Ask HN: Is 170k a good salary for a software developer in Seattle?
I have been offered a job in Seattle that will pay 170k in total comp. I have 10 yrs of experience in software dev. Another competing offer was from Facebook but I declined it because they wanted me to join at in one level down than my current role.
I am 31 and don't have kids.I plan to marry next year. My wife may or may not work.
If I move to Seattle, what are hobbies I can pursue? I heard its usually gets very cold in winter. I haven't made up my mind but I found a place near UW for $1400 per month.
What are your thoughts?
90 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadThere's tons of good hiking in the seattle area along with boating.
170K is pretty good.
It's pretty demoralizing to go to work and leave work in complete darkness for days on end.
Meanwhile, the rain alternates between actual rain and misting constantly from September until May.
I actually prefer the Pittsburgh weather with its four seasons.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/seattle?month=12&year=20...
But keep in mind that the definitions of sunrise and sunset here do not include dawn and dusk -- at 4 PM, the sun has _completely_ set, which means that at 3 PM, it's already well into starting to set.
Those are clouds. The sun is still there - you just can't see it.
It's not raining either, those are just water droplets condensing from the clouds.
Only 1 out of 10 days is sunny:
http://imgur.com/a/BhTbn
Here is San Jose, California's (8 out of 10 days are sunny):
http://imgur.com/a/CPAbM
The only bad days for me would be never seeing the sun at all.
No it does not. I grew up in Vancouver, and the latest sunrise is at around 8 am, and sunset at 4 pm.
My first software job was with a big tech company and the stock only went down after I joined. So my stock options were worthless even 10 years later.
Problem with Seattle is that only few of the area's are HIP, most of Seattle is BOEING or DEFENSE ( ex-mil ), very conservative, and Seattle has it Barrios all over, which means NOT safe, or clean to go out at night. Most of PDX is safe, also PDX doesn't have as bad traffic problems.
If you can live near the Univ-of-Wash, that is best, and do a startup and hang out with other creative CS type, like the guy say's, if your just going to work for Microsoft, Amazon, or any other BIG-BOX in SEA your life will suck shit bad. The happy guys I know are working on the islands off shore of seattle, and work from home remote, mostly for SV companys', all making over $200k/year.
Winter light at 8am, dark at 5pm, summer light at 4am, dark at midnight, puget sound islands ferry system, if you manage to work downtown, taking the ferry to bainbridge can off a real nice lifestyle, that said if your high-tech for $180k, then I assume your working 18 hrs/day 8 days a week :), and it doesn't matter where you live or what you do, as you will never have a life,
If you have a life, then san-juan islands most nice, close by skiing in mountains all year round the music scene in seattle is AWESOME so is nightlife.
Seattle traffic started to suck in 1975, now its insane. Certain places like Bellevue where Microsoft live, are like chandler Arizona with rain, ugly boring, mono-culture, again you must live/work downtown near the Univ-of-Wash, or else you will be having to drive everytime U wish to have-fun. Driving means you will have to find a parking place, think san-francisco,
You $180k don't mean shit in seattle a shit house is $1M, and a condo up there too, sure buy stuff why not, the only way to 'keep' money is real-estate you have already figured out that 'stock' is for suckers. Your $180k will not get you much in Seattle, but if you try to commute you will go insane, even 10miles out in Seattle can mean 4 hours a day sitting in traffic, for instance east/west from Bellevue there is only one narrow bridge,
Your married, so I can't give the good, the women are plentiful, beautiful and easy, so if your single PDX/SEA are most EXCELLENT. If your married I would advise working downtown, and living on Bainbridge Isl, buy a house, and when you go out at night just take the ferry into town, and then stay on the 'island' on the weekend's, if you can.
What's so amazing about them?
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_State_Ferries
> The agency maintains the largest fleet of ferries in the United States at 22 vessels, carrying 23 million passengers in 2014. As of 2014 , it was the largest ferry operator in the United States, and the fourth-largest ferry system in the world.
* https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/seattle-senior-software-e...
> because they wanted me to join at in one level down than my current role.
As you move between companies of larger or smaller sizes, to/from different countries, between industries and the public/private sector, I think you might be doing yourself a disservice by being too focused on a specific title or rank.
I do know people who happily paid both back to get out of there.
Obviously like any tech giant work life balance and general experience varies from team to team.
Just to broadly say that amazon is a terrible organisation to work for is a disservice to devs.
