
Ask HN: How much do you make at Google? - googsomeday
I don&#x27;t work for Google, but I would like to.<p>How much do senior software engineers make? What level are you? Do you work at Mountain View HQ, or elsewhere?<p>I don&#x27;t have much to share, but I make $130K base at a Silicon Valley startup. Options aren&#x27;t worth anything (yet), but from what I&#x27;ve read on HN, they probably won&#x27;t be worth anything anyways. (-:<p>Thank you in advance for sharing!<p>This post was inspired by an earlier post by an Amazon Employee: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11312984
======
throwawaycomp
I was hired straight out of school in June 2013 in mountain view as a level 3
SET at 105K salary, 15% bonus target, and $100k of stock, vesting over 4
years.

The next year, I was promoted to level 4, and got a raise to $134k salary. I
also got a $35000 year end bonus, and 5k of other bonuses.

This year, as a level 5 SWE, my gross income (unless Google's stock price
changes significantly) will be $323k - 176k salary, my 42k year end bonus from
2015, and $105k of stock, most of which is vesting monthly.

SF and mountain view have the same compensation, I think.

~~~
nojvek
Wow! This is almost more than twice what MSFT pays. Mind to share how much you
are paying for rent?

~~~
throwawaycomp
I share a 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend and dog, in a very new
building that's a 20 minute walk to the office. Rent and utilities sums to
$3900 for the two of us.

In a nice neighborhood in sf, you're not going going to pay less than 1600 for
a room in a shared apartment, or for half of a one bedroom place.

~~~
aerovistae
That is so insane. $3900 for a 1 bed. (I know it's normal in SF; I'm saying SF
is insane.)

~~~
cookiecaper
In most markets, you can get a pretty good 1 bedroom apartment for between
$900 and $1000 per month. Thus, the cost of rent in SF is around 4x the cost
of rent in a normal market. You'll pay an extra $36k per year to rent in SF v.
a median rental market. CA also has a much higher state tax rate than most
places.

Worth keeping this in mind when you're comparing SF salaries with real-world
salaries. If Google hires someone right out of school to work in SF at
$100-110k, it's really like getting hired right out of school to work in a
normal market at $60-70k, which isn't nearly as rare (but still pretty good
for a brand new guy; in positions where I used to do hiring, we'd usually hire
these somewhere between 45-55k).

I think the best way for a programmer to maximize salary is to work remotely
for an SF company, getting paid an SF salary, and living in an area with a
reasonable COL and (preferably) low-to-zero state income tax.

------
goog_salary
SWE, L6, 11 years experience, hired at L4 225 base, 90k bonus, 260k stock
(grant size has been going up each year).

Google gives fair increases on promo and even if initial salary was in the low
end. Pretty common to get a high bump after a year if one negotiated badly.

~~~
marssaxman
What, pray tell, were you able to negotiate over? I tried, but it appeared to
be company policy not to offer anything I was interested in. I don't know what
"L4" means but the numbers you're quoting are considerably higher than the
ones I remember from five years ago.

I really hate this whole "total compensation" idea that has taken over the
computer industry. Just pay me, or shut up, don't wave magic money in my face
along with the real stuff and pretend it's all the same.

~~~
jholman
In the case of Google stock, it's real money, not magic money. Google bonus is
real money, not magic money.

Startup stock is imaginary money.

~~~
marssaxman
Startup stock is truly imaginary, yes, but even Google stock has the magical
property that some amount of it stops existing when you leave, which everyone
does eventually.

...unless they've stopped issuing stock with a vesting schedule attached since
I was there, of course, but that seems improbable given the financial
advantage it creates for them.

~~~
jholman
Okay, the stock in the 4-year stock grant is imaginary in the same sense that
your future salary is imaginary. I mean, fine, call it imaginary if you want,
but that's true of all pay.

