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Google's Engineers Are Well Paid, Not Just Well Fed
D H NG writes "According to a study by the career site Glassdoor, Google tops the list of tech companies in the salaries it pays to software engineers. Google paid its engineers an average base salary of $128,336, with Microsoft coming in second at $123,626. Apple, eBay, and Zynga rounded off the top 5."
Considering the amount of effort in getting a job there, the hours worked, and the cost of living in Mountain View, I think that roughly equals minimum wage. Maybe they need a software engineers' union.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Google paid its engineers an average base salary of $128,336, with Microsoft coming in second at $123,626. Apple, eBay, and Zynga rounded off the top 5
Technically, 5 isn't rounder than 2.
128k? That doesn't seem like much once you factor in cost of living for the locations these companies reside in.
(Rant)
So Slashdot was bought by Dice, right? Have they done ANYTHING to improve it?
I'm almost as sharp as a marble, but just look at this:
Title: Google's Engineers Are Well Paid, Not Just Well Fed
Summary: D H NG writes "According to a study by the career site Glassdoor, Google tops the list of tech companies in the salaries it pays to software engineers. Google paid its engineers an average base salary of $128,336, with Microsoft coming in second at $123,626. Apple, eBay, and Zynga rounded off the top 5."
And it has a ... wait for it ... Facebook tag?
Y'all yelled at me wen I said that Facebook is getting indirect advertising. And yet the Slashdot regulars haven't bothered to fork it since they instinctively know they can't get the critical mass to go to the forked version. So we continue to live with stuff like that.
(/Rant)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yea, but they're also in one of the highest cost of living areas...
In Germany for a slightly lower salary (let's say 100K) you work only 37 hrs a week (for real, not only on paper), have 30 days of paid vacation a year, an extensive social security and healthcare coverage provided by the government (you don't need any private insurance), and you cannot be fired "at will", but only for a fair reason. What about google, microsoft, and the US in general?
Yesterday here on slashdot I read a scary post saying that astronomy Ph.D. students work 80 hrs a week, and reading the comments it seemed that it's considered "normal" in the US. I thought they were on another planet!
Y'all yelled at me wen I said that Facebook is getting indirect advertising. And yet the Slashdot regulars haven't bothered to fork it since they instinctively know they can't get the critical mass to go to the forked version. So we continue to live with stuff like that.
Hmmm, no subscriber asterisk next to your name ... how much do you pay to use Slashdot again? A misplaced tag and you're talking about forking? Please, the editing is far worse than a mistagged article (who even notices the tags?). Even then if you fork, who's paying who to do what again?
"We all" would love something better, go start it and try to pay editors yourself and we'll come, believe you me.
I have some issues with the study; for one thing, it's worth noting they don't tell us how they actually did the study. For another, I have no idea how they came to the conclusion that $128K is A) high; and B) at the top of the scale for software engineers when their own data contradicts this.
Here, allow me to present Netflix, which happens to also be in the Bay Area, and Glassdoor's software engineer salaries for Netflix:
http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Netflix-Salaries-E11891.htm?filter.jobTitleFTS=software+engineer
Senior Software Engineers average $177K; Software Engineers average $161K.
Technically, you don't understand the use of "rounded" here.
Any engineer would loved to be paid 127,001
2 is more rounded than 5, which is actually kind of squarish at the top. Yes, it is round at the bottom, but 2 has more rounding overall than the bottom of 5.
Excuse me, time for another Vicodin.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Because it's in Redmond. The other companies are in the Bay area largely, and that's the most expensive place to live per square foot in the country. Gas and everything else are more expensive too.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Noticed that Nortel is in the list of companies they are reporting average salaries from. Might want to let them know about the whole bankruptcy/sell off everything thing that happened.
A good salary is one thing. When google recruits does not even talks about salary. They ask you to be interviewed for almost 2 months time, without letting you know any of the details. That's their strategy, totally inhumane. Its like, we know you have a full time job already with salary X, we want you on our team, but first you need to spend 2 months on interviews, without any knowledge of salary and not sure of course that you are gonna get the job. Honestly, my advice, go get a second job, with the same effort you are going to get triple the money they are giving...