I personally know people who work and Amazon and have experiences ranging the spectrum from Amazing to terrible, it depends a lot on on the team you work with and the managers that you have.
Amazon pays pretty well, but people will have to work hard for it.
I had no reason to stay as I have multiple masters degrees and Amazon, along with a PIP, was offering 0% raise and no RSU's after delivering a multi-million dollar project.
https://blog.step.com/2016/04/08/an-open-source-project-for-...
it's pretty useful to judge if your comp is inline with others.
I think the bigger concern should be whether you will live and be happy with the lifestyle that you are currently accustomed to with the dollar amounts involved (live and save).
170K is certainly competitive, don't get me wrong. And in my brief visits there it looks like a very nice place to make a home. But there's a very personal aspect to relocation and money is a big part of it.
If you are looking to have kids, does that salary put you in a position to live in a large enough place that is a reasonable distance in an area with a good school district? I don't know, but I do know that it's plenty for that in a lot of areas and not nearly enough in others. People without children don't really understand how much a desirable school district affects the cost of housing.
There's also the question of relocation expenses, how they get paid, how it affects your taxes, and what term they commit you to.
My advice would be to take a two week trip with the idea of spending the entirety of it looking at areas to live both currently and in the future.
I found a good calculator here: http://www.areavibes.com/cost-of-living-calculator/ I used something similar during my own relocation and found it to be a decent guideline (I'm sure most of these calculators use a common dataset).
Once you do the initial comparison, click into your current location, adjust the salary, and re-compare to get the right numbers. Look at the detail of how your area appears and use that as a basis for understanding the statistical impression it has of Seattle.
Rent for most software folks is $1600-2500, the UW district is cheaper since it's a notch down from other areas. Ballard or Capitol Hill would be better, that or Ravina or Freemont. All great places for 30-something yuppies.
Depends on where you're coming from to say whether you'll like the weather, but it's not cold in Seattle, it has a lot of overcast and drizzly days though. Folks that like the weather here appreciate the mildness, not too hot and not cold. Outdoor stuff galore, lots of mountain related stuff, craft everything foodie scene, nerd gaming galore.
Yeah they would. They'd probably earn much more.
http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
That's what they say in every 1:1 but when you get to see how the sausage is made in the annual OLR you quickly realize that people who are deemed to have no hope of getting promoted to PE end up in the bottom right or middle right boxes of the infamous "9 box" ranking grid and are given hints to move on. Most people in that position move on anyway, as they end up getting low or no RSU refreshes due to their low "growth potential" (one of the 3 ratings that are used in the stack ranking process - the other two are communicated to the employee but the growth potential is not).
I can think of very, very few SDE3s I came across at Amazon who had 12+ years of experience, and of those some did eventually get promoted to PE. I feel fairly confident in saying you won't find any statistically significant number of SDE3s with "a lot more than 10 years there".
[0]: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/seattle/
I'm co-founder of a local startup here w/~140 people and that's pretty comparable/above average to what I've seen depending on the cash/equity split. The big co's (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, et. al) will be higher than average due to the nature of how hard it is to hire good folks here.
Seattle is fantastic for people that enjoy the outdoors - hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, ski/snowboarding, camping. The closest ski/snow area is 45 minutes from the city. It doesn't get _too_ cold in Seattle proper - usually around 40° F. The nice thing is that you have the mountains nearby, so if you do want the cold weather it's a quick trip.
One word of caution around UW - your age is definitely on the higher end of other people that will be living in that area. Although the rents are cheap, that's usually for a reason. Reddit is a great resource for info on moving to Seattle --> https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/wiki/index
Winter is definitely colder than the bay area, but in the three years I was there it only snowed once. UW is fun and there's a lot of good places to eat on the cheap up there, but as it is near a university expect a young crowd.
I loved the city overall though. Good music/food/living, great summers, amazing hiking in the area. Really close to Portland as well which is just a bouquet of culture.
$1400/mo rent isn't too bad for that part of town, no matter the square footage. It's not a steal, but I've had friends pay double for 2 bedrooms that were awful.
No state income tax which is awesome- moving back to Oregon was a real kick in the tax bill after being away for a few years.
Seattle is a fun city that doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to live well in. But you can make it as expensive as you want it to be.
I've only been gone a few months and miss all the meetups for any tech you might want to talk about.
