paper.

~~~
vonmoltke
Well, for the past four years my total compensation has been 100% base salary,
and I'm the equivalent of a low-end SDEIII so my total would double in salary
alone. That leads me to believe I am underpaid even by Dallas standards, but I
really have no idea how to gauge my market value.

~~~
tamana
Interview for a job, learn market value.

------
rajathagasthya
Holy cow! Facebook's median signing bonus for Level 1 (new grad) engineers is
$75K! Why is that higher than for experienced engineers? How can the other
companies compete with that?

~~~
beamatronic
Is that stock or cash?

~~~
rajathagasthya
That isn't specified. But isn't signing bonus usually cash? There's separate
section for stock bonus in that table.

------
mahyarm
This needs apple to round out the comparisons. I've found their offers tend to
be lower than the others in general unless you have specialized skills.

------
shekhar101
Signing Bonus offered by FB for level 1 is $75,000, disproportionately high
compared to other companies, in all the levels. Why is that?

~~~
stepny
Good question. We checked the raw data again, and the signing bonuses are all
consistently high for Facebook Level 1. We also know a couple of people at
Facebook who have received signing bonuses in line with the $75K. But we don't
yet know why it's so high compared with the other companies.

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namelezz
Why does MS pay their engineers less than other tech companies when most of
their services are not free? It's like getting paid at tight budget startups.
Despite of the reported salary here, I admire the engineers there. Is it
because MS has great work culture and excellent benefits?

~~~
tamana
Look at profit (excluding cost of investing in new business) per engineer.

------
cdnsteve
What about retirement/pension plans? This also has cash value and should be
part of the comparison.

~~~
drewg123
I'd be surprised if any of the big companies didn't provide at least 401K and
as much matching as the law will allow. There really isn't a lot of freedom to
innovate in this space that I'm aware of.

With that said, Google did have this odd thing where you could do an in-plan
Roth conversion, and put post-tax dollars into your 401K. I did this in 2013
or 2014, and I think Google was one of the few companies to offer this at the
time.

One interesting area of differentiation is health care. When I left Google in
2015, they were cutting health benefits to avoid Cadillac plan taxes. Lots of
people were saying that Facebook had better plans.

~~~
tamana
All except Amazon, you mean!

Frugal FTW

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Jaruzel
I would love to see something similar for Finance IT (i.e. the Global Banks
and Insurance Firms). It would also be nice if there was a country breakdown
as well, but from reading the comments I see that data is not available in
your current analysis.

------
electriclove
Kudos, great job! Keep it up!

~~~
stepny
Thank you!

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Boss_TiVo
how frequently will you update this report?

~~~
stepny
Aiming for once a week, but depends on how much more data we're able to get.

------
xbryanx
It would be very interesting to include technology workers in non-profit
organizations alongside for-profit corps and startups.

~~~
stepny
Definitely. We have a few data points on tech roles at non-profits, but not
enough to draw any meaningful conclusions yet. Hopefully, we can get some more
data around this to be able to post the same type of analysis. We'll also be
doing it for smaller companies too, to see how compensation compares across
company size.

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arrty88
Where is apple employee data?

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manibatra
Would be interesting to see it correlated with average working hours per week.

------
razorunreal
It looks like the last graph has Google and Facebook mixed up.

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dev1n
Why only the big four?

~~~
stepny
These are just the companies that had the most data points, probably because
the original posts that the data came from were about Amazon and Google
salaries :). We plan to update our analysis with more companies and roles as
we get enough data.

~~~
dev1n
Gotcha

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markc
I see 2 base salaries of $420420. Ha ha.

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brainary
US only?

~~~
cookiecaper
I'm pretty sure the data is coming from the self-reported salary spreadsheet
that was posted on here about a month ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223)).
There's a lot of valuable information in it and there were no geographical
restrictions on participation. However, it's all self-reported and unverified,
and there are some values that are obvious fakes.

~~~
stepny
It's possible that some of the data came from that spreadsheet. The sources of
the data are cited at the bottom of the post. You're right that it is all
self-reported and unverified. We tried to clean and standardize the data as
best we could. The biggest source of error for us in the process might have
been the level, particularly because some of the reported bonuses and stock
compensation seemed out of line with the stated level. But we took the Level
as it was in almost all cases. It may very well be that companies overpay in
certain circumstances.

------
chatmasta
Google engineers would certainly like to think that.

In reality, Google's hiring process selects for people who can follow
instructions and are happy trading self-sufficiency and independence for the
social validation that comes with working for such an "elite" company. Google
engineers are some of the most sheep-like creatures on the planet.

~~~
kp1234321
This is a sweeping generalization without even anecdotal evidence to
substantiate it, and sounds downright vindictive.

------
pareci
A given company should pay everyone the same. But, ego.

~~~
wyldfire
That seems like an interesting viewpoint.

I don't think ego is really the only thing that drives pay distinction. I
think that many people consider that different individuals contribute
differently and that those who contribute more value should get more pay.
Isn't that realization independent of ego?

------
xulith
So much money. Do people really need to be paid that much?!

~~~
qihqi
half of those go to tax.

~~~
mercutio2
This is a common fallacy.

Even for a married couple earning 500k in high-income-tax California,
effective tax rate (as opposed to marginal tax rate) is only 30-35%, and that
includes the employee portion of Medicare/social security (the latter of which
cuts out around 110k).

The exact effective tax rate will vary mostly with your mortgage interest
deduction.

~~~
pyrrhotech
quick calculation comes to about a 45% tax rate for single in CA and 42.4% for
married. So 50% is a small exaggeration, but it's definitely closer to reality
than 30-35% underestimate.

~~~
dsp1234
Note that these numbers are likely the marginal tax rate, the tax rate that
the very last dollar was taxed at. However, all of the income is not taxed at
that rate. That is why the commenter above mentioned effective tax rate, which
is the calculation of (total tax paid / total income).

~~~
tamana
Why would you guess when someone told you they calculated? For marroed filing
jointly earning $450k, the marginal rate is 35% federal plus 2.35% Medicare
tax plus 9.3% CA tax.

5% higher for $500k

