
Interview with the creators of levels.fyi - zalzal
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/14/how-much-google-facebook-other-tech-giants-pay-software-engineers.html
======
bradlys
Facebook and Google are only setting the pay standard among other well paying
public companies.

The rest of the valley isn't keeping up. Startups in particular feel like
slowly ramped up in pay but capped out. They're not offering enough stock to
make up for it either. Usually only enough to make it such that your TC at
startup would be equal to that of a big company _IF_ the company IPO's/sells.
(A big IF!) I don't see many salaries past $200k for IC software engineer
(outside of 1 year to IPO startups) and most people still balk at the idea of
it. Yet, 1-2 years out of school at Big CompanyTM and you'll be past $200k TC.

I feel bad for the people who aren't in tech or things that tech pays for
(real estate) and have to deal with even more frozen pay. However, it still
sucks for engineers not at Big Co who believed they could make the american
dream possible here.

I'm on the verge of leaving this area. My current compensation makes me feel
poor even though I could afford to buy a brand new Porsche. Even if I joined
Big Co now and made $400k/yr... housing has grown too fast in price in the
peninsula. By the time I've saved $300-400k for a down payment, I'm going to
be priced out even more. If my SO had only become a software engineer or born
into a rich family instead then maybe I would have been able to afford this
region.

Such is life in the bay area - you can buy a brand new Porsche but you can't
afford a garage to put it in.

~~~
a1pulley
I've actually had the opposite experience with Google. I'm currently
negotiating a job offer at Google; my initial offer was significantly lower
than my four other ones. It's TBD whether they'll end up matching, but my
recruiter has been trying to systematically deconstruct the argument for
working at a local competitor to make the case that 0.67 * other offer =
Google offer. I'm not sure if they'll end up matching - we'll see!

TLDR: in my current experience at non-staff levels, Google comp lags behind
"Big-N" comp as well as "near-IPO company" comp. Maybe they just lowball
everyone though.

~~~
cbanek
I know it's just anecdata but Google also lowballed me very hard. They even
offered me less than I was currently making at Microsoft, and when I told them
that, they basically said, "well, that's how it is." I walked away, and now
get an email every year asking me if I'd reconsider. Maybe it was the wrong
decision, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth. As a woman in
engineering, I now totally believe in the Google pay gap, especially if they
are lowballing people coming in.

~~~
yaacov
Google lowballed the heck out of me to start, but they were willing to match
absolutely any offer from any other company. Their recruiting process is rough
but everyone I’ve spoken to has ended up with a competitive offer at the end.
You might just have had an exceptionally incompetent recruiter

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MuffinFlavored
What's the bottom line with the super high compensation numbers? I've been a
senior software engineer for a few years now and I make about half of what is
reported at levels.fyi (I've been making about $120k-$140k/yr salary and
receive little to no bonus/stocks, which seems to be the norm at two publicly
traded companies for hundreds if not thousands of employees I've worked for so
far), yet levels.fyi pretty much advertises everybody that at a senior level
makes $300k/yr+

I'm $40k/yr shy of the average reported salary for the average senior SDE, and
I'm missing $140k+ in stock/bonus... am I wasting my time at my current job
making 50% of what I should be making or am I missing something about these
massive public companies (like, not everybody gets hired at these companies...
or... they suck to work for?)

Where are these $200-300-400-500k/yr rates coming from? Do you have to sell
your soul to reach that? Am I grossly underpaid? I usually am at the higher
level in my organization/division, and yet I'm impoverished (comparatively)
according to levels.fyi?

~~~
mangotrees
I'm in management at a FAANG company.

Total comp for my college hires averages around $150k.

Total comp for my career level ICs averages a smidge over $200k.

My top 10% have total comp in the $350k neighborhood.

The very few folks who are at the staff/principal range (depending on which
companies titles you're using) are taking home $500-800k (mostly in stock). If
we consider attrition, it's probably only 1 in 150 of the engineers we hire
who ever hit this tier or above.

The levels.fyi info seems pretty accurate to me. Their estimate for my
personal role is within 2% of my actuals.

~~~
enahs-sf
So the question for me as an engineer becomes, do I grind it out at a FAANG
company and try to be one of those level 7’s OR do I roll the dice on the
startup? My intuition is that the former has a better outcome on average.
Seems pretty rare to become staff/principal/whatever at a big co and based on
the data from levels.fyi, you gotta be pretty far along in your career.

~~~
mkoryak
I worked at ~6 startups for about 10 years before google. What do I have to
show for it? A slight beer belly and less motivation to build something from
the ground up yet again only to see it burn down. Yeah, I had a ton of fun
too.

