Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

http://jacquesmattheij.com/Programmers+Salaries+at+google+250k+and+up

by llambda • 15 years ago

406 265 15 years ago

CedriK• 15 years ago

Hard to believe.

maeon3• 15 years ago

The 250k/year is to keep these best of breed programmers from leaving. No doubt their email inboxes are completely spammed with job offers. It's capitalism, supply and demand. If Google could get away with paying them minimum wage, they would. What prevents them from doing that is that their company will crash and burn in 6 months if they did.

SandB0x• 15 years ago

It seems like we're missing some important information. I'd be interested to know what he did before going to Google - i.e. he didn't go there straight from university. So he worked for Jacques, then left and some unspecified stuff happened in the middle, and now he's at Google. What did he do in that period that made him so valuable?

mmahemoff• 15 years ago

Google's one of the few big companies that's smart enough to let engineers' careers progress without forcing them over to a management track.

gwillen3• 15 years ago

This smells funny to me. From everything I saw when I worked at Google, Glassdoor had the salary range right. For all the guy's self-deprecation, if he was really making $250k, even after bonus and stock, he must have been promoted multiple times, or hired at a fairly high level.

nknight2• 15 years ago

Haven't there been several stories in the last ~year about outrageous-sounding salary wars between the likes of Google and Facebook?

The average for "good" developers at Google might have shot up recently.

surt2• 15 years ago

Exactly. I've talked to a couple of internal recruiters at Google, and they assured me that if interested, my demand for a $300K total salary package would be no problem for a senior engineer. They didn't even hesitate or ask to get back to me. They were clearly authorized to match that level on the spot.

thibaut_barrere2• 15 years ago

A lot of people seem to find this incredible (from my twitter feed), but I don't, really.

I know a couple of people running brick-and-mortar shops (think: selling furniture etc), or lawyers, or other professions that earn just as much too.

impendia2• 15 years ago

Someone -- and indeed, looking at the real estate ads -- a lot of someones -- have to be running up the demand for $1M++ houses throughout Silicon Valley.

vaksel• 15 years ago

nothing is stopping these guys from coding something up after work/on the weekend. Sure it'll take twice as long to release a project, but it's a small price to keep getting $20K a month salary

vladd2• 15 years ago

Quite the contrary, you don't know Google's non-compete work-contract provisions and, if any, how would they held up in court, so your statement is quite speculative.

Besides, the last thing you'd want to do is to work after-hours and find out your employer is owning the IP of your project (that's besides pager-duty and other after-hour things your employer might make mandatory anyway).

Regarding taking twice as long, just imagine projects like Dropbox or Twitter taking twice as long to get to the market - I doubt they would be competitive in the same manner.

swaits• 15 years ago

Are you familiar with California's laws in this area?

gwillen3• 15 years ago

You are right on the money. Starting a startup while working for Google would be an absolute non-starter. Any code you write, they own (within certain restrictions that end up being so broad as not to matter.) And moonlighting in a business that competes with Google would be grounds for termination.

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

I will preface this by saying I have never worked at google and have not seen their employment contract so perhaps they've found a way around it but from what I understand, California has well established laws in place protecting moonlighting. As long as you aren't coding up a search engine or something that directly competes with the company, you should be ok.

danssig10• 15 years ago

>the last thing you'd want to do is to work after-hours and find out your employer is owning the IP of your project

Has this ever happened? I would imagine that if some guy got his FU money taken away and given to some big company where it would be too small to even register on the income statements that said person wouldn't just lay there and take it.

After all, what you're describing is literally slavery (i.e. anything the slave makes belongs to his/her owner).

ntoshev• 15 years ago

Tl;dr: someone's ex-employee is now working at Google, says he gets $250k salary and he's under 30.

Why is this even on HN, let alone #1?

rch• 15 years ago

My impression is that there is an unusually large dynamic range in the salaries of programmers, especially when looking at the middle third of the organizational hierarchy in non-technical companies. This post informs the discussion about finding compensation levels that are adequate to retain people with around 10 years of experience, who are exactly the type of people HN-ers would want making implementation level decisions.

oemera2• 15 years ago

I think it's on HN because such salaries will hunt talented or not even good engineers down and if this happens it could be a really hard time for startups. Let's be real for a second without engineers ideas are worthless and if all of those good ones are at big companies which gives a out a lot of cash what can you do as a startup? I don't it is bad as it sounds but it could be tough and it could kill a lot of startups in future if this attitude by big companies grows.

In the contrast: you don't have to start your company in the Valley to be good and maybe it can save you a lot of headaches and money to not do so.

But at the end the source of this problem is different: the Valley just needs more engineers to get things rolling.

davidhansen• 15 years ago

It's absolutely correct that technical ideas are worthless without effective implementation. That said, I strongly suspect that the current crop of startups, as a consequence of being overcapitalized by the current bubble, are also over-staffing their engineering teams. You don't need a dozen developers to write a me-too photo sharing app.

stanleydrew• 15 years ago

Because it's on jacquesm's blog. See http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jacquesm

Maven9112• 15 years ago

Yup, its all about credibility & trust in the business world, and in the salary disclosure world. I believe the number because not only it it posted on HN but several people on this thread have confirmed that number. I trust this data more then I trust the 1000+ people posting on glassdoor.com

jacquesm3• 15 years ago

> Why is this even on HN, let alone #1?

Maybe it is because a large number of HN'ers are currently gainfully employed in the valley and that figures like these can come in extremely handy when interviewing with any company there especially if that company is google.

Datapoints like these are few and far between, sure people lie routinely about their salary but by now I think this thread has given more than enough corroboration to take the original statements by my friend as truthful.

It also nicely showcases that places like glassdoor.com show base salary only but that the total compensation can be much higher, which should factor into any decisions you make with respect to working for big company 'x' (or G in this case) versus running your own thing.

creativityhurts• 15 years ago

'at Google I feel like I'm stupid most of the time'

Is that let's-pay-them-enough-not-to-leave-for-Facebook-even-if-they-don't-do-much strategy still on?

robrenaud• 15 years ago

I think it's likely an application of Dunning-Kruger.

