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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

You shouldn't. Everyone lies about salary or includes their options at some fictions value as part of their compensation.

The reality is that the number of people making over $200k is just not that many. Very senior people and directors of certain departments, sure. And you've got some $250k+ VIPs out there. Some.

For everyone else, even those in the Bay Area, it caps around $180k, or $10k/mo after tax. Stay for long enough and you might get a nice chunk of change you can put towards retirement, assuming that the stock is still flying high at the time you can actually do something with it.

The $250k engineer is a myth. By the time you are making $250k you aren't writing code anymore. In fact, you may have never written code in your life. You're a director, VP or C-level executive of an engineering department.

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> The $250k engineer is a myth. By the time you are making $250k you aren't writing code anymore. In fact, you may have never written code in your life. You're a director, VP or C-level executive of an engineering department.

Large tech companies have ladders for both engineering and management. There's nothing inconceivable about earning well in excess of $250k/year and writing code.

I'm not going to lie and say it's achievable for everyone, but your perspective is a very limiting one. A lot of people (in absolute terms) do the thing you're claiming is a myth at large public and private tech companies every year.

No, a lot of people don't. A few people do.

Small consultancies and independent app developers can bring in $250k+, but not necessarily year over year. And they are usually doing a lot more than just engineering.

Maybe I should clarify: The notion of a $250k+ engineering "salary" as normal is a myth. I live in San Francisco an I don't actually know a single person who falls into this bucket. I know a bunch of people at startups who pull that down, but not sustainably. A few people at FB and Google who cleared that much the first year if you include the signing bonus and/or account for all the options they might receive some day in years 1-2.

The only person I know who actually has a $250k+ salary as an engineer works at Amazon in Seattle, but he doesn't even code anymore.

SDE2s at amazon in Seattle can make over $200k - so I imagine a mid level engineer at google could be making over 250. Not as common I'll bet but imo it must be common enough.

I would be astonished if a L4 SWE at Google was making less than 250k (total comp)

Are you familiar with the difference between options and RSUs?

$200k is not very hard at the big tech companies, who employ a LOT of engineers in the bay area.

I'm less than 2 years out of college, and I'm set to make ~$210k at google in 2017. Up from ~$170 when I started. I know a few who are making a more than me because they negotiated their stock units well. To be fair, GOOG doing well the past two years has helped me a lot. It would be $186k at grant price.

I haven't even gotten promoted yet.

These figures are before taxes, of course.

False. I along with many other engineers I know are programmers making well north of $250k annually (total comp).

Please stop spreading false information and harming people here. Go get a software engineer job offer from Google or Facebook and then get back to us.

This is pure bullshit. If you seriously believe what you're saying, you've been misinformed. Stop spreading lies.

This matches my observations. On the "technical ladder" I'm the equivalent of a Senior Manger or Director (or, less commonly, VP). My pay is definitely less than anybody at those positions in truth, and the tech ladder generally tops off just north of $200k base, as I've seen it. Outliers exist, the plural of anecdote is not data, and similar disclaimers apply.

This is the ladder for just about everything outside of specialized medicine and law. There's just not that many people outside of management anywhere with a $250k+ salary. There's plenty of people who make that much, but it's usually through commissions, additional equity, etc..

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft employ over 500,000 people. I'd be surprised if there are more than 500 engineers with a salary over $250k between them.

Maybe what someone should do is poach all 500 and see what they come up with. The burn rate would only be $10 million a month. Maybe they could invent AI.

Salary no. Total comp can be 100% or more of salary - they pay people in stock.

It's still not equivalent, in my experience.

People on the same rung of the "tech ladder" as those on the rung of the "traditional ladder" are compensated less in total and also frequently in any given dimension (e.g. salary, stock, whatever).

Okay, but what is the point of saying that base comp tops out at just over 200k? Quite often people with 200k bases make 500k+ total comp, so it is very misleading to focus on the base. After all Sundar Pichai's base is $652,500, but total comp is 200 million ...

Even that's not quite true, Pichai's annual comp is likely much lower than that, since his 200m grant is over some number of years. (Which is to say, talking about compensation is confusing).

"Quite often" is controversial at best.

I think it depends on your definition of "quite common". 100% of the time? No. 5% of the time, also no.

> I'd be surprised if there are more than 500 engineers with a salary over $250k between them.

You're conflating things. Nobody says everyone has over $250k salary. They do say that Senior Engineers at Google and Facebook make over $250k total compensation.

As someone who has made over $250k total year comp at a big company in the Bay Area, I will tell you there are far more than 500 engineers doing so.

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