
Google Salary Ranges and Levels – Levels.fyi - Zaheer
https://www.levels.fyi/salary/Google/
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cletus
Speaking as someone who worked for Google for >6 years, these numbers are 100%
accurate. People saying they're not just don't realize how much they're
getting underpaid working for a small startup. Big Tech pays very, very well.

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robbrit
Likewise, looks in line with my experience at Google as well.

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tmh79
As someone who works at one of the companies on the list, yes, these numbers
are real. Big companies pay very well, consider working for one.

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chrisseaton
The trick, of course, is that very few people have the ability to pass a
Google interview. So it isn't just a lot of money available to anyone who
wants it. It's a lot of money available to the few who are talented enough.

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rinchik
[https://www.levels.fyi/2018/](https://www.levels.fyi/2018/)

$236,000 entry level engineer at Lyft. these numbers don't feel real. even for
SF.. how's it possible?

Is it a common practice to overpay THAT MUCH or those few young (maybe not so
young) individuals are just negotiation geniuses and skewing the real picture?

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meritt
It comes from a sample size of 3:
[https://www.levels.fyi/salary/Lyft/SE/T3/](https://www.levels.fyi/salary/Lyft/SE/T3/)

There's zero validation to this data. If you feel it's too high, just submit a
lower data point:
[https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html)

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0xDEFC0DE
>If you feel it's too high, just submit a lower data point

That's not how this is supposed to work

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lucasmullens
I signed my Google offer when GOOG was at $500 about 4 years ago, and it's
over $1,100 now. About a third of my offer was in stock, so some of these high
numbers are just the result of the stock price rising. I wouldn't expect new
hires at those levels to make those amounts, although they seem accurate to me
for current employees.

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candiodari
I think you will find that you're wrong. Your $500 GOOG was pre-split and has
appreciated to GOOG + GOOGL, or about $2500, more than double what you put
here.

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lucasmullens
Nope, the split was 5 years ago.

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refurb
Those compensation levels are highly dependent on equity appreciation. The
base salaries are pretty standard.

Once the stock stops going up, compensation is going to drop by ~50% for a lot
of folks.

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deanmoriarty
They are not dependent on stock appreciation (unlike most startup offers, who
during the negotiation stage try to sell you their stock options at an implied
valuation 10-100X from the current one), the RSUs are granted at the price of
your joining date.

If/when the stock later crashes, typically the company is going to issue
generous refreshers to good performers to bring them in line with their
original grant amount (source: several friends who worked at FB during the
stock crash of last year), whereas when the stock skyrockets your compensation
skyrockets as well because your RSU grant price is locked in at your
offer/refresher date, like a reverse mortgage (source: myself).

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throwaway5752
That only works if it's not market wide. Good luck getting option/rsu
refreshes in a general tech recession.

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deanmoriarty
In a general tech recession sure, but I can almost certainly guarantee that my
total compensation at Google will still be much higher than the compensation
at any startup or other second tier company.

People have been saying "this won't last, good luck keeping this going!" for a
decade now, and rather than reciting the same motto like a broken record in an
attempt to justify my lower compensation, I decided a few years ago to join
the bandwagon and milk the good times as long as they last. I'm saving like
crazy while doing so, and there's no apparent sign of stopping.

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throwaway5752
Take me at face value: I was just saying that RSU/option refreshes will be
less frequent given a general recession, particularly a tech-heavy one (where
so much capital has been deployed recently and there is probably a bit of
overbuild).

I think there are a lot of advantages to a big company employer, and comp can
definitely be one of them.

I would watch out for signs. Yield curve inversion and Duke CFO Global
Business Outlook are bearish. The fact that those are happening with high
levels of stimulative policy should get more attention. The run on ipos can
definitely be read as a change in posture that this is a local high point for
equity markets. Anecdata, but there are more stories like
[https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465880-pioneer-natural-
resour...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465880-pioneer-natural-resources-
cuts-workforce-25-percent) and [https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465885-toll-
brothers-minus-3_...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465885-toll-brothers-
minus-3_0-percent-guidance-reflects-slower-demand) which I would interpret as
leading indicators of a slowdown.

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fizwhiz
These numbers are lower than I expected; if you have even a single competing
offer from another respected tech company, the numbers are much much higher.

Also, once you stack the annual refreshers and a little bit of stock growth
over a year or two, you could be making close what your L+1 peers are making
as per the chart. This chart is a reasonable indicator of maybe the numbers on
your offer letter but usually this increases substantially over time.

Source: I'm a Google employee.

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xfitm3
Absolutely correct. Keep in mind if recruiters reach out to you while you’re
employed you have a stronger negotiating position.

I think it’s a lot easier to get stock vs cash increase.

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gvand
Dear friends at Google, since I guess many of you will read this, I have a
question for you. Is there any internal discussions going on about what you
should do with all the money you are earning once your basic needs are covered
and you find yourself with money that could be invested in interesting
projects?

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devtanna
That's a crazy amount of money even relative to the salaries in the income tax
free haven of Dubai. The highest pay for a software engineer is around 150k
USD annually.

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BrandoElFollito
I would love to see the numbers for Paris, France. Salaries are a complete
mess here and secrecy around the subject does not help

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ravedave5
Without a location these numbers are useless. I assume they are all
Seattle/SF. Comparing to what someone would make in a chicago suburb is not
apples to apples.

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gipp
They all have locations... Not sure why the summaries don't filter, but just
type a location in the search bar and you can see the individual postings.

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sys_64738
But you work for an advertising company.

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deedubaya
Take sites like these with a grain of salt. Given the total lack of validation
that any of this data is from real employees, there's not telling how
(in)accurate this site (and others like it) are.

This particular site seems to be a marketing piece for TripleByte. Perhaps the
makers can comment on the accuracy of the data?

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deanmoriarty
I understand I'm just another random data point on the Internet you might
decide not to trust, but I've received offers that exactly fall in the
compensation bands of the website, specifically: Google L4 (~280k total comp),
FB E5 (~390k total comp) and Netflix (~400k total comp). The years of
experience for those roles (between 6 and 8) match as well. And I'm no genius
at all, quite the opposite.

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fizwhiz
How come you decided to take the Google offer? :)

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deanmoriarty
It came down to choosing the best team for my skills, and since then I've
received generous stock refreshers, a promotion to L5 and the stock also
appreciated a lot, so compensation is not an issue.