The Google vesting schedule, AFAIK, is 1-year cliff and then quarterly vesting
thereafter. Which means that, past the first year, at most 90 days of stock is
money that might vanish if you leave. I agree it'd be a lot nicer if it vested
daily, but it's completely silly to characterize this as imaginary. It would
also be completely silly, supposing that you'd worked at Google for 17.9
months and gotten 15 months of stock vestiture, to describe the stock you get
3 days later as a "windfall".

The point of all this is that it is completely reasonable, when discussing how
much Google paid a person, to sum up their base pay, plus their bonus, plus
the value of the amount of stock that they vest in a year.

If you're choosing between an offer at Google, say with $110k plus 15% bonus
target plus 4 years of stock currently valued at $180k (i.e. roughly $45k per
annum, probably more by the time it vests), vs working at a startup offering a
base pay of $150k (plus say 10% bonus target dependent on revene, and some
joke amount of stock valued at some joke number), I think it's pretty obvious
that purely from an expected-value-financial-benefit standpoint, you should go
with El Goog. Because "total comp" is a real thing. (Not that any sane person
thinks that's the most important aspect of such a choice.)

~~~
marssaxman
Look: I ran those numbers, I made that choice, and going to work for Google
was one of the few career decisions I can clearly call a "mistake". The stock
was almost entirely imaginary _for me_ because I didn't stay long enough, and
I didn't stay because I had no other way to get out of the pointless,
demoralizing situation I was stuck in. So, who cares what it could potentially
have been worth if the world had been different? The world is what it is, and
the money was, in fact, nonexistent.

This has been true of "total compensation" across my whole career: base salary
is real, but stock has never amounted to anything significant. The companies
whose stock is measurably worth something have turned out to be terrible
places to work, and none of the startups have panned out. (Real Networks
managed to be both, during the dot com bubble; the expected future value of my
options peaked somewhere north of $1.5 million, before the crash, but I
ultimately cleared $0. And was so glad when I walked away from that miserable
experience.) So, I consider the value of stock in a "total compensation"
package to be $0, and make my decisions now on base salary alone.

If it so happens in the future that stock "money" becomes real money, well,
that'll be great, but I'm going to think of that like winning the lottery. It
has no incentive effect.

~~~
kirovsergei
You didn't even stay 1 year? Honestly, if your normal experience is to leave
your company in less than a year, I think you have some expectation issues to
address. While I know google isn't the amazing dream land the news makes it
out to be (I've worked there in the past), it's really not that bad. If you've
quit that quickly -- and this has happened multiple times -- you should really
try to re evaluate what it is you're looking for from your career and see why
these jobs aren't working out for you.

To get back to the original point, treating the stock 4 year sum on the same
scale as the salary doesn't make sense (though recruiters will pitch it like
that). A more honest accounting is to look at the annual number, which is
directly comparable to the annual salary and will give you the true picture of
how much you make per year. 180k of stock really means 45k per year of stock
compensation. For a company like google that's more or less equivalent to cash
compensation.

~~~
marssaxman
I got close, but no, I didn't stay quite a full year, and of course that's not
normal! I don't think my bad experience at Google was entirely normal, either
- certainly not compared to the experiences of friends who worked there
before, whose glowing reports were what convinced me to give the place a
serious look, or to those of friends who are happily working there still.

And yet - my Google experience was pretty much the same as the experiences
I've had at other large companies. The pattern is that I go in thinking that a
big company means big reach, big resources, and consequently big
opportunities, so it'll be a chance to dig in, learn from the obviously smart
and competent people who built whatever it is that made these companies
successful, do some serious work, and level up my skill set - only to find
myself stuck on some backwater project nobody cares about with managers
playing musical chairs and no way to get out until I've slogged my way through
some term of drudgery proving that I'm worthy of better things. Well, fuck
that: life is short and I'm not here to waste it. Besides, I've never managed
to work productively for very long at all without some internal motivation,
and trying to slog through pointless work simply so that I can hang on in
hopes of doing meaningful work at some point in the future leaves me feeling
stifled, frustrated, and ultimately depressed. (Especially when the work in
question is full of tedious, inefficient process that has nothing to do with
the actual engineering, which was fortunately less the case at Google than
elsewhere.)

At this point I can't imagine what it would take to make me consider working
for a large company again.

So the risk of accepting compensation in stock appears effectively constant:
you can trade the risk that the company won't go anywhere against the risk
that you'll be miserable, but you can't count on any significant return.

------
nojvek
Not at google but MSFT.

SDEII. 7 Years of coding experience full time. Base: 110k Signing bonus: $0k
cash, $6k in stocks.

On H1B visa so can't quit, but as soon as I get green card, I should
definitely look around. Geez, you folks are making me feel really bad.

