[anonygler]

That's insane. The residency program is a way for people from unique backgrounds to enter into the software engineering field with less stringent interview requirements. SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.

This was an incredible opportunity and it's an absolute shame that internal protests killed it. Yes, you get less pay and a smaller stock refresh, but I know a few people who's careers began with this residency and they'd still be struggling without it.

I don't even know how to describe this. You get less pay but an amazing opportunity, and then you look back and are upset that you weren't given more? Google took a large risk on these candidates with the assumption that they'd fail and eventually have to be let go. But they did it anyway just to create opportunities.

[ashhdsfsa28378]

To clarify, I can say from experience (having personally helped convert 6 engineering residents at Google), I'm pretty confident the "less pay and a smaller stock refresh" in the article is referring to conversion offers to FTE and stock refreshes after the first year of FTE employment, not to their pay during their residency. Those FTE conversion offers were terrible, from what I saw, with no room for negotiation. The residency program had given these candidates 1 year to build a proven track record of performance and they were fully ramped up by the end, so there was no risk to Google at the time of those offers; if a resident was given an offer, it was because they were a pretty sure thing (far more than any normal interviewed hire). As such, I think their offers should have been higher than a regular hire, not lower. (As someone who was hired direct out of college with little experience, I can confidently say the offers my residents got were _significantly_ lower than my starting offer at the same level.) The article states this a bit unclearly, but I'm pretty sure this is what it means, because it doesn't make sense to refer to year-end bonuses or stock refreshes during residency because they aren't long enough to get these regardless (and I never heard anyone complain about this).

That said, as a side note, I do think articles like this tend to sensationalize Google as a whole as the "bad guy". Try to remember, Google is a huge company with lots of people managing its many parts. I personally feel there was a failing here, but if so, it was the fault of a relatively small number of people, not "Google". Even most of the people running this program were good, and the program itself was great (as you said) other than what I said above. There's hundreds of thousands of decisions happening every day at Google. If just a couple bad ones get to define the company as a whole, then no large company can ever be good, no matter how good all the rest of those decisions are.

[creato]

> with no room for negotiation.

The only room for negotiation is being willing to walk (usually because you have an offer somewhere else).

Otherwise, it's not negotiating, it's just begging.

[onion2k]

SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.

I don't think that's really true.

I'm not arguing that there aren't SWEs whose total comp is $600k. There definitely are. However, those people aren't really SWEs. They're managers, architects, and strategists. They have a lot of people reporting to them, they make decisions about very high level things that are only tangentially related to code, and they work on guiding other engineers to find solutions to hard problems. No doubt being a developer before getting to that role is incredibly helpful and makes you better at it, but if you're earning $600k I very much doubt you're spending more than 25% of your time sat at a keyboard with an IDE open.

If you want to earn that much after a decade in work you'd be much better off polishing your management and strategy skills than learning how to write better code.

And yes, I realise I'm totally falling in to the 'no true Scotsman' trap here. But sometimes a Scotsman is just an MBA in a kilt. :)

[discobot2]

500-600K is L5-L6 at google CA, which is still a lot of coding and maybe some reports, but not necessary.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

> SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.

Just like stores have "up to" 70% discounts. One item is marked off that much, and the rest are given modest discounts.

We shouldn't normalize this number as some plain old average, it'd be aspirational for many.

[gravypod]

(Opinions are my own. I know nothing about this program.)

Using StackOverflow's [0] aggregated statistics of pay based on experience + location we can get some rough estimates

Over a 5 to 10 year span as a developer at Google you'd probably touch: Java, Golang, C++, Python, and some part of GCP (or very similar tech). Pay is also different from market location so if we look only at the USA we can look at SF and Manhattan.

5 years:

    - NYC 25% 96k, 50% 126k, 75% 166k
    - SF 25% 113k, 50% 149k, 75% 197k

10 years:

    - NYC 25% 107k, 50% 141k, 75% 186k
    - SF 25% 126k, 50% 166k, 75% 219k

This is also ignoring the FAANG bump that you get from being Xoogler. Also, if you don't get a promotion or are unhappy with your compensation Facebook's levels are an approximate 1:1 mapping to Google and from what I've heard going from Google to Facebook and back to Google is quite common. Some people have joked that there are people that are on a 2 year rotation back and forth.

Some more data can be gleamed from here: https://www.levels.fyi/

500k+ is L6+, while very difficult to obtain, seems doable if you are determined, know your stuff, know how to find the "right" projects, and are also an inspiring leader.

[0] - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary

[lrem]

I have hit L6 after 7 years of steep upward trajectory. I have been hired with a PhD and four years of part-time industry experience. I got it now because two years ago our org got a new leader with a mindset very similar to mine, while at the same time a solution I've been developing for a couple years was just found by a tens-of-billions-usd problem.

Sure, over the 7 years I've met a couple engineers with a similar trajectory and one with a steeper one. But the vast majority will either take more time to get to L6, or plain decide to stay forever at 4 or 5.

