For those of us who are curious about Silicon Valley salaries (idly so in my case; I’m living in the UK and don’t fancy moving across the Atlantic), could you give a rough indication of how much too low the numbers in the spreadsheet are?
At a company like Google you could make ~$100k+ base salary with no experience and a Bachelor’s degree, and ~$140k+ base salary with my level of experience. The equity portion will be about ~1.3 that much, but obviously given in stock (options) and spread over 4 years. And then there are bonuses that come out to something like 10-20% annually.
So we’re talking about a package whose total value [EDIT: excluding other benefits like healthcare, free food, etc.] is on the order of $340k/year assuming the stock price is stable? And you had broadly comparable offers from other companies? Then I take back what I said: those are incredibly generous numbers in comparison with what I know of software developers’ salaries in the UK. I don’t know how that splits between (1) Silicon Valley being a really good place to be right now and (2) you personally being awesome, but congratulations in either case :-).
[EDIT: If whoever downvoted this is reading, and would like to tell me what’s wrong with what I wrote, I’m listening. It still looks OK to me after rereading.]
Yup, that’s basically right. Silicon Valley is definitely an amazing place to be right now. I’d consider myself to be a good/solid engineer, but not remarkable. One thing to keep in mind is that the cost of living here is more, but unless you are a big spender (need nice house, etc...), you’ll do better here than elsewhere.
The most common one is you get 25% after the first year, and then the rest gets vested equally on monthly (or quarterly) basis. For public companies it’s RSU (restricted stock units), which are basically equity. For startups sometimes you get options.
I’m getting $206.5K: $140K base salary + ($140K 1.3 / 4) annualized equity + ($140K 0.15) average bonus.
That looks attainable. It’s better than what I’m getting as a developer in the same area, but most of the difference is in the equity package (I work for a privately held company that doesn’t offer equity), and there’s obviously some risk compensation going on there.
afaik, a typical equity package (at a large public company) is worth 1-2x the annual salary, but is spread over several years. So you get something like Base+(Base1.3)/4 per year, not Base + Base1.3 every year. So a more typical package might be 150-200k average annual compensation, (which is matches the estimates for total compensation on glassdoor). It seems very unlikely that the median compensation for programmers in the Bay Area is at all close to 300k (although the upper few percent might certainly make that amount).
For those of us who are curious about Silicon Valley salaries (idly so in my case; I’m living in the UK and don’t fancy moving across the Atlantic), could you give a rough indication of how much too low the numbers in the spreadsheet are?
[EDITED to fix a stupid typo]
At a company like Google you could make ~$100k+ base salary with no experience and a Bachelor’s degree, and ~$140k+ base salary with my level of experience. The equity portion will be about ~1.3 that much, but obviously given in stock (options) and spread over 4 years. And then there are bonuses that come out to something like 10-20% annually.
Thanks. Those are pretty generous numbers in comparison with what I know of software developers’ salaries in the UK, but that’s not a huge surprise.
(When you wrote “1.3 that much”, did you mean 0.3, or do you actually mean that you get paid more in equity than in cash?)
Equity value in USD = 1.3 * salary value in USD (roughly)
So we’re talking about a package whose total value [EDIT: excluding other benefits like healthcare, free food, etc.] is on the order of $340k/year assuming the stock price is stable? And you had broadly comparable offers from other companies? Then I take back what I said: those are incredibly generous numbers in comparison with what I know of software developers’ salaries in the UK. I don’t know how that splits between (1) Silicon Valley being a really good place to be right now and (2) you personally being awesome, but congratulations in either case :-).
[EDIT: If whoever downvoted this is reading, and would like to tell me what’s wrong with what I wrote, I’m listening. It still looks OK to me after rereading.]
Yup, that’s basically right. Silicon Valley is definitely an amazing place to be right now. I’d consider myself to be a good/solid engineer, but not remarkable. One thing to keep in mind is that the cost of living here is more, but unless you are a big spender (need nice house, etc...), you’ll do better here than elsewhere.
What’s the vesting schedule for stock? And are they options or outright equity?
Thank you for this article, it was extremely helpful.
The most common one is you get 25% after the first year, and then the rest gets vested equally on monthly (or quarterly) basis. For public companies it’s RSU (restricted stock units), which are basically equity. For startups sometimes you get options.
I’m getting $206.5K: $140K base salary + ($140K 1.3 / 4) annualized equity + ($140K 0.15) average bonus.
That looks attainable. It’s better than what I’m getting as a developer in the same area, but most of the difference is in the equity package (I work for a privately held company that doesn’t offer equity), and there’s obviously some risk compensation going on there.
D’oh, I completely misunderstood what Alexei meant about the equity portion. Thanks to Nornagest and emr for the correction.
($200k-ish is still extremely generous in comparison with the UK, but not better by so staggering a margin.)
Is this correct?
afaik, a typical equity package (at a large public company) is worth 1-2x the annual salary, but is spread over several years. So you get something like Base+(Base1.3)/4 per year, not Base + Base1.3 every year. So a more typical package might be 150-200k average annual compensation, (which is matches the estimates for total compensation on glassdoor). It seems very unlikely that the median compensation for programmers in the Bay Area is at all close to 300k (although the upper few percent might certainly make that amount).