
Ask HN: How much do you make at Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Netflix/Google/Microsoft? - 4k
There was a proper discussion on it about two years ago. Recently a similar thread was posted, but not to many response.<p>I do not work at any of the above. I work at a fintech company and make 80k + Bonus (Europe) with no equity (12 years experience, senior dev).
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ixtli
For anyone reading this: contributing how much you make honestly empowers
everyone in our field to bargain for themselves. The ability to bargain is
orthogonal to the art of engineering afaict but is whats mostly responsible
for how you are compensated for your labor.

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rndmswethrwawy
Staff SWE, Google Seattle.

Total 2018 comp will be around 550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split if
GOOG shares remain constant. Historically they have typically gone up
meaningfully over the course of any given year.

The cash component includes base salary and bonus.

~~~
browsing
I'm still a student, I have a few questions:

-What tech skills sets do you have? Do you need a MS/PhD at your level? If not, does it help?

In school we learn the standard algorithms/data structures material, but I
want to expand my horizons and begin learning what is applicable to industry.

I am very curious to learn what someone at your level has skills in. I'd like
to pick up something not taught in school and begin hacking away on a project
that will help me... which leads to my next question

-What are good beginner resources/tutorials you recommend to learn these skill sets? Are there any good projects you can point me to?

-Just curious. Does "550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split" mean you make ~247,000 base + ~302,500 in stock options? I am not too familiar with how compensation is broken down.

~~~
rndmswethrwawy
Not going to talk about my specific skills (throwaway account).

The algorithms stuff is useful. More useful than it seems. It comes up often
in many engineering jobs. Perhaps more importantly at your stage in life, it
will get you an internship.

Do internships. If you miss the one you really want, think hard about why,
then try again. Internships are the best place to start into my next piece of
advice.

Specialize in something valuable while you're in school or once you start into
your career. Jobs I might look for if I were entering the work force today:

\- Image processing or other noisy data handling.

\- Robotics, especially something requiring interdisciplinary skills like
control theory.

\- Deep learning techniques are all the rage; you'll be much more useful if
you understand how they work and can build novel topologies. Being taken
seriously here will likely require a portfolio (maybe graduate work).

\- Systems programming is an unending hellscape of horrible problems. Some
people seem to enjoy it.

\- If you have a knack for it, security. It takes a certain deviousness to
think of new ways to misuse things. It takes a wizard to do something like
Meltdown and Spectre.

It doesn't really matter what you become a domain expert in as long as it's
valuable. It does matter that you don't treat "domain expert" as a fixed
target.

In terms of extracurricular work, find an open source project that's got
engagement from companies with lots of senior people (Kubernetes would be a
good example, it has many very talented people working on it). Fix open bugs.
Fix the onboarding experience. Start with trivial things and go from there.
Don't get dismayed when you end up with hundreds of review comments, that's
how you learn.

Regarding compensation, the split is approximate. The cash is both salary and
an annual bonus paid out in January. The stock is actual stock, not options,
so every month some number of Google shares show up in my brokerage.

~~~
phx
Could you say more about why robotics today? It has always seemed very mature
and saturated to me. I went into the automotive/manufacturing industry after
getting graduate degrees in controls and recently shifted toward software and
simulation work at the same company. What business problems are out there
right now creating new demand for expertise in this area?

~~~
rndmswethrwawy
I think we're entering a new generation of controlled machines. Aerial drones,
in particular, have found a staggering number of commercial and industrial
uses, and many of them are operating under constraints that require bespoke
platform designs to minimize weight while meeting requirements. Aquatic drones
also seem to be coming into fashion. At the "that's a bit large to call it a
robot" end of the spectrum, I'd put SpaceX and their auto-landing rockets in
the same category (not to mention the drone ships that provide the stable
landing platforms!)

It provides exposure to embedded systems, likely involves caring about
communication protocols, sensors, etc. It might involve hard real-time
constraints, and if you're really lucky it will also involve dealing with
noisy data and maybe even a taste of applied machine learning.

That said, I could believe that all of the fun work is being tackled above the
entry level.

