For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely responsible for anything above that.
[1] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-en...
This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engineer at a sleepy regional bank is nowhere near talented enough to make it at a fast-paced, hyper-growth venture backed startup.
If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "lower than average skill".
Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers from a wide variety of regions.
When you hire as much of the industry as those companies do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it would be near impossible not to have a big distribution of talent within them.
But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend towards being good at the job. And I’ll stand by my anecdotal opinion.
I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.
And if certain geographical locations are known for being places where the chances of making a lot more money are significantly higher, then I would say the skill level of people there is probably higher on average. The proof would be the numerous leading companies and products coming out of these places.
Of course, those locations can change, and maybe widespread access to broadband will cause that to change that or reduce benefits of agglomeration. But it remains to be seen.
I for one have made more money in finance than valley style tech. That may change one day but there _also_ was no correlation in the finance firms for quality.
And while I personally do not know people’s financial histories, I can say that the part of my college class that went to tech seem to work far less than the part that went to finance. Even if gross income is similar, I doubt that $/hour worked, or the risk was better in finance than in tech over the past 15 to 20 years.
That isn’t to knock finance, it’s just my interpretation of the reality of how much access to broadband and advancements in certain technologies have underlined much of our economic growth.
How do you know? I've worked with extremely talented engineers from all over the globe at this point, 20+ years in. Do you think all the engineers in San Francisco were born there?
You would never guess where I'm living, and it's not San Francisco. I'd love to, but I'm waiting for tech to recede a bit and a sense of normalcy to return.