Something more like $150k or $180k is probably a more realistic mid-career average compensation (with salary somewhat less than that, in the USA).
Complicating the discussion is HN skews to the high end of the range. Not only is it very SV-centric, the type of programmers who post here appear to be atypical (high performing, entrepreneurial, etc).
Most places I've seen give you one dump at sign-on and that's all you get ever. I understand some companies refresh you every so often.
When you work at a big company like Google, you get a regular amount of equity compensation that translates directly (via public markets) into dollars, say $50k, every year.
But if you join mid stage... you usually get a number of options which translates to a very small portion of the company. Like even if the company had a unicorn IPO, it might only be $10-$20k.
I wonder if there's some kind of bridge that's typical between the startup state (where there's a sizable option pool to hand out) and the Post IPO state (where RSUs are handed out as a big chunk of compensation)?
Most of bay area is littered with low-profile companies like Brocade, Broadcomm, McAfee, KLA-Tencor, Micron, Hortonworks, Arista etc. Most "senior" engineers in these companies don't make $150k base.
Some guys just have a retarded view of what companies are paying. Outside the top 10 high-profile companies, most engineers in the bay are slaving away in low-mid 100ks
"Not exceptional in any manner" seems like a bit of an out-of-whack analysis of a $250K engineering salary at Google.
That seems to make sense. It's a like 25% more than I make at AMZN (in cheaper Seattle) with almost 4 years of experience.
As such, 35 lpa = 3.5 million INR/year ~ $52,600/year at present forex exchange rates (PPP value is another story).
The median software developer is shockingly bad. Some developers will claim to be 4+ sigma talent, but you don't need to be one of them to make $250k.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
HN discussions are insanely biased. Our idea of what's normal is skewed by who we know. Everyone knows that one guy who is somebody's brother's nephew's co-worker's roommate who makes $250K at Google. The vast majority of practicing tech people in or out of the Bay Area are not pulling down that much by a long shot.
I just sent you a link saying that the average engineer makes $100k.
I am claiming that (1) the average developer is awful and (2) you can make that much and more if you're not awful.
> So if these people all just work 3-6 years should I expect a bunch of multimillionaires?
You're not going to be a multimillionaire if you make $250k for 6 years.
I was exaggerating, but if you save your money while making 250k you can easily live off 30k and pocket the rest. It's not hard to become a millionaire off of that salary in a very short amount of time.
As someone who has actual experience with this, it's easier to get a high paying job in those areas because that's where the hard problems are being solved.
Hard problems are usually solved in high cost of living areas because you need to pay your employees a lot of money and those employees usually prefer to live in high cost of living areas. I actually have personal experience with this.
Yes, the cost of living argument applies if your salary is at the low end of the scale.
If you're solving hard problems at a company that values that kind of stuff, then you can makes just as much anywhere else. I actually have personal experience with this too.
No, the cost of living argument does not apply at the high end of the scale. Cost of living starts to become irrelevant as you make more money.
Sure, rent in NY is $60k per year vs $24k per year in Oklahoma, but it's just not that important if you're making $1m+ year.
Second off a lot of the high cost of living has nothing to do with solving hard problems, if it did the civil engineers would have solved the hard problem of fixing the housing market in SF. What you are essentially arguing is Tom Cruise 2.0 makes 6 million a film after a few years in the industry so therefor everyone else sucks which you can tell because they don't make 6 million. Being generous I would claim it's a survivorship bias.
Actually, it's directly related. People who solve hard problems at companies that value that sort of thing make a lot of money. Generally, people who make a lot of money want to live in nice areas. Nice areas become expensive as housing gets bid up by high earners.
Of course, allowing huge office towers to go up but refusing residential development doesn't help.
That's really not been my experience. Not everyone - not most people even - work at Google.
Related question - at a mid-stage startup (say 100 employees), how does option/stock compensation work? Do they regularly give you more (like big companies do) or are the options associated with signing all you get (and their growth is how they're an ongoing part of compensation)?