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gigatexal
Everyone needs to quit complaining about the sample size and the like and
bringing up things like Glassdoor and just answer the prompt. The lack of
transparency in salaries keeps us all at a disadvantage

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personatgoogle
SWE II [1], Google Cambridge, MA. I was hired in 2016 with a little under 2
years of professional experience, with total compensation of about $150k and a
roughly 75/25 cash/equity split. The equity has risen in value significantly,
the cash only slightly.

[1]: I believe this is a relatively normal entry point for people either just
out of school or with 1-2 years experience.

~~~
chickenfries
Do you mind if I ask where you went to school? I would very much like to work
in Cambridge but my experience with interviewing in Camberville is that I end
up talking to people from MIT and similar schools. Or I don’t even get an
email back. Which makes me feel like I just don’t have the credentials. Do you
just have an undergrad or do you have another degree?

~~~
personatgoogle
My CS background before my first job was:

Grew up interested in computers, learned a little BASIC.

Took two intro CS courses during undergrad at an Ivy League school, but
majored in the humanities.

Years later, attended a bootcamp.

None of this took place in MA.

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busterarm
"Senior Fullstack Dev" in NY at a non-tech company.

Currently 100k + 5k (bonuses, i've gotten 20k bonuses here in the past but
those days are gone). Roughly 35-40 hrs/week with only two week-long crunch
times in about 3 years.

I currently have offers for 135k + worthless equity (startup) and 110k (non
tech company). Waiting to hear back about a Systems Engineer role offering in
the 100-125k range (hot tech company).

Part of changing gigs at the moment is to plan to take on additional work on
the side to increase my compensation. Not possible in my current role.

I started off making 60k as a developer and not even that long ago...proving
value added 40k on to my salary quickly, but honestly I negotiated poorly. I
left at least 25k on the table starting.

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mrep
If you are interested in compensation numbers and have thick skin (its
anonymous so there is a lot of racism/sexism/bullshitters/negative hostility
and more), I recommend getting the mobile app blind as there is a ton of this
information there. I will regurgitate some of that information here for you
though.

For level comparison at different companies, lots of people point to
[http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi)

Here is a compensation poll for amazon employees only based on job title and
level with 161 responses: [https://goo.gl/V9QKHh](https://goo.gl/V9QKHh)

The total compensation rages I have heard for Amazon are 145k for new grads,
170k-230k for SDE 2, 250k-350k for SDE 3, 400k-600k for principal engineers.
There are 2 more levels after that but have not really seen any data for those
levels.

Here are Facebook's total compensation numbers quoted from "fmwf":

E3: 107K-125 Salary, 40k stocks a year, 10% bonus.

E4: 140k-160k Salary, 70k stocks a year, 10% bonus.

E5: 170k-195k Salary, 120k stocks a year, 15% bonus.

E6: 200k-220k Salary, 200k stocks a year, 20% bonus.

All Facebook numbers assuming expected performance if you kill expectations
you get more (25%-200% more shares).

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ApplThwaway100
$160k, $105k RSUs over 4 years, $15k signing bonus - started half a year ago,
currently have a little more than 5 years of experience as a software
engineer.

~~~
gigatexal
That package is with what firm?

~~~
doktrin
> ApplThwaway100

Apple, probably

~~~
ApplThwaway100
Yes. To clarify, I work in Cupertino, CA as well. Stock also had a nice bump
too, jumped 10-20% since my vesting start date.

I was hired at one level above entry level.

~~~
gigatexal
what's the life/balance if any like? is it super high stress like is reported?

~~~
ApplThwaway100
I can’t speak for everywhere in the company, but my job is fairly relaxed.
Good work-life balance, most collaborative work environment I’ve been in, and
lots of autonomy.

I did have a period of 2 months where I was working 80 hour weeks, but it was
due to a very unique confluence of events including a reorg, and highly
abnormal from my understanding, but I was rewarded for it by getting a couple
of extra days off.

~~~
gigatexal
You probably can’t tell us but do you work on the mobile side of things or
desktop or services or data science? Other?

