Not rainbows -- FAANG are out-bidding startups at every level.

If you have a modicum of talent and a flair for interviews, they will gladly buy your soul for $250k/year + bennies from heaven.

Hmm a modicum of talent? It's pretty hard to get in. Doesn't necessarily take talent but it sure helps. Either that or the willingness and ability to grind out so many interviews you actually become good at it. Whatever the case not everyone is capable or event want to go through with it. And its not as if FAANG are a good representation of the industry, maybe 5% of devs work there?

I see, so while not rainbows it does come with the fact that you're expected to be a slave on location for 24/7? So if I understand it correctly it is only rainbows if you wish to combine that with a family life and without having to move to us?

> while not rainbows it does come with the fact that you're expected to be a slave on location for 24/7?

Not at all. You're expected to be productive to a certain standard (and even that is sometimes iffy), not to be 24/7 available.

That's just the first year out of school pay. It goes up to mid six figures quickly once you get a promotion or two.

Sorry for the flood, just a remark. As a devops engineer from Eastern Europe (with "senior" formal title) in a large international consultancy, these numbers sound like they are from another planet to me. $250k+/year to me sounds indistinguishable from $200000000000000000000/year.

FAANG employees, particularly on the West Coast, are an anomaly, even within the US. People also often include stock grants in listed comp, so be sure your comparing apples to apples.

DC/Mid-Atlantic salaries at an established (non-FAANG) company are more like $85-$100k for a recent grad, $130-$170 for senior developer positions. Most of those jobs are in the suburbs, where a nice house is in the $500-$1million range.

While there is cost of living differences per region in compensation too, I imagine the typical senior+ software engineer in the US is lucky to retire after decades of work having broken $200k-250k total compensation. Meanwhile junior FAANG engineers are probably making that much.

I'd say this applies to HCOL areas too like NYC or even the SFBA. If you're working for a cludgy old Fortune 500 tech-is-a-cost-center enterprise company (where the majority of SWEs are working), you're probably not making more than $200k-250k at best as a senior SWE with many, many years of experience unless you have some niche specialty.

To put a point on this, I saw an opening for a Chief Data Engineer (or something like that) at Ford. I asked my friend, a long tenured mechanical engineer there with friends on the software side, what that would pay...he said 200k! I bet it's closer to 300, but still, it's no wonder everyone hates their car software.

Important to note that "senior dev" here means title, not actual seniority, e.g. ~5 yrs experience gets you in that range even at an early-stage startup in the Midwest.

Correct. At my employer, Senior Developer is the 3rd (of 6) title in the developer hierarchy. Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic. Though the comp ranges for Senior and up have a lot of overlap between levels - to earn beyond 150ish, you'll have to be really good, regardless of title.

A Senior Dev would be expected to operate mostly independently on day-to-day tasks, capable of contributing back to their immediate team (mentoring, working with product manager, etc), work directly with customers and leadership as needed, and be recognized as somebody with answers to problems within their immediate area.

> Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic

In such cases is it still considered the terminal title, the one you either earn or are pushed out for not earning, but are not required to go beyond?

Pretty much. We don't have codified up-or-out rules. I don't see many truly terminal Senior Devs, but have seen people "hang out" in that role for many years. Same thing for Lead Dev, which is one title more senior.

Assoc to Senior or Lead - being successful at normal tasks over time gets you there without much active career management.

Senior to Principal - you'll have to seek out interesting work, prove capable of working across product/business or technical boundaries, and start interacting with leaders outside you team.

Senior Principal - all of above, plus interacting regularly with VP, leaders in Product Management group, capable of high level design/analysis, trusted by peers and leaders across your organization. High level of ability mentoring and leading.

Cool, that lines up with my recent experience at a "mid tech", a Fintech that will IPO this year or next. I interviewed for Staff, they downleveled me to Lead, I quit in 6 months. There were people ahead of me with half my experience...but those folks had basically never worked anywhere else.

Funny to compare that with my previous experience at an IIOT startup, where I was employee ~#30 and the third or fourth engineer doing cloud stuff. Started at Staff, left at Senior Staff after two years but would have been Principal if I stayed another 2-3 months. The gap is big!

You haven't. That's the sad reality for devs living in the EU (or elsewhere but not in the States). 200k is also a bit generous, senior engineers that are specialized in <xyz> tech do earn much much more than that, anywhere from 2x to 5x. Yes, 5x that amount for an engineer. I didn't believe this myself but that's really how it is.

However, given that more and more companies are becoming more open to WFH setting, it will hopefully make the things better for the devs outside the States.

What tech do you have to specialize in to get $1 million a year?

Big-data, AI, HFT ... Basically anything that has been and is a hot topic and which generates a lot of revenue. But I am clearly not thinking of an average Joe level of expertise. It requires to have all around the stack skills including the ability to grasp the big picture of the product and drive it forward.

Technical skills wise, for areas from above, you'd usually be looking at the strong background in algorithms, math & statistics, internals of operating systems, underlying hardware but mostly about the CPU at the microarchitectural level and strong expertise in at least one programming language.

In general in Belgium if you work overtime that time is then alloted to "inhaalrust" up to a certain point (you're never able to work more then 11h/day or 50h/week). Only if you have like a specific agreement where you work "voluntary" overtime, which is not counted towards inhaalrust, but is the standard 50% extra or 100% extra on sundays/holidays.

More info can basically be found on https://werk.belgie.be/nl/themas/werkbaar-en-wendbaar-werk/a... (also available in French).

As for unions, normally if a company reaches 50 employees they are required by law to have a union rep. How exactly that works I don't know. Also while I personally also have never heard of a software specific union, you can always just go with the big normal unions if you want, it's not like they're going to turn you away.

> haven't even heard ever of a union for software developers

Now you have: https://prospect.org.uk/tech-workers/ or https://www.unitetheunion.org/ in the UK.

I had colleagues in both at a previous job, depending whether their jobs were more scientific (we'd call it data science now) or engineering.

Both unions are more general than just software/IT.

It’s very expected to get options, pensions (401k matching) and premium health insurance.

Basically DACH region.