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which ... the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

asknemo• 15 years ago

I too recently lost a co-founder to a Valley company of similar size. Considering that he is very green, not exactly the best in our startup and that we are based somewhere with rather low pay for engineers in general, the offer he received was very hard to believe for everyone. It's hard to convince people to stay when those work in Valley could be as interesting without the stress and come with a big fat cheque.

baddspellar• 15 years ago

Does anyone know if they have an active program to cut the bottom performers? If not, I suspect they have quite a collection of overpaid mediocre programmers.

I worked for many years at a company that paid significantly higher than average salaries. Even with a program to cut the bottom 10% per year, we had quite a few people who were mediocre at best.

It's easier for a busy manager to hold onto the people they have than to hire and train new ones. Paying high salaries is an easy way to do that if you have the cash.

gujk2• 15 years ago

A company so toxic as to have a 10% attrition commitment is going to be filled with employees trying to abuse the company as much as the company abuses them.

_delirium3• 15 years ago

I remember (but can't seem to dig up) some research that those programs harm the productivity/morale of the top performers as well, who end up being unreasonably worried that they might end up in the bottom 10% somehow. Either they underestimate their own skills, or worry that a bad review process will undervalue them, so they end up spending a lot of time/stress worrying about reverse-engineering how the review works and optimizing for its metrics, rather than focusing on their real job.

tsotha6• 15 years ago

That's what I was wondering. Two former employees from my group have ended up at the Goog. Both of them can talk the talk in an interview, but they're both below average as programmers. They're both still there, too. If Google is paying either of them $250k it's time to short the stock.

koalaman• 15 years ago

Being able to 'talk the talk' will not get you a job at Google. You have to be a very strong problem solver, a fast thinker, and lucky. All Googlers might not be rockstar programmers, but they are almost all unusually intelligent. There really are no average people there, apart perhaps those that came in through acquisitions (like myself).

keiferski• 15 years ago

Another effect this will have on the start-up scene is that if you build your company in 'The Valley' that companies like Google will be competing with you for talent. You may have an upside from being in the SV eco-system in the first place, however you may find yourself paying a lot more for developers than if you were in a place where parties with pockets as deep as Google are rare.

Headquarters in Silicon Valley, development somewhere else might be a good strategy if you want to keep the burn rate under control.

Any thoughts on this? Can a small startup compete with the Googles and Apples in the Valley?

thibaut_barrere2• 15 years ago

I'm not living in the Valley (far from it, mind you :-) but I think a small startup has more to be worried about other small startups than about Google/Apple.

mseebach• 15 years ago

While it might be harder to get good employees cheaply, you would expect that finding financially independent co-founders would be easier.

If you have reasonable financial discipline, 5 years of $250,000 can easily build yourself a war chest of a few years living expenses: the perfect co-founder.

impendia2• 15 years ago

> Any thoughts on this? Can a small startup compete with the Googles and Apples in the Valley?

They can and do!

shin_lao• 15 years ago

$ 250,000 a year must include stocks, bonus, 401k and healthcare. As is, it doesn't match the insider information I have about Google's salaries.

Let's be realistic a minute, $ 250k/year is a lot of money.

surt2• 15 years ago

Probably not health care. The value of that is hard to deduce. Possibly not 401k match. Most people don't factor that into their totals. Traditionally, compensation package for an engineer means salary, bonus, stock.

aantix• 15 years ago

250K is a lot of money depending on where you live.

You can't take simple things for granted in the Bay Area. Want to raise a family of four and actually have three or four bedrooms, you're looking at a million+ dollar house.

250K is what you should be shooting for if you have goals such as these.

danssig10• 15 years ago

As mentioned by another poster:

>The revenue per employee at GOOG is $1.2M in a very high margin business.

$250k/year is not a lot compared to that.

garethsprice• 15 years ago

This is very dubious - the Glassdoor stats at http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm have 1,500 entries for Software Engineers that max out at $190k and average $100k.

The position above, Senior Engineer, averages $130k.

There doesn't seem to be an incentive for 1,500 people to understate their earnings by 50%+ on an anonymous poll, especially a poll of engineers at one of those most engineering-centric companies in the world, where corrupting a dataset would likely feel akin to high treason.

Not inclined to trust second-hand information from one individual - sounds like they're either working at a much higher level than regular programmer, inflating their salary by including perks/stock/etc to make it seem higher, an extreme outlier, or just lying (people who tell their friends how much they earn in casual conversations also sound like the kind of people who would inflate that number).

liuwei6• 15 years ago

That is about right. Below is salary data reported by the company to Department of Labor for labor purposes http://www.salarylist.com/company/Google-Salary.htm

gujk2• 15 years ago

Why do you think perks and stock are not part of compensation?

yangyang• 15 years ago

Total compensation = salary + bonus + perks + whatever else they give you.

jarek2• 15 years ago

You have to be careful when reporting them as part of compensation because they're difficult to value. Stock is easier in an already-public company like Google, although it is still subject to some uncertainty due to vesting schedule. The monetary value of being able to come into work at 11 is going to differ greatly among employees.

vidarh2• 15 years ago

They are, but consider that they are very volatile. When I worked at Yahoo, my stock added an equivalent of about $50k/year to my total compensation for the period I worked there. But I was lucky - I joined at a low and left and cashed out all my options with Yahoo trading at one of its highest amounts of the last 7-8 years.

At the same time I had people working for me who had 10 times as many options, but had been in the company for ages and received the vast majority of those options before the crash in 2000. As of this year, the couple of those people who are still at Yahoo will have options worth maybe $30k-50k total from 10+ years of employment that are over water, and their older options will start expiring soon.

Of course Google people receiving new Google options now are currently in a better position, but estimating the value of options grants over time is tricky.

larsberg• 15 years ago

I believe this post. I took a peek at the MSFT numbers on glassdoor, and either they are salary-only or total compensation packages have been reduced significantly since I was a manager ~6 years ago. I remember the general salary ranges for each of the levels (those titles correspond to numeric level ranges which had fixed salary, bonus, and stock ranges), and the glassdor numbers are reflective of salary data, not stock.

