I don’t know if I’m misreading it but did OP include the value of the options or did they just leave them unexercised? Box did IPO, and obviously Yahoo was liquid the entire time.
What was the total compensation be like with these numbers?
The message buried is: stock options, even of large companies are most of the time worthless. The exceptions are a position at a company that strikes it big, or safe bets such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. The latter also have the advantage that once you do have stock you can relatively easily dispose of it if you want to.
Box IPOed at $14/share but spiked to $23/share on the first day of trading. Assuming 50K shares (and ignoring the strike price / any upfront cost he might have paid), total additional compensation was ~$700K to $1.150M.
first day of trading makes no difference whatsoever. Employees are usually locked in for about 6 months, by which point the stock will have probably crashed to below IPO levels
You can make a pretty good guess at strike price from Box's financing history. They raised a Series F in 2013 at $2B post. There are currently 141M shares outstanding, of which 12.5M were offered in the IPO and roughly 10% of the company (13M) shares was sold in the Series F & Series G, so figure 120M shares outstanding at the time of his option grant. That implies a strike price between about $10 (@ the $1.225 Jul 2012 Series E valuation) and $17 (@ the Dec 2013 Series F valuation).
At the end of the 6-month lockup Box's shares were worth $17, so that would imply his options were anywhere from +$175K (he'd only have vested half of them, with standard 4-year grants) to just slightly underwater. If he held to the $28 peak this May, he'd be anywhere from +$500K -> +$900K, but if he kept holding them, he could potentially be underwater today. It's a nice additional bonus (particularly if he got in at the Series E valuation), but not enough to make one rich.
Wow. It's very interesting to see the salary numbers of the one author whose book jump-started my engineering career. Given his depth of knowledge and his penchant for imparting the said knowledge, I'm actually surprised he wasn't making more. I guess without his health issues, the numbers would likely have been higher. Here's hoping for his quick recovery.
Lyme is a terrible disease, more so depending on how long you've had it undiagnosed. I have a case close by that is frankly disturbing to watch, can't imagine what the person is feeling like inside. It's an occupational disease for anybody in the wood processing industry in countries such as Poland.
That's the thing... most of the information in this thread is useless besides when it's categorized regionally. Some of the salaries posted here appear epic, but could be not that impressive relative to the area.
The pay rates for tradies in Australia is phenomenal. If I had kids, I'd be encouraging them to become electricians, not software engineers.
Even a lot of unskilled jobs pay really well in Australia. I have a friend who works for Aldi in their distribution centre as a general worker, and he's on $35 per hour (only 6 hour shifts though, I think), plus when he's rostered on Sunday he goes up to $70 an hour.
Anecdotally, as a software developer in Melbourne for a small company, with 2 years experience, I'm on AU$75k + super, which is a pretty comfortable wage. Coming from NZ$42k (and only 3% super) back in New Zealand, it was certainly a nice payrise.
<<I have a friend who works for Aldi in their distribution centre as a general worker, and he's on $35 per hour (only 6 hour shifts though, I think), plus when he's rostered on Sunday he goes up to $70 an hour.
And developers can certainly make over 100/hr, but in my experience that would mean contracting/consulting as a specialist with at least 5 years experience in a given technology.
(in melbourne) $4 a coffee for fancy cafes in expensive parts of town. $0 a coffee if you dont care and are happy to swig whatever is free at work.
can certainly hit $aud 100 / hour and upwards for full-time contract gigs with bigcos (banks, finance, telcos). can hit that with less than 5 years experience.
if the client knows what they're doing they may also assess for ability, not just years experience. but at least some big clients don't know what they're doing and are overrun with whatever resources of varying ability bodyshops manage to palm off onto their projects.
Private companies are probably more likely to account for actual experience. I've mostly dealt with government contracting where 5 years seemed to be the magic threshold.
Oz has a fairly hard and low dev salary ceiling for smaller companies, excepting maybe some Melbourne hotspots. If you want decent scratch you have to go corporate, but the content often sucks.
I think the reason for that is American tech companies simply make a lot more money. They have a bigger market to server and USA first makes it easier to conquer the rest of the world, but Australia first normally ends up sandboxed in Australia, with some exceptions. The companies selling internationally will tend to pay more, as well as the cartels e.g. the banks, super, etc.
Likewise, living in Melbourne Australia, I dropped out of school after year 11, tried an mechanical apprenticeship for a year but didn't like it so I started freelancing (Javascript) in 2013.
2013 $20k (freelance) 100+ clients
2014 $75k (salary + super) 100+ employees
2015 $70k (salary + super) ~50 employees
2016 $120k (freelance) 8 clients
2017 $70k (salary + super) 3 employees
2018 $90k (salary + super) ~15 employees
2016 was by far my best year, still living at home (with parents) and after tax almost all of it went into savings.
At this stage I plan negotiating for $120k after christmas which I think is inline with my peers.
And for those talking about $4 coffee's, most places I know give discount if you BYO cup!
I always get called elitist/out-of-touch when I point this out, but it's really true that most people working in trades do $50k with mediocre benefits.