~~~
maybeunderpaid
I was complaining on the other thread that as an SDE II I'm making just about
the same as an SDE I who posted there. But you, my friend, are underpaid :(

You can switch to another company on H-1B, but if you've already started the
Green Card progress, it will get reset.

BTW, I was hired as an SDE I even with 6 years experience.

------
linkedin_dev
I'll add my $.02 for LinkedIn. Sr Software Eng at LinkedIn in CA.

$165,000 Base

$25,000 Hiring Bonus

$300,000 Stock (25% 1st year, then quarterly for the remaining 75% over 3
years) ($300,000 at the time, now it's only about half that). 10% annual
bonus.

Male. Native English Speaker.

I can also speak to a friend here all the stats are the same except he got a
$35,000 moving stipend instead of a hiring bonus.

~~~
im_thor
Same, but only ~3 years out of undergrad, 160k base, 15% bonus, 280k over 4
years (but this dropped by half with the latest LinkedIn stock plunge), and
40k signing. Expecting to get to staff (L4) in about a year based on feedback
from my director, interested to see if it jumps or I get a stock refresher.

------
anonymoose234
1 year prior professional SWE experience at the time of hiring, CS undergrad
degree from a state university

Female, mixed ethnicity, American/native English speaker

SWE II, L3, Mountain View

$110k base, ~$45k in stock, 15% target bonus ($172k total assuming stock price
stays stable and I make said bonus)

Worth noting that I tried not to give my then-current pay to the recruiter
during the hiring process and was (very politely) told that they'd cancel my
application if I didn't give them a number. Also tried to negotiate this offer
up (asked for $120k base) and again, got told to take it or leave it.

~~~
throwawaycomp
What's your vesting schedule for that stock? If that's a 4 year grant, it
seems low.

~~~
what_ever
From his calculations of what he will get this year, it seems like $45k is
what he would be getting this year from stocks.

~~~
anonymoose234
*she, but otherwise this is correct. :) ~$180k total over four years, $45k is just what I would expect to get in a year.

------
throwaway_goog
Since I've already got this throwaway and already posted my numbers:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10761173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10761173)

~~~
googsomeday
Thank you, Sir/Madam! I think it's interesting that you went the tax return
route.

\---------

To save people one click:

 _I spent 5 years at Google. My AGI (as measured by the IRS) during my time
there went $130K, $200K, $280K, $280K, $300K, $356K (for my last 5 months
there...it also includes unexercised stock options for the last 5 years,
though). The bump to $280K was upon promotion to senior SWE; the one to $200K
was largely because of a generous stock refresh grant._

posted by user: _throwaway_goog_

