Do tech companies really pay 170k?

Everyone on /r/cscareerquestions claims they make at least 170k and factor 4 years of their vesting into their salary. Why count stocks that you won't get until 4 years into your salary when you could be laid off/fired before then? Is 170k really the base people make or is this inflated?

it's marketing by tech companies because they want a legion of cheap programmers.

you think actual adult programmers hang out on that gay ass website bragging to kids and helping them pick a career?

good point.

My first job out of uni I'm making 60k but I live in rural-ish Kentucky. I figure in places like California you could easily make 150k.

also planning on getting a job at netflix as like becoming a physicist planning to work at the LHC.

look at actual median salaries that account for location and you'll find devs do about as good as any other white collar professional. it's not a money printing degree like medicine where you can't make less than 6 figures with million dollar ceilings. don't be a programmer unless you enjoy it.

This. reddit is basically marketing masquerading as friendly and informative posters. Also, it's full of people who lie about their success.

Senior devs do rake in around that much. However those people have years of experience and often have advanced CS degrees (masters and beyond.)

What kind of skills do these devs have that warrants that much income?

My stock started vesting after 1 year and now vests every quarter. It works out to $10k/yr but our stock went up a lot recently is now it's worth 25% more.

I make 110k base, 15% bonus for a total of 126k, then the stock which adds 12k/yr. then there's the employee stock purchase program which nets me another 6-10k/yr.

I completed a master's

I'm making around 25k/year before taxes. I frankly think everyone who earns more is lying.

if you work in the bay area, you can easily start anywhere between $90k-$120k, given you're not an autist and know how to negotiate salary.

with experience or graduate degrees, you can certainly work up to around 170k.

Forgot to add I'm 37 with obviously a lot of experience. I do live in the Midwest where it's really cheap, but in that other thread to see people 22 with senior titles
Making the same as me is pretty rage inducing, if they're not lying.

>if you work in the bay area, you can easily start anywhere between $90k-$120k

That's like 60k anywhere else. Kind of weird how highly intelligent programmers don't understand basic financial concepts like the cost of living.

Okay, that's too low. I got a bachelors and I make 45k. You better look for something more

you also get stocks, and that's still a greater and superior salary to what most people are making in CA.

and in states like Georgia, you can still make $80-90 working somewhere like Cisco, HP, etc.

What kind of skills you got? Can I make that kind of money knowing Java, Scala?

fucking middle school teachers make 50k, what the fuck are you doing
>inb4 he forgot to type €

>factor 4 years of their vesting into their salary
Is this like... I own 0.0005% of this company, so in 4 years when this company goes unicorn, I'll have an additional $500,000, so that's an additional $125k/year, so it's ok to be paid $45k/year until then kind of logic? Because that's shitty logic... but it's the kind of thing I'd believe a person on reddit would buy into.

dude, euro and dollar is worth exactly the same

Cost of living is just a lot lower in yuropoor

not to mention taxation

didn't imply they aren't close to being worth the same, but 25k€ is a pretty good with yuro costs of living while in the US you'd be trailer trash equivalent to burger flippers

lol I get about that on welfare.

I'm basically a Linux admin with a programming background. i do config management and automation, mostly Ruby and Python. i landed on a senior engineering team that makes a lot more money that our less experienced colleagues. I don't think anyone on my team is under 35.

thanks

I actually have a question about this. Say I moved to the bay area and worked there for 2 years making, say, $120k. If I then moved to a place like Atlanta, would the HR teams of new companies realize the massive difference in cost of living, or would this still allow me to get a disproportionate salary boost?

>If I then moved to a place like Atlanta, would the HR teams of new companies realize the massive difference in cost of living

They might. Just demand that they match your current salary.

>Going to reddit to ask question about serious topics
That place is marketing heaven, you get tricked since mods are cocksuckers to whatever thing the board is about and will not tolerate any opinion or fact that makes them look unmarketable.
Also you should go back.

Your $120k in the bay area is the same as my $55k in the midwest

I work remotely for a SF based company. We also have a Midwest office. People routinely move from the Bay Area to the Midwest office because commuting an hour to the office from your $350k 2 bedroom condo sucks. They take a pay cut and move to the Midwest where their $350k buys them a 4000sqft 4-5 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood with great schools. Anyway yes they take an appropriate pay cut but besides the cost of living you get back 2 hours of time per day and a less stressful life.

not really.

you working a similar job as you are now in the bay area would not enable you to mortgage a house that isn't surrounded by Mexicans and niggers.

and just because you work in the bay area doesn't mean you have to live in the bay area. Northern CA is full of nice small towns with low cost of living.