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joatmon-snoo
2016-2017 data from another tiny, absurdly biased forum:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NZLCpnaaKCMIb0OrKElE...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NZLCpnaaKCMIb0OrKElEOcuuCKbG4zUggy2PNgJnYys/edit#gid=1723005296)

Also from said forum:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFIC...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFICIAL%5D+salary+sharing+thread+2017&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

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bootsz
There's a lot of posts on HN related to this, some with links to spreadsheets
of anonymized data:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15501158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15501158)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223)

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0xff78d4a4
SWE III (One level above new grad) in Boulder, CO with 4 years at Google:
~$225k total comp with 60/40 cash [Salary+Bonus]/equity.

For reference, Google's ladder goes: SWE II -> SWE III -> Senior SWE -> Staff
SWE -> Senior Staff SWE -> Principal -> Distinguished.

~~~
fooker
This seems wrong. Google's starting position for full time employees is SWE
III.

~~~
rndmswethrwawy
There's a difference between the numerical levels and the job titles.

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busterarm
One request here, can people include a rough estimate of how many hours they
work weekly to add some perspective?

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anonymous2018
W2 Contractor Senior Software Engineer, $85/hr, REACT/Rails Posting as
anonymous. Regular HN user here. I work in Denver, Colorado at a TV company. I
am a contractor through a local tech firm. I am making $85 an hour on a W2
open ended contract. Through my contracting company, I get access to 401k (no
match), medical/dental/vision (company pays atleast 50%) and they send me to
conferences/training.

I really dig the gig, they treat me like an employee but pay me like a
contractor. I tend to take 5-6 weeks of time off (unpaid) so I tend to make
$160,000-165,000 at the end of the year.

My background is about 10 years of tech experience. Working on React
currently. CS degree.

~~~
anonymous2018
I only work 40 hours a week

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goog_new_grad
Recent new grad that joined Google in the past few months.

Total comp (base + bonus + stock + signing bonus amortized over 4 years) is
185k. Higher than expected because of recent stock increases & I negotiated
with competing offers.

TC next year will be closer to 200k.

(throwaway account)

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hnthrowawayden
Denver, CO and not any of the big companies mentioned in the title.

34 years old, approx 7 years experience. MS stack.

$125k plus annual bonus of approx $9-10k. 2019 hoping annual salary pushes the
$135k mark.

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alanmessy
What about Stack Overflow's yearly survey? That's got a lot of people and has
data for salaries by job and geography. It won't tell you where they're
working, though.
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary)

ETA: 5yrs exp, Dev III in logistics; $95K/year, ~$6k in stock, insurance fully
paid by company.

------
AndrewDucker
Glassdoor is the place you want to go for this kind of information. You're not
going to get anywhere near a large enough sample from a few comments on HN.

~~~
4k
There is one major problem with glassdoor - the salaries that are collected
today are grouped together with salaries that were collected 7 years ago.
Which is why you always see lower salaries looking at the glassdoor.

This post is to get a (however small) current sample and it is purely to help
me evaluate a couple of opportunities, no commercial interest whatsoever.

~~~
LandR
Salaries I see on Glass Door for Amazon for Scottish jobs are fairly accurate.

A Developer will make anywhere between £35k and £50k depending on experience
(this matches with what I saw when I was looking for a job a year ago)

~~~
neospice
Just curious: That seems disproportionately low compared to US salaries. Is
cost of living proportionately lower in Scotland?

~~~
LandR
The cost of living where I live in Scotland is pretty small (IMO).

I make around £40k as a developer with 11 years experience, which seems about
average for my city.

My total cost of living each month is around £930. That includes my mortgage.

The company where I was working before I made ~£29k as developer, some people
in that company were on as low as £21k. The average was probably around £25k.

Contracting rates can be good, I regularly get calls about contracting jobs
from recruiters with rates around £400-£450 a day for a 6 month contract. But
then you have the hassle of looking for a new contract every 6 months or so.
That hassle is just not worth it for me.

I get emails each day from a job place with jobs. Today the jobs are

C# .net developer - £30k - £45k

C# software developer - £28k - £35k

Senior python developer - £65k

PHP Developer - £35k - £42k

.NET Developer -£38,000 DOE

.NET full stack developer - £35 - £50k

Java Developer - Upto £65k

Javascript Developer - £30-£40k

These are all for positions with many years experience. I don't know where
people are seeing £100k a year salaries?