~~~
t3nary
I'm still a student so I don't know a lot about salaries, but is this kind of
increase common? 130k to 280k in two years sounds extreme

~~~
jsolson
It's possible; without getting into specifics of any given company's
compensation policy, one common compensation scheme involves cash + equity
where the equity doesn't begin to vest until some tenure has been reached with
the company. Let's assume base cash comp stays more or less constant (or has a
some small raise to adjust for inflation).

Now, consider an initial stock grant that is 800 shares vesting linearly and
monthly but with a one year cliff. If you started in January 2015 you would
have seen zero of those shares in 2015. In 2016, however, you'd see 200 shares
in January plus roughly another 200 shares throughout the rest of 2016.

If you also assume that the company in question provides annual stock
refreshes, that those begin vesting immediately, and that the stock is on an
upward trend it becomes apparent how such a large increase is possible.

Other factors could include non-salary cash comp like bonuses, etc.

------
throwaway372452
Hired at L4 SWE, ~4 years ago, 140k, 35k signing bonus, 200 RSUs vesting over
4 years. GOOG did very well since 2012, so that helped a lot.

Salary rose to 160k on promo to L5 SWE, also got stock refreshers for 90k and
190k in years 2 and 3 (vests monthly over 4 years).

Salary jumped to 182k when I talked to manager at last appraisal that I am
underpaid w.r.t. salary. Found out because I was TLMing a team of size 12, and
the L5s reporting to me had higher salaries. Btw, Googlers, MRP at L5 is about
190k.

Going for promo to L6 now, and expecting a salary hike, and hopefully a good
stock refresher as well.

------
cuca_de_chumbo
I work at a podunk Santa Clara, CA startup. 20+ years experience. Working
remote from southeast U.S.A.

Tenure so far: 2.5 years

Salary: $150K

Stock: purportedly .75% of company 4 years 1-year cliff, with small follow-on
grant later, don't know what recent dilution is, though I think more recent
funding has been "debt" at low interest with preference

Not a regular VC situation, company funded through other means.

Outlook -- real uncertain, market has definite need, execution so far has been
very mixed, company willing to re-do things the right way

------
31415926535
Google Kirkland office, L4 (SWE III), 7 years of experience.

    
    
      $150k base salary
      $25k bonus this year
      $90k/year in stock at current share price, vesting monthly

~~~
pw
Wow, how long have you been there and what was your experience going in?

------
googsomeday
Previous Salary Discussion:

Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation (danluu.com) 730 points

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10758278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10758278)

Also see PayScale:

[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google,_Inc./Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google,_Inc./Salary/Job/Senior-
Software-Engineer)

------
sf_googler
I work in Google SF. 7 years in Industry since I got my CS degree. I'm at L4
and I'm at 117 base plus 40k stock a year (30k at grant time).

~~~
Cookingboy
That's kind of low for L4, many L3s make more than that.

~~~
sf_googler
Not a SWE is the catch, though my primary job responsibility is coding. Also
messed up the job search and had no competing offers. Now trying to figure out
if it's worth leaving Google and getting a job hopper stigma over the fact
that I'm well paid but not as well paid as others.

~~~
Cookingboy
There is no such thing as a job hopper stigma, there are many valid reasons to
leave a company.

Considering the cost of living in bay area and how in demand good developers
are, if a company like Google is underpaying you, it's a perfectly good reason
to explore new opportunities.

~~~
sf_googler
Yeah, thanks for the support. I also like my job and consider the SF office a
perk, but I may interview a few other places to get a feel for the market.

------
londonthrowaway
Anyone care to share details on compensation and career progression (bumps in
salary / stock) in London?

Also the bonuses quoted here sound a lot higher than the standard 15%.

------
aprof-throwaway
Just curious, anyone know what kind of package I could get at Google or equiv?
Or am I too old?

I'm a 36 year old associate professor in Statistics at a top 20 international
university and I also have extensive coding experience (10+ years professional
experience).

I currently make around $100K salary + $80-100K consulting on side. I also
bring in more than $100K a year in grant money that I use to pay RAs, etc.

Are there people with similar backgrounds that have made the leap? I'm keen to
hear from them.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I used to work at google. The offer depends on the office, and what role you
have. Big expensive cities pay more (sf area, seattle, nyc are the highest
pay; zurich pays even more). Google's interview bar is really high, a lot of
prof software engineers can't make it. Also plenty of good people don't pass
the interview bar.

They have real statisticians at google, doing stats stuff, like analyzing
different options and combinations and strategies for charging.

