The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you beli... (2024)

sidlls on March 11, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at B...

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you believe. It's not easy to be at the $600K total compensation level at FAANG. It's not necessarily uncommon, but it's not like the majority of engineers there are at that level. Just look at https://levels.fyi and search for a FAANG company. For example, Google's L6 total compensation average is ~$450K. L6 (the rough equivalent of principal or senior principal engineer at many, perhaps most, other companies, including the one I work for) isn't easy to achieve at Google and the vast, vast majority of SEs at Google are not making L6 compensation.

In fact, I'd wager (not assert, as I haven't actually run the numbers from levels.fyi or industry salary data), that the vast majority of Silicon Valley software engineers plateau around the $300k mark on the high end.

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you beli... (1)

zamnos on March 11, 2023 [–]

If the vast majority of Google engineers aren't earning anywhere actually near $600k, then I'd argue it's pretty freaking uncommon!

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you beli... (2)

nunez on March 11, 2023 | parent | next [–]

Someone at Google came up with this internal spreadsheet for everyone to enter their salaries and total comp into while I was there. It made the news but afaik never leaked.

That spreadsheet made very clear that salary was distributed like a Bell curve with the mean being something like $120k and total comp somewhere in the $300-400k range.

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you beli... (3)

zoover2020 on March 11, 2023 | parent | prev [–]

Not sure why Google has been used as top paying company as it has been known for a couple of years now that they tend to low-ball.

Not saying it's paying peanuts either - just be aware that anetflix for instance pays quite a lot better even.

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you beli... (4)

sidlls on March 11, 2023 | root | parent [–]

The salient point is that a $600k/year salary is uncommon or even rare even at FAANG. There are a lot of engineers who could work at a FAANG or FAANG-like company, but most of them will never see $600k/year in compensation.

Also, sure, there's a distribution of ranges at a given level across FAANG (and all tech companies, really--though I think it's bimodal in that there is "FAANG" (and FAANG-like or near-FAANG) and "everything else"). Also, Netflix has a rather unique (for the tech world) approach to employment, in that they will absolutely let someone go if their performance is even slightly off or there is a pivot in strategy (rather than, say, relocate an engineer to another team). Employment there is a riskier proposition than at other FAANG companies. They have to bake that premium into the price they pay for labor.