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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

>> That sounds great, but one of the common rebuttals is that the job market (remote or otherwise) may be more challenging outside of the Bay Area.

It amazes me how many people in tech can't do simple math.

Hint: The Detroit area job market is on fire, but you will pass it over if your idea of compensation doesn't take into account cost of living. I'm sure there are several other cities that can say the same.

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I'm not an expert, but from my experience this is not true. If you do well in Bay Area (lets say ~500k total comp) it will be hard to match that in another area even including cost of living.

How do you get to that level of compensation? Are you just referring to "luck" with stock or cash salary? If it's not stock what skills pay that much?

It's also a very small subset of people that get those style offers. Every CS student I talk to thinks they're going to make the google prime salary, when the reality is they're not likely to make the cut as an average developer let alone the "silicon valley rock star". It's really a dis-service to the reality for most entry level and young developers. Additionally these crazy bootcamps aren't helping with their take a 12 week class get a job at google stories.

Staff engineer at Google, most likely, but possibly Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.

In any case, somebody who thinks this represents a significant slice of the Silicon Valley workforce is living in a bubble. For every engineer making >$500k, there are many thousands making <$200k, at the thousands of other tech companies in the Bay Area that aren't Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple. While the $500k engineer has every incentive to stay in SV, that has no bearing on the vast majority of engineers.

I have seen offers or been given exact numbers from 3 of the 4 companies in your list at the "staff engineer" level or equivalent ("principal" at both amazon and microsoft), and they are nowhere near $500k/year.

I have heard that at FB and Google, a very small percentage of engineers got special stock awards a couple years ago that could put them in that range. But most top performers at these places at the senior/staff level are more in the 175-350 range.

Other than that, the only engineers making that kind of money got lucky in a startup lottery.

I wouldn't rule out $500k for Google. It's not a super reliable source, but Glassdoor lists the average total compensation for a Google staff engineer at $420k.

I doubt Apple, Amazon, or even Facebook pay that much on any regular basis, but I wouldn't rule out someone getting an outsized offer during a machine learning (or other flavor of the month) hiring frenzy.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engin...

You don't. It's kind of a "HN trope" that the typical Silicon Valley engineer makes that much in total comp. Everyone on HN seems to know that one guy who's brother's nephew's roommate works at Google and makes $400K, but it is a far, far, FAR outlier in terms of total comp for a mid-senior level engineer at a mid-tier company.

There seems to be ample [1] data [2] about [3] this.

1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-senior-soft...

2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...

3: http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-II...

I know senior engineers making more than that because of 1 year pre ipo equity, but my understanding is senior engineers at google and facebook are more in the 300k-400k range with base/bonus/rsu. I am also curious how common it is to get to 500k total comp, and how one would go about that. It sounds like an outlier, unless you are an executive.

If you are mostly just saving that money, perhaps to later do early retirement in a place like Tennessee or Kentucky, sure. Cost of living doesn't impact you much when you live in a tiny apartment.

If you want to raise a big family, you're better off elsewhere. Even with a really reduced total comp, say ~300k, you could have a 6-bedroom house on the beach or on a 30-acre lot. You could have a guest house and servant's quarters.

My plan is for sure to retire somewhere cheaper, but life sometimes have it's own plans.

You don't need anywhere near $500k in SF to have more disposable income than most other places. That is, if you don't have any dependents. Things like food, entertainment, and rent are high in SF, but on average software engineer salaries I still think you'll come out ahead of most other places until you have to start paying for child care, education, etc.

I don't know if I would call the Detroit market hot, it took me about 3-4 months to find a new job. However, I'm not a software developer, so rhat could also have something to do with it.

Every single person I know in software has a decent job and I'm having a hard time finding good people. We're slowly increasing staff, but it's hard. Back in 2008-9 I worked somewhere that was hiring a LOT and the problem was just sifting through the mountains of people after the crash. This is the complete opposite. Part of the problem is internal - since management wants to operate very lean we need to find really good people, but there aren't very many average ones showing up either.

"Our salaries aren't competitive, but we still wonder why we can't hire any good people!"

> However, I'm not a software developer, so rhat could also have something to do with it

Definitely has something to do with it. I'm a software engineer in the Detroit area and the last time I switched jobs (4ish years ago), it took less than 2 weeks from the time I updated and posted my resume to signing an offer letter. With the number of calls and emails I get daily for different positions in the area, I have a feeling it would go just as quickly the next time I decide to make a move.

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