You should, but it looks like triplebyte was explicitly ignoring that because it would add too many dimensions to the graph and those benefits are hard to value. Stock options are not a liquid asset, and their value can change wildly and unpredictably. Ask all those programmers around in 2001 how much their options were worth.

Stocks are a major part of compensation for tech companies. Looking at just salary is an incomplete picture and also isn't fair for job-seekers. Fwiw this page has compensation data with break down by RSU, bonus, etc: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html

Very true. I work at a non-FAANG, non-West Coast company and my initial job offer was 55/45 cash to stock ratio. Due to stock appreciation, that's changed to 45/55 cash to stock. Including only base compensation makes no sense.

My current base salary is exactly the same as it was at my last startup, but my income has more than doubled.

In NYC, and in the financial sector in particular, total total compensation often includes cash bonuses, while stock components are less common compared to S.V.

Without insight into total compensation, these numbers are only minimally useful.

Agreed. This is leaving 50% of total comp out of the equation.

-e- not to mention, it's the portion that varies the most with experience and internal performance.

Very relevant for people working for startups, much less relevant for those working at public companies where the stock can be sold the day it vests. Standard vesting starts after a year cliff, but it’s common to get a large signing bonus which makes up for it. Plus some people are getting offers with no cliff.

I worry that some really skilled developers may be looking at these stats and not realize what they are giving up by accepting a job with the average salaries reported here.

Unless you go to a FAANG you're basically going to be accepting compensation close to what's listed here.

If you're at a FAANG and get those massive stock packages, then you can really start getting close to the $300k+ total comp packages that people talk about.

Hedge fund programming jobs in NYC pay a significant annual cash bonus, I believe 50-100% of base salary is standard. From what I can tell $250-300k is pretty standard total comp for senior software devs. I'm just a programmer, probably a hiring manager or recruiter would have a better sense of the market.

Do you happen to know how to get a programming job at a hedge fund? I have a finance background, ran a tiny algo fund and is currently doing Swift development at a FAANG company, would love to combina my passions!

If your current FAANG role is listed on LinkedIn, you're probably getting a ton of messages from head hunters. Just start asking them if they can get you an interview at one.

The hard part is that there are only like 4-5 trading firms that have a reputation for great technology, and their size combined is like 1% of FAANG size, so there just aren't that many openings.

Yeah that makes sense but I actually don’t have it on LinkedIn, apparently we’re not allowed to for secrecy reasons. I still get a lot of unsolicited messages but almost nothing finance related so far...

Networking and recruiters, mostly.

I spent 9 years at a hedge fund in Chicago. I started a year out of college. That job, the reputation and that I lasted nearly a decade, and left of my own accord have opened numerous doors for me, and I only got the job because of networking (my best friend from college worked there and vouched for me, and he was there because a college friend of his sister worked there and vouched for him). Now that I'm "in", I can call up a handful of recruiters that specialize in finance to setup interviews inside of a week or so any time I want. Usually beginning of the year is the best time to interview (after theyve fired tje worst performers from the previous year). Recently, I was looking for a job after being let go in January. I had my first phone screen 3 business days after I lost my job. Accepted an offer after about 4 weeks without work. Actually accepted the lower base/higher bonus potential that also had better work/life balance and easier commute.

But, like I said: networking and recruiters. The hedge fund world is a very incestuous industry. Once you get in, lots of opportunities to move around as you meet people, they leave for new shops, etc. Education also doesnt much matter except to open the first door. I.e. a degree from MIT, CMU, Harvard or Stanford will open more doors without a network connection. I got in with dual BS degrees in engineering from a well respected, but not top tier tech school, with a referral from an employee. While there worked with some very talented people, few of which had degrees in CS. Worked with physicists, philosophers, mathematicians and English majors - all in a software development capacity. I'm sure there were other disciplines, but they escape me.

Thanks for the reply. Yes sure, that’s the way to go. The trouble is that I don’t even live in the US (I’m Swedish), so I’m sort of disconnected from that world. I do have one or two friends that went into HFT and similar, but only in Europe and I’d rather work in NYC right now.

Any tips on firms that even have those kinds of positions, I can always cold call a few to get a feeling for what they might be looking for.

My theoretical physics degree is from the best university in Sweden, but that probably doesn’t go very far in the US...

Best advice I could give is to leverage the contacts you have. Not just your friends, but also potentially your professors. They might have more contacts in finance than you know. A lot of physicists end up working as quants in finance. You might have to relocate to London or Germany (not sure what the outlook is over in Europe currently - my experience is entirely US). Hedge funds and the like will generally sponsor visas in the US, but you might have to seek them out more than expecting to be actively recruited, especially if from a more obscure school (and I do not mean this derogitorally). Most HFs usually have a small set of schools they actively recruit from, usually top tier (perceived) schools in the US in either finance, math, physics or engineering.