>all these anti-Bay Area shills

Jealous much?

But you're talking about the same company. I'm talking going from making $70k to $120k simply because of cost of living, then moving back and still making more than you would had you been working in the same city the whole time.

Jealous of commuting 2 hours a day and paying $25 for lunch at any restaurant (excluding fast food and food stalls/trucks), and living in a tiny apartment with astronomical rent? No not jealous. You should see my bay ads coworkers' reactions when they see the endless trees and grass outside my window that I own for far less than a 1 bedroom condo 30 minutes from San Fran.

Not when there are 6 other local candidates only wanting 60k when you want 100k.

The difference is the jobs in the midwest fucking suck and there is little to no growth. You work with people who suck at coding and people who suck at life for a shit organization like a hospital.

Former Cleveland-er at one of the three major hospitals there. Just move west and enjoy the weed, women, weather... oh and good jobs.

Lol man this is true. I'm the anti Bay Area guy but you've hit it spot on, the jobs mostly suck. I work remotely for a t ch company so I'm good to go, but you just described everything at my previous local job with a large medical device manufacturer

>2 hours a day
no

>$25 for lunch
>not working for a company that provides several free food options
>eating at restaurants for lunch in the first place

>and living in a tiny apartment with astronomical rent?
depends on location

>You should see my bay ads coworkers'
oh, you're the midwest bumpkin judging from a town you never left. carry on.

Housing prices are expensive here because people actually want to live here. Also our women are a lot hotter, even though there aren't really that many of them.

>he thinks rent reflects supply & demand

Kek, in my country it's quite the opposite. Not that programmers earn a huge amount of money, but in medicine salaries are so low that many find jobs elsewhere

Proven results at large companies at scale. Anyone can learn CS, but you need exposure to learn how really fucking huge performant distributed systems work. Since Netflix is comprised of these systems, they need that immediately and they can't wait for people to fail first and learn.

Lol bro have you ever been to Miami? Girls in the Bay Area are not hot on average, not even close.

>not cooking your own lunch

In defense of working in California, one of the benefits is there is protection for original works you create. In most other states, when you work for a company, everything you produce outside of it is automatically owned by them.

You don't get cucked like that in California.

>living in the Bay Area
>being so poor you can't even afford the Gyro cart

Heh at the Midwest company I work for almost eveyone has a side business because we get paid so litttle. There's no fuckery like you're implying.

Thanks for contributing your valuable anecdote.

The reason they factor in four years of vesting is because you get stock vesting over four years when you join, and then you get more stock every year. So once you have been with the company for four years, you have four years worth of stock vesting every single year (in year n you have stock you got in years n - 1, n - 2, n - 3, and n - 4 all vesting at once).

170k seems a bit low though, I make almost 250k a year.

>factor 4 years of their vesting into their salary.
If they do this, they're idiots.

However, if 1/4 of that vests after 1 year, I would not hesitate to include it that.

Here's what I made starting at Google in 2012 (non-senior position):
>120k base
>100k RSUs over 4 years (1/4 vesting after 1 year)
>15k target bonus
>15k relocation costs

Here's what I made starting at Facebook in 2016 (senior position):
>160k base
>500k RSUs (1/4 vesting after 1 year)
>50k sign-on bonus
>25k target bonus

Yeah, but compare the living expenses. Everything nearly breaks even.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you actually DO to earn 160k? Not your title, but your actual day to day job.

>get PoliSci degree (3.9 GPA)
>after 4 months of unemployment get shitty office job which starts at 32k/year
>start taking CS courses at local community college
>a year later now have a job as an elevated code monkey making a little more than 50k/year

All I wanted to do was argue with people and get paid.

Do you specialize in anything else besides stock programming? What's the best way to sell your specialization/ how did you do it?

>You don't get cucked like that in California.
No non-compete bullshit to deal with as well.

Fuck, I'm a ky native and I'm trying like hell to get into IT. I've got the creds but I currently work for the state in a non IT field. Seems that more and more state IT jobs are being phased out to outside contractors which makes it harder on me. (I've got 12-13 yrs in so I can't just toss it away)

Jesus Christ those rsus. I'd work there for 4 years then move back to the Midwest and buy a McMansion straight cash. I get recruiting emails from them frequently but they won't hire remote emoloyees. Is there a Facebook office not in some huge expensive city?

me again, funny thing is that currently I make around 26800 a year (before tax) and my job is not hard. Come in on time, do what has to be done, and that's it. I generally enjoy it and my co-workers. However its currently a dead end type job. (No prospects of advancement or promotions). There's been a lot of downsizing (people retired and they not refill the position), and a lot of real clueless leadership bullshit from up on high which gets passed down to us. Our Director is nearing retirement so they don't want to make any waves so they just sit back and be "yes" men to the higher ups. Who the next Director will be is anyone's guess (normally they promote from within but no one there wants the job)

Are you going to commute to the high cost of living city? If not you're going to have to take that pay cut. Unless you've got 15 plus years at the company and ate literally un-fireable. Remember programmers with less than 5 years at company are highly expendable. They'll drop you because you want to take a second coffee break a day.

