Comment by noname123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noname123 | Hacker News Reader

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>"senior" is the last level that everyone is expected to hit, and at which you are "allowed" to not seek further promotions.

I was under the impression that Senior is mid-level? I thought the ladder went, Junior/Associate, (Just) Software Engineer, Senior (some places have Senior I/II), then Principal, and finally (Optional for really big companies with R&D like Cisco/Juniper/United Technologies), Fellow or Distinguished Engineer (and Senior Fellow).

>a senior engineer at a large company (and thus earn ~$250k in salary)

I'm under the impression that the $250K salary is total comp, usually $150K in Silicon Valley (which is like $80K in fly-over country) and $100K in stock options/bonuses which varies year to year (e.g., what was the annual bonus of SV programmers in the year of 2002-2005? vested options now worth for employees of TWTR and LivingSocial?); also how secure are these Senior Engineer jobs and people's average tenure at those jobs? What is their hourly wage accounting for how many hours they work?

I propose a better formula for salary range for all job ad's, your cost-of-living adjusted annual salary * (1 - % involuntary attrition per year at your company) * (40 hours / avg hours worked of employees in the team) + (50-percentile bonus) + (employee stock options {if not public 0 else 50-percentile of the cohort of the one year price target of stock analysts}).

Risk adjustment is definitely appropriate, but I think the author is being conservative even with this in mind.

You're right that "Senior" is still mid-level, but the author is being conservative.

The reality at a healthy, profitable company is something like this: $250k being the "total comp" for someone is a T5 seems right to me, even adjusting for risk. A T5 at Google, Facebook, or Apple is likely earning much more than this as their stock from 4 years ago is vesting at a much higher price than it was granted at.

150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w/ equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion. Also worth noting -- the bonus is basically guaranteed. It can be much higher if you get very good performance ratings.

The author also didn't include 401k matching (about 8.5k there), free offsites to go skiing or go to Vegas (w/ team trips to Hawaii not unheard of for high profile, long-term projects), generous medical/dental/vision benefits, free food, free gyms, matching charitable donations...

And IDK if it's just my team, I don't see people working extremely long hours.

You're totally right that you're at the mercy of stock prices in some regard -- but it works in two directions. Both FB and GOOG have gone up something like 150% in the past 5 years. So if someone got an initial stock grant of 200k vesting over 4 years, last year that 50k at vest time was more like 100k. Meanwhile they've gotten subsequent equity refresh grants -- the actual equity comp might be more like 200k, not 75k.

> 150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w/ equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion.

You're right, assuming that everything continues as it has. Nothing is guaranteed; that 150k can vanish in a puff of smoke through no fault of your own, and take all your unvested comp along with it.

> the bonus is basically guaranteed.

No, it is not. Many, many people will tell you of their time spent at BigCo when the economy is not booming, and after the free donuts, the first thing that goes is the bonus. You have to read the bonus plan very carefully to understand how it's computed. It's quite possible that your bonus at Facebook or whatever depends solely on your own rating, but at most companies that's just the final multiplier and all kinds of other things have to happen in order for the bonus pool to exist at all. In even mild headwinds, it's likely that only a part of the expected bonus will be paid, and not unusual for there to be none at all. Furthermore, the bonus plan is usually determined one year at a time, so the fact that whatever needed to happen this year for everyone to be paid at 100% did happen is no guarantee that the criteria in next year's plan will be satisfied.

Do not assume that the future looks exactly like the recent past. It is certainly possible that the near future will be even better than the recent past, but at least some kind of mean reversion is a hell of a lot more likely. I predict that very few people will end up receiving as much total cash for their work over the next 5 years as their simplistic and rosy-eyed calculations of today would indicate.

Yes, senior is mid-level if you look at a ladder. It's usually SWE I, SWE II, Senior, Staff, Senior Staff, Principal, Distinguished, etc. for large companies.

What I meant was that large companies expect all hires to eventually hit senior, give or take 3 - 6 years. If you don't, they have something of an "up or out" approach, where it counts against you in subsequent reviews. However, not everyone is expected to achieve Staff or higher.

> I was under the impression that Senior is mid-level?

Yes and no. It's a middle level in that there are levels above it. It's not in the sense that it is where most people will cap out. A senior engineer is expected to be exactly that for most teams, but you will see principles (or whatever) there for the harder/bigger problems.

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