
Highest Paying Tech Companies of 2019 - z0a
http://levels.fyi/2019/index.html
======
senordevnyc
If you're a software engineer in a city where these companies employ folks and
you're thinking this doesn't apply to you, I'd encourage you to at least give
it a shot. It's not only the absolute best of the best who get these jobs.

I recently decided to do a round of interviews after 10+ years as an
independent web / iOS dev, having _never_ had a professional software dev job.
I'm also a self-taught developer with a business degree from a no-name state
school. Despite all that, I've been really surprised and happy with the market
reception here in NYC. I got interest from the bigger guys like Amazon, FB,
and Twitter, as well as smaller companies like Dropbox, Stripe, Square,
Coinbase, etc. Last week, I got a very good senior / staff offer from one of
the smaller public companies for around $400k in first year comp. With
bonuses, promotions, refreshers, etc, that could easily average $500k - 600k
per year over the next few years. And I had no competing offers. Some of the
other companies I'm in the loop with will almost certainly offer quite a bit
more, although I love this company that made the offer and I'll probably just
drop the other interviews and take it. Comp isn't everything.

All this to say, if you're interested in making more $$ and these companies
are hiring where you live, don't pass it up because you think it's only for
hotshot 22-year-olds coming out of Stanford.

~~~
geebee
Have you studied extensively for the technical exams? I've tried, and I've
gotten interviews at several of the FAANGs as well as some desirable mature
startups, but I fail at the technical screeinging stage. Not sure if I've
tanked it or was close, but I get the "no hire" call or email after take-home
projects or whiteboard exams.

Btw, to give you sense of it, I'd have no trouble finding a loop in a linked
list, printing all permutations of a set, or searching a tree recursively. I'd
have to puzzle a bit to figure out how to do DFS vs BFS, but I'd get there, I
don't have it loaded into memory. I wouldn't be able to implement merge sort
on the spot, I'd need to look it up, though I could probably get it
frontloaded. All I can say is dayum those interview exams are hard, what I
described is a pre-req, nobody will just ask you to permute a set, but if you
can't, you'll never solve whiteboard the problem they ask you in 45 minutes.

For take-home projects, one (a rails app) was rejected because I used named
routes rather than using the more conventional methods (I know this wouldn't
be good to do in a production app... guess I just wasn't thinking about
routes, it was a demo app, so I just threw some names routes in there for demo
purposes, it was a take-home), along with some "duplicated" code that I
thought was justified but never got to explain (I personally think extracting
this into another method would be a pre-optimization that would need to be
undone when the methods diverged, something I thought would be likely under
the admittedly fabricated business requirements). I did have what I though was
good testing, the reviewers did complement that along with some aspects of the
app in their review.

Sorry, don't mean to give you my sob story, I just... I'm at the point where I
wouldn't mind a crack at these jobs but just feel like maybe it's not an
effort that's going to pay off (I mean, how much more time do I really want to
spend on the kind of problems in cracking the coding interview? I actually
feel like I got something out of studying it and preparing, but going back
over and over, nah... maybe other people retain this stuff better than I do,
and you know, maybe that does actually say something about suitability for
these jobs).

~~~
senordevnyc
How many tech screens and interviews did you do? I cast a pretty wide net to
start, so I was in the loop to some degree at a bunch of companies over the
last ~7 weeks, which was exhausting. But I didn't really think I had much shot
at these bigger tech companies, honestly, so I interviewed at a ton of NYC
startups too. The practice was really helpful.

I haven't totaled up my stats, but this is roughly how things went:

1\. Once I got a recruiter on the phone, I had a 100% chance of going to next
stage

2\. For take-home projects, I had a 100% pass rate (did 3-4 of these)

3\. For online assessments, I had a 50% pass rate (did 2 of these)

4\. For live coding screens, had about a 60% pass rate (did 10-12 of these)

5\. For onsites, I had a 50% offer rate. I did 4 of these at NYC startups, and
2 at bigger tech companies, one of which made an offer. Still waiting to hear
from other one, but not hopeful.