Would I trade all those years at startups for going straight to google? eeh,
maybe 4 of them. On the other hand though, I don't think I would have made it
through the interview without knowing a lot of random shit I learned at
startups.

Also being a dad and working at a startup does not mix well.

~~~
pm90
Interesting. Maybe FAANG's do so well in SV because they have a nice pipeline
of startup burnouts who learn all this weird shit that you only learn from
working at startups for a decade, and then finally end up in FAANG's, use all
their wisdom to build even better systems....

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thinkingkong
I think this type of information is desperately needed for all geographies and
way more (smaller) companies. The one challenge is that the pay grades
themselves are usually dependent on a common definition of certain roles,
which is definitely also missing. It would be great to be able to have _some_
kind of standardized career track for Individual Contributors and Managers
within software engineering so we could continue a healthy conversation about
compensation, roles and responsibilities.

~~~
Zaheer
Zaheer from Levels.fyi here. Our next feature is actually better
regionalization. This is the top ask we've gotten so far. Additionally we're
considering coming up with a standard leveling so that we can provide
industry-wide granular information easily.

Ping us at hello (at) levels (dot) fyi if you have more feedback!

~~~
davidjnelson
> we're considering coming up with a standard leveling so that we can provide
> industry-wide granular information easily.

Please do! Thanks :-)

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nodesocket
I've never worked for a public company (such as Facebook, Netflix, Google),
when it says $120,000 in stock is that essentially free shares at a given
price? I.E. you are open to sell them whenever?

I worked at a small series B level startup, and when I left I had the option
to buy my shares at the last valuation price, but at just over $20,000 total I
declined. I decided I could use that capital better than waiting around hoping
they explode and get acquired. I don't think stock options work the same with
public companies though.

~~~
opportune
Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a
company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might
be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not
sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same
as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change
companies often, get promotions and refreshers, etc. To me it's more like an
automatic raise.

~~~
joshuamorton
Just as an FYI, my understanding is that Google, FB, and MS all offer 25%
annual vesting with no cliff, the exact vesting schedule depends (for Google,
for example, it depends on the exact grant, but a 400K grant would vest
monthly). Amazon offers a 5/15/40/40 backloaded vesting schedule, but cash
bonuses in years 1 and 2 to compensate (sort of).

~~~
huac
I know Google has no cliff, is that also true now for the others?

~~~
joshuamorton
My understanding is that Google dropped their cliff after facebook. I think MS
is still on 6 months, but that's just their vest schedule.

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hnaccy
These numbers make my head implode. Back to the leetcode grind.

~~~
ehsankia
Pro-tip, work on personal projects, code something meaty. I learned far more
from making websites and tools than I did with coding competitions.

~~~
chillacy
To put this in context though, if you’re already getting recruiter interest
and scheduling onsites it’s better to leetcode. If you aren’t getting resume
callbacks then build stuff.

It’s been discussed before but the sad reality is that passing an interview
loop at the big 5 and building stuff are not really correlated.

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warp_factor
this whole leveling thing is very sad. It makes you realize you are simply a
number: a small pawn that falls into a predefined category and that will do a
predefined job without too much opportunities to go out of its way.

I'm missing the craziness of studying at university where I felt everything
was possible. I had sometimes similar feelings in startups.

In big companies that created that level structure it's shocking how boring
everything becomes. People define themselves based on their level. That
becomes the only goal together with the TC (Total compensation). It really
feels like a rat race sometimes.

~~~
vshan
I feel the opposite way. When I was studying at university, I found it quite
hard to motivate myself to do boring assignments, but after joining a BigCo
and talking to customers who are direct beneficiaries of my work, it is much
more rewarding and I feel more naturally motivated.

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notgivingemail
I tried this on mobile and it never fully loads. When I click on the chat
button to report it, it asks me to enter my email address. Not sure what
that's about, but I'm not doing that.

~~~
Zaheer
Maker here, what device & browser are you using? The email in chat is
optional. You can ignore the input message for it if you would not like to
share email address.

~~~
H8crilA
I had that once or twice (that it never fully loads), but for example now it
loads perfectly fine. Android with latest Chrome.

PS. bro you're great for making this happen. levels.fyi is like "software
eating the world" for labor unions. Clean, elegant solution avoiding all the
nasty labor unions politics. Now if we could also bring awareness around
work/life balance!

~~~
Zaheer
If this ever happens please try to capture / send us any relevant details. We
know there's some issues with Internet Explorer but not aware of any other
issues.

Thanks for the kind words! Surfacing work / life balance and general workplace
concerns is in our roadmap (3-6 months out). Look out for updates soon!

