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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

What a lot of these types of articles seems to miss out on (other than just being out of date, not including equity, flexibility on CoL) is upside potential.

Senior engineers should be making $250-450K including equity in the Bay Area. As long as you’re somewhere in the middle of that, which isn’t that hard, you should be doing pretty great. And if you’re really good, $600K+ is possible, or $1M+ if you take the management route.

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This makes me strongly consider moving to the Bay Area. My wife has family there, and we love the city. I've climbed up in pay very quickly here in Salt Lake City which still puts me ridiculously lower than Bay Area salaries. Cost of living is obviously way lower, but $500k in San Francisco would give me a much higher quality of life than $150k in SLC which is about the max around here unless you have a niche skill. A friend of mine just accepted a role as VP of Engineering at a very successful startup and he's not quite cracked $200k.

Options around here are so pathetic that in the best case scenario after your options vest you might be able to pay cash for a brand new Kia Sorento.

My only concern is work life balance. In Utah it's pretty uncommon to find a company where people work over 40 hours a week. This is nice, but I'd like to become "wealthy" and I'm not sure how to do that as a Software Engineer here without starting my own company.

Netflix & Google work-life balance is actually pretty good. Amazon it's very variable - some teams have decent hours, others work you to the bone. Apple has a reputation for preventing engineers from having a life, though it might've gotten better since Steve Jobs died. Facebook is probably similar to Apple overall - you work harder than at Google, and also have less time for reflection (Facebook is all about metrics and hitting the numbers).

I would shop around and see if you can get an offer from a FAANG or Bay Area growth company before moving out, though. They'll often pay your relocation, and it's a lot less stressful than moving out, paying Bay Area rents, and hoping you get a job without any firm commitments.

Also beware of down-leveling. People who have not previously worked at a FAANG or hot growth company often take a title demotion (but salary bump) when moving to one of them. I've heard of folks - in the Bay Area, but at a bank rather than a tech company - going from being a Director with ~20 people under them to an IC at Facebook (but making more money), and of people being VPs at their previous company but going back to being an IC to work at Stripe. If you were a senior-level engineer making $150K at SLC you might get a mid-level engineer position at a FANG for maybe $250K, which is basically a wash after CoL adjustments (actually probably a step back in quality of life, because Bay Area housing & traffic is so terrible). But then you have a FANG on your resume, and you can either stick with it and get promoted into those $500K-$1M roles once you get back into management & senior engineering, or you can turn it into a very senior engineering or leadership position at an up & coming startup.

This hits the nail on the head. For a strong performer at mid-level stock+bonus should be equal to salary. For a senior equity exceeds salary by six figures.

Moving to the Bay area is still one of the best financial decisions Ive ever made. It helps that the work is way more fulfilling too.

Thanks for the note! Looking back on it, I probably would have use levels.fyi and tried to construct an analysis that would account for how salary grows over time in different regions but c'est la vie.

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