Google has an office in Chicago, but from what I hear it's almost entirely sales jobs.

I live in Chicago and periodically have Google recruiters contacting me, and it's never been for a position in Chicago, it's only ever been for Mountain View.

That is not true anymore. They have engineers now, and they're rapidly expanding.

They do have a low base though, $98.5k vs. like $110k or something in MTV (and of course most people negotiate that way, way up).

I'm pretty sure they all pay less outside of their HQ location. At least in London, salaries are significantly less for the equivalent role.

In America, they generally don't. It's a mild adjustment at worst. Chicago is the biggest I've seen - $98.5k base vs. $110k base for L3 SWE - but FB doesn't change their comp, Amazon and Microsoft only increase it in the SFBA and NYC (IIRC).

In fact, for new grads Amazon pays the exact same TC in Seattle and in Detroit.

Oh cool, didn't realize that. Hopefully London will catch up.

Historically, the money in London has always been in the finance sector. Both large banks and hedge funds.

I think even in finance you'll be unlikely to touch 400USD (~300 GBP) for a similar level. Sure there are outliers, but of the senior people I know in this area total comp is around 200GBP after many years. It's much easier to just contract (if you don't mind the mercenary role), you'll make similar due to the tax savings.

That seems about right. 100-200k GBP in London, 200k-400k USD in the USA. Standard packages for people with a few years of experience.

> But the Big5 have tons of locations

Name one Big5 job in the entire U.S. south. Or at least one that pays as well as them.

There aren’t any.

Facebook is in Austin; Amazon is in Dallas

Austin isn’t the south.

Raleigh / Durham probably is the best tech scene in the south. No mega companies but a good number of second tier, ie. Redhat, Sas, Epic, and so on

Last I checked, Austin is south of the Mason-Dixie line and has plenty of small towns around it that will be glad to remind you that you’re in the South.

RDU definitely has an enterprise tech scene. So does DFW!

Ok, so Texas is technically in the South... you got me.

I suppose I should have clarified: major southeastern cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, D.C., Nashville, Miami)

AWS has several thousand engineers in the Virginia suburbs of DC, with a bunch of local VP-level management

(and that's not including anyone who works on the us-east-1 region)

Apple and Amazon could end up choosing Raleigh for their HQ2. So maybe that'll soon change.

I've only ever lived in Raleigh and I'm very skeptical they'll pick Raleigh for HQ2.

I'll be very excited if Apple ends up deciding on Raleigh though, it could easily push up salaries significantly.

Then don't live in the south. You'll get paid more, the weather will be nicer, and you'll meet less numbskulls with confederate flags painted on the hood of their trucks. Win/win/win.

Google's Skia team* is in Chapel Hill, Microsoft has a team in Raleigh working on VSTS. I know a few folks that have interned there.