Stock would be hard anyway because they vest over N years so how much you vest in a given year depends on a) your promotion velocity b) whether you got any gold stars/special bonus grants and c) how you ranked within your peer group.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

It's really dangerous to take one anecdote as data.

cletus3• 15 years ago

Let me add some perspective to this as both an engineer and a Google employee.

The first thing I'll say is this: people lie about their incomes. They even do this anonymously (Glassdoor, etc). Not that I'm calling (or even suggesting) this a lie but be very careful believing anyone's salary claims unless they show you an original offer letter, employment contract or a W-2.

I'm not even sure if they're simply bad at math, lying to themselves or lying to others. Whatever the case, they lie.

With respect to Glassdoor and similar sites, another problem is different people have different ideas of what "salary" means. Does it include stock? Actual bonuses? Expected bonuses?

Likewise it's a skewed sample. I kinda have my doubts that many principal/distinguished engineers have the inclination to accurately report their incomes on such sites.

That being said, my experience in the outside world is that your salary quickly tops out as a senior engineer, architect, whatever. The only way to increase it is to move into management.

While you can move into management at Google, you can go very far (in terms of career and compensation) being simply an engineer if you're good at what you do, get things done and have a lot of impact.

This compensation can take many forms (vested stock, base salary, annual and periodic bonuses, etc).

Also, Google realizes that after you've been here awhile you become increasingly valuable. This is true for an engineer no matter where you work. The cost to a company of replacing someone who has worked there for years is huge (both in recruitment costs and getting them up to speed). Google is simply the only company I personally have worked for that seems to both recognize this and build it into the compensation system.

This really is a great place to work. That alone attracts and retains an awful lot of people. You can also get to work on some very large problems and systems (another draw card). The fact that Google does (or can) pay you very well is just icing on the cake.

rudy750• 15 years ago

Do you or anyone else know how much/little Google outsources their development work? I was having a discussion with a fellow engineer about the outsourcing model and innovation.

cletus3• 15 years ago

Outsourcing? Not even a little bit. Not only that but AFAIK contract engineers are incredibly rare and nonexistent in many product areas.

This isn't to say that Google doesn't have partnerships with external vendors. We do. But engineering in general is a core competency, something far too valuable and of strategic importance to outsource.

iradik5• 15 years ago

They outsource by buying startups.

raldi2• 15 years ago

Speaking as a Google engineer: There are three components to compensation here. Base salary, annual cash bonus, and stock grants. When he says he "takes home" $250k, he probably means the sum of all three. When the author says he thought the average Google salary was $130k, he might be referring just to the base.

Most of the comments in this thread are similarly ambiguous. If you post a comment, please be clear about whether you're talking about base or total compensation!

mvgoogler• 15 years ago

Yeah, 250K total comp (salary + bonuses + stock) is very believable. It's likely upper end of the scale for a 30 year-old, but completely believable.

stef252• 15 years ago

Without wanting to sound stupid, when you talk about salaries do you always mention the amount before or after tax? Here in Europe it's almost always after tax.

lunaru• 15 years ago

In the states all salary numbers are before tax unless stated otherwise.

asmosoinio• 15 years ago

Really? In Finland we always discuss salaries as in before personal tax. This amount is a bit less than the company pays though, because they pay a part as social security compensations etc.

iaskwhy3• 15 years ago

In the UK, it has always been before tax with me.

In Portugal, it depends: if you are on a contract then it's after tax, if you are not on a contract (think consultant) it's before tax. This happens because most people have no idea that the other side receives only the net wage and vice-versa.

bobbydavid• 15 years ago

In the US some taxes are paid by the employee and some by the employer. The salary that's quoted is before employee taxes but after employer taxes.

div• 15 years ago

I'm from Belgium, and I've never heard people talk about their salary after tax.

edit: to answer your question, the 250k is before tax.

bosie2• 15 years ago

in austria it is always before. heck, i know a lot of people who don't even know how much they make after taxes

dkersten• 15 years ago

In Ireland, salary refers to before tax.

plunchete• 15 years ago

Spain and Luxembourg also before taxes

krzyk2• 15 years ago

In Poland it's always after tax. Moreover we almost never mention yearly pay, always a monthly one.

j_baker• 15 years ago

Not to mention that they may get a retention bonus if they were part of a startup that was recently acquired. This could easily add up to $250k.

bluesmoon• 15 years ago

I recently interviewed with several companies, and my experience shows that including bonuses, this isn't an unrealistic amount to expect. I had only one offer that ended up under $200K and that's only because the company didn't have a bonus program at the time. Many of the offers were much higher.

It was a really had choice to turn them down to start my own company, but I figure that being my own boss had some value, and being able to create something that was completely my own vision was more enticing. However, at the same time it gave me some confidence that if my startup didn't go according to plan, I did have a decent fallback.

googlethrowaway• 15 years ago

As a point of data, I work at Google and am at a similar point in my career. My base salary a year ago was $136k, but there was a companywide 10% raise last winter, and now my base is $150k.

You get a cash bonus each year that's around 15% of your base, but if you're a superstar it can be double that, or if you're a total disappointment, it can be nothing. But if I perform as expected, that's another $22k.

Finally, I was granted 300 shares of stock that vest annually over four years. So each year, I get 75x the value of a Google share. GOOG is trading around $600, so that's another $45k.

So my total annual compensation this year will be $217k. If I were bragging to an ex-employer, I'd probably round up to "a quarter million" too. :)

fake_handle• 15 years ago

Adding to the data pool:

I'm also an under-30 engineer making ~250k in the Bay Area (at a publicly-traded gaming company, not at Google). My company has six pay grades for pure engineers; I'm at the second highest. My 2011 comp breaks down as follows:

* 166k base

* 45k bonus

* 35k stock grants (RSUs)

Note this does not include 401k matching, stock purchase plan, healthcare, or any other quantifiable perks.

When I took this job a year ago, I had a similar offer from a prominent NYC startup: ~220k (150k base, 30k bonus, 250k options over 4 years using offer-time valuation). I was 26 at the time.