>cost of living
Only housing is especially outrageous compared to the rest of the country, the other items you'll be purchasing are at most 20% more expensive in California. Just don't try and buy a $1m teardown in San Jose, and you'll still be saving significantly more in raw dollar amounts. Then you can move to a low cost-of-living place when you want to settle down.

The main thing you need is a strong knowledge of computer science. I'm very good with data structures and algorithms. This was reflected in my GPA in my degree in CS, and I demonstrated this knowledge well in the technical interviews. The interviews for top Silicon Valley companies are basically CS exams.

Best to apply as a new graduate straight out of a bachelor's degree, or an internship between semesters if you can get it. Then you get the easiest interviews where they basically only ask you to design and implement a number of data structures or algorithms to solve some problems. If you have industry experience your interviews will be harder because they will ask more complex questions like how to design a system to do x, y, and z.

what about graduate degrees? I'm going to Purdue university, which is notorious for having hard classes and lower average GPAs.

This is true but as someone who works in the Silicon Valley getting job offers of $90k-100k right out of school with just a BS isn't unheard of for a student that can show they are competent individuals. Getting to $170k a year takes time or you were in a good position at a company and climbed ranks really fast. Most likely they're including their stocks, and most likely after 5 years they are earning around $120k as I am told by my cousin who works as a head hunter. This obviously doesn't include webdev cucks and general CS cucks.

Don't stick around Indiana unless you're going to work at Eli Lilly or Salesforce. Would recommend Salesforce and then you can move to the SF office then work anywhere else in the Bay Area and make $$.

I will make 200k after my first year at Google fresh out of college. I don't even live in the Bay Area. I pay $1400 a month for rent and pay no state income taxes.

Yeah, I was mostly wondering how masters and PHDs are viewed in canidates. Are they a waste of time? Is a masters unnecessary if I spent that time working at a notable company? If I would want to work for a startup (

I'm a fucking Co-op and I make ~$27 an hour pre tax. You must have picked a bad degree.

I can't speak from personal experience but I have a friend that got hired at google straight out of his MS program. He is now a senior engineer at google after working there for several years.

Another friend of mine completed a PhD in physics from an Ivy League. . He specialized in machine learning and google got an expert in ML to interview him. He said he drilled him on ML / his thesis really hard. He said the google interview was harder than his actual PhD defense. He got an offer, but didn't get to choose which team he'd work on.

He wanted to work at google x but they said they were going to match him on a team dealing with Ads or something and if he proved himself then maybe he'd get a stop at google x. He turned down the offer and worked as a data scientist at another company. He said his PhD wasn't worth it and if he could do it all over again he wouldn't get a PhD. He recommended me against getting one, but I'm going for one anyways. He's super, super smart.

YMMV

>Why count stocks that you won't get until 4 years into your salary

Stocks usually vest after a year and then vest on a monthly basis (to prevent people from joining and leaving quickly to get stock)

So that $170k is your first year salary but the stock chunk (~40-60k for a new hire?) is deferred to the end of the first year. After that it is all spread out.

The company will give you 4 year grants (ie $200,000) and that vests evenly over 4 years ($50,000 year).

Stocks are taxed like a bitch though.

What is your base salary? What is your location? How are you getting 200k? I highly doubt it's your base salary.

Probably base salary, sign in bonus and stocks? Care to explain?

Offers seem to be in 105-110k range. So for you to get 200 I wanna hear what you got rolled up

110k base salary
250 RSUs over 4 years at the time of signing, worth 60k a year now
20k annual bonus
10k 401k/HSA match

Looking for a tech job in the Bay Area with a BS in physics. Will I do alright?

Thanks for the break down. Along the lines of what I thought.

I made $32 in my internship on east coast. What did you do?

I'm making 130K base plus the usual SV perk garbage and I work at a 4th tier toilet. So yeah, if you're in with the big boys, like Facebook or Google, you can expect to make in the mid-100K range base.

Incidentally, Netflix pays ~170Kish cash and doesn't offer RSU or bonuses until you're pretty far up the chain. But, nobody makes it that far up the chain because they fire everybody all the time for anything.