Everyone always lashes out at this with anecdata, but both the hard data from Labor and the 15+ datapoints I have personally all seem to agree that $60k is "really good", and that's with overtime. Statistically, for every wealthy plumber/small business owner pulling down 100k+, there are a lot of folks pulling down $50k or less working for the man.
Other downsides: The trades are extremely sensitive to certain types of recessions. And most trades are hard on your body. Plumber is actually one of the better trades from that perspective. Even stuff like welding and machining, which outsides think of as less hard on your body, are usually brutal. If the setup was such that they don't need you carrying stuff, going up and down stairs, etc. all day -- ie. if you could just stand in one place and weld/cnc without doing back-breaking labor -- then they'd have automated the work already.
This might all be specific to the two labor markets I know most well, but... sigh for smart kids, going to college for an in-demand STEM degree is still a great life choice and probably much higher ROI than a trade. And saying so isn't elitist.
Driving truck also seems to do better over the past two decades than most trades. Still sensitive to recessions, but much less so. None of my trucker relatives/friends have had bouts of unemployment since 2008, but all the construction and manufacturing trades have been in and out of work pretty much continually since 2009 (maybe things got better around late 2015)
If college isn't for your kids, have them also consider healthcare. Might be more stable during recessions and less hard on their body. The only downside is that there are fewer options for entrepreneurial endeavors than in the trades. Also, outside of large cities, there's only one or two dominant employers and that holds down wages. But the same is true in tech and trades.
I have found the HN crowed has a rosey view on trade jobs that doesn't seem to reflect reality. Family members of mine are employed primarily by trades (lots of plumbers, some carpenters and electrician's) and a lot of what you say is spot on. There are certainly cases where they can make a lot of money, but it's definitely not easy not a golden ticket that I see a lot of HN comments make it out to be.
In Australia which this reply chain is about trades get paid exceptionally well if you have a successful business operation (not working for someone else). There's simply an oversupply of university graduates and a very liberal visa program for IT workers. Most tradies here have their own business so any income figures are highly misleading. As an example he may earn 65k on his tax retrun but his wife does the "accounts" (65k goes there too) + the cash jobs that they don't declare on tax. A good tradie can earn 150k easy and pay less tax than the average office worker due to clever business accounting. And there's always work; and none of those "horror" stories you hear about software interviews here on HN and other sites.
My comment was specific to the USA and maybe even certain parts of the USA.
> Most tradies here have their own business
Maybe this really is true in Australia. IDK. People say this a lot in the USA, but both statistics and personal anecdata indicate it's complete bullshit. Starting a business is hard. Getting the money to start up is hard. Handling cash flow is hard. Handling everything from deadbeat clients to litigious clients is hard.
> + the cash jobs that they don't declare on tax.
Software engineers can also make $$$ by committing tax fraud and other crimes.
It's not criminal per se. It's all in the law - they just aren't perks available to the typical employee. The cash jobs are but they're in a business where they can get this; a typical engineer can't ask to be paid in cash from a large corporate client even if they are freelance. In Australia it isn't that hard - people often can't get tradies here and as a tradie you are spoilt with calls for work. I personally know some pretty rude tradies that constantly get work anyway despite doing bad work. Getting a tradie to travel more than 5km to do work around my house depending on the trade is hard; they have enough work within a 5 K radius not to bother. They can charge what they like and typically do. Especially for the top end of town.
Funny you should say that. So here's my situation: college diploma (massage, 2005-07), BSc (bio/psych, 2007-11), MSc (psych, 2013-15), MSc (econ/bus, 2018-19)... and yet my main money-maker continues to be massage because:
1. $110 CAD ($83 USD)/h
2. I set my own schedule, both weekly and time off (self-employed).
3. Zero stress: no one's ever stressed coming in, and I get to directly help people in pain. These people tend to be very neat and I have an hour to get to know them and the interesting lives they lead. It's very fulfilling.
Since starting my current practice in Vancouver six years ago I've made $300,000 CAD ($230,000 USD) total, working an average of 3.5 months/year (or, more accurately, averaging 8 months/year, 3.5 days/week). It's paid off my BSc student loan and covered an expensive MSc that I was able to finance while simultaneously completing it full-time in Europe for two years. I'm now able to turn my focus to helping my family get out of debt.
I should add that I've worked the same in Toronto, Nova Scotia, Montreal, and Yellowknife, and nowhere was it this good. I'm also quite good at what I do and am a real people person -- these are key. And a white male as well, but our clinic is made up primarily of ladies who make the same as me, just less in total as I work longer -- 8-10h compared to their 5-7h days.
I'm so happy this conversation was started. I wish I could have read this post before diving headlong into student loan debts the first decade of my adult life.
Rent: Sydney is maybe 50% more expensive. There is no council tax in Sydney, and the houses are bigger.
Food: In Sydney, groceries are usually more expensive (prices seem to be seasonal), but eating out is cheaper. The overall variety of food is better in Sydney, but Indian food is better in Bristol.
Booze: Beer is maybe 30% more expensive in Sydney, there is much less variety, and the pubs are less cozy. Wine is much cheaper and better in Sydney.
Bills: gas and electricity bills are both much, much cheaper in Sydney.
Transport: I don't own a car. Public transport is better and cheaper in Sydney than Bristol.