For added context, I did not attend an elite school. I did not complete my undergraduate degree. I'm smart, but not extraordinarily so (800/710 math/verbal SAT). I interview well. I have a "disruptive" skill (cloud expertise).

wallflower2• 15 years ago

> I interview well

Any tips or techniques outside of the standard behavioral based interviewing techniques (like STAR)?

Also, I suspect you may be underselling yourself here, you very well may have excellent communication skills (like presenting complex ideas clearly to senior management) or even just social acumen.

eurohacker• 15 years ago

what kind of work do you do - what programming languages you can write in and what type of tasks you do

Selvik2• 15 years ago

Isn't a perfect math score very hard to get, something like the upper 1%ile? Do you know your IQ? I'm scandinavian and could do a traditional finance/consulting/management/accounting thing in my home country but the software industry seems far more fascinating. I'm afraid my 120 to 125 iq means I'm too stupid to do well in SV though.

teratau3• 15 years ago

Do you know if the 10% raise is automatically applied to the base salary of new hires as well?

I'm looking for a new job, and strangely, Google's base is about 10% lower than the base from my other offers (Apple, Facebook, Zynga, LinkedIn), rather than 10% higher.

Also, to add my own datapoint: I'm four years out from undergrad at an elite school, and Google offered me $120k base and 500 stock units over four years. My recruiter said that given the way annual bonuses work (15% bonus if you perform average, all the way up to 15% * 3.5 = 52.5% if you're extraordinary), I should haven't have much trouble getting about a 30%-35% bonus. So my expected annual salary from base, stock, and bonuses is about $120k + 125 stock units * $600 (which is what Google is currently trading at) + 30% * $120k = $231,000.

If I'd joined Google right out of school, I expect this would be even higher, since I would have received the 10% raise last year (and also, I've made a series of poor career decisions to join no-name startups that I think have kept my current base salary lower than normal and made me a little less desirable). Pure speculation, though.

tensafefrogs• 15 years ago

Yes, it is. They just increased their pay scales by 10% across the board forever.

raldi2• 15 years ago

The 10% is factored into new offers.

littledanehren• 15 years ago

Tell your Google recruiter about your competing offers, especially if you're considering choosing another job on this basis.

dodedo• 15 years ago

I'm at another large valley company, at a similar point in my career, and I have almost the same base / equity compensation. Added up I hit around 220k.

I've had offers from other shops in the same just-over-200k ballpark, and I know peers at google pulling in around the same. I don't doubt 250k for a second.

felipemnoa• 15 years ago

>>So my total annual compensation this year will be $217k. If I were bragging to an ex-employer, I'd probably round up to "a quarter million" too. :)

That last part about "a quarter million" made me crack up. Awesome stuff!

Now, down votes, come to me.

xytop2• 15 years ago

I'm web developer, 25 years old, I'm raising 21000 euro/year. What I'm doing wrong? :/

Thrymr• 15 years ago

Working in Europe?

krzyk2• 15 years ago

Welcome to the club, I'm also from Europe and make few percents more and I'm 31.

getsat• 15 years ago

> What I'm doing wrong?

You're not applying to visa-friendly startups in Silicon Valley right now. :)

nateberkopec• 15 years ago

Economics!

During a boom time, wages rise. Wages are "sticky", meaning they lag behind the current state of the economy. Wages for programmers have really gone out the roof in the last few years due to lack of US computer science graduates, stingy visa provisions, etc.

In a few months, the funding wave will start to level off and dip, but wages will still be as high as ever. That's the crunch. Winter is coming.

EDIT: Think about it this way: in 2009, a 1M seed got you 10 engineers for a year. Now it gets you 6, maybe 7. Ouch.

nandemo• 15 years ago

That is true, but we're talking about total compensation. Base salary is sticky, but stock options and bonus aren't.

3pt14159• 15 years ago

Economics again though!

In 2009 servers were more expensive, and programmers handling your cloud were both less experienced AND had inferior tools. There is a small funding glut, but 7 vs 10 isn't a fair compensation. It's more like 7 people that work 20% more effectively, so 8.4 vs 10.

patio114• 15 years ago

HN has a curious relationship to money some of the time.

a) Many of us watched our classmates go into management consulting, investment banking, finance, medicine, law, etc. These are all fields where $250k is not exactly outlandish for a 29 year old.

b) We have a lot of friendly, accessible fellow posters who write computer code and are financially very successful.

c) We talk about $X million valuations and $YY million acquisitions and $Z billion IPOs the way catering company owners discuss the price of tomatoes.

d) We have heard many credible people complain of how difficult it is to hire and retain engineers. So difficult, in fact, that they'd pay $10k+ just for an introduction or $50k+ for an actual placement.

e) We understand incentive structures and equity grants exist.

f) We routinely read industry news like "Google and Facebook in heated war for talent", "The going rate for an acquisition-to-hire is $1 million per engineer", "Four large technology firms were engaged in a gentlemen's agreement to conspire against their employees until the government told them it was cartelicious", "Productivity per engineer is going through the roof", "Company Z supports Q00,000 paying customers per engineer", "Efforts of individual engineers have succeeded in adding millions to billions of dollars of value to some companies", etc etc etc, and generally seem to be at least as savvy as C-students in Microecon 101.

and yet

g) Talk of engineers receiving wages above some magic threshold is met with disbelief, scorn, and a wee bit of jealousy.

It isn't hugely interesting to me what any particular person at a particular company is making, but is $250k an outlandish total compensation number? No, it is clearly achievable. Do you have to be programming demigod to achieve it? No, compensation moves along with several different axes and programming ability isn't the main one. Is this anecdote a freak of nature which we'll never see again? No, signs point that this will become increasingly more common over time.

veyron9• 15 years ago

The problem seems to stem from the fact that most people are presented with paltry-sounding offers from places like google. As is mentioned in many of the response here, it seems that the guy probably quoted total compensation. However, prima facie the only number people see is the salary number from their offer. The offer doesn't tell you how good the bonus will be, nor can you immediately appreciate stuff like 401K match or stock / options awards.

