
Seattle Tech Employees Earn 56% More Than NYC Finance Workers - leptoniscool
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/seattle-tech-employees-earn-56-more-than-nyc-finance-workers
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pauljurczak
When you find the term "average wage" in an article about economy with upbeat
title, stop reading right there. Use your time for a more productive purpose
or just kick back. Any measure, which ignores huge economic disparity is
mostly a piece of propaganda. In a group of 10 people with one earning $10M
and the rest getting less than minimum wage, everyone is a millionaire on
average.

Unfortunately, it is so rare to see median or other asymmetric distribution
sensitive concepts used in articles about economy.

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WJW
A minor aside, but what a particular way to measure millionaire-ness. Surely
you need to own a million or more to be a millionaire, not "merely" earn that
sum on a yearly basis? So many people I know live paycheck to paycheck and
that seems to only marginally decrease as wages go up. People just start
buying more expensive shit.

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croon
If you make make a million a year and don't have a million saved in two,
you're doing everything wrong.

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eclipxe
>Currently, job site LinkedIn is showing that Apple has more than 500 open
jobs within 50 miles of Boulder, while Google has in excess of 1,600 jobs
advertised.

That doesn't seem accurate at all. Can anyone figure out what data they're
using here? Google only shows 42 open roles in Boulder (+50 miles). Apple
shows 25.

I think they just did a text search for Apple and Google here, but didn't
filter by actual jobs listed by either...

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dmode
You are correct. They have no idea how to use LinkedIn. If you literally type
Google in the job field for Boulder, it shows 1600 jobs, includes jobs from
companies with the keyword Google in the JD. Actual jobs from Google is 42

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xt00
These statistics if dominated by AMZN, MSFT, GOOGL, FB all have stocks in the
past few years have been on a tear, so I’m sure RSUs have to be part of this.
280k for Seattle area is definitely not some kind of average..

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Pfhreak
280k doesn't seem out of line for a mid career engineer to me. I know plenty
of college hires making 150 to 180k their first year straight out of school.

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adamredwoods
They're probably including Jeff Bezos in that average, because most of us
Seattle tech plebeians make lower than NYC finance workers.

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paxys
I bet the finance workers think the same, because like every sector it is
dominated by the top few percent earning a lot and the rest toiling away
dreaming of getting there.

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chriscatoya
This isn't going to lend much insight without a distribution by job
title/seniority and compositions of the total comp. (As others have already
pointed out about RSUs, bonuses, options, etc potentially playing a big part).
Further, I think it would be more interesting to see measures of upward
mobility given cohorts in tech vs. finance to see which presents more overall
opportunity.

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ck425
Can anyone explain how the US got to such ridiculously high salaries for Tech
compared to most other countries? As someone working in the UK I'm more than a
little jealous and tempted to try the visa gauntlet though it seems like a
long shot.

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chris11
I think part of it is cultural. The majority of Americans speak English as a
primary language, and there's only one set of federal laws. That makes it
easier to grow your userbase.The EU has a large number of residents, but also
has 24 official languages, and the member countries have much more distinct
cultures. Localization can be a huge problem for startups there. The potential
for growth and access to investment capital means tech companies can and do
pay engineers very well. Of course there is China, but China also has a lot of
unicorns, and it looks like Chinese developers get paid a lot of money
compared to the average income.

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ck425
I don't buy this as a reason. The UK has a thriving startup scene, as do
certain cities in Europe. Yet that hasn't translated into higher pay anywhere
near as much as it has in the US.

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manfredo
> People working in the information sector in the Seattle area earn almost
> five times that -- King County, Washington, tech workers average $5,367 per
> week, or about $279,000 a year.

I assume wages includes equity. Otherwise, close to $300k salary for all
information jobs seems high. At least, depending on what they mean by jobs in
"information". The underlying data is not very specific:
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t02.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t02.htm)

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thrtythreeforty
> Wage data includes non-wage cash payments such as bonuses and deferred
> compensation plans such as 401(k) plans and stock options.

So, yes, it's total comp.

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HenryKissinger
Furthermore, you don't even need to go to a target school. Because the largest
and most reputable employers in tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.)
have no target schools.

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seanmcdirmid
Most of the tech companies are in Seattle largely because of UW. I wasn’t
really expecting it, but there are a lot of UW CSEs working in Seattle FAANG
offices.

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samfisher83
They are there because of bill gates being born there. UW isn't like Harvard
or Stanford. It's a good public school. Microsoft had a lot of smart people
which is one of the reasons bezos moved there. With msft and amzn there, fb
and going decided to leverage that talent.

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seanmcdirmid
UW CSE is ranked more than a few places higher than Harvard CS, it has the
second highest ranking next to UCB CS.

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partingshots
Why not use the Bay Area instead to compare? Seattle tech wages are definitely
lower than Bay Area tech wages.

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klipt
Take home in Seattle might be higher though due to no state income tax. And
cost of living in Seattle is way lower.

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hellisothers
What does take home or cost of living have to do with a competitive wage comp
dataset?

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EpicEng
Because when I'm evaluating two jobs I'm going to do so based on how much
money I'll have left at the end of the month. Not saying that's the actual
reason, but why _wouldn't_ you consider cost of living?

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asdfasgasdgasdg
I wonder what's included in "financial workers". Does that include bank
tellers? I get that tech is well compensated. But the banking numbers seem low
considering what I've heard and seen around town.

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ZeroCool2u
It seems like in Finance, actual banks pay pretty terribly. I think it was
about 2 or 3 years ago that starting base salary at Goldman broke 6 figures
for CS grads out of school. From what I've heard its gone up since then, but
definitely not to FAANG standards. The interesting part is watching these
firms with fairly prestigious reputations in the finance world begin to
realize/grapple with the fact that very few engineers actually _want_ to work
there, because they're basically just not considered cool. This is balanced
out by places like 2 Sigma and other quantitative hedge funds that tend
towards the other extreme of the compensation spectrum. It seems like there's
not a whole lot of middle ground from my anecdotal experience, but of course
YMMV.

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govg
One thing common to banks (and in general, finance) is that a significant
amount of your compensation is in year end bonuses. These figures are
notoriously hard to get a hold of, and makes direct comparisons tough.
Accounting for these bonuses even at the major banks doesn't make the gap seem
as high as without it, but yes, FANG would still beat tech roles at these
places. The better comparison would be quant roles at these places vs FANG
tech.

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TheOperator
Millenials aren't fresh out of college.

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tryitnow
Wow. This is journalistic malpractice. I'm pretty sure "finance" workers
include everyone working for financial institutions including tellers and
other low wage positions.

My guess is that this average has more to do with the composition of the
workforce than any meaningful pay differentials in the industry.

So my guess is that the story here is that tech companies just have a lot
fewer low wage positions, which makes sense because a lot of lower wage tech
work can be outsourced abroad (e.g. customer support).

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always_late
The sampled data must be skewed way off to one side. That cant be the average.

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Pfhreak
In my experience that seems like a pretty reasonable average for total comp.
Including salary, bonus, stock, 401k matches, maybe other cash benefits.
College hires are earning at least 150k when you consider total comp. What
makes you think this isn't a reasonable average?

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rdtwo
Our cost of living is lower so that might help

