I think it feels like a bit of an extrapolation from recent market conditions. But someone who’s 28 is still in their 20s and can have enough experience to be considered a senior engineer. Big tech companies will pay >$250k for that and recently those companies have done very well in stock markets so if you were offered $x of shares (at the current price) over 4 years at the start of the job, they would now be worth say $2x. If you combine that with a job market where those companies are all competing for the same people it is likely one could do well by being in the group that is being competed for.
So I think it is reasonably plausible for someone towards the older end of the range with a bit of skill and good fortune. It feels unlikely that the trend which I described above (of company stock going up 2x every two years) will continue so I would expect effective compensation to go down a bit. But on the other hand compensation can be pretty sticky and plenty of people will be willing to quit after reaching the 4 year cliff (where their stock awards would no longer be worth 2x what they were meant to be worth) to look for high pay elsewhere.
Most of the devs at prop trading companies in Chicago or New York will hit 500k/yr after a few years if they can hack it and stomach it. Depending on how close to the money they are, it could be 2-6 years.
Unless it changed dramatically in recent years, when I was in Chicago prop trading firms were paying mid 200 to 300 after a few years. 500k was definitely not normal comp for most engineers at any trading firm, although obviously there are exceptions.
Thank you. This is really my point. People share these rumors of a small minority making huge sums and normalize it as what anyone can do, which just does harm to the industry and to individuals. People actually in the sector/area know it’s not true yet there are those just sharing things they heard like facts.
While I think salaries have gone up in recent years, I'm also going to call BS on 400k for entry level. I just looked at levels.fyi, and I'm not seeing that all. A couple unverified outliers for Citadel doesn't represent the majority of devs. I'm mostly seeing in the 100-200 region for the firms I checked, with Citadel at the top in the 200-300 region.
Also keep in mind bonuses are rarely guaranteed or part of packages, so they are completely speculative for new grads.
It's not a "couple" of unverified outliers for Citadel, it's like half of their offers in the last few months.
It's also baseline entry-level comp at Jane Street, and Hudson River Trading goes even higher.
First-year bonuses are generally guaranteed, and after that are "speculative" in the same way that stock compensation is speculative - largely dependent on firm performance (though personal performance can actually pull it them significantly in finance, unlike with stock).
I didn't say this was the majority of devs, I said this was entry-level comp for "top-end finance shops", which is true. It is also true that there are competitors in that space which pay much less, just like there are tech companies which pay much less FAANG & Co, but does not mean that FAANG & Co don't exist or shouldn't be relevant to people's decision-making.
We're going from "It's easy to earn $500k" to "Top-end financial shops in Chicago and New York". And if someone gets a good offer they'll be more likely to put it up on Levels.
SBF earned what... $22B in the last three years in crypto by the age of 29? If he posted his earnings on Levels.fyi at Alameda Research can I start suggesting people can earn $1B by 30 by moving to Hong Kong and working for top crypto trading firms because out of the massive amount of people trying to do that, it happens to people from time to time?
> If you are in your 20's, it is totally worth moving to the US where you can get paid 500K+ per year if you navigate your career efficiently.
I don't want to say that it's "easy" to hit numbers in this ballpark as a senior engineer in the US, but the way to do it is relatively straightforward and doesn't require any particularly unusual skills, connections, knowledge, etc.
1) There is a set of companies which pay that kind of money
2) Those companies employ a non-trivial percentage of the software engineers in the country
3) Those companies are _always hiring_ more software engineers at those levels
4) The interview processes for those companies are public and quite similar
Obviously nobody is guaranteed to get a job paying that well at one of those companies. Some people simply won't be able to clear the bar (either technically or socially). But the bar is not "one in a thousand". These companies already employ something like 8-10% of the software engineers in the country, so "one in ten" is a hard _upper bound" on how strict they are (and obviously, since their selection process isn't perfect and they don't in fact have every single 10%ile engineer or better locked up, the bar is lower, probably much lower).
I was in startup land over in SF, so my salary topped out lower at 160k USD but with ~2% equity.
I was in a partnership in a small plane, and one of the guys was "in his 20's making $500k+" at google as an L6 plus retention bonus. Several engineers in my circle (early 30's) are on $500k+.