So yeah, I think a lot of people would be jealous if they thought they received a 100K offer from google while some other person received 250K.

endtime3• 15 years ago

This is highly relevant. I had an offer from Google with a base salary lower than a competing offer from a startup...but when I factoried in benefits, stock, etc. on both sides Google's offer was about 50% larger. Of course, you're eating the same food as you get promoted, so some benefits/perks become a smaller fraction of your comp as your total comp goes up, but they're still significant around 250k.

anothermachine4• 15 years ago

Does Google fail to explain the non-base comp in offer letters, leading to recruits taking competing offers that actually pay less total? That seems to be a very easy to fix mistake, so I'm surprised they'd keep making it.

cletus3• 15 years ago

Spot on.

(d) in particular is worth stressing. There is no difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. There is simply an unwillingness to pay them what they're worth and give them an environment in which they'd want to work.

Supply and demand. It's pretty simple.

Yet so many (typically business types) want to treat engineers as an interchangeable cost center. "5 years ago an engineer cost $100k so I refuse to pay more than $100k now to keep my costs in check".

The fact that it's taken this long for engineers to be recognized (financially) for the huge impact we have and the vast differences that can exist between individual engineers speaks volumes about us. As a whole, we're just not as good as the business guys at this compensation game and, a lot of the time, it's not our primary motivation. Give us something interesting to do and stay out of our way and we're happy.

veyron9• 15 years ago

The reason why business types see engineers as cost centers is because engineers have positioned themselves that way. Engineers pushed for higher salary in lieu of the variable upside.

What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures even if the company is seeing hard times, but that won't improve the situation. Most of those business types you mention see engineers in the same way that engineers see themselves: wanting a large, stable paycheck. The business types shoot for the large end of year bonuses, which in general only get paid if the company does well (ignore the TBTF banks for a moment)

As an example of what I mean, most celebrity endorsements are lump sum payments plus a very small variable upside. William Shatner, taking a longer view, pushed Priceline to compensate him (for his celebrity appearance) in the form of equity, and now he's laughing his way to the bank. In this case, he was willing to take the risk.

Eliezer• 15 years ago

Hi! This is the Market Economics Fairy! I help supply and demand equilibrate everywhere! If nobody can find good programmers to hire, it means that programmer salaries are too low! Raise programmer salaries until...

...erm, actually, students are remarkably goddamn insensitive to their future salaries when it comes to picking a major. And the other way S&D could equilibrate here is by fewer companies even trying to hire programmers because they know they can't afford them. What's really needed - considering the Camel Has Two Humps effect where some people have the magic programming gear and some people don't - is a mass effort to take students in journalism studies or, heck, smart unemployed adults, and administer some simple tests to see if they have large amounts of hidden programming talent, screw the college degree. But that effort would benefit lots of companies equally, and that means it's a commons problem. Not sure the Market Economics Fairy can easily solve this one.

wyclif2• 15 years ago

You're talking about The Pardo Axiom:

"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel

If you're having trouble hiring, it's probably because you're not paying enough. It turns out that talented people are worth paying a lot for.

spacemanaki• 15 years ago

What does "cartelicious" mean? All that Google turns up is a lot of stuff on MySpace and Xanga...

kirubakaran• 15 years ago

Cartel-like. Made up word.

oxtopus• 15 years ago

Google, Apple, Adobe, Pixar, and others settled with the DOJ on charges of collusion related to alleged mutually agreed hiring practices.

patio114• 15 years ago

It is a made-up word (a portmanteau, if you want to get technical) meant to suggest that the activities of the tech companies were similar to those of a cartel. I frequently use non-standard English constructions for comedic effect when writing or speaking informally.

bane• 15 years ago

Or put another way, the stagnant salaries for developers has incentivised/pushed many of us into starting our own companies so that we can make money commensurate with what we believe we should be making.

$250k developer salaries invalidates much of that pressure.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

Uh yeah...

HN has lots of readers. Most probably make less than $250K even though quite a number make more. Still, most of those who make less than $250K probably aren't venture capitalists.

A million dollar deal doesn't get anyone chiming in with "but my deals aren't million dollar" 'cause they don't have deals of any sort. $250K salaries, on the other hand, do get exactly that reaction.

Is there anything here that isn't screamingly obvious?

wyclif2• 15 years ago

Yes. Yet, when I posted The Pardo Axiom in a recent HN thread related to talent acquisition and hiring, I received an irrational, angry response. I don't get it. If there is a huge demand for engineering talent, then it seems obvious to me that companies haven't even approached the top end of what they can offer.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180674

ootachi• 15 years ago

Well, the recommendation at the end of the post was "outsource your engineering". I suspect that, instead of ridiculous wages becoming "increasingly more common over time", offshoring is what companies will do instead of continuing to pay engineers higher and higher wages.

veyron9• 15 years ago

I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund.

My programmer friends at hedge funds (all between 22 and 26) are averaging 500K salary with 100K bonuses (note: as a programmer, base is much higher but bonus is lower). So if google isn't paying those types of numbers to people, then money cannot be the only factor at play.

omlette• 15 years ago

the idea was that you had to take a 5x pay cut to do interesting work in a good environment with smart people. it's interesting that it has reduced to a 2x paycut.

cynicalkane• 15 years ago

Many hedge funds have 2 of those 3 and sometimes 3 of those 3. It's a myth that every finance job is as bad as I-banking for Goldman.

stuntprogrammer6• 15 years ago

This is certainly true (I've worked both sides of the fence in terms of types of firm).

To add a generalization, my rule of thumb is the variable part of compensation varies most for the domain experts. So in technology for the sake of technology style companies like Google, total comp shoots up based on stock/bonuses. In reality, Google is an advertising company so presumably the ad sales folks bringing in whales aren't hurting either. Naturally numbers get skewed by overpaying to keep certain people (i.e. overshoot on retention packages), and given large scale, there are always some overpaid due to lucky timing/placing. Such is life! In hedge funds, the traders get the big bonuses, but the programmers get a solid salary so lower bonuses don't hurt quite so much. Luck also plays a part for those folks var comp. For those in hft, I'm aware of a few places where given the right mix of skills, someone who likes to think of themselves as a programmer can get the trader style bonuses.

