"cannot possibly provide the value necessary to keep their job."

It's actually very much possibly for software engineers, at least, to justify high valuations. As an example when I joined Reddit my first task was to remake a data engineering server in scala that cut down the needed AWS machines by 70%. That cost saving already covered more than my salary in perpetuity and I was only 3 months in.

The vast majority of startups aren't doing anything remotely complex enough to be able to save money on electricity by paying for developers to write more efficient software. Or if they can - the instances are few and far between.

The vast majority of startups are also heavily cash-flow negative - so anything you do likely won't pay for itself.

It's almost always a bet on a rosy future.

Not true. The vast majority of startups hemorrhage money with inefficiencies. I routinely cut tens of thousands of dollars a month off a startup’s AWS bill. It takes me 30-45min. Why didn’t someone else do it? Too busy, didn’t know about it, didn’t know how.

I keep expecting to find a place that doesn’t need some sort of efficiency cost-saving. I’ve yet to find it.

The fact is there’s a crap-ton of beneficial work to be done anywhere you look. It’s not hard to justify a good salary in the software world.

For example: what if your company could double the speed of your CI/CD system and halve the price? If you move your runners to spot instances in an auto-scaling group you can do that. What’s the return on increasing the productivity of your eng team? Maybe eng salaries times percentage productivity improvement? That number is probably… large.

The vast majority of engineers earning these salaries work for "startups" like Google minting huge amounts of money on software built by these engineers. They are underpaid if anything. Do you really think management or shareholders (that get paid more for doing less) are the underpaid ones in this equation? Where else would the money go?

The amount of revenue per employees at some of these companies is in the 7 figures.

The "vast majority of startups" is not a useful unit of measure. Look at where all the people and the money actually are (FAANG).

Define FAANG.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google employ <1M engineers in the US. There are 4.4M engineers in the US.

That does not change the point that most of the engineers earning insane salaries are working for FAANG

There are 4.4M engineers in the US, but almost all of them make far less than the one working for FAANG.

Fair point.

I didn't know we were talking exclusively about engineers in the top 5% of pay or so.

I thought this was about engineers in general.

I was paid $165k a year by a neobank startup to.....build their bank. It's now responsible for over $200mm a year in revenue. I was the sole engineer on the project.

Good engineers are worth their weight in gold.

Yeah when I read takes like the guy you're responding to, I have to wonder: where should the money go if not to the people that built the product? Management? Shareholders? You can say that but those people are doing less work for more money already, so I don't buy it.

Engineers like many people that build useful things, provide orders of magnitude more value than what they get for their labor.

Well...op left the company, so why should he still get a cut of their current revenues ? That does not seem very fair to the current engineers who a currently able to manage the $200 MM. As far as we know, the company really started working well when they were finally able to replace his crappy code with a better implementation.

The money probably goes to management, who stuck during the entire story - which OP didn't. It also goes to current employees who, by their number alone require more money. And of course to stakeholder who paid for OP $165k when the bank was making $0.

Actually no. They replaced me with 9 engineers to do the same amount of work and had to delay the project 6 months because they had me working 100 hours a week and renegged on a raise and a vacation.

This one.

I did unimaginable things for one company, only to understand the value years later.

You know who else asked themselves that same question? Karl Marx.

The Workers control the deployment to Production!

By that logic, any salary < 70% of AWS cost is justifiable.

In reality there is a job market, and there are office politics. These determine salaries more than "marginal revenue of labour". This means that as long as someone who is employable by office-political standards will do the job cheaper, the salary can be contested.

I get your point. But to add to it, there is a labor shortage of good software engineers and that contributes to the high salary. We are still digitizing our economy, we are still disrupting non tech savvy businesses with tech first startups, and we are barely beginning to apply ML all the areas it could make gains. Please see more_corn's comment in this thread about how they haven't found a job yet where they couldn't immediately save the company 10k a month. There is no shortage of work to be done and a real shortage of people who can do it. So the reality is yes, any salary < 70% of AWS cost is justifiable in this example.

I has a phone screen at Coinbase and they just threw out 380k as the salary without me saying anything as far as expectations.

This reminds me of the dot com bubble. In 2000 people who had no software background and were making 50k would get offers for 80k, just for showing up at an interview and saying they know Java or HTML

I work at coinbase. We have standardized salary bands, this is just the salary at your level (comp plus equity, not sure if bonus is included). They are letting you know this up front to not waste your time.