They're high but not enormously so, IME if you're in Sydney or Melbourne and are competent you can be making $110k+ with 5 years experience. Even more if you're skilled in something that's in demand (data science and DevOps ATM).
From what I've seen I actually think we are lucky to have the highest dev salaries outside of the US. Which is kind of suprisingly in a way, because we don't have too many large internet companies headquartered here and the startup scene isn't huge.
Possibly because Australians can get an E-3 visa easily? That would mean AU salaries would have to rise to stop them simply jumping on the next plane to S.F.
Hmm, maybe.. but anecdotally there's not too many Australians who want to pick up their lives and move to the states. I would guess the majority of devs here wouldn't know about the E-3 visa in fact.
I'd look at it from a different perspective. A low-level SWE salary might be $120k, and the all-in cost of employment might be $160k (benefits, taxes, office space, lunches, etc.). For a senior person, the base salary might be $200k, and the all-in cost might be $260k. So how does the senior person justify that extra $100k?
Well, they just have to output about 2x more impact. In my experience, it is not very hard to be 2x more impactful than a junior engineer. This is not meant to be arrogant, just that it's very easy for a junior engineer to waste time on useless stuff. In some cases junior (or bad) engineers will be 10x or 50x slower than they should be. I've seen some really bad examples in my 10 year career.
For example at my last job, a team of 2 engineers was using the wrong tool for a task, and this resulted in them taking 5x longer to deliver a worse product than alternates. I was able to do the same thing as them, but deliver much faster and at lower cost.
In other cases, junior engineers will make poor decisions, or write bad code that needs to be refactored later. This can be simple things like thinking on the wrong layer of abstraction. Refactoring the bad code is effectively 10x slower than doing it right the first time.
In all, I think paying an extra $100k for a good engineer is a real bargain for companies, because the impact can be so huge. The real challenge is figuring out who is a legit senior engineer.
My friend is making about that as a new grad at a trading company.
He writes performant React code for high-speed table rendering. I know another guy making about that much at FB as a new grad. He works on Messenger games.
Just normal mid-to-senior-level stuff. I know people in that range who work in front end, Python, Java, Clojure -- sometimes just cranking on code all day, but often having some design and collaboration responsibilities.
New grads can get that kind of total comp at Facebook and Google these days. But experience engineers can get that at a lot of larger companies.
14 yrs exp working in same company earning about 21.5k(India) working both front-end and back-end. Still good considering India. But when you see freshers getting 60K plus ...hmm.
Sorry, i should have been clearer. There were 2 distinct startups i founded during that time. One at the start of 2012, which died mid-2012, and the other started mid-2012 and I worked on all the way through till 2018.
I should also mention, this was in Canada. And yeah, I didn't keep the PW to my previous burner account. Not used to posting anom info :-(
When it was 65k it was just from raised money, just to take the focus away from how to pay rent and back on the business. We had revenue, but it was in my opinion insignificant (Less than $1 million).
We bumped it to $150k around the time that we had about $5 million in revenue, and post acquisition it was increased by the purchaser several times.
2012: Graduated with CS degree from top 10 public school, 2.9 GPA
2013: Mid-sized co in Texas, Software engineer, $70k salary, $20k RSUs vesting over 4 years, ~5k/yr cash bonuses
2014: Same company, bump to $75k salary
2015: Same company, bump to $80k salary
Later 2015: Jumped to seeded startup in Texas, software engineer, $70k salary, 50-70 hours/wk, aspirational but worthless equity options
2017: Same company, bump to $90k, 60-80 hours/wk, VP title (though doing work of a CTO), aspirational but worthless equity bonuses.
2018: Same company, no salary change, could request higher salary but have not because I am using it to make myself to work smarter rather than harder. Earning equity bonuses upon achieving targets. Generally working fewer hours now and have hired in some help so while responsibilities and problems are harder, work weeks are not so long.
Expecting a salary increase to range of $110-130k within 12 months (else will quit and work on my own business ideas). I believe I could obtain a $130k salary elsewhere now but have not interviewed to to find out and am not inclined to.
I think this is really interesting and glad OP posted it as a reference.
I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial. I was surprised when OP was unsure of salary amounts or when precisely raises went into effect.
While I think this is cool from a career planning perspective, I don’t think it’s very useful from OP’s aim of correcting any biases on pay based on gender. But it doesn’t hurt and is helpful just to be aware of what’s possible.
It’s a bit odd that Forbes and Atlantic are used as sources of pretty definitive statements of existing biases and the ability of authors ability to negotiate based on status as a “white man.” (Personally, I think that confidence may be a bit misplaced :)
Mostly, I’m grateful for using ESLint and it’s cool to see the career described for people who develop oss projects in addition to work.
> I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial.
First off, not everyone gets digital paystubs. It depends on how the company manages payroll, and whether they keep it in-house or subcontract it.
Second, even if you do get a digital paystub, it is frequently a manual operation to download and save it outside of the payroll system. I personally have been bad about actually doing so.
I don't keep paystubs, but I've kept every one of my IRS w-2 forms. It should be possible to pro-rate the total compensation from approximate hire/leave dates, if I need to.
I'm actually surprised that as a 'Principal Architect' he was only making $208,000 a year. Considering that entry-level positions at large companies which can have cash compensation of around $150,000+, it seems he may have been 'underpaid'.
Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.
Fair points, though I don't know how high of an expected value I'd give to 50k of Box options. It's hard for me to imagine that options given that late are that valuable. I'd imagine the equity compensation at lots of other places would be better.
Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.
And what's your expenses per month ? I see there are big salaries in the US but when i imagine, i am in central EU, smaller country, there's possibility to get 4-5k € per month in gross, that's around 3,5k in net and cost living even if you have 2/3 rooms flat and other daily stuff would not be higher than 1000€ per month. A have to note, you work 40 hours per week, around 170 hours per month max.
Would you be able to purchase a home or condo in the Bay area with a $208k salary? If so, what could you get (size, quality, approximity to the main tech areas)?
Yes. Well, yes if you assume decent credit and some cash saved up for a down payment. The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay.
It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.
"The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay."
Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down?
Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.
To clarify, I mean that the old wisdom that you can only buy if you can put 20% down does not apply in the same sense that it is voices.
50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash.
5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage.
In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue.
Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.
you were able to do it in 2014 on the $208K. The 2018 equivalent of those $208K - a principal at a hot company is $450-$550 (Google's L5-L6 medians) and it does allow to buy very nice townhouse in MV/PA/SNVL or even a modest home.
I really can't understand why they stay in the UK then, to be honest. We seem to have better salaries and generally lower cost of living across the sea...
I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher:
Well, the places where you'd get better salaries than London probably don't have a much lower cost of living. Personally I'd consider working somewhere like California for a couple of years for the experience, but like a lot of Brits I just don't think the US would be a comfortable cultural fit.
Right, but I was referring to the Irish Sea. €95k (about $107k thanks to the atrocious euro atm) for that job would be ridiculously low in the valley, after all. As someone who left California for Europe because I wanted a better cultural fit I wouldn't tell Brits they should move to the US. But Ireland appears to offer better salaries, for all of its housing issues is still cheaper than southeast England, and isn't so dissimilar culturally.
TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL.
Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either.
Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)
Family, friends, football club, being in ones own culture?
Not everyone is ready, able or willing to start a new life somewhere.
And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.
>And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.
Yep, anecdotal but time is just so much more valuable in my 20s than the extra (taxed) money. The sweet spot atleast for me is a 3 day work week. Pays enough and it has a decent balance.
I could never trade this situation for a US dev job even for 3-4x the salary.
Yeah - but I was referring to Ireland. When headhunters contact me it's weird how the British ones offer surprisingly low salaries compared to Ireland, Germany, Finland, etc. (obviously this is after converting to EUR). I suppose I should have been more specific about which sea I referred to.
And time is incredibly valuable, if only because for most of us enjoying time is the whole damn point of working. I find playing with my kid or traveling or working on side projects much more fulfilling than my day job (which is fine, but ultimately just a job)
Yeah that's fair, but (again, purely personal) I also wouldn't want to move from the Alps to live in Dublin, no matter the salary.
I agree that the salaries are lower, but also tax is a fair bit less in the UK than some EU countries. When I did the math on paying UK taxes vs registering in France for French taxes, the take home would only have been ~50% of net salary on the French system.
Ah, to be honest I love mountains and in the long term have considered ways to live closer to them. In Ireland we only have tall hills at best, but people are offended if you call them that...
However Ireland was where I got a visa, and now that I'm here it's not bad.
I don't know about the UK, but there was a recent breakdown of salary of US vs France and though there is a delta in the absolute salaries offert, the gap was almost closed when considering health care, vacation, or other benefits. It's important to consider that the salary can be buying you a lifestyle and some savings, not a high-score.
Depends a lot on whether you are in finance. Plenty of people there are on £150k or more coding for front office stuff. My LinkedIn always has someone touting 200k or more roles.
I'm a mid level engineer earning £45k in Bristol, not including additional benefits and perks. To get that I moved from a small company to a very big software employer in the UK. I've found that UK salaries have a massive range but it's pretty much the big companies paying the top end ones, and then all the rest paying the lower ones.
I have many friends with the same years of experience as myself, and similar tech stacks. They're working for smaller organisations across the south of England and on roughly £28-30k with few/no perks past the standard UK pension payments.
I think a lot of people are underpaid in the UK (including the parent poster), in particular those at smaller companies and smaller consulting agencies. However I imagine it's less of an issue in London.
I have 4 years experience and earn £ 45k as an AI dev in a small business who sponsored my work visa. Secured 3 job offers in the same magnitude in diverse roles during my job search spree earlier this year. DevOps, Python data consultancy and this one. I have recruiters bugging me every day because of my polyglot experience but those roles won't sponsor my visa.
On QoL, I have a 2 bedroom flat in a nice area within a 15 min walk of tech employers. This is equivalent to owning prime real-estate in San Fransisco.
I am really amazed at the salaries you Brits are getting. I work in Germany and are getting headhunters calling me. When I question them about the salary, it becomes a immediately blocker as they are not able to match my German salary.
Once an engineer start working on the continent, I would imagine that it would be hard to go back to Britain solely for monetary reasons.
Depends of course where you are, but it sounds like you are getting underpaid.