Currently I'm living in Europe but leaving back to SF. I tell people all the time about salaries in the US and point them to levels.fyi, but these salaries are so detached from their realities that they seem simply unable to believe them. Go look at levels.fyi, it matches very well with what I've heard on the ground.
For some jobs, higher salaries correlate with worse working conditions. The warehouse worker who moves from day shift to night shift, or the oil worker who moves from onshore to oil rig work, can demand a higher salary.
But more broadly, higher salaries correlate with better working conditions. That warehouse worker will have targets to hit every single shift, get in trouble for being five minutes late, will get written up for taking sick leave without a doctor's note, and will have to pay for their own food and drinks.
On the other hand, most jobs that pay a six-figure salary? There might be quarterly department-level targets, but you won't get fired for missing them. Flexible working hours, and no checks you're putting in your hours. Illness? Take as long off as you need. Of course there's free tea, coffee and snacks. Maybe there's also free breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Just because a job is highly paid, doesn't mean it'll be particularly onerous - in fact, often the opposite!
That's true, but my impression is that many of those super high-paying jobs in the US expect 60-80 hour work weeks. That's a pretty hefty sacrifice. If you can also get those salaries on a 36 hour work week, then that's definitely better.
A lot of Google engineers seem to report working no more than 40h/w on average.
Amazon is obviously notorious. Facebook also seems to involve longer hours. Can't speak for Apple. My friend at Netflix reports working 40h/w on average as well.
I would argue that hours/week and salary are not necessarily directly correlated in the Silicon Valley tech companies.
Personally my most arduous job (50-60+h/w at a Korean conglomerate) was also the least paying (starting salary $35k, left after five years making $60k).
That said, while everyone's circumstances and desires are different, I would say typical quality of life making $300-500k at an above average 50h/w is arguably better than making <$100k USD equivalent at 35h/w even if you include all the European country social benefits. At some point an absurdly high compensation sort of lets you steamroll and acquire those benefits for yourself privately if you want them.
are you interested in the norm in terms of raw numbers, or where you would need to work to achieve this? and are you interested in people who have won the stock lottery, or just people who have their total comp pegged at 500k+?
assuming the latter, you're looking at getting hired in at level as a senior engineer (maybe one level higher depending on the company) at most of your brand name tech companies that value engineering talent.
Although I have yet to see a person with no lifestyle creep in these kinds of jobs. You start earning, you start spending. Yes, some people don't, but I keep hearing sad stories on that front too (guy did FIRE only for his wife to leave him after 6 months because they didn't keep up with the Kardashians. Some people feel mega-excluded if they can't partake in casual conversations like 'we are shopping for a new expensive carpet' or 'we just got a 8k lamp'.
I don't know if this is who you were talking about, but this guy was a big FIRE proponent/blogger who posted last year about his divorce after not updating his blog for several years: https://livingafi.com. It took a few years of early retirement and his coming down with a medical condition, though: "During this time of physical rehabilitation, while I was struggling with the physical issues, my partner finally figured out what would make her happier. It was a relationship with another man."
i would guess as a percentage there are two orders of magnitude more senior engineers at an arbitrary tech company vs managing directors at an arbitrary investment bank. senior engineer is ~5 years of experience to achieve, with maybe 1-2 years extra if you're meandering.
I was being facetious - advising someone to become rich and retire early by getting a very difficult to achieve role in another country 10x that counties annual salary in their 20s is not much better than saying to someone if they want to become rich they should just become a world famous actor or something. It’s just unrealistic advice that does more harm than good (and it rubs me the wrong way hence these responses lol). It seems to be a view perpetually shared by someone who knows someone who heard something and then treats it as the norm.
It is actually a lot better. The hard part is getting into the US, not getting one of these jobs. People meme about practicing leetcode for months but the reality is you should be able to land an offer with no more than 50-100 hours of practice (sure, you might need to do more if you're not actually that strong, but FAANG literally employees 5%+ of the engineers in the country, their standards aren't _that_ high).
I’m sure some can but this is not the norm and expectations need to be checked and called out when wrong.