Google Is Tops for Software Engineer Salaries

http://mashable.com/2012/10/18/google-tops-software-engineer-salaries/

by gregpurtell • 14 years ago

68 116 14 years ago

duedl0r• 14 years ago

this is clearly only one side of the coin. The money is not normalized: What if a google engineer has to work 15h for this salary?

odiroot• 14 years ago

Also, what about variance?

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

You can get this off Glassdoor's main website... but only if you post your own salary.

quest88• 14 years ago

Then they should have written unit tests from the beginning!

davidmr• 14 years ago

I find this extremely hard to believe. Aside from the obvious fact that glassdoor's data set can hardly be judged to be a fairly conducted survey, I simply don't buy that the average software engineer salary in, say, trading firms, is less than $128k.

ImprovedSilence7• 14 years ago

I think in trading firms, you would not be defined as a "software engineer", but rather "quantitative analyst". Often times, quants require other advanced mathematics degrees as well, thus creating a distinction between quant, and software engineer. Also, this article seemed to focus only on tech firms anyway.

rafkin983• 14 years ago

Nope, software engineers and quantitative analyst are two different positions. The first one is building an infrastructure (market data feeds listeners, caches,...) for second one (which builds model based on that infrastructure). Been there, seen that...

rafkin983• 14 years ago

And I forgot to mention that 128K is really a low end for finance software guys. It's not uncommon to see salaries about 200K for experienced guys even outside of Manhattan ;-)

stephencanon• 14 years ago

Their base salary (which is what is listed here) may not be a whole lot more; a large portion of their compensation comes in the form of annual bonuses. That's also the case for some of the listed firms, FWIW. As a senior engineer at one of them, I have received bonuses that are twice my "base salary" in good years.

rafkin983• 14 years ago

Exactly. These kind of bonuses are not uncommon...

chollida12• 14 years ago

Well to be clear software engineer isn't the high man on the totem poll in most trading firms.

I think the outside population has a skewed view of what the technology looks like in a typical hedge fund due to all the stories about highly technical funds.

Many hedge funds dont' have that great of computer technology and the technology that they have is applied to back office processing rather than trading. In these types of firms, which I'd say make up the majority of funds, tech is viewed like marketing would be viewed in a techology company, a necessary evil but not a core part of the team.

Most funds buy their technology and build out to fill the missing pieces.

Some funds do build out sophisticated tech, and in these funds tech is valued and paid accordingly, but they are not the majority of funds.

chollida12• 14 years ago

One other point I should make is that salaries are usually pretty small. $50,000/year at a fund isn't unheard of. Many people draw no salary after they've been at a fund for a few years.

The idea being that you put your money where your mouth is. If you're good you get paid via year end bonus, otherwise you leave the industry:)

Adrock• 14 years ago

Finally, if you’re looking to maximize your paycheck, consider moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the average salary is $107,798, the highest in the nation. You might also want to avoid Minneapolis, where the average is just $75,032, the lowest in the nation.

Adjusted for cost of living, $107,798 in San Francisco is equivalent to $71,100 in Minneapolis:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24107%2C797+in+san+fra...

throwaway1979• 14 years ago

It is shocking how often people don't consider this. I myself did not understand the full implications of cost of living until I moved several jobs, to different cities, each time my cost of living went up. At one point I realized, I was getting paid four times more in real terms but my standard of living was worse than in grad school!

praptak2• 14 years ago

Wait, this dumbass page just divides the salary by the cost of living ratio? This is idiotic. It would only make sense if you spent all you salary on "livings", trying to maximize the monthly number of "livings" you get.

What matters is the amount of cash you're left with after you pay the actual cost of living. In this model, 20k/y raise is a 20k/y raise wherever you live, assuming you've already got the monthly balance positive. Of course it's still not the perfect metric but still much better than this bullshit.

ImprovedSilence7• 14 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Also, I don't know how many times I've heard potential employers who are very interested in me, tell me "well the cost of living is so much less out here, we don't want to pay you jack $h!t!". As if I don't understand how compounding my raise percentage works over the course of my career, or they think my rent is going be drastically different... It's disturbing to think they can get away with it.

joezydeco4• 14 years ago

CNN has a cost of living calculator that seems to take grocery , housing, utility, transportation, and healthcare factors into account.

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm...

