Ask HN: Who earns more by age of 30-35? Technologist at Goldman Sachs or Google?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517859

by symbolepro • 8 years ago

1 3 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

You can't answer this without specifying which technologist at Goldman Sachs or Google. What's their skillset? How specialized are they? Who do they know within the company? Which projects have they worked on? How much value did they deliver to the company?

Gut feel (as an ex-Googler with a number of friends on Wall Street) is probably that on average a decent technologist at Goldman Sachs will make more than their equivalent at Google, but the top end of Google's range is significantly higher than the top end for technologists at Goldman (though less than the top traders or portfolio managers). One thing most middle-class people underestimate is just how skewed the income distribution is; someone who can demonstrably make it rain for a big company typically gets paid well into the millions per year.

symbolepro• 8 years ago

For example, Vice President Technology at Goldman vs Project Manager at Google.

And do you think, is it easier to climb ladder in Google or Goldman Sachs?

nostrademons2• 8 years ago

Project Manager isn't a technical role at Google and VPs in finance, I have heard, aren't a particularly high title, roughly equivalent to Senior Software Engineer at Google [1]. Well-performing Senior SWEs at Google get total compensation in $300-400K/year range, including stock. Average salaries at Goldman Sachs were about $367K in 2016 [2], but that's a mean rather than a median and so likely skewed upwards by all the rainmakers - but if you figure that "VP" is roughly the top 1/3 of employees, it's probably about right. Those are comparable salaries.

The framing of the question misses the really high earners, though, folks who would be Distinguished Engineer at Google or...I don't even know what the equivalent title at Goldman is, but at that point it probably doesn't matter. These people don't climb the ladder, they bypass it. Usually that means taking a risk on a project that has a high likelihood of failure but makes hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for your employer if it succeeds, and then seeing it through to success. Those are the folks with $multimillion stock packages.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-04/goldman-s...

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/news/guess-how-much-goldmans-av...

Ask HN: Who earns more by age of 30-35? Technologist at Goldman Sachs or Google?

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