In London a senior engineer will get at least £60k (depending on what 'senior' means and how many currently hot languages you list on your CV). I know people in obscure parts of the country, with next to no tech scene, who aren't far off that.
The real money in the UK is in contracting though, or go to the dark side and work in finance.
Perm roles are now (finally) getting better at competing with sky-high contracting rates. Every successive budget also makes contracting a slightly less lucrative situation.
Eh no one pays per hour here, it's all day rates. But yeah 500-700 is common. You see up to 850 every now and then. 1000 is heard of but .. not so much.
UK salaries are dire. When I moved from the UK to Canada my salary doubled and my expenses in the UK (Brighton) were actually higher than here in Canada.
I could probably double my salary again moving to the US but I don't want to stay in a place that doesn't have a solid route to citizenship. The TN visas being temporary, non-dual intent and not allowing my spouse to work. Maybe my company will transfer me on an L1.
Also, there was as story on the BBC today about a firm that can't hire software engineers even offering 100k in compensation (which is pretty good for the UK). I rarely see postings for positions that pay this much. London salaries seem to cap out at around 60k which is peanuts considering how expensive the city is.
What's funny is Canadians often lament their lousy salaries compared to their US counterparts. But I've found that by "US", they really mean "Silicon Valley". It's not a fair comparison.
Also, quality of life matters and should be factored in.
The salaries are somewhat reflective of where you work and how good was your interview. And of course you have to love what you do.
2010 . 72 . (East Coast)
2011 . 78 . (East Coast)
2012 . 84 (East Coast)
2013 . 88 . (East Coast)
2014 . 96 . (East Coast)
2014 . 135 . CA
2017 . 210 + 20 CA
2018 . 185 + 30 + 60 CA
2018 . 195 +25 + ? CA
I try not to work more than 40 hrs a week. Ironically people are more happy when I am working lesser cause it seems to ease everyone.
I have been able to get offers as high as 350K for base salary but honestly they scare me.
I can’t help but be alarmed by the fact that his health has been on the decline for the last five years due to contracting Lyme disease.
I know of one person who was fine after like a month (detected early) and someone who spent the better part of a year recovering, but nothing like this!
And still, many doctors even in Connecticut where it was first detected won't provide the antibiotics for it until you have a positive test, and the tests are unreliable. This is a real tragedy.
I worked briefly with Nicholas at Box though we never met. I recall him being one of a handful of Principal engineers at the company when I joined and aspiring to reach that position myself. I commend Nicholas for sharing this data and for the thoughtful way in which he laid out why he felt compelled to do so.
I also worked with him at Vistaprint and, to be honest, found him to be (appropriately) opinionated but not a pain in the ass. He was one of the good ones, so it's interesting to hear his own lower self-estimation of his time here.
2008 first “real” .net developer job after being the internal guy at several jobs. -85k
Left that in 2010 for an etrm startup(though it was 15 years in business at that time) - 100k plus 1000 options.
After an acquisition I got about 1.25 per share and left in 2011.
Did odd senior .net dev jobs for a year at ~115k no benefits
In 2012 joined etrm consulting start up for 130k. Left at ~140k.
Joined larger consulting company in 2014 for 160k with ~10% bonus.
Left and did indie etrm consulting in 2016 and bill at 140-200 per hour depending on terms. Have consistently been about 85-90% utilized on average. I feel like I am nearing the limit of what a year of working a job can generate. If I want to increase my wealth it would be via equity in a business. That’s the next goal.
Burner account. White male working at a single US software company in the suburbs since 2007 (not anywhere near Silicon Valley). Cost of living is comparable to Minneapolis, MN.
Graduated college in 2007, Bachelor's in CS, hired to a QA team, ended up building a lot of internal web apps by myself from scratch that are used by a lot of teams. There aren't any other software companies anywhere near here, so switching companies frequently as others do to get raises isn't an easy option.
--------------
2007: $35,000
-- [incremental raises, working for the same team]
2016: $82,000
-- [Hired as a senior front-end web dev for a different team in 2016]
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 462 ms ] threadWhat was the total compensation be like with these numbers?
Other than that is a complete lottery.
The problem with share options is the vicious way the IRS taxes them its almost like the USA isn't set up to support individual's getting rich.
We are just getting an EMI where I now work will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Week of June 26, 2015: $19.10
At the end of the 6-month lockup Box's shares were worth $17, so that would imply his options were anywhere from +$175K (he'd only have vested half of them, with standard 4-year grants) to just slightly underwater. If he held to the $28 peak this May, he'd be anywhere from +$500K -> +$900K, but if he kept holding them, he could potentially be underwater today. It's a nice additional bonus (particularly if he got in at the Series E valuation), but not enough to make one rich.
Year Starting $ Inflation Inflation adjusted to 2018
2000 $48,000 1.50 $67,500
2001 $62,500 1.44 $90,000
2001 $68,000? 1.44 $97,920
2003 ?
2005 $82,000? 1.32 $108,240
2006 $115,000 1.27 $146,050
2008 ?
2011 ?
2013 $175,000 1.10 $192,500
2014 $208,000 1.08 $237,600
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=48000&year1=20...