I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. My company pays FAANG total comp in cash. Private company.

what industry, if you don't mind me asking?

Later stage startups also have equity packages similar to FAANG based on their valuation.

Given that FAANG (+Microsoft) employ close to quarter of a million software engineers and probably represent 50%+ of hiring in a given year, it seems weird to ignore those.

250k engineers at FAANG sounds really high. Do you have a source for those numbers?

250k is really pushing it.

I remember reading a Google earnings report that said they had 90k employees in total. Assuming Amazon/Microsoft to be larger and assuming Netflix to be smaller, we can take Google to be the average. Of that, even if 50% was engineering, we'd only have 250k FAANG engineers worldwide. In the US, I'd guesstimate ~100k.

Taking Google as the average is throwing off your numbers by an incredible amount. Amazon alone has more employees (around 540k as of the most recent reporting I can find) than you gave the entire group. Microsoft and Apple each account for more than Google as well.

Does the Amazon number include people working in logistics, delivery, and all that? I suspect that is huge portion of that number. Their engineering force is larger than Google's but not by much, I think (60-70k at best).

I wouldn't expect it includes those positions, as warehouse operations/logistics seems to be contracted out to other companies. Not sure, though.

Media reporting appears to suggest that number includes the supermarket chain they now own.

Not sure about others but I and many of my coworkers sell RSUs immediately. Many companies offer RSUs, not options, which have guaranteed value.

It's riskier than cash but definitely real compensation and not the monopoly money that options end up becoming.

At large, public companies, the stock options are basically as good as cash.

That would be stock, not stock options.

Rsu’s vest monthly at many top companies.

That would be a lot more interesting but it's also super hard to compare equity for public companies and different stages of startups. It probably makes better sense to split the companies into different categories and then do the comparison in the same category

That's easy: equity in public companies is worth $something, equity in private companies is worth $nothing.

(this is why we did it this way)

If I'm being cynical, TripleByte left this out on purpose. From what I've heard, they're mainly linking developers up with startup roles that don't pay much more than this (except perhaps in monopoly-money equity).

Of course, you'd be better off going to FANG or a (soon-to-IPO) unicorn where you'd make double these amounts with RSUs factored in. But if you can get in there, you probably don't need to go through TripleByte.

Then again, TripleByte also created https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html so maybe I am just being cynical.

But even $250K in total comp wouldn’t allow my family to live the lifestyle that we can live in many major metropolitan areas in the US that have a much lower cost of living where just your commodity full stack developer with a few years of experience can make $135K - $160K.

Wouldn't it? What major metropolitan areas are you talking about specifically?

$250K is FANG compensation for an engineer with a few years of experience. According to NerdWallet cost of living calculator, equivalents are:

    Manhattan:    $314K
    Los Angeles:  $191K
    Boston:       $196K
    Chicago:      $157K
    Miami:        $152K
    Denver:       $149K
    Philadelphia: $146K
    Minneapolis:  $139K
    Atlanta:      $134K
    Des Moines:   $117K

So $250K in San Francisco should afford similar lifestyle as in other major cities paying $135K-$160K.

But a senior-level position in FANG should be closer to $350K and above. I think that becomes much harder to match as a commodity developer outside the Bay Area (it'd be $205K in Philly, for instance). And even if you did match it, and you're able to sock away X% of your income a year in both cities, the FANG salary leaves you with many more dollars in your bank account in a few years. You could always leave the Bay Area at some point, and spend those dollars in a low CoL area.

I'm not saying it's worth it. The Bay Area has a lot of downsides. San Francisco has become a crime-ridden cess pool in recent years. Commutes are horrendous if you don't live near work. And many tech companies in the Bay Area pay much less than FANG compensation (and I know from experience), which really makes it hard to stomach. But from a purely financial standpoint, it seems like the FANG developers are doing pretty well.

I have a house in the burbs in Atlanta - 5 bedroom/3.5 bath, 3000 square feet, new build.

It’s in a top rated school district, 30 minutes away from where I work and we paid $335K for it back in 2016. Now, it would probably be around $385K. How much would a similar setup cost in San Francisco?

We bought it with the 5% down that the builder required to start, but we ended up even getting some of that back when we used an FHA loan that required only 3.5% down.

Yes, the housing supply in SF and the peninsula is not good. If you want a new build or lots of space, it is not the place to be.

Agree with this. To get any insight on what actual compensation looks like, one option can be to add a filter by publicly traded companies and add equity value to those.

Agreed. After about the first 4 years of my career, base salary was a minority of my TC.