Ask HN: Who earns more by age of 30-35? Technologist at Goldman Sachs or Google? - symbolepro
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nostrademons
You can't answer this without specifying _which_ technologist at Goldman Sachs
or Google. What's their skillset? How specialized are they? Who do they know
within the company? Which projects have they worked on? How much value did
they deliver to the company?

Gut feel (as an ex-Googler with a number of friends on Wall Street) is
probably that _on average_ a decent technologist at Goldman Sachs will make
more than their equivalent at Google, but the top end of Google's range is
significantly higher than the top end for technologists at Goldman (though
less than the top traders or portfolio managers). One thing most middle-class
people underestimate is just how skewed the income distribution is; someone
who can demonstrably make it rain for a big company typically gets paid well
into the millions per year.

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symbolepro
For example, Vice President Technology at Goldman vs Project Manager at
Google.

And do you think, is it easier to climb ladder in Google or Goldman Sachs?

~~~
nostrademons
Project Manager isn't a technical role at Google and VPs in finance, I have
heard, aren't a particularly high title, roughly equivalent to Senior Software
Engineer at Google [1]. Well-performing Senior SWEs at Google get total
compensation in $300-400K/year range, including stock. Average salaries at
Goldman Sachs were about $367K in 2016 [2], but that's a mean rather than a
median and so likely skewed upwards by all the rainmakers - but if you figure
that "VP" is roughly the top 1/3 of employees, it's probably about right.
Those are comparable salaries.

The framing of the question misses the really high earners, though, folks who
would be Distinguished Engineer at Google or...I don't even know what the
equivalent title at Goldman is, but at that point it probably doesn't matter.
These people don't climb the ladder, they bypass it. Usually that means taking
a risk on a project that has a high likelihood of failure but makes hundreds
of millions to billions of dollars for your employer if it succeeds, and then
seeing it through to success. Those are the folks with $multimillion stock
packages.

[1]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-04/goldman-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-04/goldman-
sachs-just-says-vice-president-to-be-polite)

[2] [https://www.investopedia.com/news/guess-how-much-goldmans-
av...](https://www.investopedia.com/news/guess-how-much-goldmans-average-
salary-gs/)

