Well, if they are in SF (which many of them are), they know exactly what to do with all the money: pay the rent and share pizza with their 6 roommates.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20943699
Yes SF is expensive, but these salaries are absurd.
That poster is definitely has good compensation, but TC needs to be broken into salary and equity.
When I left Google, a substantial part of my salary was via stacked yearly vesting GSU (like RSU) stock grants with some bonus mixed in. That meant that my salary was heavily dependent on the whims of the market. It also meant that my cash flow was somewhat impacted by either doing a lot of extra withholding or doing quarterly estimated taxes, since the GSUs were taxed at 25% instead of my actual tax rate.
Just getting paid every two weeks is so much nicer, and so much simpler. And we don't have a Monday in January after annual bonuses are awarded when we spend all day talking about who quit after their bonus was paid.
How is this worse? You can always sell the stock as soon as it vests, with zero tax implication.
Your compensation has nothing to do with stock price. Your decision to sell or hold onto the stock is an investment decision made by you, but isn't really relevant to the discussion of "this is how much money was given to me by my company".
But if you are granted $100k worth of stock in February, and the stock price drops by half in March you're only getting $50k worth of stock. Come next February, your stock grant will probably have a higher number of units to account for the drop in price, but you still earned less than $100k in stock the previous year.
Get $50k in equity ($100 per share), but you can only sell 1/3 each of the next 3 years. Stock price drops to $50 means you now have $25k of equity.
If it’s options it may mean you get $0.
Really, anything but taking the value of stock as it is when discussing total compensation of well-established publicly traded companies is just noise.
When the stock price flattens, that extra $11k per month might turn into an extra $5k per month which isn’t exactly rolling in cash in SF.
Shooting up? Dude works at Pinterest, and Pinterest stock has actually been falling recently.
>extra $5k per month which isn’t exactly rolling in cash in SF.
Five thousand dollars a month is rolling in cash for anywhere. This is the type of attitude I'm talking about in my other comment in this thread. There's an incredible loss of perception when it comes to SVers and what constitutes a lot of money and what doesn't. An extra $5k a month is more than the entire salary of the average American household. Hell, it's almost more than the average SF income!
Save up 100k and move to the middle of where in India. You won’t be able to do your job, or talk to anyone but hey, you’ll be better off than most of the world.
If you want to save up a $300k down payment on a single family home, $5k a month in savings will take you 5 years (assuming you ignore your retirement entirely).
Otherwise, I agree that $5k per month after taxes and expenses is a ton of money.
Edit: At an 11k surplus every month, I take the above comment back.
Better than "zero" signing bonus. $100k takes how many years of saving money? This signing bonus is "free money" provided you stay with the company within the agreeable period.
According to one poster in this thread [1], it takes 1 (one) year for him to save up $100k without even trying.
Check Zillow for prices.
I am currently living in a gigantic 3BD for $5200.
The type of fresh-grads that chase FAANG for fame and money aren't necessary the type of developers that love their work and craft. These fresh-grads put career first and craft second. I'd say the majority, not all. There might be one or two pockets of small group of people who love to do these stuffs ... maybe...
> but damn if you've never looked out from behind your screen at the sun shining and thought a little less of the React component or whatever saas thing you work on.
There's plenty of sun in California ;). Plus, they're doing what they love no? I'd say these folks know what they're getting themselves into (e.g.: still chasing Facebook despite known as cutthroat employer).
> Believe it or not, it is okay to love your craft and expect to be paid. It's not zero sum
I do believe it. Just not the majority of today's fresh-grad that has the attitude.
FAANG these days demand you to go over rigorous Leetcode and System Design practices (mostly having to do with high-level scaling architecture and not CODE level which where most of the craft exist unless we changed the definition of craft). Some people have to spend months training themselves in Leetcode because they really really really want that high-paying job in top brand companies.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I'm associating "craft" with writing code, learning best practices, or building products regardless the environment/situation. Not grinding Leetcode HARD problems trapping water 3D: https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water-ii/
Gone are the days where companies hire OSS contributors because they're good at a specific domain.
> In fact I'd say many startup new grads lose out on code reviews and architecture tips by senior people.
I think you might conclude that startups == mid-size companies like Airbnb and Dropbox? Feels like it's either FAANG or startups while there are middle ground of just about different size of companies with varying years of existence.
> It's not their fault that they have to do that. If that gets them a good life.
No complain here. Good for them.
> That doesn't mean there aren't people who genuinely care about their craft and want to be better architects.
Minorities. Unlike the past.
> That's why systems (infra / embedded etc ) have a higher rate of people who truly enjoy it joining.
I'm on Infra. Most of my peers who are working on Infra are older people (35-40+ years old) with purpose. Most younger folks prefer "mobile" or "app" teams.
That said, I'm happy that people get paid well to do something they love, but that can often be very depressing. Not always certainly, but damn if you've never looked out from behind your screen at the sun shining and thought a little less of the React component or whatever saas thing you work on.
It's easy to forget that many of these articles, and particularly posts are Blind, are just just riddled with people posturing about the same thing.
Edit: I should add the emotional response I tend to have given my circumstance, I do think it's way better to have transparency than not.