400k is not unusual for a senior engineer working at big tech for several years in the Bay, Seattle, NYC, or even a city like LA.

Base salary will be around 200K, and bonus would be another 200K. Can easily be 50-100K more than that on some years.

Outlier would be 750K or more, which means the engineer is one of the most valuable members of the team.

The median T5 Google eng does not have 200k base. (It's less than that) and lol bonus is not 200k. Bonus is 15% of base. Not sure where you are pulling your numbers from but Facebook is very similar. Most senior devs at big tech are not making 200k base (more like 150-190k). It is more like top 20% making that base. But base doesn't matter. The money is in the RSUs anyway.

I'm obviously including RSU in the "bonus" portion, in addition to cash. There are also companies who pay these kind of total bonus figures in cash, but in big tech it's typically paid in stocks.

I'm pulling these numbers from direct contact with recruiters in these companies, and in some cases job offers.

Incidentally, there's an anonymous reply from a Facebook engineer under one of my other comments in this thread. His total compensation last year was $450k.

So? That's one engineer. I said top 20%. You act like the median engineer is pulling 400k at FB. They aren't.

The median employee at FB is making $240k. We can safely assume the median engineer is making more than that.

I never claimed that median engineer is making $400k. This entire thread is about the senior engineers and their payout after 4-5 of working at a company like FB vs at a startup.

If you could do good work as an engineer at a startup for 4-5 years, pulling $400k at FB is very realistic for you. With the median being $240k, it's not going to be a whole lot less.

I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup.

Bottom line: if you can stick it out as a senior engineer at a startup for the 4-5 years it takes your options to vest, then you can realistically pull $400k/yr at FB. Except at the startup, you'd make maybe $180k base, and your "bonus" would be your bottom-preference 0.01% equity that would almost certainly be worth 0.

> I'm not sure why you're trying to prove me wrong, but let's face facts: even that absolute median of $240k that includes non-engineers is better than what most engineers would pull at a startup.

I think there has been a common disbelief among many commenters on this forum about engineers making that high compensation. There really isn't any upside to trying to convince others of this reality. Its easier to mock you here than to face the facts that many are losing quite a lot in opportunity cost by not working in SV. So its natural you will face a lot of animosity here.

No one doubts that some developers are paid that much. What they doubt is that that compensation is normal. To me, the argument implicitly seems to be over the definition of what's "normal" rather than the actual existence or non-existence of highly paid developers. Of course highly paid developers exist.

That's really just a distinction without a difference. The point is that for reasonable definitions of normal, this is true. Some people don't believe that. Sure not every engineer takes home that much, but its also not only the top 5 or 10%, its significantly more than that.

What evidence do you have that significantly more than 10% of engineers earn more than $400K?

Are you talking software engineers? Software engineers in the Bay Area? Software engineers in the Bay Area working for a subset of companies?

I suspect the reason this 'debate' exists is that we are not specific enough with our language to make our meanings clear to one another. :)

To me it's difficult to tell whether the commenters here are disagreeing over the objective reality of compensation distributions or the subjective reality of what counts as 'normal'.

>Software engineers in the Bay Area working for a subset of companies?

Yes, to be clear that's what this argument was predicated on. Someone said "A significant percentage of SWEs at FANG style companies take home more than 400K per year" and other people said "I don't believe you.

No one ever said "A significant portion of all swes everywhere make more than 400K." That would indeed be a silly statement.

Specifically, this was the statement that started this thread:

>400k is not unusual for a senior engineer working at big tech for several years in the Bay, Seattle, NYC, or even a city like LA

That statement is objectively true for practically any reasonable definitions of "not unusual".

> What evidence do you have that significantly more than 10% of engineers earn more than $400K?

What evidence do you have to the contrary?

Compensation data isn't typically shared openly. Well-paid engineers have no reason to share their pay figures and create animosity or worse problems.

I have no strong evidence to the contrary.

I'm trying to learn the truth. The previous commenter made claims about the distribution of comp. No doubt they had reasons for believing that claim. I want to know their reasons so I can update my own beliefs.

I have made no claims so I don't understand why you are asking me for the answer. I'm trying to learn the answer! :)

Beyond "I work at one", there's not much I'm willing to share, but suffice to say that when the majority of the people who work at these companies are saying something, perhaps they have reason to believe it is true.

There are also past threads on reddit and hacker news which include anecdata that points to such compensation being reasonably common, but again that requires believing anonymous internet people.

You're probably right, it's just my first time encountering this.

Yes I know the median is making $240k. The median eng is probably doing 250-360k. You do not work at a startup for 5 years straight out of college and then goto FB making 400k a year. A few do, but the median engineer does not.

200-300/yr still doesn't get you less than winning the startup lottery as an early employee. So it's better to get that than risking getting only half.