I have a phd in cs, and 20 years as a dev, including some leadership times. I
made about 175-185 at google in one of those big cities, plus half that in
stock each year. you get a fixed bonus of 15% of salary times a company bonus
rate.

Because you have experience but you might be a specialty area, it's harder to
say. I'd guess 150k plus 150k payable over 4 years in stock, maybe a hire on
bonus of 25k. and the typical 15% bonus.

------
throw2192015
Early engineer at a San Francisco unicorn

16 years of experience overall; 5 years with this firm

Male, H-1B from India

Title - Started out as Principal Engineer, now Sr. Engineering Manager

Current comp: 220K base, 150K/yr of (illiquid) stock

Some portion of the stock is in the form of options, some are RSUs. I took the
price per share from the last funding round, deducted the strike price of the
options and arrived at the dollar value.

~~~
kelukelugames
How many people are in your org?

~~~
throw2192015
12 engineers report to me.

------
amazoniananon
Hey, Googlers. I'm interested in working at Google and I'd like to talk to
someone who left Amazon/AWS to there. I put an e-mail alias in my profile for
anyone interested.

------
JoshDoody
I don't work for Google either, but I write about and coach people on salary
negotiations, so I keep an eye out for these threads (I learn a lot from
them).

There's a very similar thread going for Amazon right now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312984)

It's a mix of salary sharing and salary negotiation advice that could be very
relevant to your bigger question of "How much do senior software engineers
make [at the big tech companies]?"

Also relevant is this Salary Negotiation For Developers workshop I did last
week in Orlando: [http://bit.ly/21zFG5q](http://bit.ly/21zFG5q)

As I said over there: I love these threads and I hope more of them get
started. The more people know about what they're worth, the more tools they
have to get paid what they're worth.

Thanks for starting this thread!

------
oneisone
Associate professor with tenure 50k euros. (Ph.D. in Maths) good ranking in
Hackerrank. CS Engineer. Lisp, Clojure, Haskell, Python, Ruby, Javascript, R,
numpy, machine learning. Lack of experience. Spanish working in Spain, not so
young to be desirable. Able of very heavy weight lifting, steel strong, fast
runner and swimmer. Dreamer, hard working, extremely lazy when required.
Lovely father, loyal friend, dilettante but able to focus when reward is
worthy. Irresistibly handsome at times living in a castle.

~~~
Aij7eFae
Reads like a dating profile.

Do you enjoy long walks on the beach ?

------
googler_nyc
SWE III, L4, NYC

150k base, 40k signing bonus, ~27k yearly bonus, ~130k yearly stock

8 years prior experience before Google

~~~
nycurious
Thank you. I'm interviewing there and was curious about this. When did you
start there, and what was your initial salary, title?

------
throwawaysaly9
Not at Google, but VMware. MTS SWE 1.5 years out of school. Base: 120k Stock:
20K/year Bonus: 20k/year

------
googler_ny_comp
T7 engineer/TLM, > 20 years of experience, in a US premium-market Google
office: roughly 280K in salary, 80K in bonus, 280K in annualized equity.

------
marssaxman
In 2011/2012, I was a senior sde (or equivalent, don't remember the specific
title) at the Google office in Seattle (Fremont), and my salary was $140K.

------
stepny
Posted on the Amazon comp thread but wanted to share here too...

We went through both the Google and Amazon comp
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312984))
threads, and we added it all to this Google Sheet:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z1...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z14Uov92EgIGjjLjh4lrmTnyk/edit?usp=sharing)

Feel free to share/add to this doc.

Here are the median comps by level for Amazon and Google, just based on the
postings collected in the Google doc as of 3/22.