I'm still in loop at 3 big tech companies.

The point is, it's pretty random. I flopped a couple of tech screens pretty
badly because the interviewer was just difficult. Some give easy questions,
some give hard. Some you click with, some you don't. And you get better at
this over time too.

 _(I 've also been amused to watch startups give more challenging interviews
than the big tech companies and then make offers that are 1/2 as valuable)_

In terms of prep, I took a data structures / algos class at Harvard Extension
a couple years ago that was really helpful, and then I've been doing some
Leetcode and CTCI problems the last couple months. Not enough though,
honestly. I also went through some mock interviews with Interviewing.io and
TripleByte, both of which were helpful.

By far the most helpful thing though is that _both_ of the big tech companies
where I did onsites actually tested me on mostly real world iOS dev, not
generalist whiteboarding algorithms. And the other tech companies where I'm in
the mix have also been a little more flexible. Twitter for example offered me
the option of a take-home iOS project or a traditional 1-hour generalist tech
screen. Although their onsite is still whiteboard coding algorithms from what
I understand. Sigh...

~~~
geebee
Thanks for your reply! Your pass rate is quite a bit higher than mine - I'm
0/2 on projects, probably 2/5 on interviews (I'm only counting the in-person
interviews, don't have a problem with phone screen level). Some were much
easier than others. I think my most recent interview was a couple years ago,
though, haven't done much of it lately. I do agree with you and the other
reply (mdocherty) that it is a bit random and you only need to connect once.
That said, it's not totally "free", there's no real point (for me at least) in
going into these without substantial prep.

At my google interview, I asked for 3 weeks. My lunchtime "interview" (this
one is unscored, just a chat) told me that he had requested and studied for 6
months! Seriously.

Now, some of that may seem nuts, but if you really don't know much about data
structures, algorithms, binary arithmetic (or are very very rusty on it), I
can see how a stretch of studying would be good for you. But once you have, it
starts to feel like re-studying for your midterms. Still, for $250k and up,
with growth potential... yeah, I can see why people are willing to keep going
through the washing machine.

Lastly, I suspect you're just a little better at this than I am. I think I'm
in range, but it's a little more of a stretch.

------
chimeracoder
Looks like they're including RSUs for private companies as equivalent to cash,
which _dramatically_ skews the data.

For private companies, RSUs aren't liquid, and ISOs actually _cost_ money to
exercise, so they arguably have negative value. Treating them as cash-
equivalent makes these rankings very misleading.

~~~
oarabbus_
They would be remiss not to include this when making a statement about total
compensation.

~~~
chimeracoder
> They would be remiss not to include this when making a statement about total
> compensation.

Ideally they would be separated out. But if you have to make a single ranking,
it's way more misleading to include RSUs/options for private companies than
would be to ignore them.

------
memn0nis
These salaries are incredibly high for someone who never worked at a tech
company in the valley. What's the general consensus on whether these salaries
will increase, decrease, or stay the same in the medium term (i.e., next 5-10
years)?

~~~
doublement
With nothing to back me up except the general impression I have, these numbers
look out-of-whack even for the highest-paying employers in the Bay Area.

~~~
senordevnyc
I know I'm just a random internet commenter and thus you could be forgiven for
thinking I'm making things up, but I just got an offer from a smaller public
tech company for a senior / staff level position making almost $400k in first
year comp. I'm pretty confident that after negotiation we'll land a little
over $400k. And recruiters at several other tech companies where I'm
interviewing have told me they can match or exceed this offer. I think FB or
Snap would pay more than $600k at this level, but I don't want to work for
either of them :)

To be fair, I have 12 years of experience, 9 of that in mobile dev, but _all
of it is self-employment experience_. Comp is just insane at the top
companies.