Selvik2• 15 years ago

What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)

stuntprogrammer6• 15 years ago

CS/STEM. Need not be Ivy League but it certainly doesn't hurt-- though I know a team or two in the top tier that almost have a preference for non-ivy league :-)

To be a quantdev or quant, an MFE is far more useful than an MBA.

jarek2• 15 years ago

If you have a finance MBA and want to make money in finance, you'd be insane to try programming.

zem4• 15 years ago

i think what's happening here is that no one really envies hedge fund programmers. sure, they make a lot of money, but the job itself is perceived as unpleasant, unfulfilling, boring, stressful, or some combination of those. google, on the other hand, is a standard[1] software job - the type that most people in the hacker news demographic are probably doing, so it is seen as directly comparable.

[1] i don't mean that in a dismissive sense - i work there and it's the best job i've ever had, but the work is not qualitatively different from what you'd do in other software-focused companies. hedge funds are not software-focused.

stuntprogrammer6• 15 years ago

A /lot/ depends on the fund. I know some that are extremely tech focused as it makes the difference between profitable and not.

kabdib• 15 years ago

For someone with ~ 10 years of experience who has a very good track record, I could see a total compensation package of that order.

Joe Shlub is not going to get this. But I've worked with very good developers (e.g., guys at Apple who were instrumental in making whizzy stuff happen in the Mac's graphics stack) who are worth this, and more.

anonsalaryqtion• 15 years ago

I've been meaning to ask some of my founder friends about this.

I've casually heard that Google and Facebook have driven the starting salary for Bay Area developers up above $150k/yr for college kids with no experience.

I'm a talented 25 year-old web developer who jumped from contracting to full time a year ago. I received a $110k/yr (not eligible for bonus) offer. The people I asked at the time said it was a competitive salary and not worth negotiating.

Now I'm wondering if it's time to move on. I see boxes in on job applications for "expected annual salary" and I don't know what to put. I know the money you save when you're young is what allows you to retire/start a company/etc., and want to make sure I'm being paid competitively. At the same time, I don't want to misread the market and come across as out-of-touch on one of these apps.

Guys, what's the going rate for a talented front-end web developer in the Bay Area about 4 years out of school?

patio114• 15 years ago

I see boxes in on job applications for "expected annual salary" and I don't know what to put.

"Negotiable", "Market rate", etc. That box is asking you to compromise your negotiating position. There is no legal or moral stricture that says you have to oblige them.

The people I asked at the time said it was a competitive salary and not worth negotiating.

This makes me angry. Of course it is worth negotiating. What would have happened if you had said "That is an interesting number. How would you feel about $115k?" Answer: in all probability, you'd be a couple thousand dollars richer now for three minutes of work, the worst possible outcome would have been accepting the offer at $110k, and nobody at your company would care either way because the difference is bat guano to them.

xiaoma4• 15 years ago

>the worst possible outcome would have been accepting the offer at $110k, and nobody at your company would care either way because the difference is bat guano to them.

That's a pretty unimaginative worst possible offer. The company could pay you 115k, resent it, and use it as justification to give you various shit-work. I've seen that happen to a friend and it actually hurt his mid term learning and career growth.

It's also fairly common for a company to simply choose to fill the position with someone who's less troublesome.

If you have an exceptional value to offer a company then, you have significant room for negotiation. If your skill is a common commodity, you likely won't.

there• 15 years ago

takes home one quarter of a million dollars annually.

did you really mean "takes home" as in, $250k after taxes and social security?

dogfu• 15 years ago

They have to. Some really talented engineers could re-imagine google search fairly easily. At this point, they have to pay them not to jump ship and become competitors. Google was both "the search engine" and "the best search engine". They are rapidly becoming a shopping site and "karma whores" have gamed their ranking algorithms. What you are looking for is no longer in the top 3 google results. I wouldn't be surprised if facebook or Apple took a run an their core business.

iradik5• 15 years ago

I don't understand the article, the author says the current googler was one of his "ex-employees" but he is "the guy he just met". Am I missing something here?

jacquesm3• 15 years ago

"the guy I just met" can be someone you never knew before or someone that you've just had a meeting with.

I thought from the context that it was clear I meant the second version.

iradik5• 15 years ago

This is just my opinion/rant.

I just met this guy. Idk just doesn't conjure up the idea of someone you once knew. It's just loose language, that's why I was confused.

Also you said you recently met him, then you say you just met him. Which is it?

"The guy I just met who was once my ex-employee." This sentence just feels confusing. I can't tell you why but it does.

A simple "He" would be much clearer.

barce• 15 years ago

tl;dr There was a hasty generalization based on one dibious number made about Google salaries being higher than Glassdoor's poll-based estimate.

Maven9112• 15 years ago

well based on several people on this thread revealing their total compensation packages, the 250k number does not seem false.

..And I am incredibly jealous...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a fraction of that? Even though my cost of living is less...I live in a major metropolitain canadian city, I know of several people from Uni who moved to the states in jobs like that.

hn_reader2• 15 years ago

>> ...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a fraction of that?

Asking myself the same question today..

iradik5• 15 years ago

This article does not give a good feel of how smart this engineer really is. The programmer says he feels stupid at google. Well, truth is often the smartest people are often more humble!

Being the stupidest person among your peers is probably the best things you can do for yourself if you want to learn. Who better to learn from than a bunch of brilliant people!

nikcub2• 15 years ago

A few months ago I heard a first-hand account from within Google of a developer who was paid a $1M annual bonus, a team that divided a cash and stock bonus between them that was worth $1m+ to each team member, a PM who was paid $40M (and another who got ~$20M IIRC) not to go to Facebook and many other similar stories from Google that make $250k a year sound rather normal.

The theme is that Google has upped compensation in the past 12-18 months in order to retain top talent, with a lot of cash bonuses and base salary increases since competing against Facebook stock options with Google stock options isn't a fair fight any more.