~~~
switch007
Salaries that have been <£40k for the past few are starting to look really
abysmal. UK inflation is currently 3.1%. In England we have above-inflation
rail fare increases, inflated rents that keep going up, potentially 5.99%/year
council tax rises and not to mention utility bills and food.

The effect of price rises (council tax, travel, utilities, rent etc) combined
with your salary remaining stagnant is nothing short of devastating over a
period of 10-20 years.

Companies pretending that inflation doesn't exists probably contributes quite
a bit to job hopping

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aoeuasdf1
I make 290k total comp as a SWE III at Google.

I would make around 240k if my initial stock grants hadn’t nearly doubled in
value since I joined. I will probably actually make less money once my 4 year
grant runs out, all things being equal.

5 years total experience.

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southphillyman
Is there a way for an outsider to figure out which level they would be slotted
into if they passed the interview process? For instance if you are a "senior
engineer" at an average company, would Google only interview you for Senior+
roles or could you potentially interview for _any_ available job and be
evaluated and hired as say SWE II or something?

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austinengineer
IBM, Austin, TX, band 10 (Senior Technical Staff Member)

Base salary: 190k / yr base salary, ~6k / yr performance bonus

Equity Grant: ~$125k stock grant, vesting twice in four years, so ~$31k/yr
stock presuming I stay for all four years

So - total annual compensation (excluding healthcare benefits and our 6% 401k
match) is about $216k annually.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
You and the other poster at Google in Boulder have probably found the sweet
spot between comp and cost of living. Nice work!

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JofArnold
Something I’d love someone to explain: in USA as in UK contract developers
seem to be paid around $600-1000 a day with a few exceptions. In the UK this
is higher than at least 95% of the permanent jobs I see - which is what you’d
expect given you’re hiring an expert who is taking on some risk.... But in the
USA (if the data in this post is to be believed) I’m seeing even inexperienced
graduates earn more than experienced contractor devs. Is that right?

Also, I’m curious; I read figures like $400-600k... Is that actual salary you
see on your wage slip or wrapped up in that are things like healthcare that
you never “see” normally?

I’m curious because these figures are astonishingly high and I’m wondering 1)
how on earth do startups find devs 2) how on earth there’s any developers over
30 when you can become a millionaire and retire early.

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duckwheat
I'm at a gigantic (50k+ employees), soul-sucking company that is mostly
nontechnical business consulting, working remote as a Software Architect from
a borderline-BFE city. $105k + 150%ish 401k match up to 5% of pay + decent
benefits. Supposedly some kind of bonus next month.

------
317070
London, 0 experience, have Phd. Google Research Scientist:90k£ base, 100k£
bonus and stock

~~~
sage76
How bad are the visa issues surrounding hiring of internationals who do Phd in
the UK?

Do you have any idea if smaller companies and govt research labs sponsor?

------
newgoogle
Google, swe 2, 2y prior experience, didn't finish degree, Bay area.

205k total, 45k from stock

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kzisme
This might sound silly, but to get a position at Google is it mostly
experience or just white boarding practice?

Is it possible to go from new grad -> first job -> Google? By that progression
I mean what sort of background is required language/stack/etc aside from
studying and practicing?

------
Mitchhhs
Check out
[https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com) you can
filter by any function in the organization, educational background, years of
experience, recency of data, etc. We tried to include as much granularity as
possible to avoid the issues with glassdoor. After you sign up, navigate to
the career explorer, you should be able to get the information you need
without being required to add a ton of personal information. More information
is required if you want to get to the highest levels of granularity.

~~~
ziziyO
Requiring the education section is kinda silly given the number of people that
haven't gone to college in the industry.

------
pc86
It would be nice if HN had a system to allow new accounts to post in threads
like this without getting the "you're posting too fast" message on the first
comment.

------
superkitty
155K + 15K signing bonus + 25k yearly bonus+ some equity (10% of base salary/4
years = vesting)- Boston, MA Sr SWE

------
lostmsu
SDE II Amazon Seattle, ~$200k total/y

------
kowdermeister
You probably want to setup a form for this. You would get much more
willingness to share anonymously.