~~~
pascalxus
If you can get 600K at FB or Snap, you must be a top 3% candidate, according
to FYI.levels, right?

~~~
senordevnyc
I mean, I don't know? To be fair, I have not gotten an offer from either of
those companies. Maybe I never could. But I did get an offer from a company
that competes with them for talent and it's roughly at the L5 level at Snap
and E6 level at FB. Looking at levels.fyi, I'm seeing $550k - 575k, and given
that the offer I got was about $50k higher than the data levels.fyi has for
the company in question, I don't think hitting $600k is crazy, especially if
you have competing offers.

------
hotdogs
What's in Pittsburgh driving the median so high? I know Carnegie Mellon is
there, but I was not aware of any sort of commercial tech hub.

~~~
Zaheer
Zaheer from Levels.fyi here. Argo AI & Duolingo are based out of Pittsburgh.
Uber & Google also have a decent sized presence. Some more context on their
tech scene here: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pittsburgh-tech/a-tech-
bo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pittsburgh-tech/a-tech-boom-in-
pittsburgh-brings-hope-and-angst-idUSKCN1MM13Y)

~~~
hotdogs
Huh, it's been about a decade since I last visited Pittsburgh, I had no idea.
Thanks for sharing.

~~~
crw5996
Pretty much all the big tech companies have a presence here.

From what I can remember, Microsoft (Azure Storage), Amazon (ML Alexa Teams),
Google, Uber (ATG), Argo AI, Aurora, Facebook (Oculus), Duolingo, and Apple
are all have offices in the city.

In the suburbs I think Netapp and Oracle have offices.

~~~
Zaheer
Significant concentration of AI & ML teams probably raises the median (thanks
to CMU). Some of the hottest skills in the market today.

------
swat535
As a Canadian Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience.. I think this
list is comical..

I've managed to barely squeeze 120k-130k CAD (90-100k USD) out of big
companies here (e.g Shopify). I'm not sure if having free medicare is worth
losing 2-300k...

Oh and I've tried applying for remote positions in the US and I get the good
ol compensation skewed based on COL mantra.

------
grammarxcore
I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are
also very expensive cities to live in and around. 200k in the bay area is
scraping by whereas 100k in the Austin area gets you a house in a reasonable
amount of time.

Are there any plans to provide adjustments like that?

~~~
throwawaymath
Can we please stop with the hyperbole? $200k in the bay area is emphatically
_not_ scraping by. You can live on your own, without roommates, save money
_and_ have a social life if you have a $200k income in SFBA.

What people (especially on HN) think "scraping by" looks like is getting a
little nuts. Just because you can't have an opulent lifestyle and a cheap five
bedroom house doesn't mean you're struggling. $200k in SFBA is well beyond the
point where all your basic needs are met.

~~~
pascalxus
it all depends on your situation. Sure, as a single person 200K is doing well.
But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on
the penninsula or SF. The only way that's not scraping by is if you bought
your house over 20 years ago (or during 2010-2012 housing slump) OR you got
yourself a Rent controlled apartment. Other than that, You ARE scraping by.

In SF, day care is almost 3K per month per child! On the penninsula/SF, if you
rent a 3 bedroom apartment, it'll cost 4k-6K or so per month or more, that's
60K of your 130K take home pay.

~~~
txcwpalpha
>But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on
the penninsula or SF.

Lol. No, it isn't. It is absolutely mind blowing what the general tech
industry thinks "scraping by" means. The _median_ household income in SF is
less than 100k. At 200k, you make more than twice that. If you're just
"scraping by" with 200k, then I can't even imagine what people making less
than the median are doing.

~~~
geebee
Child care in San Francisco, the kind that goes from 8am to 6pm, runs over
$2500 a month. That's not ultraluxe, that's pretty standard fare, and my
estimate is probably on the low side. A 3br house in an unfashionable but
largely safe part of town is probably well over $4000 in rent. Again, that's
not a high estimate. If you have 2 kids in daycare and are paying a mortgage
or even just renting, you're looking at $9,000 a month in these expenses
alone.

Wealth in San Francisco is more measured by when you got into the housing
market than what you make, salary-wise, unless you're quite a ways up.

Now, a two income family with tech jobs is likely going to have at least 300k
in family income (though even with the expensive 8am to 6pm day care, expect
lots of phone calls coordinating who will scramble over to day care before 6).
These families are not "scraping by", and I agree we need to be careful with
hyperbole. But the median household income may not reflect the cost structure
for new arrivals to the housing market who lack the family structure that
would cushion the blow of daycare costs.