Edit: apparently they also don't like developers talking to each other about this (although team bonuses are highlighted within the company), since they don't want developers interviewing with Facebook or another co. just for the purpose of getting some cash out of Google.

no4clipper• 15 years ago

Could any engineer(with 1~3 years of experience) at Google NYC office share some income information? How's the pay at NYC Google generally compared with Mountain View?

wan23• 15 years ago

I was a Software Engineer 2 at Google NYC, which is the level most new grads and people up to 3 years or so of experience start with, and my base was 106K, with the usual 15% expected bonus plus stock and options (though it seems like they've moved to giving out more stock rather than options). Can't say how that is compared to other offices, but I have reason to believe that I was very close to the mean salary for my level.

feralchimp• 15 years ago

The numbers in this comments thread are staggering.

tryitnow• 15 years ago

This is a nice data point. But if you want to know the real deal, don't talk to fellow programmers. Talk to guys in finance who support the R&D function at tech firms. We know all and see all, everybody else except HR only sees data points. And are you seriously going to trust anybody from HR to interpret numbers?

My advice: Do this work because you love it. But negotiate aggressively. Programmers don't push as hard as other types of employees, there's no real cost to pushing on compensation, just don't be a jerk about it. Read books, blogs, etc on compensation negotiating tactics.

Bottom line: This compensation will not last and plans are already in the works to put an end to it. I will bet money that 2-3 years from now people will be wailing about the drop in programmer comp.

thecage411• 15 years ago

Care to elaborate about these plans?

danssig10• 15 years ago

>This compensation will not last and plans are already in the works to put an end to it.

Like the collusion big companies were already doing and got busted for? It's going to get harder and harder to distort the markets with instant communication. If anything is going to come to an end it's probably going to be the absolutely ridiculous overpay that executives have been enjoying for the last 20 years+.

b_emery• 15 years ago

Please do elaborate. I can only guess that you're talking about massive investment in CS departments in universities (US and abroad). I suspect that the only way to decrease salaries is to increase the pool of skilled labor.

My personal prediction is that programmers will continue to be in demand over the next decade, as demographics (shrinking workforce) collide with a growing economy, and the businesses that are currently disruptive become mainstream. That's my weakly held hypothesis at least...

socratic2• 15 years ago

Ignoring passion, does it make sense economically to join a startup in the Bay Area?

It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area to be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus + equity. Over 30 years, that's a more or less guaranteed $5m -- 7.5m before taxes from a single income. (Ignoring things like promotions and older engineers possibly needing to retrain.)

If you're not an early employee at the next Google, or a co-founder of a to-be-talent-acquired company, is it likely at all that you will beat those numbers at a string of startups? And if you do beat those numbers at a startup, is it because you're basically doing the same work you would be doing at Google anyway, likely ads or infrastructure?

lawnchair_larry2• 15 years ago

"It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area to be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus + equity."

It's very uncommon. Less than 1%, for sure. The other 99% don't make headlines on HN.

socratic2• 15 years ago

I may have a biased sample, but six out of my seven engineer friends 25--35 have salary + bonus + equity in that range or higher. The only one not making that is at a very early stage startup. Even my friends making iPhone apps independently are in that range.

danssig10• 15 years ago

The rational thing to do is look at compensation to you. What are you going to get out of the startup? Comparable salary? Then it's probably ok. Experience that will allow you to make your own company (assuming you want to)? That's worth something.

I just wouldn't figure the stock grant/options for any value at all. The odds are strongly against them being worth anything.

drumdance• 15 years ago

I've heard this is part of the reason Google is expanding in non-SV offices. They can recruit someone right out of school, move him/her to Boulder or Portland or Austin, pay them less and not worry so much about Facebook stealing them.

codenerdz• 15 years ago

I wonder how many of these non-Google $200K+ salaries are for developing in non-Java languages/frameworks

matheusalmeida• 15 years ago

I don't know if one can easily find a similar compensation given from an European company... So, distinguished persons like Brian Kernighan or Rob Pike should earn at least 1M$ ?

dev_jim• 15 years ago

I'm not sure why people find this so unbelievable.

The revenue per employee at GOOG is $1.2M in a very high margin business. That means some of their best developers, the guys whose products generate all the revenue, take home only 20% of the pie. In finance, this would be laughable.

Corporate America baffles me sometimes.

Joakal• 15 years ago

Which areas of finance? From what I understand from some finance people is that they don't take away as much either.

There's also an oversupply of labour in the city though.

Aloisius• 15 years ago

I do not compete with Google for talent. Well, certainly not talent that I want anyway. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of fine engineers at Google, but they aren't startup engineers.

Because I don't compete with Google for talent, I, nor anyone I know, pays engineers anywhere near $250k/year. Personally, I believe Google pays that much because they have to just to keep people from jumping ship.

If you're an academic, I believe Google may be the perfect place. Your meals are provided, there is always something intellectually interesting to research and the stress level is quite low. The fact is, nothing you do as an individual is going to make or break a $30B/year company and that has its pluses and minuses.

Luckily for me and other startup founders, there are a whole lot of talented engineers out there that don't find the slow, calm, quiet life particularly appealing.

teratau3• 15 years ago

I know profitable companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon typically offer you more options and stock grants (in addition to cash bonuses) at annual reviews or whatever.

Do (not yet profitable) startups do the same? From what I've heard, most don't offer bonuses in the form of options and stock grants, but this seems kind of weird to me. I can understand not offering cash bonuses if they're not yet profitable, but it seems like if I do a great job, I should get extra stock (since otherwise, basically the amount of stock I ever get is purely determined from my status when I joined, which could be much different from my status four years later).

strlen• 15 years ago

This is completely believable, if you take into account the bonus and the RSUS.

Suppose the actual salary is $130k and 30% (at least that's what I heard bonus): that already brings his salary up to $169k.

Now add RSUs: over the last five years, the average price had been ~$500/share. He will only need an RSU grant of ~650 RSUs (which sounds reasonable, especially if it was granted in 2008/2009 when the stock price was lower) to be at $250k total compensation. It could also be the case that his base is higher, but he is only getting 15%-20% bonus, or didn't get as many RSUs: there are many ways in which $250k is a believable figure.

