I do not work at any of the above. I work at a fintech company and make 80k + Bonus (Europe) with no equity (12 years experience, senior dev).
Total 2018 comp will be around 550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split if GOOG shares remain constant. Historically they have typically gone up meaningfully over the course of any given year.
The cash component includes base salary and bonus.
-What tech skills sets do you have? Do you need a MS/PhD at your level? If not, does it help?
In school we learn the standard algorithms/data structures material, but I want to expand my horizons and begin learning what is applicable to industry.
I am very curious to learn what someone at your level has skills in. I'd like to pick up something not taught in school and begin hacking away on a project that will help me... which leads to my next question
-What are good beginner resources/tutorials you recommend to learn these skill sets? Are there any good projects you can point me to?
-Just curious. Does "550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split" mean you make ~247,000 base + ~302,500 in stock options? I am not too familiar with how compensation is broken down.
The algorithms stuff is useful. More useful than it seems. It comes up often in many engineering jobs. Perhaps more importantly at your stage in life, it will get you an internship.
Do internships. If you miss the one you really want, think hard about why, then try again. Internships are the best place to start into my next piece of advice.
Specialize in something valuable while you're in school or once you start into your career. Jobs I might look for if I were entering the work force today:
- Image processing or other noisy data handling.
- Robotics, especially something requiring interdisciplinary skills like control theory.
- Deep learning techniques are all the rage; you'll be much more useful if you understand how they work and can build novel topologies. Being taken seriously here will likely require a portfolio (maybe graduate work).
- Systems programming is an unending hellscape of horrible problems. Some people seem to enjoy it.
- If you have a knack for it, security. It takes a certain deviousness to think of new ways to misuse things. It takes a wizard to do something like Meltdown and Spectre.
It doesn't really matter what you become a domain expert in as long as it's valuable. It does matter that you don't treat "domain expert" as a fixed target.
In terms of extracurricular work, find an open source project that's got engagement from companies with lots of senior people (Kubernetes would be a good example, it has many very talented people working on it). Fix open bugs. Fix the onboarding experience. Start with trivial things and go from there. Don't get dismayed when you end up with hundreds of review comments, that's how you learn.
Regarding compensation, the split is approximate. The cash is both salary and an annual bonus paid out in January. The stock is actual stock, not options, so every month some number of Google shares show up in my brokerage.
At what level do most engineers plateau at Google (meaning most people are unable to go past it)?
Senior (one level below Staff) is deemed "career level," and if you just want to build stuff it's a good place to stop. Staff involves a much more substantial leadership and coordination component, and that requires both the skill and desire to take on that sort of work.
[1]: I believe this is a relatively normal entry point for people either just out of school or with 1-2 years experience.
Grew up interested in computers, learned a little BASIC.
Took two intro CS courses during undergrad at an Ivy League school, but majored in the humanities.
Years later, attended a bootcamp.
None of this took place in MA.
Currently 100k + 5k (bonuses, i've gotten 20k bonuses here in the past but those days are gone). Roughly 35-40 hrs/week with only two week-long crunch times in about 3 years.
I currently have offers for 135k + worthless equity (startup) and 110k (non tech company). Waiting to hear back about a Systems Engineer role offering in the 100-125k range (hot tech company).
Part of changing gigs at the moment is to plan to take on additional work on the side to increase my compensation. Not possible in my current role.
I started off making 60k as a developer and not even that long ago...proving value added 40k on to my salary quickly, but honestly I negotiated poorly. I left at least 25k on the table starting.
For level comparison at different companies, lots of people point to http://levels.fyi
Here is a compensation poll for amazon employees only based on job title and level with 161 responses: https://goo.gl/V9QKHh
The total compensation rages I have heard for Amazon are 145k for new grads, 170k-230k for SDE 2, 250k-350k for SDE 3, 400k-600k for principal engineers. There are 2 more levels after that but have not really seen any data for those levels.
Here are Facebook's total compensation numbers quoted from "fmwf":
E3: 107K-125 Salary, 40k stocks a year, 10% bonus.
E4: 140k-160k Salary, 70k stocks a year, 10% bonus.
E5: 170k-195k Salary, 120k stocks a year, 15% bonus.
E6: 200k-220k Salary, 200k stocks a year, 20% bonus.
All Facebook numbers assuming expected performance if you kill expectations you get more (25%-200% more shares).
Also from said forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFIC...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984
For reference, Google's ladder goes: SWE II -> SWE III -> Senior SWE -> Staff SWE -> Senior Staff SWE -> Principal -> Distinguished.
I really dig the gig, they treat me like an employee but pay me like a contractor. I tend to take 5-6 weeks of time off (unpaid) so I tend to make $160,000-165,000 at the end of the year.
My background is about 10 years of tech experience. Working on React currently. CS degree.
Total comp (base + bonus + stock + signing bonus amortized over 4 years) is 185k. Higher than expected because of recent stock increases & I negotiated with competing offers.
TC next year will be closer to 200k.
(throwaway account)
34 years old, approx 7 years experience. MS stack.
$125k plus annual bonus of approx $9-10k. 2019 hoping annual salary pushes the $135k mark.
ETA: 5yrs exp, Dev III in logistics; $95K/year, ~$6k in stock, insurance fully paid by company.
I wrote about my bad experience at one of the company I interned for. Some PR from the company comment on my review, I knew the PR guy cuz he goes around doing it to other reviews there and create fake reviews.
Anyway, I call him out on it said he's using ad hominem for one of his tactic in the comment. Other users comment and back my report up.
After a few week glassdoor deleted my comment and the comments that back me up, they left the PR guy comment up. I wish I could have screen shot it.
Eventually they did away with the comment system.