Economy up here is in the toilet thanks to the price of oil so looking for a job is terrifying.
I need to find a remote gig... Or leave the state with the intention of moving back in a year.
I have the feeling that I'm shorting myself quite a bit, maybe by $30K or more according to the salaries I researched several years ago for similar roles (full-stack dev minus visual design) in the same town.
My problem is I got comfortable. I get along with the boss and other employees (and one of them has been there almost as long as I have!), and am afforded some perks that are very useful, such as flexible hours, private office, no supervisor (just the boss/owner), etc.
And, due to being "comfortable", I haven't pushed for occasional raises or seriously shopped around for better positions. In fact, I think the only reason I wrote this was for it to act as an attempt to nudge myself away from "comfortable".
TLDR: don't get too comfortable.
Perhaps a less entitled way of phrasing the question would have been "Is 170k an appropriate salary for a software dev in Seattle?" I think my issue is with the implication that 170k might not be a good salary to maintain high standard of living.
As tech workers with the potential to earn these large sums, we should be aware of our privilege, and cognizant of how the rest of the population lives.
I would still argue this comprises the minority in HN.
To prevent misunderstanding, we've inserted "for a software developer" into the title above.
The real guilt should be in not being paid what you are worth for too long.
Seeking greener pastures and getting compensated in line with what you're worth should be celebrated!
OP, shoot for 200k+ and I'd suggest going to Facebook. I'm confident their stock will do wonders in the coming years and they have very interesting problems due to scale.
First, you made a big mistake in turning down FB because "you would be one level lower." I know those levels seem like a big deal when you're working for those promotions, but ultimately, they really don't matter. The only things that really matter: how much are they paying you, what will you be working on, and how is it going to affect your future career prospects. From a salary perspective, I'm sure FB would have offered you more, if nothing else, purely through additional leverage for negotiating. From a career perspective, having the Facebook brand on your resume, and the contacts you'll make there, would have helped your future prospects immensely. Compared to these benefits, being "one level lower" is pretty meaningless.
Second, given that you're someone smart/accomplished enough to get an offer from FB, and have 10 years of SW experience, 170k seems low. Check out the other HN threads about salaries at top software companies. Plenty of people with similar or less qualifications report total comps of 250k. That's the level of comp you should realistically be shooting for.
Third, even if 170k is "lower than you deserve", that's irrelevant. The only question worth asking is whether 170k is better than your next best option. Go find a cost-of-living calculator and you can easily figure out whether 170k in Seattle beats your current salary-location. In an ideal world, they will give you 3 months to make a decision, and during this time, you can go interview with all the other major companies, in order to find a better offer. Realistically, since you've already turned down FB and the other companies will have long interview timelines, you don't have the time for this. If the 170k offer is better than your current situation, just accept it, and you can then reevaluate your situation 2 years from now.
Also, some smaller tech companies will inflate titles to try to compete for talent. Like I met someone who's a VP of engineering, they have a total team size of 2. That's not the same as a VP at Facebook. If that guy got an offer for one level lower, that would be a huge step up.
Regarding your other questions: You can pursue the same indoor hobbies as anywhere else obviously. Outdoors-wise, we have some of the best hiking in the world, great ski/snowboarding locally and ~4 hrs to Whistler for world-class, and sea kayaking right out the door. There are is also a very strong cycling community here, though the road biking is more obvious than the mountain biking. If you're willing to drive a bit further on weekends, there's also world-class wind surfing and white water kayaking.
As for "very cold in winter" - it rarely gets very cold, but then I grew up in eastern Canada so maybe my reference is skewed. The coldest it gets with any regularity is low 40s/high 30s. What may be more concerning in terms of winter conditions is that fact that we get extended periods of cloudy weather and shorter day light hours compared to the bay area which some people find depressing.
Other than that if you have a woman, i heard there'll be alot of dudes that will try to take her from ya, but that is minor issue compared to going to Seattle area single.
Also, I hope it is not one of the drone corps... They will use you up then spit you out and sell your job to the Indians.
forget hobbies and the weather. you and your significant other need to sit down and work out an understanding of each other's career goals, and especially whether you plan to have kids.
i am less familiar with seattle's cost of living, but for SF/NYC for example, 170k/year will come with significant lifestyle tradeoffs to be worked out (e.g., in terms of size of home, commute time, public/private school); obviously two-income will come with its own set of decisions to be made as well.. it's worth talking all this over now.