
Salary Stream – Software Engineer Offers - zuhayeer
https://email.levels.fyi/t/v/8fd44f81-e530-474c-af6a-0d999c33c658/d4660a8a-afa7-4989-9718-d6d3cc71f3c0
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zuhayeer
I’m from Levels.fyi, this is the second issue of Salary Stream - A digest of
verified salaries sent weekly. Let me know if you have any questions!

You can subscribe at
[https://www.levels.fyi/verified/](https://www.levels.fyi/verified/)

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Relys
Your site helped me get a really nice compensation package for my current
employer. I recommend it to all my friends and colleagues. Thanks! :)

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zuhayeer
Awesome to hear! Why we do what we do :)

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drinkzima
The stock-based comp portion of these are moving around incredibly quickly
right now. Probably changes the calculus in lots of cases.

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trevyn
FWIW, grants are usually targeted to a specific dollar value, though the stock
movement between grant and vest does affect your results. (And if this
significant dip is sustained, I would expect many companies to issue
additional special grants to compensate.)

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bradlys
It's good information. Leaves me feeling hella bitter though since I'm paid
less than half of that FB offer but could theoretically get the same offer.
Just wish there was a more straight forward way to getting into these
companies that pay so much.

Has anyone had success with mock interviews? (Done by people who actually hire
- not random people) I've received endless feedback from recruiters saying
it's my technical performance even when I've smashed every problem. (Guessing
it's cultural but they can't write that down as I rarely receive a no during a
phone interview - just no's during in person)

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lacker
It’s quite common for people to think they nailed a question when actually
they did poorly, in the eyes of the interviewer. Even if you are getting the
“correct solution”, the interviewer will usually have some followup discussion
designed to make sure you really understand the solution well. Often this
catches out people who practice so much they’ve seen the answer before. This
is my guess for what’s happening, at least.

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LanceH
I walked out of an interview before thinking I nailed one of the big
questions. I answered it so well and in such an orderly fashion they asked if
I had seen it before, which I hadn't. I received feedback that they would pass
and one reason is that I wouldn't admit that I had seen that question before.

I guess I wasn't prepared for having my integrity (literally) questioned.

No loss for me. It was really off putting how suspicious they were of someone
who knew the answer better than they did; like it just wasn't possible.
Instead of disbelieving me, they should have just moved on to some other
questions for confirmation, even if it meant calling me back in.

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chrisbennet
I've found that people are suspicious for a couple of reasons:

1\. They are bad actors and they expect other people to be also.

2\. They've been burned by someone and now they are suspicious of anyone.

When confronted by a person who doesn't trust me, I ask about the 2nd
situation i.e. have been burned by a past employee? If they have, I cut them
some slack.

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adamredwoods
I don't know how great this is to share, although I am curious about the
numbers, as I'm sure it will depress some people. A lot of pay is based off
personal intelligence and interviewing skills, which cannot be shown with
quantitative numbers like years of experience.

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mandeepj
Salaries are a bit misleading on this page.

Let's take LYFT's example - on landing page - salary is $420k but on inside
page - it's $396k. What's the vesting period on those stocks? I'm almost sure
it's not 1 year. And, that salary is for the first year. They will not be
giving you $200k worth of shares every year or do they?

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cactus2093
I think it really is what it seems. I got a similar offer from Uber a few
months before their IPO - level 5a position, base salary $200k, $710k shares
of RSU's vesting over 4 years, and performance based bonus with a target of
$25k (it's not guaranteed the bonus target will be the same every year, but
this is an annual bonus not signing bonus). So total comp just over $400k.

I'm sure some people are inflating values on levels.fyi and some people are
probably mixing up the 4-year vesting amounts of stock with per-year comp.

But this example seems legit. Salaries like this are very real (and very
crazy)

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andrewljohnson
Twitch is so low:
[https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...](https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&search=twitch)

Is that because a lot of people want to work at Twitch, and/or because Amazon
doesn't pay that well?