\--Amazon -- New grad: $141K, SDE1: $146K, SDE2: $173K, SDE3: $250K, TPM3:
$220K,

\--Google-- Level 3: $170K, Level 4: $200K, Level 5: $312K, Level 6: $575K,
T7: $640K, Tech Level 5: $660K

Just a few notes - Total comp includes bonus, signing bonus, relocation bonus,
and stock. Bonuses and stock were all annualized straight-line. (I know this
is not how Amazon stock comp is done, but we assumed this in our calcs.) Since
we took postings from 2 different threads, it's possible that one person could
have posted once in each thread, in which case that would show up twice in the
Google doc. Also, there's a lot of variance particularly with bonuses which
are lumped in, and some of the higher levels only have one data point, but you
can look at the data in the Google doc if you want to dig in.

If it helps with comparison between Amazon and Google, here's how Amazon
levels map to Google's (from Quora: [https://www.quora.com/How-do-Amazons-
engineering-levels-map-...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-Amazons-engineering-
levels-map-to-Googles)) Amazon SDE 1 - roughly a Google T3 ("I") or T4 ("II").
Amazon SDE 2 - roughly a Google T4 ("III") Amazon SDE 3 - roughly a Google T5
("Senior") or T6 ("Staff") Amazon Principal - roughly a Google T6 or T7
("Senior Staff") Amazon Sr. Principal - roughly a Google T8 ("Principal") or
T9 ("Distinguished").

Full disclosure - we're Step ([http://www.step.com](http://www.step.com)), and
we're building a platform to help engineers and product managers anonymously
crowdsource personalized salary and level estimates from decision makers and
hiring experts at tech companies. This thread is especially interesting to us,
because it shows the need/demand for more transparency around compensation and
company feedback. Right now, we're working with ~10 NYC startups that will
assign personalized salary/level estimates and other feedback to anonymous
profiles, but our bigger vision is that as soon as someone signs up, they'll
see how each and every company values them without having to interview/talk to
recruiters.

------
Amir6
Apparently this is taking off! come on people, show your colleagues what you
are making!

~~~
J_Darnley
It is more like "brag about your salary".

~~~
yomly
This is an unfair comment..

The thread is extremely useful for people both inside and outside the company.

While it may come across as a bragging, having worked at Amazon in a non tech
role I can say that there was extremely little transparency on what someone
should be paid at their level. As a result, there was a lot of variability in
salaries at any level for a given role. People could be paid as much as 10-20%
more purely because they joined a team after some change in salary policy -
everyone else in the team would be at a lower salary. MBAs with 2 years work
experience would be paid more than people who climbed up the company with 6
years internal experience.

Threads like this level the playing field for employees and would-be employees
as they can negotiate with HR and know definitively what they should be paid.

~~~
J_Darnley
It is not unfair in the slightest. Complaining that you earn 100k rather than
120k is, in my opinion, the height of silicon valley arrogance. You would not
have accepted that salary if you did not think it was fair.

~~~
yomly
The values are irrelevant (although interesting for a nosy person).

Are you telling me that you don't think it's fair that people get paid equally
for the same role / level of responsibility? Are you saying you wouldn't be
pissed with your company if the guy next to you was earning 20% more than you
despite your performance being comparable?

Please stop shaming people for being successful, whether by luck or skill
these people are earning a lot of money but that doesn't make them any less
human or any less deserving of earning equally amongst their peers.

Given that women have historically been less likely to negotiate on salary,
these sorts of factual exposés are a constructive means of narrowing the
gender pay gap.

At the end of the day, who cares what other people make. Whether you earn in
the 0.1% bracket or only top 80% bracket, while you still earn a salary from a
profit seeking company, you are seeing only a fraction of a fraction of a
fraction of what the company makes. While we squabble over 20k with HR and
brand each other "arrogant", the C suite are rolling around in their billions
blasting hundreds of millions on moonshots like driverless cars, humanoid cars
and quantum computing...

So as employees of companies we should all strive to eke out more from our
employees because 99/100 you're getting paid significantly less than what
you're adding to the business and they should value all of us better.

------
talsi
Check out Comparably.com they launched recently, it gives great data on salary
compensation. I'm going to negotiate my salary now :)