107,798 in SF would be 73,278 in Minneapolis

_delirium2• 14 years ago

In particular, you shouldn't adjust for CoL any parts of your salary that will be spent on (nonlocal) trips/vacations, or on nationally priced consumer goods. The cost of big-screen televisions or Xbox games doesn't get any cheaper when you move from San Francisco to Fresno, for example, and neither does the cost of taking a trip to Paris.

The CoL calculators, as they're usually implemented, make the most sense for people with no real disposable income beyond living expenses, but they don't make a lot of sense for Google-level salaries.

hnriot• 14 years ago

Your paragraph makes no logical sense, a 20k raise is not the same wherever you live, taxes and the things you'll ultimately buy with it vary in cost so it's incomparable.

Notice how the salary adjustment jives with the CNN calculator too, this is because the cola takes into account the things that people need to spend their salary on, if you buy a vw microbus and sleep in the office parking lot every night and have minimal dining needs then you will notice an absolute difference between regions, otherwise you won't, the salary variance is eaten by the cost of all he usual things people do.

DannyBee• 14 years ago

Yeah, I was gonna say, this is just crazy.

I'm a google person, moving from one side of the country (Maryland) to the other (Mountain View), and the price differences are hilarious.

Income taxes are roughly the same in both states (~10%), but for the price of a 2500 sq ft house in the Bay Area, I could get a 4000 sq ft house with gold plated bathtubs in Maryland/Virginia. In turn, the property taxes will also be double or triple what I pay now (~5k) because of the high housing prices.

Of course, the traffic is actually significantly better in the bay area than in DC, so i could live farther away and have less of a commute, but still.

oscardelben• 14 years ago

The traffic in the bay area is pretty bad, too.

smackfu• 14 years ago

This also ignores that some of these companies are very big on telecommuting and others aren't. The fact that I can telecommute to my current job is probably worth $10k to me.

ditonal3• 14 years ago

I personally think the "cost of living" argument is bogus a huge portion of the time, at least it was for me when I moved from Maryland to NYC.

Sure, rent is expensive. That's about it, and even then if you're willing to live in the right part of Jersey you can still be 30 minutes from work and have very cheap rent.

Most big ticket items are the same. Anything ordered from Amazon is the same. Laptops, tablets, sound systems - the same. Tons of clothing deals all over the city. Food is actually cheaper because there are so many little farmer markets and dollar stores. I understand that if you just go by what some people are paying for a hamburger, you could think that NYC is much more expensive, but you don't have to eat at the same place i-bankers and tourists eat! A street gyro cost $4 and there's $1 slices of pizza.

Finally, even if the cost of living is higher, it's not a comparable product. You are paying not only to have a place to sleep, but you are also paying to live in New York City, one of the most exciting cities in the world with endless amounts of diverse people, places, and activities. Paying higher rent so that you can live in the city many people dream about makes sense, and the fact that salaries are largely adjusted to make this a reasonable proposition makes it an easy choice.

netcan• 14 years ago

Yeah, look... it's an impossible problem.

On one hand you put your finger on it. Your life in place A is completely different then your life in place B so trying to so that you are paying x% more per sqft and therefore you arre y% poorer is obviously nonsense. Same goes for inflation calculators. This week you spent your money on iPads, international foods, air travel, divorce lawyers and antidepressants. 200 years ago you could have taken that money and bought this many slaves, that much bread and a weekly leaching. Therefore $1 in 1804 is worth $349 in todays money.

On the other hand there obviously is such a thing as inflation over time and cost of living variances. You can tell because you can live in a house, eat food and drive a car with a certain amount of money in one place but you can't pay for a the smallest apartment in another place with the same amount.

skittles• 14 years ago

I think a lot of people lower their standard of living when they move to expensive places. For instance, I live in the mid-west in a 5-bedroom, 3-bath house with a 2-car garage. My wife and I own 2 reliable cars, and we eat at mid-level restaurants almost every day. If we tried to live a comparable life in NYC, I'm certain the cost-of-living argument would apply.

king_jester• 14 years ago

When it comes to food, I disagree that NYC isn't significantly more expensive. It is true that you can find cheap street and fast food in the city, but there's no way you could stand eating that all of the time just like any fast food. Groceries are more expensive than other parts of the country and you are often dependent on several stores for getting the kind of goods you want unless you live in Manhattan near a big store like Whole Foods (a store which is expensive). In terms of salary, only white collar and union jobs have any kind of salary adjustment that helps with the cost of living.