Also, which country in EU?

~~~
hellbanner
Just not a Google form, lest they know which employees are discussing salaries

------
krapp
12.50 USD/hr.

Hi from Amazon's shit tier.

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ask066941158
FB/Google figures here are mostly from the US, but can someone enlighten me on
theirs UK offers? Particularly, Google/Dublin and Facebook/London - are they
on the same level? Or 1.x less?

------
johnvanommen
Read this: [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-policy-to-pay-
unfairly...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-policy-to-pay-
unfairly-2015-4)

------
cottrell
Anyone know of an open, semi-anonymized data sharing platform? Let's use that
if so. If not exist, let's make.

------
Redoubts
Making about 320k/yr, with a 47:47:6 split between cash, stock, and bonus. 4
years with the company.

------
Samaraz
Is there anyone who wouldn't mind sharing salary from Intel?

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lawnchair_larry
Anyone who is reporting _appreciated_ stock compensation is ruining the thread
with inflated numbers. People who join _today_ don't get a retroactive stock
grant.

~~~
softawre
I was paid in bitcoin in 2011, total comp in the billions ;)

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gautam1168
Only slightly related. Since many google employees will be here: How can I
plan to land a job with google in 2 years if I have a physics masters and 1.5
years of web development + little exp. with other software stacks? I am trying
to figure out a strategy to make it happen and I am willing to do anything,
even go back to school.

* How can I get an interview? It seems simply sending my resume through the online portal will not work because I don't have a stellar academic record or much experience.

* How can I figure out what to apply for? I have experience in UI but does google even do that? I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around. But I don't really care what I work on.

* How and how long should I prepare for the interview? I am working through the Cormen's algorithms book but I don't really have a solid CS education. And I hear that they just want you to know everything. So should I just go back to school?

* I have heard that one way is to participate and excel in coding competitions. Should I then focus my entire energy on this front? Or will this be misguided?

~~~
4k
Others here would be in far better position to advice you, but from what I can
say, having an awesome github portfolio will go a long way to compensate for
the other handicaps you mentioned.

Once you are there, I'd say the best way would be to find someone in your
network who works at google, and get referred. If you don't know anyone, make
contacts through various channels.

~~~
xyzzyz
Github portfolio might help one get the interview in the first place, but once
you get your foot in the door, it is 99% useless. Hiring committee will only
look at it if they are unable to give yes/no decision based on the data from
the interviews. Preparing for interviews is much better strategy compared to
creating stuff to post on Github.

------
mcherm
I don't feel like discussing my salary publicly. Have you considered checking
glassdoor.com or other similar sources?

~~~
Viker
Why do people feel this way about their salaries. Always seemed to me that in
the grand tottal we will be better off if we did discuss our salaries
publicly. I make around 60k usd in a Scandinavian startup as a programmer with
experience. What is so big deal about it

~~~
doktrin
> I make around 60k usd in a Scandinavian startup as a programmer with
> experience

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why European developers earn
_significantly_ less than virtually all their American counterparts, even in
high cost of living areas (like Scandinavia)

I do understand you specified you work for a startup, but even at one of the
many established regional consultancies dev salaries tend to cap out at around
$90K IME.

Is it the lack of lucrative VC funding, the prevailing sense of egalitarianism
at all costs, the abundance of (comparatively) well paid middle managers, all
of the above or something else entirely?

edit : changed wording

~~~
adventured
One big factor is growth potential.

US tech companies can scale into a ~$21 trillion economy between the US +
Canada, with barely any adjustments for culture & language. From there they
can then use their considerable footing to push into any number of other
foreign markets and press the scale further.

Most software businesses benefit immensely from such scaling.

If you're a Scandinavian tech company, doing something like that is far, far
more difficult. It caps the upside for most companies. That's not unique to
Scandinavia of course, it's true about almost all other countries / areas,
other than China. US & British cousin cultures have a slightly easier time as
well in general, as they can often immediately tap right into the US as an
early market. That's why eg Shopify was able to so quickly scale itself,
despite the smaller size of Canada's economy, they're doing a monster business
in the US. Tech companies that have pulled that off coming out of Scandinavia
are still semi-rare, such as Mojang or Spotify (Mojang famously was able to
use the global scaling to immensely reward its employees).

~~~
doktrin
Excellent point