One other thing that’s worth noting is that each year they give you a new equity grant. That grant I believe is priced based on the stock price over a period of 30 days in the first quarter.

Handy for limiting your downside if you are bearish about the economy.

The issue they are raising is specifically that, $380k standardized salary band, what role is this? That number seems unsustainable.

No. This is well paid but not out of the ordinary for someone working at a top tier tech company in NYC/SF Bay Area. Think Facebook, Apple, etc. see https://www.levels.fyi/ for levels and comparison.

Some of those companies are doing hiring freezes right now but many are not.

Salary bands are adjusted within the USA by zones where NYC/SF/Seattle are zone 1, zone 2 is 90% of base, zone 3 is 85%. With equity component staying the same.

Europe/Brazil/Canada are on a totally different lower pay scale.

This is extremely out of the ordinary- Levels.fyi lists a salary of $224,000 for a Staff level SWE at Google

No you are incorrect. That 224k is base at google not including equity. Staff engineers at google get a bonus and the majority of their comp is in equity, just like coin.

Source, I have a lot of friends who are former/current staff engineers at a variety of Bay Area companies. I also was a staff engineer at coin.

Also if you want to earn something like this in cash go work at Netflix when they start hiring again. They give you the option to be paid in cash.

It's not incorrect, salary does not include equity. Total comp would be a combination of salary, equity, and bonuses. The OP refers to salary, not total comp. I'm using their information to reply in their thread. Happy to re-asses conversation at total comp (a different conversation) if they are referring to total comp instead of salary.

Coinbase isn't paying $380k base either..are you just quibbling over the meaning of salary?

I don't think it is quibbling. It is a really important distinction. Salary is (mostly) guaranteed. Equity isn't guaranteed at all.

It’s a bit pedantic to be honest. Multiple times it’s been pointed out on this thread that the OP was referring to total comp so I’m not sure why this keeps being brought up.

While equity in a public company can go down and go down significantly it’s liquid. Especially in companies like coinbase that don’t have a 1 year cliff, are public, it’s a significant part of your comp and not funny money like you get in many early stage companies.

> Salary is (mostly) guaranteed

Truth

The salary I banked at the beginning of the month is guaranteed.

>Equity isn't guaranteed at all.

Especially not at coinbase, whose stock has imploded to the tune of -75% just this year, and more since IPO.

To quibble even more, it's much harder (legally) to take away unvested RSUs than it is to demote / reduce salary.

The OP is confused, I work at coinbase and that figure refers to total comp. Also levels.fyi is listing salary and not total comp for the google position he is comparing.

I wonder if this is sort of imposter syndrome, where an engineer thinks a year of my time is just not worth $380k to $495k. We all know plenty of examples where good employees are worth this and much more to growing or very profitable companies.

Ask for what you can get and realize that you are worth more than you realize in the right situation. And never begrudge a peer who earns a lot.

The coin base is almost certainly total comp, especially since they give annual (rather than the standard 4-year) equity grants.

Yeah, no way that Coinbase is paying $380k salary.

I’m guessing 380k is total comp, which is 498k for staff at Google.

Levels.fyi lists that number as base cash salary, yes. Total comp for a Staff SWE at Google is easily breaking $500k. It is also not a secret to anyone that cash salary at most tech companies tops out pretty low, because as you grow in levels, cash becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your total comp.

$224k/yr is below what a midlevel/L4 SWE would make at Google in total comp.

That’s low. I don’t think they’re using “staff” right.

Also, Total comp in 224k is more like $400k. 15% bonus target is normal with a possible 2x performance multiplier. 100k/yr gsu stock. 50% 401k match. To say nothing of the perks. On-site gyms, fantastic food, free shuttles.

Not that I’m advocating for working for goog, just saying.

levels.fyi shows $498,910 in total compensation for a staff level SWE at Google. Different companies compensate using a different blend of cash and equity. At a public company like Google, it's all liquid. Similarly, an E6 at Facebook gets $576,886.

These are also roughly speaking first-year salaries. You can expect a refresh grant equal to 1/4 of a new-hire equity grant each year vesting over 4 years, plus a staff-level can get a signing bonus of $50-100K.