2007 Startup A $80,000
2009 Startup A $90,000
2010 Startup B $100,000
2011 Startup C $100,000
2013 Startup C $130,000
2015 Startup C $150,000
2017 Startup D $160,000
Even a lot of unskilled jobs pay really well in Australia. I have a friend who works for Aldi in their distribution centre as a general worker, and he's on $35 per hour (only 6 hour shifts though, I think), plus when he's rostered on Sunday he goes up to $70 an hour.
Anecdotally, as a software developer in Melbourne for a small company, with 2 years experience, I'm on AU$75k + super, which is a pretty comfortable wage. Coming from NZ$42k (and only 3% super) back in New Zealand, it was certainly a nice payrise.
How much does a cup of coffee go for in Au?
And developers can certainly make over 100/hr, but in my experience that would mean contracting/consulting as a specialist with at least 5 years experience in a given technology.
can certainly hit $aud 100 / hour and upwards for full-time contract gigs with bigcos (banks, finance, telcos). can hit that with less than 5 years experience.
if the client knows what they're doing they may also assess for ability, not just years experience. but at least some big clients don't know what they're doing and are overrun with whatever resources of varying ability bodyshops manage to palm off onto their projects.
The pay tends to start off a lot lower here compared to the hot spots in the US but somewhat catches up from what I’ve seen.
2013 $20k (freelance) 100+ clients
2014 $75k (salary + super) 100+ employees
2015 $70k (salary + super) ~50 employees
2016 $120k (freelance) 8 clients
2017 $70k (salary + super) 3 employees
2018 $90k (salary + super) ~15 employees
2016 was by far my best year, still living at home (with parents) and after tax almost all of it went into savings.
At this stage I plan negotiating for $120k after christmas which I think is inline with my peers.
And for those talking about $4 coffee's, most places I know give discount if you BYO cup!
I always get called elitist/out-of-touch when I point this out, but it's really true that most people working in trades do $50k with mediocre benefits.
Everyone always lashes out at this with anecdata, but both the hard data from Labor and the 15+ datapoints I have personally all seem to agree that $60k is "really good", and that's with overtime. Statistically, for every wealthy plumber/small business owner pulling down 100k+, there are a lot of folks pulling down $50k or less working for the man.
Other downsides: The trades are extremely sensitive to certain types of recessions. And most trades are hard on your body. Plumber is actually one of the better trades from that perspective. Even stuff like welding and machining, which outsides think of as less hard on your body, are usually brutal. If the setup was such that they don't need you carrying stuff, going up and down stairs, etc. all day -- ie. if you could just stand in one place and weld/cnc without doing back-breaking labor -- then they'd have automated the work already.
This might all be specific to the two labor markets I know most well, but... sigh for smart kids, going to college for an in-demand STEM degree is still a great life choice and probably much higher ROI than a trade. And saying so isn't elitist.
Driving truck also seems to do better over the past two decades than most trades. Still sensitive to recessions, but much less so. None of my trucker relatives/friends have had bouts of unemployment since 2008, but all the construction and manufacturing trades have been in and out of work pretty much continually since 2009 (maybe things got better around late 2015)
If college isn't for your kids, have them also consider healthcare. Might be more stable during recessions and less hard on their body. The only downside is that there are fewer options for entrepreneurial endeavors than in the trades. Also, outside of large cities, there's only one or two dominant employers and that holds down wages. But the same is true in tech and trades.
> Most tradies here have their own business
Maybe this really is true in Australia. IDK. People say this a lot in the USA, but both statistics and personal anecdata indicate it's complete bullshit. Starting a business is hard. Getting the money to start up is hard. Handling cash flow is hard. Handling everything from deadbeat clients to litigious clients is hard.
> + the cash jobs that they don't declare on tax.
Software engineers can also make $$$ by committing tax fraud and other crimes.
In Melbourne, I graduated school in 1997. With a bachelor and a PhD and a few years in R&D in biotech I am able to rent in the inner city.
My neighbour is a
1) a tradie my age,
2) owns the house and has another investment property,
3) and finishes work at 3pm to hang with his three kids.
1. $110 CAD ($83 USD)/h
2. I set my own schedule, both weekly and time off (self-employed).
3. Zero stress: no one's ever stressed coming in, and I get to directly help people in pain. These people tend to be very neat and I have an hour to get to know them and the interesting lives they lead. It's very fulfilling.
Since starting my current practice in Vancouver six years ago I've made $300,000 CAD ($230,000 USD) total, working an average of 3.5 months/year (or, more accurately, averaging 8 months/year, 3.5 days/week). It's paid off my BSc student loan and covered an expensive MSc that I was able to finance while simultaneously completing it full-time in Europe for two years. I'm now able to turn my focus to helping my family get out of debt.
I should add that I've worked the same in Toronto, Nova Scotia, Montreal, and Yellowknife, and nowhere was it this good. I'm also quite good at what I do and am a real people person -- these are key. And a white male as well, but our clinic is made up primarily of ladies who make the same as me, just less in total as I work longer -- 8-10h compared to their 5-7h days.
I'm so happy this conversation was started. I wish I could have read this post before diving headlong into student loan debts the first decade of my adult life.
Isn't stress a reason to go get a massage?
I more than doubled my salary moving from the UK (Bristol) to Australia (Sydney), while my living costs only went up a little higher.
