[techelitism]

Few comments on this because I think about this quite a bit.

1) I always read these articles and sigh. Seems like they only focus on 2 elite tech companies at the expense of all the others while only interviewing students at the #1 CS school in the country. I feel like a 2nd class citizen in the industry because of it. When will the normal people be heard?

2) I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook.

3) I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons (you're probably not going to be working on product code if you don't want to) that pays as much as Facebook does, especially given the $75k signing bonus on the table for interns. I think any discussion about this on the student level has to start with this. Any comparison to the defense industry is silly because defense pays significantly less than big tech.

[manfredo]

> I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook.

If it's just salary, not including equity, that's by no means "very low". Where are you finding that new grads are typically getting more?

[RandomInteger4]

I'm assuming this is a California thing? That's like beyond senior level pay over here in the mid west, lol.

[manfredo]

140k including equity is not unheard of. 90k-120k base salary plus a few tens of thousands in equity is a typical range for a new grad in SV. Chances are they'll still live with room mates, though because housing costs are high. Not to mention the 10-20k that is paid in California income taxes. So it probably balances out.

[techelitism]

Total compensation obviously because FB stock is liquid. New grad salary is in the $110-115k range at FB. I know a few companies that do pay it or more base (2Sigma, Snowflake Computing and Jane Street come to mind).

I had offers for $130k base, $130k base + equity and $130k base + bonus and those were considered to be below average by most of my peers.

[vonmoltke]

> I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook.

You are living in a Valley bubble if you think $140k is "pretty low" for a new grad in general, and that's as total comp (not just salary).

[saagarjha]

Facebook mostly hires inside the “Valley bubble”-so it’s pretty important to discuss salaries taking that into account.

[vonmoltke]

I know. That's why I was addressing the broader assertion.

[mattlondon]

This "Valley bubble" probably goes a long way to explain a lot of these attitudes too.

Would the average joe/jane, given the offer of a "low" 140K salary at a FAANG, turn it down on ethical grounds?

I doubt it. The median US household income appears to be about 60K (1), so at 140K you'd be single-handedly over double the median houshold income before taking into consideration any partner's income. Thats a big deal.

This almost flippant attitude to employment and high salaries in silicon valley is somewhat worrying. I feel like people are growing increasingly disconnected from reality of life that the average person on the street has to deal with.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

[akhilcacharya]

>Would the average joe/jane, given the offer of a "low" 140K salary at a FAANG, turn it down on ethical grounds?

I mean, I'm pretty average but I did that for a tiny bit more money considering equity at a startup. I think it's not an unreasonable assumption to make if your competing offers are similar, which a lot of people in this position do. I don't think there are many people who only get Facebook offers.

The calculus is different for interns though, on account of the massive signing bonus.

[techelitism]

I don’t live in the Valley, I just have a lot of accomplished friends/acquaintances

[vonmoltke]

Where outside the Valley (and maybe NYC) where new grads are routinely getting total comp packages significantly greater than $140k? All the names you dropped in your other post are top companies that the typical new grad has very little chance of getting in to.

[akhilcacharya]

Not OP, but I live in Boston and make a little north of that. Not Google/FB/etc. TBH, I'm as close to a "typical new grad" as you can get IMO.

[ken]

> I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons

I'm reminded of a line in Roger Ebert's review of American Splendor: "We don't fight over trivial things, because nothing worth fighting over is trivial. As Harvey might say, Hey, it's important to me!"