After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

It's probably not 380K base, which is very high, it's likely 300K base + 25% bonus target = $375K, give or take. That's not hugely more than any of the mega-caps have been paying in cash comp for staffie's for like 5+ years.

> After 3-4 years in a staff role you can easily be making $1-2M/yr.

Refreshes exist but this is a total lie. I'm staff at Google. Nobody at L6 is making $1M in annual compensation, even if they have their sign-on equity and three refreshes. Let alone $2M.

Ok so I'm speaking from personal experience and network.

The point is that 3-4 years tenure is enough for significant appreciation in equity, especially in the earlier grants. Let's work an example, for someone who started 3 years ago.

- May 2019. -

Base: $225K.

Equity: $880K grant = 785sh @ 1120/share = 220K.

Bonus: $60K.

Total: $500K.

- May 2020. -

Base: $236K.

Equity: 196sh @ 1428/share = 280K.

Equity: $220K grant = 154sh @ 1428/share = 55K.

Bonus: $63K.

Total: $634K.

- May 2021. -

Base: $247K.

Equity: 196sh @ 2411/share = 473K.

Equity: 39sh @ 2411/share = 94K.

Equity: $220K grant = 91sh @ 2411/share = 55K.

Bonus: $66K.

Total: $935K.

Trust me, if they've been there for 3-4 years, they're making more than 1M in total comp. If you back my example out to someone who started in 2018, those refreshers easily push them into 1.2-1.4M, and factor in promo grants?

Okay if the stock price more than doubles in two years then yeah you can end up making a lot of money. This is why it is foolish to use vest price rather than grant price when discussing compensation. It isn't actionable information.

And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019. You can't use todays numbers for past cases. And then you are choosing a peak pay before it drops dramatically after the sign-on grant ends. And after all that, you aren't even at 1M, let alone "easily 1-2M". With literally everything being used to pump numbers up, you don't get to where you cite.

So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

> So yes, there are people at loads of companies who make way more money than advertised because the stock ballooned. But this is a completely useless way of analyzing compensation.

I couldn't disagree more. If half your total compensation is derived from stock, then you better be looking at yourself not just as an employee but as an investor. And part of that means making projections.

The point is that it isn't repeatable. Saying "oh I made bank investing in Tesla" is not useful information for another person making a decision now. Similarly, "Google stock went up dramatically between 2018 and early 2022 is not useful information for somebody who has offers in hand today from various corporations because they have absolutely no way of predicting future stock growth.

It's not about assuming that past performance equals future performance. With that attitude, nobody should invest in anything.

It's about bringing an investor mindset. Do your own analysis, make your own projections. It's literally half your paycheck, you owe it to yourself. It won't perform the same, sure, but your job as an investor is to analyze the quality of that investment. Will it go up or down? How much?

Whatever you vest is ordinary income. It's your compensation. Just because it's not fixed in advance doesn't mean it's not total comp! Don't pretend otherwise! :)

An effective investor mindset is to buy the whole market and forget it. Doing your own projections and trying to choose a particular company based on your belief that it’s stock will go up 150% over the next few years is a thing that virtually zero people can do effectively.

Except that you are literally investing a large chunk into the company you are going to work for. So while you may take that approach with your discretionary income, you are taking a different stock-picking approach joining a company that offers equity compensation. Unless you join Netflix.

So while you're saying one thing here, you're actually doing another.

I don't have data to prove you otherwise, but I don't think 880k would be not possible as the initial stock grant for L6. FB gives that to E5 now so I am not sure why you think L6 can't get that even in 2019. The initial stock grant bands haven't changed that much. I even got 400k as the initial grant in 2017.

Disc: Googler.

> And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019.

Note that Facebook certainly was.

The original grant runs out after 4 years. You don’t just infinitely accumulate a higher annual comp through refreshers.

L6 @ Google, personal AGI last year (not counting capital gains or spouse's income) was just over $900K. You forget the massive stock-price appreciation between 2020 and the end of 2021. If you were granted $400K/year in stock compensation in March 2020 it was worth over $1M/year in Dec 2021.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I do not think it is useful to use grant price when discussing comp with other people because it is not actionable. People joining Google today cannot rely on another 200% stock growth.

And even if you managed to hit your sign on grant at just the right time, you still were below the proposed “easily 1-2M”.

Totally accurate and valuable information based on people in my network.

You can make a lot of money working as a staff engineer at a top tier company.

