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A comment on San Francisco is one of the worst-paying places in the US for software engineers. Parent comment

Re:San Francisco is one of the worst-paying places in the US... by sjg007 on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @10:43PM (#15659670)
The argument is that the expected value of salary + rsu/stock/options is effectively just salary. These reddit posts basically agree with H1B data. Salaries are the bar. A H1B has to be paid more than the prevailing wage for the position and the company has to have documented that they could not find a qualified American for that role. Prevailing wages are set as a function of the H1B + American workers so over time salaries rise.
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Re:San Francisco is one of the worst-paying places in the US... by joshuamorton on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @11:34PM (#15659886)
But that's not the case, since salaries are significantly less variable than stock comp.

For high paying jobs, salary is 50-80% of total comp. For lower paying ones, it's 95+%, which is what the salary surveys show.

So comparing salary only, you strongly bias against top paying positions since salaries make up a smaller portion of the compensation for those positions.

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