~~~
camgunz
Being able to afford 8 hours of child care for multiple kids every weekday,
and a mortgage/rent on a 3br house, is way above what most Americans consider
scraping by. Americans who are scraping by use family, friends, and spouses
for child care (or just hope for the best), and they live in low-cost housing
often in pretty bad neighborhoods with bad schools that are far away. They
also have trouble affording health insurance, they often share a single car
(if they even have a car), have debt, and aren't saving.

------
senordevnyc
Is this getting flagged? It's currently near the bottom of page 4, and should
be in the top 10 of page 1. Are HN'ers just bitter / skeptical of these
numbers?

~~~
doublement
I don't know why it's falling away from the front page, but as far as
skepticism goes, numbers that surprising raise more questions than answers.
Your anecdotes have been very informative by the way.

------
umvi
Obviously San Francisco and New York City have the highest salaries... they
have the highest cost of living. Can we get a list adjusted for cost of
living?

~~~
lhorie
Depends on who you're living with. When I first moved to SF, living in a dorm
downtown w/ shared bathrooms/kitchen among some ~50 people, I was paying
$1.8k/mo. Then my wife and kids joined me, and we moved to a "proper" place in
outer richmond. The cost for 2 bed + 1 kid in preschool went to 6.5k/mo. If
you're single, you're probably looking in the range of 3.6 - 4.5k for a 2 bed
rent, or half of that if you can get a roommate. Transit runs you about
$80-100/mo. So if you're young and cheap, there's a lot of opportunity to
build up a bank.

On the other hand, If you are married w/ toddlers and your spouse is on a non-
work visa, you're gonna have some tougher luck w/ COL.

------
libso
How is the level mapping between various companies decided?

~~~
Zaheer
Within a company, levels codify the hierarchy, scope & responsibility of
employees. The question we try to answer with our mapping is: "If an employee
at company X were to switch to company Y, which level would they come in at?".
The answer then is: what is the equivalent scope / responsibility across
companies. There's several other factors (company size, interview performance,
etc) that go into actual leveling when you switch companies and thus we really
emphasize that this is a _rough_ guide. I think we've settled on something
that's generally agreeable for most folks. We constantly take feedback though
and adjust based on what we hear from users switching between companies.

------
crispyporkbites
Is there data on the UK / London available?

~~~
oarabbus_
Honestly if you're a software engineer in the UK and you're concerned about
salary... you should move to the United States.

~~~
IneffablePigeon
Who isn't concerned about salary? Who is _only_ concerned about salary?

Like most software engineers in the UK, I could almost certainly make at least
triple by moving to the US but I don't consider it worthwhile for me. Many
people do - there's no right answer.

------
Trias11
Can we separate salary from stock-based comps?

~~~
rcpt
Why? They're all reported the same as income on your taxes

~~~
electricslpnsld
Compensation from stock grants is significantly more volatile than base salary
or bonus targets, but otherwise I don’t see a major difference.

------
zer0faith
Does this data include Cyber Security type jobs?

------
einpoklum
These salaries is kind of obscene. But then, the conduct and social impact (in
the US or outside of it) of many of these companies is also kind of obscene:
Lyft and Uber employ pseudo-freelancers for very low effective wages; AirBnB
are keeping apartments out of the regular rental market in favor of jacked up
per-day prices; Facebook tracks everybody and shapes (to some extent) their
consciousness and knowledge of the world; and so on.