Why? Because it’s higher than you’re used to seeing? You don’t even know what role that person was applying for. Is your position that 380k is just “too high”, period?

That number (or higher) has been the norm at a huge swath of stable and profitable tech companies for a decade+.

I am making an assumption that 380 is total comp and not base salary. I don’t believe that Coinbase is paying 380 base salary for any non-executive position.

I asked what the role was in the comment you are replying to. Do you have data to back up the "huge swath" assertion? Certainly there are a few individual companies that have been able to provide specialized roles a $380k base salary, and companies who have been able to provide that and above on total comp thanks to an amazing run on equity value over the past 10 years. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are situations when this happens, that's not the point. It's irregular, it's naive to think that is the norm.

The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future. Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k.

OP has clarified that it’s total comp and not base salary, as I had assumed. This is absolutely not out of the norm for engineering compensation at publicly traded companies. Levels.fyi has all of that data readily available.

"I asked what the role was in the comment you are replying to. Do you have data to back up the "huge swath" assertion? Certainly there are a few individual companies that have been able to provide specialized roles a $380k base salary, and companies who have been able to provide that and above on total comp thanks to an amazing run on equity value over the past 10 years. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are situations when this happens, that's not the point. It's irregular, it's naive to think that is the norm."

It's basically what the salary looks like in the USA at a top tier company in a top tier city. Go look at https://www.levels.fyi/ for base salary excluding equity. Equity goes up by level.

As for this role, it sounds basically like a mid career engineers salary. i.e 5-12 years of relevant experience. Hard to know exactly because geography impacts salary bands at Coin.

I can't remember what HR tells us, but I think we are targeting pay for the top 25% of companies/engineers in the USA.

"The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future."

I work at Coinbase, it's not salary, it's total comp. I'm assuming the OP was a bit confused. At least half that figure is equity.

"Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k."

As I mentioned earlier, each year Coinbase give you a new equity grant priced at the start of the year. I.e thirty day average, I believe.

So if the equity tanks one year, the next year you will be reset to 380k total comp. Assuming of course we are not in a multi year bear market and you don't get laid off, which is always a possibility in tech.

Also some companies, such as Netflix allow you to take a cash only salary that would be comparable to this.

>Why? Because it’s higher than you’re used to seeing? You don’t even know what role that person was applying for. Is your position that 380k is just “too high”, period?

Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter and is in a controversial space facing regulatory scrutiny?

>That number (or higher) has been the norm at a huge swath of stable and profitable tech companies for a decade+.

Yeah, stable and profitable.

> Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter

So what? Last year COIN made $3.62B earnings. They may need to shift at some point, but I think it's incorrect to act like 1-2 bad quarters means a company should completely shift their plan. If anything, it's more important than ever to hire top people - which requires a decent salary.

>If anything, it's more important than ever to hire top people - which requires a decent salary.

These are not "top people", they are average people. This isn't Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average.

>So what? Last year COIN made $3.62B earnings.

Only in Silicon Valley do people say "so what" to profits and quote revenue numbers. We're literally talking about high costs. Selling dimes for a nickel is simple, but not sustainable.

Not revenue. In 2021 COIN earned 3.62B profit on 7.84B revenue. People are acting like COIN is one of these companies that has never made money. Last year they had a $14.50 EPS.

2021 Fiscal Year https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/COIN/key-statistics?p=COIN

Of course past results are not indicative of the future, but in 2020 and 2021 COIN had positive earnings.

They actually made that in profits last year.

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001679788/8e5e050...

What do you mean, so what? Have you not read the article under discussion?

Sure, an article where COIN wasn't mentioned. Given that COIN made a profit in 2020 and a very large profit in 2021 it's hard to place it as a VC cash burning company.

COIN had a bad quarter and expects to have another. Are we seeing a shift away from crypto and tech or repricing which things will continue again? I think it's too soon to tell, hence my so what. COIN needs tighten up and plan for what's next. It doesn't mean they need to assume crypto is going to zero and the company is over - yet.

"Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter and is in a controversial space facing regulatory scrutiny?"

Wouldn't you expect people to be paid more for working in a risky space? Also, please not Coinbase just announced a hiring freeze.

https://blog.coinbase.com/employee-note-an-update-on-hiring-...

Even if they were paying it as cash, it's likely $300K base + 25% bonus target = $375K.

