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Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

He sites $165k average for senior engineers (which seems accurate), but its important to note the higher salaries as well - I have friends at Google who are making over $300k. In terms of the worth of a software engineer, the former company I worked at used to bill $150/hour (roughly equivalent to $300k/year salary) in the mobile space. I think that this is more likely a trend though - I don't see it being that sustainable but who knows.

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Aren't you conflating base with total comp here? $150/hour consulting is $300K at 2,000 hours / year. But if that's $300K base for your friends, then the total is likely way above $500K (bonuses, stocks...) He did say base $165K on average though, which sounds too high, TBH. Surely total comp average can be above that, but base?

That was for a Sr. engineer (so not unreasonable), and keep in mind he's advertising his ability to place high-end talent.

$150k base for a guru-level talent in Austin is very reasonable. I'd expect somewhere around double that to adjust for the cost of living in San Fransisco.

This concept is something I cannot even fathom. My base salary has never been less than 95% of my total compensation. How common is this?

Pretty common. At mid levels (senior manager, director), base is ~50% of total. At senior levels (VP, CxO), base is less than 25%. At the extreme (CEOs of major corps), base is negligible (e.g. Costello's base is $14k out of a total of ~$8.7 mm).

I need to change my calculus then. Thanks.

If you add in data science or other technical knowledge, then the price stays high for the reasonably foreseeable future. That is, maybe the rate for iOS programming alone goes down quickly, but proper systems engineering that might also require an understanding of futures markets or Reynolds numbers will almost certainly stay expensive.

I think this upper end is a lot more interesting than the mean. I'd love to see data on what the distribution in the upper percentiles of software engineers and engineering managers looks like, especially compared to traditionally high-paying professions like finance, law, medicine, etc.

The trends appear to be the combination of the demand generated by increasing technology in our every day lives and a supply shortage of tech knowledge workers. I personally don't see the demand for tech falling anytime soon and, optimistically, the supply will take several years to train people with the proper skills to adequately fill these roles

You could find consultants and firms billing $150/hour in the middle of the country during the post-dotcom years. That's not remotely as surprising as $300k/year salary.

well BMW dealers charge out labour at a very high rate (150 ph hour in central London in 2004) but the actual mechanic doesn't see anything like that in his pay check.

For information back in 2000 the internal Day rate for BT in systems engineering was £300 and the rate for top tier integrators at the time was around the £600-900

Any recommendations for how a new to the valley engineer gets on to this salary track? Is it hard won negotiations?

Step 1: Don't believe his numbers

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