[garciasn]

From the article:

the top of the pay scale were elite ai labs such as Openai, as well as hedge funds such as Jane Street that are also betting heavily on machine learning. In this tier, median pay exceeded $400,000 a year. Below that were tech giants including Alphabet, Microsoft and, until recently, Meta, where median pay was closer to $300,000. Experienced developers at most other companies earn much less. Their median was around $180,000 (see chart 2).

—-

A median of 180K is mostly definitely raking it in compared to the median of all US employees.

I’m well over double the household median income in my metro area and while I don’t feel like I’m raking it in, I guess I am when compared to others.

This just seems like a silly article.

[robertlagrant]

It's also worth noting the take-home pay is closer than that, due to progressive taxation. E.g. in California[0]:

$180k/year gives you $118,970 after tax

$300k/year gives you $186,880 after tax

I.e. the gross jump from $180k -> $300k is 67%, but the net jump is 57%. You have to increase the gross more to attract people, because take-home pay is what matters to them when switching job.

[0] https://www.mypaycalculator.net/us-paycheck-calculator/calif...

[VirusNewbie]

Microsoft really getting lucky with being grouped in with FAANG in this article, but everything I've read says they pay far lower than most top tier tech companies, no?

It's certainly true by comparing "senior" at G/Amazon/Apple to Microsoft, but is there level skew that compensates for this?

[ashdksnndck]

Combine the level skew with stock appreciation and high employee count, and there are a lot of Microsoft engineers raking in that kind of money. So lots of people think of it as competitive even if there are also many working there for less.

[leoqa]

I’ve been making over $500k a year since 2020 working fully remote; everyone I know with 7+ YOE at big tech or unicorns is also making 500k TC which often appreciates to ~700k+ with the current market.

We’re just writing dumb gRPC services that use Postgres. I work probably 30 hours a week and still get awards, bonuses etc.

[mixmastamyk]

Do tell, I’m very good at my job and can’t get an interview. :-D

[leoqa]

Senior+ eng roles at Netflix, Stripe, Discord, Figma, Reddit

[mixmastamyk]

Now all I need is an interview and offer.

[ycombinatornews]

Offtopic - what kind of unicorns now hire fully remote people with that experience?

[leoqa]

Senior+ eng roles at Netflix, Stripe, Discord, Figma, Reddit

[kjkjadksj]

Those are all definitely not asking about writing little services in postgres on their job apps. That tier job posting today looks more like a post for a tenure track ML faculty position.

[leoqa]

I’ve worked at half of these places and they’re all doing yaml massaging and grpc sculpting. Not much more than basic KTLO with some regularly scheduled feature work and reliability heroics.

[kjkjadksj]

Well that is not what that tier job description is describing today at least. Maybe in the past or even still today if you got in early. Hard to imagine so much weight being put on ML knowledge and skills in the job app if it isn’t getting used in the role at all.