Defintiely could be. But not in this economy. I'll take what I can get.
But in general, it really is a matter of knowing your worth and what they could pay. IF you have a certain noteriety in a community of a domain and you get an offer, understand how much leverage you have vs. yet another front end web dev. Let alone 99% of students out of college.
I do want to emphasize being careful with current times, though. I've heard of very mild negotiations (were talking a 5k counter offer or an extra week of vacation time) leading to rescindings in 2023. Which is unheard of from 2022 or before. They'd at least hold firm in the worst case. But we're still in the middle of this circus that is probably going well into 2025.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I think better advice is to simply do a lot of research on what comparable salaries are for the position you're looking for. There are tons of information sources online now that can give good info on accurate salaries, including breakdown of cash, bonus, equity, etc.
To your last point, you better be aware of who has the leverage when you start negotiating. If there are a hundred other qualified candidates, and you really need the job, going into "battle mode" over 2-3 percent is not a good idea. On the flip side, if you really are that "purple squirrel" for which there are few if any compliments, go for all you can get.
Your worth is a mixture of (but not limited to) your expertise and how you sell yourself, the supply and health of the market, and what markets are offering vs. What they can potentially pay. Too many factors to give universal advice. So you'll need to fill in the variables based on your current experiences.
Right now the market is horrible and I'm not a purple squirrel. So I want to take what I can get for now and just focusing on relieving short term debt over long term plans to improve myself.
If that's what you seek or think is your worth is an entirely different discussion.
The benefit is, if they can't pay you enough to join them, you don't have to waste your time going through some six-interview multiday gauntlet.
I'm not interested in going through the gauntlet either, but these things are surely related.
What kind of work experience would you say was most valuable in climbing that ladder? Open source stuff? Anything you could show off?
1. The US tech giants (the "FAANGs"). These companies are so insanely profitable and they can afford to pay a lot, though they all have become more cost conscious in the past couple years.
2. Finance. Again, they've got a lot of money, and especially for trading firms it's usually more straightforward to assign value to individual developers than in other areas.
3. Currently there is a big desire for AI talent, so if that's your industry one of the big startups (OpenAI, Anthropic) or one of the smaller well-funded ones should be able to pay you well.
So I would say this person didn't so much "climb the ladder" as opposed to position themselves well to get hired at other companies that would pay them a lot more. And I think this person did it in perfect order, i.e. it's been said a lot on HN how "the startup deal" (i.e lower salary but more equity) is hardly ever worth it for IC software developers these days if you can also get a FAANG job, but it can be a great stepping stone to getting experience that leads to a better paying job at companies that can afford to do so.
I was leading enterprise app dev + AWS projects at a small startup making $x. I got a remote job working at AWS (Professional Services) as a mid level (full time direct hire) consultant making $x + 65K working remotely.
I got Amazoned and a year later, now I’m a “staff” consultant (full time) at a smaller consulting company making the same as I made as a mid level consultant at AWS.
If I were to work at GCP as a “senior” (one level down) I would be making $150k - $200K more than I am making now. But even that department has a return to office mandate. Maybe I would try it after getting a few more years under my belt working at this level
If you're OK with that, just visit the US and make some friends. Go to meetups and conferences. You will definitely find something much better than any EU offer (while still wildly underpaid in California) - that's your starting point. Do a good job, underpromise and overdeliver, and ask for referrals.
The supply of good, experienced software developers willing to work for $100k in the Bay Area is practically non-existent when "normal", nothing-special suburban houses there can go for a couple million. There are a much higher supply of developers willing to work for that in Poland because the CoL is so much lower.
Similarly, a gigantic reason American companies hire overseas in the first place is because wages are lower outside the US. Without that wage differential most of those jobs wouldn't exist.
When I came back to the recruiter, I asked how much room she had to negotiate, and asked if she could put me “in the middle of the band”. She immediately said yes and it resulted in a bump of $75k/yr or so.
The thing to remember is that recruiters key metrics are about hires. They desperately want to get people in the door, especially after going through all of the effort to schedule interviews. They will happily help you out within reason.
I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”. I worked at AWS for 3.5 years until last year. I would assume the distribution is about the same thing for most other tech companies.
Doing a quick bit of research, you’re not to far off. My back of the envelop math is about 7.5% work at FAANG + Microsoft. Maybe 10% if you include other companies that pay in that range
I think your assumption is way off. From what I've gathered, each team typically has a single L6 engineer (some have zero), and each independent organization has a single L7 engineer. We're talking one senior engineer per 9-12 engineers, one principal per around 50 engineers.
Senior engineers tend to have a 1:1 correspondence with software development managers, whereas principal engineers have a 1:1 correspondence with senior managers.
> I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”.
You should check your notes, as they are way off. Even if you Google the topic you get 15% senior engineer, 2% principal engineers. I know for a fact that flagship organizations within Amazon have a single principal engineer, 4 or 5 senior engineers, and around 50 L4-L5.
L6s are tasked with interfacing with higher-ups, such as product owners and senior managements. They coordinate with principal engineers to design and deliver critical features. They help communicate and coordinate tasks with SDMs about the work that other SDEs need to do to reach goals.
By design, they are normally one senior SDE per team, and a single principal engineer per organization. They are there so that senior managers and executives can discuss plans, goals, and roadmaps. You definitely do not need a team full of interfaces.
Worked at a startup for a bunch of years making 90k by the end
Got offered a place at FAANG. Recruiter pushed me a little bit on expected salary but I didn’t give one using all the approached from the linked article. They offered me 250k. I would have never ever assumed that I can be payed this much. Instead of accepting I again followed the advice and asked for time to think. I had no counter offers but spoke to the recruiter thanked them for the offer and asked if there’s room for improvement. And they were nice and reasonable, they said yes if there are counter offers or you are leaving unvested stock behind. I was leaving unvested stock in an unprofitable startup, but I wrote the amount and vesting schedule and got offer bumped by 25k.
After working there I considered going to trading shop. Used the same approach and they offered 400k. Again this number seemed insane at the time. So I asked for more, this time I had much lower counter offer. But I could use it as some form of leverage. They upped the offer by 150k by the end (this is sign on+ salary+guaranteed first year bonus).
I am writing this not to show off the numbers, but to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Let the employer give information first and don’t back yourself into the corner by revealing your ignorance of market or minimum comp you are willing to take.