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Comment by throwitaway2364 | Hacker News Reader

> the UK, where tech salaries top out around $100k.

Citation needed.

I work in a FAANG in London. I am a middle-performer in a non-senior position and not even a "real" software engineer (I code, but its not my main job responsibility) and I am £84K/$101K basic, £149K/$180k total-comp. If I were a proper engineer, I'd expect to get at least 15-20% more than that, and if I were promoted to a "senior" position I'd expect a similar 10-15% pay rise too.

There is money to be had in London.

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Sources: Tech recruiters in London Contacts at a bank Twitter exchanges with other developers in the capital (including ex-AWS staff) GDS ex-staff

Sounds like they are getting low-balled. I'd shop around as $100k total comp seems fairly low (although it buys more at the moment considering the GBP is so low right now) for anyone with more than 5-8 years experience.

Total comp for a middle engineer at Uber is $450k.

That would be high for London for a middle-tier engineer! Although London is just as expensive as SF in terms of living expenses, we tend to be significantly underpayed by comparison IMO. "Market forces" etc.

Does this include stock-based compensation? If so, roughly how much is cash and how much is stock (vesting within the first year)?

$230k can including bonus and $225k in RSU with can guarantee

Interesting! Is that for example:

* 150k cash base

* 80k cash bonus (between sign-on & EOY performance)

* 225k vests in the first year? 900k over 4 years?

* What's an RSU guarantee? Does it convert to cash if some price is not met by the time it vests? I couldn't find anything on Google about this, but I am probably looking in the wrong place

Do you have direct experience or knowledge of this? Cause this doesn't square with my anecdotal knowledge or my sense of the bay area labor market. For instance levels.fyi quotes total comp for mid level engineers in the 250 range, which tails much closer to Google, Facebook, etc.

Yes I do. I know someone that got this offer and recently joined. I helped them negotiate and pick offers. This was a staff engineer but the person had only 6 years of experience.

Staff (l7) is no where near middle engineer. L6 is senior, l5 is engineer and l4 is entry level. L6 is also split into two bands 6a and 6b. As a 6a my total comp is around 240 and on par with my coworkers. The l5s were closer to 200. L5 is a middle engineering level.

L6 is staff at Uber. They have this weird 5a/5b thing. Meaning Amzn/goog/fb L7 = Uber L6. Msft would probably 65/66 map to Uber L6.

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