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somebodythere
It's because the bulk RSU portion of the offer vests in the latter 2 years and
the TC value given on the site is based on 1st year compensation.

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beau
This is great. Companies share these numbers with each other, good to see more
visibility for employees.

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_bxg1
Interesting info and interesting website. Do they pay a small fee for each W2?
Otherwise I don't see the motivation to go through that whole process

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fg6hr
For someone making $400k, a whatever fee they have to offer wouldn't be worth
15 minutes of time. And the idea of uploading such a personal document as W-2
seems laughable. The more believable option is the informal offer letter with
numbers: that could be shared, indeed.

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_bxg1
> What is Salary Stream? A digest of verified salaries sent weekly. Users
> upload Offer Letters, W2s, etc. We extract the relevant numbers and the
> share the anonymous data back with you.

The whole point is that they verify them. In contrast with, say, Glassdoor.
Which is why even a singular data point can be treated as meaningful.

> For someone making $400k, a whatever fee they have to offer wouldn't be
> worth 15 minutes of time

I mean, sort of. I don't see that as a reason nobody would do it.

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zwieback
I feel great, make about half of what these companies offer but I don't have
to work at places everyone loves to hate now.

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ear5her5ahreh
Pretty sure I got blacklisted from Triplebyte, it's been months but every time
I check it just shows this message:

> We're really sorry but we've had a surge of applications recently and are
> temporarily booked out of interview times.

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julee04
How does the stock work here? Wouldn't these vest over 4 years? Or is this how
much stock they get per year?

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Zaheer
Per year. The number of shares are listed for each as well. As you can
imagine, the dollar amount is changing rapidly with the market crash.

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wundering
So, are the dollar amounts for stock we see on the website the literal amounts
users entered at the time of grant or did they enter number of shares that are
being translated to $ in real time?

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zuhayeer
The dollar amount is from time of grant, the total number of shares (when
available) is to help you calibrate to current market

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Aloha
I'm I the only one who thinks these salary levels are both insane and not-
sustainable?

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foota
Makes me wonder: will they reissue the offer based on how much Lyft stock has
dropped?

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gct
Usually they specify the stock part in dollars, it doesn't turn into a
concrete number of shares until after you start.

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foota
Yes, that's my point. It'll be much more shares than normal, and presuming the
share price recovers (which it may not) these people will be much more highly
compensated.

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gct
Ah you're saying they might lower the offer assuming the stock will recover?
Unlikely in the extreme I think.

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alexandercrohde
Is this just an ad for triplebyte?

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Zaheer
Levels.fyi is not part of Triplebyte. They are one of our sponsors.

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MuffinFlavored
Those base salaries are really not that strong in those high cost of living
areas.

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thorwasdfasdf
It's stronger than any other jobs out there.

But yes, you're right even the very very highest of salaries doesn't
compensate enough to buy a modest 4 million$ house. You'd have to be in your
20s and rent a room with plans to leave in less than 10 years or just don't
have a family.

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MuffinFlavored
I'm just saying, it isn't hard to make $140k-$160k/yr in Iowa/Missouri as a
remote software engineer.

You just don't get your salary again in stock options :P

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boring_twenties
That's a hell of a "just," considering just 5 years of that could be close to
enough to live the rest of your life in Iowa/Missouri without working another
day.

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abraxas
Does it even mean anything. The economic discontinuity that the virus will
introduce is likely to alter all of these numbers in ways we can't predict.
Most likely push salaries much lower after the layoffs hit on a wide scale.

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thorwasdfasdf
Wow, this is great. It's awesome to make that much money, but it'd be pretty
hard to convince yourself to work hard enough for that stock and bonus when
your marginal tax rate is over 40%.

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twblalock
> Wow, this is great. It's awesome to make that much money, but it'd be pretty
> hard to convince yourself to work hard enough for that stock and bonus when
> your marginal tax rate is over 40%.

I mean, it's still a lot of money and at a FAANG you'd be working less hard
than someone at a startup while making twice as much money. (This is why it's
hard for startups to hire people.)