babs4743• 14 years ago

The minneapolis tech market seems to underrated and overlooked. The salaries in the article are not uncommon, demand is high and the cost of living difference is huge. The big drawback being that the tech culture tends to be weighted in the enterprisey java direction. But hey, we have startups too http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4636880

rada8• 14 years ago

I've moved to Minneapolis a couple years ago and I've been very impressed by the startup scene. I've had a chance to attend one MinneBar (http://minnestar.org/minnebar/) and one MinneDemo (http://minnestar.org/minnedemo/) and see 30-40 startups present. Out of that number, about 5 were in solid black, 5 were easily cash-flow positive, and 5 more well on the way. Minnesota does not have the superstar startups but there are definitely a lot of solid performers.

mronge• 14 years ago

The cost of living difference between Minneapolis and San Francisco is HUGE. For the cost of an apartment in San Francisco you could have a huge house on 1/2 an acre of land in the Minneapolis area.

This calculator takes into account more, like housing, food etc: http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=107798%20&city1=50...

"A salary of $107,798 in San Francisco, California could decrease to $56,716 in Minneapolis, Minnesota"

Which is much more in line with my personal experience having worked in both Silicon Valley and Minneapolis.

If you're a good engineer, it is not uncommon to pull down 107k or more in Minneapolis as well.

dennisgorelik5• 14 years ago

If you are single or DINK (dual-income-no-kids) and don't really need more than one-bedroom apartment - you would probably be better off living in Bay Area and working for Google (or whatever). That way you would be able to accumulate cash faster or travel internationally a lot more.

With kids - it's better live in a provincial suburb, have big house with nice backyard while working for 30% smaller salary.

rada8• 14 years ago

Minneapolis has a weird thing going on that skews the salaries to the low end of the scale. People just don't move. I've tried to recruit a couple friends who are really unhappy in their jobs, and they don't want to even hear about it. Literally: they hate their boss, the work is stale, the commute is an hour each way, the salary is low - and yet, they won't even consider a job that offers a 30% raise, half the commute, newest technologies, a $5k equipment package, work from home twice a week, etc. It's mind boggling, but there it is.

In my experience, the higher salaries are easily available. I've been consistently offered much more than $70k and the recruiters are desperate. So I'd say the job market in Minneapolis is actually quite hot - it's the talent that doesn't take advantage of it.

babs4743• 14 years ago

This is right on. It is so frustrating to see really excellent talent rot away in some intertech cube farm, but I see it a lot. Is it a midwest culture thing? I guess it opens up opportunities for people who aren't so risk averse though.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

Just to clarify, do you mean that people won't move to Minneapolis, won't move from Minneapolis, or people all over the country generally don't want to relocate?

Graham24• 14 years ago

I know nothing about Minneapolis, why is it so cheap? is it a bit rubbish?

Evbn4• 14 years ago

It is beautiful, and has perfect summers, but a cold snowy winter.

rm999• 14 years ago

A high cost of living often means the area is desirable to live in, which is hard to value. SF has much nicer weather and culture than Minneapolis, which to many people is worth a lot more than the cost of living difference.

Think of it this way: people want to live in desirable places even if they have jobs that don't adjust for cost of living.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Is Base Salary the "starting salary" for a new hire, or is that the "base salary" across all employees across the company?

edit: I ask because my starting salary at MS is surprising close to the number they have listed as "base salary". I can't tell if base pay growth is small there or if this information is simply inaccurate.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I thought that was very misleading...

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

Latter.

larsberg• 14 years ago

Indeed, glassdoor is bad (estimates low), at least at Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook. I saw it on two fronts; as a manager, the salary ranges are fixed for each of the title/pay grads.

As a hiring manager, human resources also paid for Serious Surveys (i.e., not just relying on the people who enter their info into a random website) of salaries for comparable jobs at other places. Of course, that was probably superfluous, as the HR and recruiting people swap between the big tech firms pretty frequently (seemingly moreso than engineers), so for the cost of a trip to the cafeteria starbucks, you could usually get info on comparable salaries from a recent transfer.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

Base salary presumably means salary not including equity grants and bonuses. There's no such thing as "starting salary" because people have varying levels of experience and compensation is roughly proportional to that.

brianbreslin• 14 years ago

Just looking at the sample set in this article you need to factor the headquarters or location of most of these engineers. An IBM employee in white plains ny making 95k makes relatively more than zynga guy in sf making 104k.

jere2• 14 years ago

I thought I was hearing a lot of chatter in the past few years that Google's salaries weren't that great and that the benefits/environment are really what made it worthwhile (e.g. if you attempted to negotiate they would come back with a calculation about the value of the free food).

