[cletus]

The average cost of a Google engineer is at least $500k/year. This includes all direct compensation as well as amortized office costs, perks, meals and so on. I have no official figure on this but the average total comp can be well-established from levels.fyi as well as my own experience (disclaimer: Xoogler).

1000 engineers will give you a burn rate of $500m/year. I guarantee you the head count associated with Fuchsia is higher than this, probably much higher.

Again, I have no official information on the current resource allocation but you can figure these things out by, for example, looking at the leadership structure. At a company like Google, certain positions will indicate head counts. An engineering director probably averages ~100 engineers rolled up through 2-3 layers of managers. A VP means 200-500.

Familiarity with how Google staffs projects, how much Fuchsia was staffed while I was still there and the costs innvolved gets you easily into the billions of dollars over 5+ years.

[md_]

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/one-day-googles-fuchsia-os... says, as of 2018, “about 100” people work on Fuschia.

I find your “much higher than 1000” estimate a bit surprising.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

i dont think L4 and below costs $500K? $170 base +$30 bonus+ 100 in stock.. i don't think other benefits add 200 more?

[m0llusk]

Their health insurance package is extremely expensive and a huge amount of money goes into supporting campuses with buses for commuters, full meals, laundry service, and so on.

[mehrdada]

I wouldn't call health insurance "extremely expensive" in the context of Google SWE salaries. On average it probably costs on the order of $5-$10k/head/year at most. My very loose upper bound estimate is $50k/year for all aux benefits and bus/campus costs.

[mehrdada]

I'd be willing to bet something like Fuchsia is on average L5-6 (or more) given retirement projects at Google attract some very senior engineers that would offset the L3/4s if you amortize them.

[dlp211]

nit: Stock grants/vests are not a cost to the company. They just create new shares and give them out.

[microtherion]

They dilute shareholder value, and if you consider that many tech companies are also doing stock buybacks, it seems plausible to consider the net effect of (Handing out "free stock" with one hand) + (Buying back stock with the other hand) to be spending money.