Given the near certainty of Facebook's IPOs, what other private companies are trading at on Sharespost and SecondMarket, as well as valuations/prices of recently/upcoming technology IPOs, his total compensation is actually somewhat below what he could earn elsewhere.

Of course nobody working at Google (or Facebook, or any other serious technology company for that matter) is it in purely for the money: otherwise they simply wouldn't have be at the level of proficiency needed to be hired at such companies. Taking a route optimized for maximizing _current_ income is not the same as taking a route optimized for learning. _That_ is the reason engineers will always leave Google and join startups (much like Engineers left DEC/Sun/Yahoo/etc... to join Google), provided the startups are solving interesting technical problems. Unfortunately, right now there's a dearth of that.

Corollary: you'll never lure a Google-caliber engineer into an actual startup (as opposed to a "certain pay off" pre-IPO company) with talk of compensation. When I hear companies complaining about how difficult is it to hire "because" of Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn hiring all the engineers, they're almost always startups that are _not_ building interesting technology.

Another relevant point: there is no pressure for a software engineer to live a $250,000 lifestyle. An enterprise sales engineer I know once purchased a used BMW 540i. That seemed pointless to me: you can get better acceleration and handling in in a Japanese car, if really want a BMW you could get a new 3-series (getting better handling and acceleration than a 5-series, along with free maintenance for 50,000 miles). If you don't care for performance, you easily spend 1/3 as much money on a Honda Civic or Accord. However, his explanation made a lot of sense: he frequently needs to take clients out and an executive class car certainly makes an impression that can close a sale. I'd imagine the same goes for lawyers, management consultants and the like. A software engineer can easily live on $40,000 a year and save/invest the rest (for either a startup, early retirement or purchasing what he/she truly dreams of e.g., a Porsche 911 Turbo if they're really into performance cars).

siromega• 15 years ago

This is very true. I know some lawyers who, when they graduated law school and joined their firm, were told by the partners to get a better car as quickly as they can afford it, preferably a BMW. Even if you already have a nice vehicle already, they want a luxury model.

topbanana• 15 years ago

I feel I should speak up for the 5-series. Much more leg room in the back if you have family!

kayoone• 15 years ago

The car thing is funny. In germany if you turn up in an expensive car at your client, they think you already make enough money and want to get the price down while in the US people think you are successfull and close a deal. Different cultures i guess :)

rayiner4• 15 years ago

This is a good sign. Market salary for a 30 y/o corporate lawyer in NYC was north of $250k this year, and for a 30 y/o banker it was probably 1.5x-2x that. Yet Google makes more revenue per employee than any law firm or investment bank.

Professional salaries are a function of both objective factors (supply and demand), and subjective factors. Engineers have long had a disadvantage on the subjective side because it is difficult to quantize their contribution to the revenue of the company. Hopefully signs like this mean the perceptions are changing.

Like it or not, the Valley needs to pay more to attract top people. If you're a science/engineering major at a top school at the top of your class, how much would you be willing to give up to go into engineering? Prior to these recent salary spikes, you were looking at making $30k less to start versus finance, growing to $300k-$400k less by 30. It takes a lot of love and dedication to turn that down for what is at the end of the day just a another job.

wtfcisco• 15 years ago

Maybe I can shed light on why some of us are "shocked" about this number, while others seem to think it's no big deal.

I work for Cisco, which is certainly not considered a Google or Amazon, these days, but still a fairly respectable place. I'm a software engineering doing embedded work for the last three years out of my BS in CS. I got hired on at $73k with 300 options (now underwater).

I have had consistently good reviews, though only given one promotion and one raise - with a whopping $79.5k in salary afterwards. A bonus is typically 6%, though this year I've got the highest rating possible, so I had a 12% bonus. I've been given RSUs once, at a value of about $10k, though the stock price dropped and they are sitting at around $5000 now.

So, my yearly compensation is about $90k or so, though they've jacked up our medical costs, taken away free drinks, raise prices in our cafeteria, taken away the home broadband reimbursment, etc etc since I've been here.

So, Anyone need an embedded engineer with a network security focus?

danssig10• 15 years ago

Polish up that resume and start the search (the easiest way IMO is via contracting agencies, since they only make money when you do). Everyday you spend working below your market rate is a day you leave cash just laying on the table. You only have so many years you're going to be able to earn, I wouldn't waste them.

hn_reader2• 15 years ago

I'm in a similar situation (except with an even bigger tech company) but I work in a geographic area with no other tech employers. I do believe this cuts down on the number of people leaving for greener pastures and helps keep salaries down.

rachelbythebay4• 15 years ago

At Google, Sr. SWE makes about $155K if female, about $180K if male. Base salary. Bonuses and refresher grants are also skewed accordingly.

These are 2011 numbers, personally researched.

savrajsingh• 15 years ago

I'm surprised that gender-based pay differences aren't addressed at Google?

rachelbythebay4• 15 years ago

They can't even buy the right numbers of T-Shirts (hint: unisex isn't. One word: breasts), so why would they get the big stuff right?

Seriously, ask any woman who's still left in SRE about the Mission Control jackets in 2008-9. There was an impressive post-mortem written about it earlier this year right before I left.

lsc2• 15 years ago

From what I've seen, as an outsider with a lot of friends that work at and/or have interviewed at Google, they seem to have some serious issues with sexisim, issues that go beyond a pay gap. They are trying, but man, they are not doing so well, and they are losing out on talent because of it.

rachelbythebay4• 15 years ago

So check this out. I finally have a data point to use to prove this. I've been out of there about six months. One of my friends recently transitioned male-to-female. This is a unique opportunity to find out, right?

She is now being passed up by people visiting her team's cube to ask about things regarding the service. Their default response is to go ask the guys in the cube instead.

"Welcome to my world", I said.

Bikepump• 15 years ago

This must be partly a team-specific culture issue, because my observations are different. In my area of the company there are quite a few women engineers who are highly regarded, extremely influential, and well-compensated. The gender ratio is still poor like most places in the industry, but I haven't seen any evidence of women doing worse in career advancement.

darylteo• 15 years ago

Beginner level engineer - barely pushing 80k.

I'm working at the wrong place =(

Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

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