Has this changed or was I misinformed? A bump of $13k in a single year does, of course, seem quite significant.

libria• 14 years ago

I do remember 2 things which might have bumped it up. To stem the stream of developers going to pre-IPO Facebook and other Valley up-and-comings[1], they bumped salaries up 10% across the board + making bonuses part of salary that year, IIRC. Also, a Valley salary corroboration was exposed recently[2].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2417577

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521817

Evbn4• 14 years ago

The food thing was a myth spread on HN.

jere2• 14 years ago

Really? This blog post is a lie?

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/

wildmXranat• 14 years ago

I wonder how those salaries compare to our companies north of the border in Canada. Also, yes Mashable, that is strikingly similar to how I look while working : http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/programmer.jp...

tocomment• 14 years ago

How would this be different if they had used "senior software engineer"?

rguillebert• 14 years ago

It would be nice to have salaries of software engineers per country (from France those numbers are huge)

skilesare• 14 years ago

Stop working for salary.

cobrausn• 14 years ago

While you're at it, stop eating for sustenance.

vilda• 14 years ago

Isn't there a catch in job position names? I heard that the term Software Engineer is used broadly in Google. Thus a higly-paid Manager in IBM is Software Engineer in Google...

sp332• 14 years ago

I worked for DEKA for a while, they had a bit over 200 employees who were, on paper, engineers. I wrote software for them for a while and all the programmers were called Software Engineers. I'm a little surprised that the 2 HR people weren't called Social Engineers :)

Evbn4• 14 years ago

Yes.

And I would rather be an engineer 2 at $150k than an engineer 3 or associate VP at $100k

adjwilli• 14 years ago

Are IBM salaries so low because of the "the cost difference is too great" between H1B and domestic employees as posted yesterday? http://cis.org/miano/ibm-cost-difference-too-great-business-...

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

Heh, ironically, IBM H1B and Google H1B salaries differ substantially http://www.garamchai.com/TopH1b.htm

softbuilder• 14 years ago

After many years of reading these surveys, I've started to avoid them. It's not very helpful. Sure, it may tell you if you are drastically underpaid. What it won't tell you is the opportunities of the particular job, whether you will be happy working there, or how much you'll be making in X years because you chose one opportunity over another. All it can really do is make you bitter or smug.

cupcake_death• 14 years ago

"Google Is Tops for Software Engineer Salaries" - I'd hope so, compared to traditional corporations like GM for instance; they have similar operating income BUT, Google have roughly a quarter less employees. They need to be paying high salaries to attract top talent, as an incumbent operator, but their contribution to the larger economic picture is less than impressive, (Unless tax avoidance impresses you).

iamjs• 14 years ago

why on earth would you sort that list by company name and not by salary?

allsystemsgo• 14 years ago

And in other news, water is wet.

Salary postings are link bait for the most part.

namank• 14 years ago

Hardware companies pay the lowest? Not much in embedded, eh?

kayoone2• 14 years ago

hilarious compared to Software Engineering Salaries in Europe... id like to hear if there are any European Software Engineers (not PMs or any leading role) that earn more than 70k EUR pa.

Alan01252• 14 years ago

Not unheard of, I know of at least one developer earning much more than this working for a bank in London. I had the pleasure of meeting another software engineer from Switzerland who's salary was around that figure.

chnoogler• 14 years ago

Sure there are. I'll be starting at Google Switzerland the coming month with a considerably larger base salary. I'm nothing fancy at that, a fresh university grad with only a year of real programming experience.

kayoone2• 14 years ago

Ok Switzerland might be a special case, salaries have traditionally been higher there as in the rest of europe, cost of living is also alot higher though.

tonfa• 14 years ago

CH doesn't count I think, non engineering roles in Zurich are already very well paid when converted to EUR (e.g 60k CHF for construction workers).

russgray• 14 years ago

I make more than 70k EUR pa at a startup in London (but then I'm sure London isn't particularly representative of Europe).

Google Is Tops for Software Engineer Salaries

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