Citation. People throw around fantastical, ever-increasing numbers (250k, 400k, 500k, now a million) in these threads, but never any hard data. How many is “plenty”? I argue that it would be exceptionally few, if any.
I joined Facebook as a junior engineer a year before the IPO. After five years I was earning a touch over 500k as a senior developer and first-level manager.
The majority was from stock and significantly boosted by the rising price. If I stayed it would have decreased slightly over time due to the stock price levelling out.
If you achieved steady career progression at Facebook over the last four years (reach E5 level, a couple of promos) and not get fired them making 400k+ would be common. I’d hazard a guess that probably 50% of new hires achieve this. Base salary would be 200k and the rising stock price makes up the rest.
For what it’s worth I left the Bay Area and Facebook and cut my compensation by more than half to do so.
I'd have to assume a million includes stock compensation. Even executives don't make a million in cash base (eg. Alphabet's CFO makes $760K, chief legal officer makes $664K).
With stock compensation it's pretty easy because of the appreciation of company stocks. 5 years ago, Facebook was trading at $24/share. It now trades at $193/share, a roughly 8x increase. If your compensation package included $125K/year in RSUs - something eminently achievable even with just a few years of work experience - you're now making over a million a year as those stock grants vest.
And for purposes of comparing total compensation across regions, including stock appreciation like this is misleading. The value used should be the value of the stock at the time it was granted. that's effectively the intended compensation from the company. stock markets go up and down. especially using the past few years record bull market and including that as if the companies intended to pay that much is not going to help someone trying to compare total comp between regions.
Depends what the discussion is about. For someone deciding whether or not to move to the Bay Area, stock price appreciation should be excluded because you can't predict the future and if you could you'd be just as well off putting your cash into FB stock without working for them. For someone discussing the causes of Bay Area housing unaffordability it's very relevant, because having several thousand people earning a million a year who are all trying to buy up limited housing stock is going to seriously affect prices.
This discussion thread seems to be a mix of both, so...YMMV.
I know it sounds crazy, but it's not really crazy. People don't talk about it a lot, but it's not unlike commercial airline pilots making $300k a year. They extract their fair take from very profitable businesses.
Those numbers make working in tech feel like a modern day gold rush. I work as a programmer and don’t see anything near those amounts. I suspect most other programmers don’t either, even if they won’t admit it. Colleges and bootcamps selling overpriced training certainly won’t. Working in tech is beyond overhyped and it’s only going to get worse. I’m not talking about FAANG, I’m talking about everywhere else.
This is what passes for "data" here? Self-reported with zero verification. You're not capturing rank-and-file software engineers here, only those who have interesting enough situations to report. A spreadsheet like this is bound to skew ultra high.
You're not going to get a citation outside of somebody's anecdote about "someone they know at FB". I've addressed this common HN trope upthread[1]. It's like talking to a vacuum here.