Food is a lot more expensive - but I guess if you eat cheaply or take advantage of office perks it could get the cost down.
Alcohol / going out is a lot more expensive.
Fuel / public transport is cheaper (but public transport is not as good in Sydney).
Tax is slightly less with no National Insurance to pay, and the employer is not paying it an sticking that into your Superannuation (Pension) instead.
Comparing Bristol's prices to Sydney's:
Rent: Sydney is maybe 50% more expensive. There is no council tax in Sydney, and the houses are bigger.
Food: In Sydney, groceries are usually more expensive (prices seem to be seasonal), but eating out is cheaper. The overall variety of food is better in Sydney, but Indian food is better in Bristol.
Booze: Beer is maybe 30% more expensive in Sydney, there is much less variety, and the pubs are less cozy. Wine is much cheaper and better in Sydney.
Bills: gas and electricity bills are both much, much cheaper in Sydney.
Transport: I don't own a car. Public transport is better and cheaper in Sydney than Bristol.
From what I've seen I actually think we are lucky to have the highest dev salaries outside of the US. Which is kind of suprisingly in a way, because we don't have too many large internet companies headquartered here and the startup scene isn't huge.
Well, they just have to output about 2x more impact. In my experience, it is not very hard to be 2x more impactful than a junior engineer. This is not meant to be arrogant, just that it's very easy for a junior engineer to waste time on useless stuff. In some cases junior (or bad) engineers will be 10x or 50x slower than they should be. I've seen some really bad examples in my 10 year career.
For example at my last job, a team of 2 engineers was using the wrong tool for a task, and this resulted in them taking 5x longer to deliver a worse product than alternates. I was able to do the same thing as them, but deliver much faster and at lower cost.
In other cases, junior engineers will make poor decisions, or write bad code that needs to be refactored later. This can be simple things like thinking on the wrong layer of abstraction. Refactoring the bad code is effectively 10x slower than doing it right the first time.
In all, I think paying an extra $100k for a good engineer is a real bargain for companies, because the impact can be so huge. The real challenge is figuring out who is a legit senior engineer.
He writes performant React code for high-speed table rendering. I know another guy making about that much at FB as a new grad. He works on Messenger games.
New grads can get that kind of total comp at Facebook and Google these days. But experience engineers can get that at a lot of larger companies.
2007: Junior developer $25k (no bonus)
2008: Project manager $50k (10% bonus)
2009: Project Manager $65k (10% bonus)
2011: Senior Project Manager $92 (10% bonus)
2011: Product Manager $97k (Some worthless options as it turns out, and an approximately 8% bonus)
2012: Founded my own startup / developer $28k that year
2013: Startup founder / CTO $65k
2014: Startup founder / CTO $150k
2015: Startup founder / CTO $150k
2016: Startup founder / CTO $250k + 10% bonus (acquired)
2017: Startup founder / CTO $250k + 10% bonus
2018: Startup founder / CTO $325k + $100k bonus + $100k stock
2018: I'm now taking a break from work.
I should also mention, this was in Canada. And yeah, I didn't keep the PW to my previous burner account. Not used to posting anom info :-(
We bumped it to $150k around the time that we had about $5 million in revenue, and post acquisition it was increased by the purchaser several times.
2012: Graduated with CS degree from top 10 public school, 2.9 GPA
2013: Mid-sized co in Texas, Software engineer, $70k salary, $20k RSUs vesting over 4 years, ~5k/yr cash bonuses
2014: Same company, bump to $75k salary
2015: Same company, bump to $80k salary
Later 2015: Jumped to seeded startup in Texas, software engineer, $70k salary, 50-70 hours/wk, aspirational but worthless equity options
2017: Same company, bump to $90k, 60-80 hours/wk, VP title (though doing work of a CTO), aspirational but worthless equity bonuses.
2018: Same company, no salary change, could request higher salary but have not because I am using it to make myself to work smarter rather than harder. Earning equity bonuses upon achieving targets. Generally working fewer hours now and have hired in some help so while responsibilities and problems are harder, work weeks are not so long.
Expecting a salary increase to range of $110-130k within 12 months (else will quit and work on my own business ideas). I believe I could obtain a $130k salary elsewhere now but have not interviewed to to find out and am not inclined to.
I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial. I was surprised when OP was unsure of salary amounts or when precisely raises went into effect.
While I think this is cool from a career planning perspective, I don’t think it’s very useful from OP’s aim of correcting any biases on pay based on gender. But it doesn’t hurt and is helpful just to be aware of what’s possible.
It’s a bit odd that Forbes and Atlantic are used as sources of pretty definitive statements of existing biases and the ability of authors ability to negotiate based on status as a “white man.” (Personally, I think that confidence may be a bit misplaced :)
Mostly, I’m grateful for using ESLint and it’s cool to see the career described for people who develop oss projects in addition to work.
First off, not everyone gets digital paystubs. It depends on how the company manages payroll, and whether they keep it in-house or subcontract it.
Second, even if you do get a digital paystub, it is frequently a manual operation to download and save it outside of the payroll system. I personally have been bad about actually doing so.
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.
I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(
Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.
It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.
Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down?
Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.