[skt5]

L3 to L6 in 7 years is very impressive. Even L4 to L6 in 7 years is impressive. I would expect a talented engineer would be able to go from L3 to L6 in 10 years.

[b20000]

“ way for people from unique backgrounds to enter into the software engineering field with less stringent interview requirements” - sounds like discrimination and should be illegal. meanwhile, people in their 40s are dealing with leetcode BS to get a reasonable position with that sort of compensation even though they have an extensive track record.

[badlucklottery]

>sounds like discrimination and should be illegal

IME the "unique backgrounds" are "doesn't have a CS degree or a couple years of experience at a big software shop".

[username90]

"Unique Backgrounds" meant women or lgtb or non-asian non-white. They often came from top schools, so that didn't really matter. It is way easier to get into Google via this program so some lied about being gay to get in.

[b20000]

the fact that this programs exist in the first place is a problem. how is it fair to have different interview processes for certain groups of people? it also results in underpaying these people and making it difficult for them to leave.

[rejectedandsad]

That's generally not what I've seen. It's generally just the same sorts of folks from top schools.

[b20000]

yep, discrimination

[ryan93]

You could at least explain how it’s unfair to pay less qualified applicants less money?

[JorkJork]

It's bold to assume that the Google interview process accepts all qualified applicants.

[b20000]

bold? as long as there is no discrimination going on they can do what they want. the problem is, there is plenty of discrimination going on. maybe you don’t care because you work there. good for you. sooner or later, it will matter to you.

[b20000]

it is unfair to require leetcode bullshit interviews from candidates who apply for a job via the normal route but at the same time have programs in place where people can enter some kind of internship or training program via which they can be hired into similar positions without going through the exact same interview process. in fact, it is illegal.

[skt5]

>sounds like discrimination

discrimination can either be legal or illegal. google legally discriminates by giving offers to those who get the hiring committee's approval. i think getting the hiring committee's approval is a form of legal discrimination.

[dragonwriter]

> discrimination can either be legal or illegal

Right, every nonrandom decision is discrimination, but in the US private discrimination is generally legal unless it effects a protected category; because of the rational basis test, in the US, public dsicrimination is generally invalid unless it meets some bar of justification, but unless a particularly protected basis of discrimination is involved or a particularly important right impinged, the bar for validity is very low (a rational relation to a legitimate government function.)

[b20000]

if you know about it, why don’t you do something about it?

[Imnimo]

>with the assumption that they'd fail and eventually have to be let go.

This seems at odds with the article:

>Nearly all residents converted to regular employees, according to the presentation

[hkai]

True equity of outcomes means that people spend different amounts of effort but get to the same results.

So people from underrepresented backgrounds should be paid the same as top engineers regardless of output.

[junon]

> SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.

Where? lol

[nivenkos]

Here in Europe you're unlikely to break $100k in that time.

[benhurmarcel]

That's still really good for Europe. That's €84k, not a lot of careers pay like that after 10 years, even in STEM.

[Google234]

500k is about L6. You ahou get that within 10 years if you want

[junon]

I've been a software engineer professionally for 11 years. I've never had a peer make near that. I even worked at Uber in downtown SF.

[dekhn]

Let's take a look at my salary history. I am a PhD, I didn't enter the Real World Job Market until 2001, when I was 28 (others in my cohort went straight from college to SWE, while I spent 10 years just doing research).

2001: SWE at UCSF, making about $75K/yr. This is roughly triple my graduate student salary and higher than my postdoc salary. 2007: Architect at Genentech. Make about $100K/year 2008: Join Google as L5 with a starting bonus of $25K, $125K salary, and about $100K in stock options. Stock options are refreshed every year. One year, Eric Schmidt gives everybody a 10% raise. I get promoted once. 2019: leave to work at a startup for a year, same base pay as Google, and stock grants that are now worth $1M but aren't fungible. 2021: Leave Google as L6 with base pay of $225K, 15% bonus target (which I get), a $45K annual bonus, and $700K stock vesting over four years. I count this as "around $450K/year total comp" before taxes etc.

If I had managed 2012-2016 better, I'd be an L7 or more, making about $550K/year total comp. However, these are all exceptional situations made possible by the insanity that is Google.

[dresdenfire]

Mostly US in SV, NYC, SEA. But even in UK, FAANG salary for 5-10 years can be around £300k+

[sydthrowaway]

Refreshers stacking + stock appreciation, I'd guess.

[junon]

I didn't take it to mean stock appreciation, as pay directly means salary where I'm from.

[joejerryronnie]

They are talking about total comp which is usually base salary + bonus + stock (RSUs). As the person above mentioned, 50% or more of that $500-600K is most likely made up of stacked stock grants. Even if you sell your RSUs right away, a grant typically vests over 4 years. In the current market, that makes older grants much more valuable based on stock appreciation.

[footlose_3815]

The IT residency you don’t even get stock.

[antognini]

Same with the AI residency. (At least I didn't.)

[joshuamorton]

You don't, but ai res did have relatively higher bonuses that some what (to be clear, only somewhat) made up for it.