[alistairSH]

FAANG employees, particularly on the West Coast, are an anomaly, even within the US. People also often include stock grants in listed comp, so be sure your comparing apples to apples.

DC/Mid-Atlantic salaries at an established (non-FAANG) company are more like $85-$100k for a recent grad, $130-$170 for senior developer positions. Most of those jobs are in the suburbs, where a nice house is in the $500-$1million range.

[decafninja]

While there is cost of living differences per region in compensation too, I imagine the typical senior+ software engineer in the US is lucky to retire after decades of work having broken $200k-250k total compensation. Meanwhile junior FAANG engineers are probably making that much.

I'd say this applies to HCOL areas too like NYC or even the SFBA. If you're working for a cludgy old Fortune 500 tech-is-a-cost-center enterprise company (where the majority of SWEs are working), you're probably not making more than $200k-250k at best as a senior SWE with many, many years of experience unless you have some niche specialty.

[claytonjy]

To put a point on this, I saw an opening for a Chief Data Engineer (or something like that) at Ford. I asked my friend, a long tenured mechanical engineer there with friends on the software side, what that would pay...he said 200k! I bet it's closer to 300, but still, it's no wonder everyone hates their car software.

[claytonjy]

Important to note that "senior dev" here means title, not actual seniority, e.g. ~5 yrs experience gets you in that range even at an early-stage startup in the Midwest.

[alistairSH]

Correct. At my employer, Senior Developer is the 3rd (of 6) title in the developer hierarchy. Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic. Though the comp ranges for Senior and up have a lot of overlap between levels - to earn beyond 150ish, you'll have to be really good, regardless of title.

A Senior Dev would be expected to operate mostly independently on day-to-day tasks, capable of contributing back to their immediate team (mentoring, working with product manager, etc), work directly with customers and leadership as needed, and be recognized as somebody with answers to problems within their immediate area.

[claytonjy]

> Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic

In such cases is it still considered the terminal title, the one you either earn or are pushed out for not earning, but are not required to go beyond?

[alistairSH]

Pretty much. We don't have codified up-or-out rules. I don't see many truly terminal Senior Devs, but have seen people "hang out" in that role for many years. Same thing for Lead Dev, which is one title more senior.

Assoc to Senior or Lead - being successful at normal tasks over time gets you there without much active career management.

Senior to Principal - you'll have to seek out interesting work, prove capable of working across product/business or technical boundaries, and start interacting with leaders outside you team.

Senior Principal - all of above, plus interacting regularly with VP, leaders in Product Management group, capable of high level design/analysis, trusted by peers and leaders across your organization. High level of ability mentoring and leading.

[claytonjy]

Cool, that lines up with my recent experience at a "mid tech", a Fintech that will IPO this year or next. I interviewed for Staff, they downleveled me to Lead, I quit in 6 months. There were people ahead of me with half my experience...but those folks had basically never worked anywhere else.

Funny to compare that with my previous experience at an IIOT startup, where I was employee ~#30 and the third or fourth engineer doing cloud stuff. Started at Staff, left at Senior Staff after two years but would have been Principal if I stayed another 2-3 months. The gap is big!