50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash.
5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage.
In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue.
Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.
In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that.
I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k.
I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky.
Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.
I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher:
https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/
TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL.
Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either.
Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)
Interestingly, Dublin ranked 19th in the Economist's 2018 Worldwide cost of living report, whereas London came 30th.
Not everyone is ready, able or willing to start a new life somewhere.
And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.
Yep, anecdotal but time is just so much more valuable in my 20s than the extra (taxed) money. The sweet spot atleast for me is a 3 day work week. Pays enough and it has a decent balance.
I could never trade this situation for a US dev job even for 3-4x the salary.
And time is incredibly valuable, if only because for most of us enjoying time is the whole damn point of working. I find playing with my kid or traveling or working on side projects much more fulfilling than my day job (which is fine, but ultimately just a job)
I agree that the salaries are lower, but also tax is a fair bit less in the UK than some EU countries. When I did the math on paying UK taxes vs registering in France for French taxes, the take home would only have been ~50% of net salary on the French system.
However Ireland was where I got a visa, and now that I'm here it's not bad.
Principle architect on £150-200k is entirely usual in the smoker.
Source: I'm a junior engineer being paid in the mid 30s, most of the seniors I know make well north of £60-70k.
You can get lead roles for 100k+ at least in London without having to go to finance.
I've seen most mid level roles in London go for between 50-60k.
Outside of the capital is very different.
I have many friends with the same years of experience as myself, and similar tech stacks. They're working for smaller organisations across the south of England and on roughly £28-30k with few/no perks past the standard UK pension payments.
I think a lot of people are underpaid in the UK (including the parent poster), in particular those at smaller companies and smaller consulting agencies. However I imagine it's less of an issue in London.
On QoL, I have a 2 bedroom flat in a nice area within a 15 min walk of tech employers. This is equivalent to owning prime real-estate in San Fransisco.
Once an engineer start working on the continent, I would imagine that it would be hard to go back to Britain solely for monetary reasons.
In London a senior engineer will get at least £60k (depending on what 'senior' means and how many currently hot languages you list on your CV). I know people in obscure parts of the country, with next to no tech scene, who aren't far off that.
The real money in the UK is in contracting though, or go to the dark side and work in finance.
Also, it doesn't really matter to me since I'm a US Citizen with no cheap Visa route.
I could probably double my salary again moving to the US but I don't want to stay in a place that doesn't have a solid route to citizenship. The TN visas being temporary, non-dual intent and not allowing my spouse to work. Maybe my company will transfer me on an L1.
Also, there was as story on the BBC today about a firm that can't hire software engineers even offering 100k in compensation (which is pretty good for the UK). I rarely see postings for positions that pay this much. London salaries seem to cap out at around 60k which is peanuts considering how expensive the city is.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45891002
Also, quality of life matters and should be factored in.
This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.
I try not to work more than 40 hrs a week. Ironically people are more happy when I am working lesser cause it seems to ease everyone. I have been able to get offers as high as 350K for base salary but honestly they scare me.
I know of one person who was fine after like a month (detected early) and someone who spent the better part of a year recovering, but nothing like this!
Hope the blog writer gets better soon.
I wish Nicholas health and happiness.
2012-2016 $105k-135k MSFT SDE-SDE2
2016-2017 $190k AMZN
2018 - trying to start up, $250
> Obama Executive Order Protects Employees of Federal Contractors to Discuss Wage and Compensation
Fortunately, both AMZN and MSFT are government contractors
2008 first “real” .net developer job after being the internal guy at several jobs. -85k Left that in 2010 for an etrm startup(though it was 15 years in business at that time) - 100k plus 1000 options. After an acquisition I got about 1.25 per share and left in 2011. Did odd senior .net dev jobs for a year at ~115k no benefits In 2012 joined etrm consulting start up for 130k. Left at ~140k.
Joined larger consulting company in 2014 for 160k with ~10% bonus.
Left and did indie etrm consulting in 2016 and bill at 140-200 per hour depending on terms. Have consistently been about 85-90% utilized on average. I feel like I am nearing the limit of what a year of working a job can generate. If I want to increase my wealth it would be via equity in a business. That’s the next goal.
1) Unpaid internship (3 months)
2) $10 an hour assistant marketing role (1.5 years)
3) $14 an hour marketing role (1.5 years)
4) $30 an hour marketing role (8 months)
5) $35 an hour marketing role (Much bigger budget, lots of opportunity to learn) (1.5 years)
6) $50 an hour (promotion from the above role, 2 years)
7) Became a consultant for $150-$300 an hour, current since May 2017.
So my path from unpaid to $300k+ per year took like 8 years.
* 2012 - $120,000
* 2014 - $140,000
* 2016 - $160,000
* 2017 - $200,000
* 2018 - $225,000
Graduated college in 2007, Bachelor's in CS, hired to a QA team, ended up building a lot of internal web apps by myself from scratch that are used by a lot of teams. There aren't any other software companies anywhere near here, so switching companies frequently as others do to get raises isn't an easy option.
--------------
2007: $35,000
-- [incremental raises, working for the same team]
2016: $82,000
-- [Hired as a senior front-end web dev for a different team in 2016]
2017: $97,000
2018: $103,000