That's not insane for a staff engineer. A little high, but not impossible at any big tech company.

6 figure wages were common for successful professionals in the 90s, why would you believe that inflation, economic growth, and increasing income inequality hasn’t driven comp to roughly 4x that for successful professionals over the last 30 years?

This is the average salary of someone Senior - Staff in the Bay area. Coinbase indexes on the Bay for salaries, as many other companies do.

It'a pretty typical for higher level engineer roles and senior director and above manager roles for people in high cost of living markets.

Nope this would be a standard band at staff+ level swe at a successful company

And they gave that number out before they assessed candidate level. But maybe that was recruiting BS as the pay for the max plausible level.

Usually positions are based on reqs rather than who walks through the door. The req will have a level attached, the level will have a salary band attached. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

It also lets the candidates talk about it even if they aren’t extended an offer - someone they mention it to might be the candidate the company is looking for.

380 isn't even close to the max possible level. If this was an Engineering role, that a mid level salary.

Your past experience can be a proxy for the role and level you're targeted for and thus, the comp target.

Mid-level salary where? That is an insane salary _anywhere_, no wonder the market is beginning to correct for those inflated "mid level" numbers.

Mid level in SF, Seattle, and the bay, at any tier 1 paying company. You also have places like Amazon and MS up here in the Seattle area who target more like the 70th percentile for pay, where as an L6 senior SWE new offers are still topping 500k/yr.

The market is hot, and might be in a bubble, but these are comp numbers that you could have seen even five or six years ago at the FB, Snap, Lyft, even Googles of the world.

Well yeah, that’s what they think the candidates pay level will be. If the candidate doesn’t perform well in the interview they won’t get that offer.

Did they offer you the job or did they just state the expected compensation? b/c those are two different things. They could have told you the position paid $380k, and then assessed you were not qualified for the position and not extended an employment offer.

And when I say you, I don't actually mean you. I mean anyone they held interviews with and stated the expected compensation.

Just for comparison, I work at a Non-FANG (SWE >10 years) in a expensive COL area and I make less than half that.

I say, you take that offer.

Actually just had a discussion about this and putting the dollars out in front in the hiring process is something that more canidates are looking for in this competitive market. I'm sure it was said something like "this title (grade) pays 380k, is that's what you're hired at". Since levels.fyi has this all documented it still comes down to the interview and your ability to pass the interview and meet expectations for the level.

What they're trying to do is get you to continue with the process and potentially slow down any other interviews by putting the total compensation out there at the start.

Also notably CB doesn’t allow salary negotiation [0] so they just throw out high sounding number up front.

[0]: https://blog.coinbase.com/how-coinbase-is-rethinking-its-app...

> "so they just throw out high sounding number up front"

Weird way to phrase it, makes it sound like they just make it up on the spot

They have fixed salary per level, so they tell you exactly what you will make if hired

The difference is today, they are subjected to a battery of interviews, tests, and rudimentary psychological evaluations to make sure they know Java or HTML, and are a "culture fit", meaning they have the personality of a smiling Alegria person from the company's advertisements and not that of a living human being.

Huh, I guess this explains why so many otherwise-sceptical and intelligent engineers are so motivated to pretend 'web3' is a thing.

It also explains why people go into tech instead of becoming a teacher or nurse.

> This reminds me of the dot com bubble. In 2000 people who had no software background and were making 50k would get offers for 80k...

I accepted a $54k SW Eng job offer in 2000. To be fair, I had a Masters, but only 6 months work experience. I didn't break $80k until late 2003. Now I feel bad. ;)

I believe they quoted me the same number recently. From what I recall this was dual purpose - letting you know up front this is the comp range, but I believe the recruiter also let me know that because it was algorithmic(75th percentile for my market/zip code) that it was also a non-negotiable offer.

I think you're misunderstanding the theory. Hiring without fixed length contract is just interviewing. It's somewhat expensive interviewing, but given the legend of the 10x developer, it is worth risking paying people more than what they are worth to try to identify them.

True, I’d claim that the 10x people exist but would be impossible to spot based upon resumes and many of their resumes would fail to hit the checkbox requirements of the organizations looking for them. Also, in general I’d claim that 10x people aren’t necessary for most projects and tend to get stifled by bureaucracy.

10x deba exist for a given project. The same dev can be amazing in one environment and suck on a different one.