I don't trust them at all.
There are aggregate surveys from O'Reily and stackoverflow. I think it's pretty decent. O'Reily doesn't give raw data for their data science survey so I couldn't do any survey analysis to confirm it but they release their linear regression model.
Sounds like that was a positive step, wasn't it? Getting rid of the system that allowed the company to comment on your review?
This post is to get a (however small) current sample and it is purely to help me evaluate a couple of opportunities, no commercial interest whatsoever.
Here's what (I think) is important to know to help you -
Role
Your years of experience
Size/function of org, assuming you don't want to name the companies
Public, or Private (and what stage)
Base
RSU or Options w/ offer
Annual Bonus potential
I'm sure you don't want to entirely out yourself, but some of that info will help you get better answers.
A Developer will make anywhere between £35k and £50k depending on experience (this matches with what I saw when I was looking for a job a year ago)
I would make around 240k if my initial stock grants hadn’t nearly doubled in value since I joined. I will probably actually make less money once my 4 year grant runs out, all things being equal.
5 years total experience.
Base salary: 190k / yr base salary, ~6k / yr performance bonus
Equity Grant: ~$125k stock grant, vesting twice in four years, so ~$31k/yr stock presuming I stay for all four years
So - total annual compensation (excluding healthcare benefits and our 6% 401k match) is about $216k annually.
Also, I’m curious; I read figures like $400-600k... Is that actual salary you see on your wage slip or wrapped up in that are things like healthcare that you never “see” normally?
I’m curious because these figures are astonishingly high and I’m wondering 1) how on earth do startups find devs 2) how on earth there’s any developers over 30 when you can become a millionaire and retire early.
Do you have any idea if smaller companies and govt research labs sponsor?
205k total, 45k from stock
Is it possible to go from new grad -> first job -> Google? By that progression I mean what sort of background is required language/stack/etc aside from studying and practicing?
Also, which country in EU?
And Ireland. :)
Hi from Amazon's shit tier.
* How can I get an interview? It seems simply sending my resume through the online portal will not work because I don't have a stellar academic record or much experience.
* How can I figure out what to apply for? I have experience in UI but does google even do that? I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around. But I don't really care what I work on.
* How and how long should I prepare for the interview? I am working through the Cormen's algorithms book but I don't really have a solid CS education. And I hear that they just want you to know everything. So should I just go back to school?
* I have heard that one way is to participate and excel in coding competitions. Should I then focus my entire energy on this front? Or will this be misguided?
I wouldn't recommend going back to school. You already have a Master's in Physics, which should give you all the math background you need to understand CS algos. I'd even encourage you to start to "translate" your Physics knowledge into code.
Google, FB, Microsoft, et. al. are more concerned with your ability to explain CS concepts at a whiteboard than your degrees.
Have you considered SpaceX? http://www.spacex.com/careers/list
They are usually very interested in cross discipline candidates.
Once you are there, I'd say the best way would be to find someone in your network who works at google, and get referred. If you don't know anyone, make contacts through various channels.
Is this you personal experience?
I know for a fact that almost no one I interviewed with bothered to look at github. Some even admitted that asking for github is just a formality and that they don't have time or resources to evaluate it objectively.
I also concur that getting a referral from an any employee that you might meet is the better than just blindly sending in your resume, though not as good as a strong referral (i.e. someone you've had direct experience working with before). You will get more attention from the HR side and the employee referring you will have a better idea of what teams will be relevant than the HR people will.
If you think you have talent in that area you could spend the next two years working in that area, then apply
> I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around
Be careful with that kool-aid, it's toxic in high doses.
Considering how many times we've warned you before about posting comments that break the HN guidelines, I should probably ban your account for this. But we'll give you another chance. Please don't break the guidelines again, if you want to keep commenting here.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why European developers earn significantly less than virtually all their American counterparts, even in high cost of living areas (like Scandinavia)
I do understand you specified you work for a startup, but even at one of the many established regional consultancies dev salaries tend to cap out at around $90K IME.
Is it the lack of lucrative VC funding, the prevailing sense of egalitarianism at all costs, the abundance of (comparatively) well paid middle managers, all of the above or something else entirely?
edit : changed wording
As an example: would you tell a colleague "on the same level" as you that you're making $300k, when he is making $50 or $100k? That's either 1) an excellent way to get fired, because now everyone wants $300k, or 2) an excellent way to piss off your colleagues. They will start looking for a new gig immediately.
I agree though that we would, on average, be better off if all of us agreed to share salaries publicly.
First: because it is socially unacceptable.
In the US culture, talking about one's salary is taboo. It is rather as if someone were to post naked pictures. Sure, you are an enlightened person and you probably wouldn't hold it against them. Much. But you'd find it a bit weird. Americans try hard to hold to the illusion of a classless society and treating everyone equally, and hiding salary is an important way to do this. It also allows people to not feel cheated, if they don't realize that others are making more than they are.
Secondly: because my company might not like it.
US labor law actually REQUIRES that employees be permitted to discuss their salary with each other, which is why companies do not forbid discussing it, and to be clear: my company does NOT have any policy against discussing salary. But it is to the company's advantage to be a bit vague about salaries. Cynically one could say that this permits them to pay each individual the minimum they can get away with without having to deal with a sense that this is unfair. As a representative of my company, they would probably prefer that I talk about work conditions and company culture rather than specific numbers about the salary we pay.
If I were a more suspicious person I’d chalk it up to a cabal of employers trying to suppress wages...
* Avoiding jealousy from people that might know the poster * Avoiding becoming a target for scammers or kidnappers
Also why does HN not support basic formatting?
I respect your decision not wanting to discuss your salary publicly. May I suggest a throwaway? :)