While volume of hiring may have been lower overall so far this year, median compensation has generally remained steady or increased in the first half of 2023 relative to the last half of 2022 for most roles. In particular, the median for software engineer compensation stayed the same, while roles such as software engineering management saw a 5% increase in overall pay.
Augmented reality was quite in-demand so far in 2023. AI engineers have also seen elevated compensation compared to their engineer counterparts, which we analyze on our post here: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/ai-engineer-compensation.html
being just a regular IT person with 15+years experience and getting paid fairly well for what the local market is, whats the chance of a normal person working at a place that pays $700,000 as a SWE? How do you even approach that? Does someone mid career have a chance to pivot?
Almost nowhere pays $700k for a SWE. These numbers come from stock grants or similar financial instruments; that money gets realized eventually, but it's not guaranteed in the same way that a fortnightly bank deposit is.
Stock grants are typically vested quarterly, sometimes after an initial waiting period of 1-2 years. RSUs are just cash, I don’t see how they would not be considered being paid. They certainly show up on my W2.
I didn’t say they aren’t considered being paid; I said that they’re speculative instruments in a way that a paycheck isn’t.
In other words: 700k is 700k when realized, but there’s no particular guarantee that so-and-so many units of stock are worth that much; it depends on the market. Comparing TC as if 700k is guaranteed is misleading.
If we are discussing the levels.fyi pay report, then they are only including the numbers you get in a single year, you are incorrect. $700k is obviously top top band, but this is referring to annual pay.
I went from making barely $100k to a senior engineer at a FAANG simply by passing the interviews. No special background, I worked at the same function at a 50 person local SEO marketing company before that. I did take 1 year off to "find myself" and do some hobby projects that helped catch recruiting attention - nothing anyone would have ever seen here, but enough materiel to discuss in an interview
Didn't get up to $700k -- that's L7/Director territory (hard to reach) -- but it's definitely possible to get into the $300-400k range just by being a run of the mill engineer at big tech.
To answer your question on how to make lots of money mid-career, think about how you're scaling yourself. Are you an IT person supporting a 20-100 person team at a small company? You gotta learn how to scale your time and effort by impacting more than that. You'll have to impact more than 2 million people to get to 700k.
While volume of hiring may have been lower overall so far this year, median compensation has generally remained steady or increased in the first half of 2023 relative to the last half of 2022 for most roles. In particular, the median for software engineer compensation stayed the same, while roles such as software engineering management saw a 5% increase in overall pay.
Augmented reality was quite in-demand so far in 2023. AI engineers have also seen elevated compensation compared to their engineer counterparts, which we analyze on our post here: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/ai-engineer-compensation.html