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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

It’s so interesting to see actual data that confirms what most people might suspect, instead of what you see here on HN where people talk about $200k+ base being “not that unusual”.

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The data is on average base salary. Nearly half of my total comp is stock plus guaranteed bonus. That's how my total comp is $200k+ with 1 yoe at a low CoL city.

Base compensation is typically just your salary, which is where the distinction between base and total compensation comes from.

I don't know of many engineers with salaries of 200k, but many who will make more than that when you include stocks and bonuses.

If a bonus is guaranteed, how is it a bonus? Just because it's a big year-end extra payment?

It’s never guaranteed, you have to wait all year for it, if you leave in December you get nothing, banks don’t value it as highly, you can’t pay your bills with it until you get it

What low CoL city? Are you counting Austin as low CoL?

I got what I thought was a pretty good low CoL offer as a new grad for $95k base (+maybe $10k-20k bonus?). Haven't heard of people getting such high offers as yours in low CoL areas except for small offices of tech giants

That seems very unusual for a low CoL city. It seems like there's an unbelievably large gulf between high + low CoL cities (far more than CoL would account for)

If you don't mind me asking, what city?

I generally consider comp numbers on public forums to be a bit like salaries on dating profiles. Even if you're not inflating the number and even if you're anonymous, there's a status drive to "round up", and the ones open to talking about the numbers generally know their numbers are pretty good.

I trust Triplebyte's data to be more representative because it's not one internet identity at a time stating their own number.

These data also align well with other aggregations of self-reported salaries at glassdoor.com and salary.com. While you can nitpick about methodology or “base vs total”, these reports are at least better than anecdotes posted on message boards for internet points.

No it doesn’t confirm that because it’s just base (ie useless) and 200k+ is basically norm in sfba at this point.

200k base is not that unusual for a senior engineer in a major tech hub working for a large tech company

Given that the median in SF is $150K, $200k base salary for an experienced engineer is in line with expectations

I think it's easy to get stuck in a bubble where all your co-workers are highly compensated so of course it's normal.

Its not unusual, its just not the average.

Feels like there's a joke in here about most programmers being above average... ;)

200K base is not uncommon (after all the median here is 150k), but total comp >200K is very common.

It is uncommon. That’s literally what this is showing. Even with a decade of experience in the hottest markets it’s still in the 80%+ percentile.

[edit] It seems you’re arguing about whether 80th percentile base counts as “not uncommon”. It’s certainly not common, but I think I agree it’s also not uncommon.

[previously] The Triplebyte numbers are not total comp. So this link isn’t showing what you appear to be claiming at all.

This is showing base comp. I am talking about total comp. Total comp [includes equity and bonus] >200K in Bay Area and Seattle are very very common

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