With nothing to back me up except the general impression I have, these numbers look out-of-whack even for the highest-paying employers in the Bay Area.
I know I'm just a random internet commenter and thus you could be forgiven for thinking I'm making things up, but I just got an offer from a smaller public tech company for a senior / staff level position making almost $400k in first year comp. I'm pretty confident that after negotiation we'll land a little over $400k. And recruiters at several other tech companies where I'm interviewing have told me they can match or exceed this offer. I think FB or Snap would pay more than $600k at this level, but I don't want to work for either of them :)
To be fair, I have 12 years of experience, 9 of that in mobile dev, but all of it is self-employment experience. Comp is just insane at the top companies.
I mean, I don't know? To be fair, I have not gotten an offer from either of those companies. Maybe I never could. But I did get an offer from a company that competes with them for talent and it's roughly at the L5 level at Snap and E6 level at FB. Looking at levels.fyi, I'm seeing $550k - 575k, and given that the offer I got was about $50k higher than the data levels.fyi has for the company in question, I don't think hitting $600k is crazy, especially if you have competing offers.
It appears to be adding up a lot of different things into one number:
- base salary (cash)
- sign-on bonus (typically a large one-time equity grant that vest over 3-4 years)
- a raise each year (cash)
- an accompanying equity grant (which also vests over 3-4 years)
Where the whole thing seems weird to me is that they seem to be comparing pre-IPO options/RSUs to actual stocks as if they were apples-to-apples. This matters because the fraction of an amount that is attributable to equity is typically large (sign-on total value is a few times the amount of base salary for a year, for example, so I wouldn't be surprised if these numbers were 50-75% equity)
It would probably be an interesting article to delve into what accounts for the difference between the Bay Area's $227,000 median (which sounds about right) and the $400K-$500K that 5 years of experience gets at the top of your list. The difference is striking, essentially paying double the median amount for moderately experienced employees.
Considering that the overall category is "software engineering compensation", many people will be senior/staff engineers, unless people are constantly washing out in less than 5 years time.
Staff usually makes up less than 10% of people, and senior is above the median at most places.
Levels.Fyi further biases towards new grads. A more representative sample would likely move the median higher. And most people are at the low end of senior after five years, if that.
Let me reiterate that: the median silicon valley swe has under 5YOE.
To be fair, I have 12 years of experience, 9 of that in mobile dev, but all of it is self-employment experience. Comp is just insane at the top companies.