I'm not so sure that these engineers are very well paid. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook was awarded $378 million in compensation. According to the above survey, the average software engineer at Apple makes $114,413 a year. In order to make the same amount as the CEO, the engineer would have to work 3300 years. So let's ask the question: When would the engineer have had to start working in order to have the same amount of money as the CEO? The engineer's first day of work would be 1300 years before Jesus of Nazareth would be born. And keep in mind this is an engineer. Consider junior level employees. According to an article by the New York Times, a salesman working at an Apple store makes about $11.25 an hour. He would make the same amount as the CEO in about 16 thousand years —- that would put his first day of work well into the stone age -- if you’re a creationist, his work time would be longer than the age of the universe.
This survey must be only talking about companies above certain size. Our Sillicon Valley startup has about 50 employees and the average engineering salaries are north of $150,000. Large companies like Google actually don't have to pay that much, because the hours are more reasonable. I know there are other companies too that pay more than Google in the area.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
The article doesn't mention but I suspect that is base salary only. Google is known to have a very good benefits package (at least by today's standards). There may be a stock and/or bonus component that is not included. I find it hard to believe that 128K is the total comp for an engineer at Google.
Having said all that, my experience is that salaries in CA are far too low given the cost of living there. Where I live (it's a large city, not out in the sticks) you can buy a nice house for 250-300K. Same house in Silicon Valley or LA? Well over a million and that's being conservative. Taxes are also much higher in CA. So you would think that salaries are 4x as high there as they are here but they are almost the same.
Sure, CA is really nice. I love going there. Great weather, all that. But living there? Forget it.
$128,336 in San Francisco equates to about $65k when cost of living is adjusted to the US average (specifically Raleigh, NC...it was the most average I could think of and is pretty close). I'm sure there is some flexibility in those numbers, but I don't know of anywhere in the bay area that isn't well above the national average.
Considering the number of Phd's and M.S. graduates that Google employs versus Microsoft, it stands to reason that the average salary would be higher. As others have mentioned, when you factor cost of living, hours worked, and the degree employees hold, 128K doesn't go very far. Also in Washington State (where Microsoft is located), there is no state tax
When the median home price in Mountain View is over a million and the cost for a decent 2 bed/bath apartment is 3k/month, your dollar doesn't go to far.
Oh please, even for California that is a lot of money. With taxes taken out you get about $5700 a month, about $66.80 an hour gross $35.62 an hour net. Your telling me you can't find an apartment for $1400 - $2000 anywhere in California. The highest I ever got was $18(working 9-5, actually 7-6, 7-9, 7-12, 6-9, time and half only) an hour gross comes to about $11.63 an hour net, $1860 a month. NY taxes are freaking high. You can get a shitty roach infested single apartment here in ny queens, brooklyn, bronx for $1100-1300 no utilities included, 2 bedroom $1800-$2000 in queens. Basement apartments are now $900 a month and still rising. Yes, expenses are up, wages and salaries are down. In the 1990's an engineer with a E.E. got started with $120k a year. These days hard work and experience means shit, but if you have a degree with no experience and not a very hard worker you get paid like a king.
The article states that Facebook, not Microsoft, is the second-highest paying.
Also, the subset of employees who report salary on Glassdoor is biased.
The article states that Facebook, not Microsoft, is the second-highest paid. Also, the subset of employees who report their salary on Glassdoor is biased.
Health package? Stocks, bonus? ...)
Salary is only one aspect of financial compensation. And then there is non-financial benefits too (culture, hours, career growth, fun, organization,
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Having interviewed with google several times, google is a degreee snob. If you don't have a CS degree, don't bother applying. It doesn't matter if you kick ass or not, no CS degree and they won't consider you for a programming job. I know people that work for google and there are people at google that don't have CS degree. I'm guessing those are people acquired through buyout.
So, what is Google's diversity rate, anyway?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think a very important caveat here is that Glassdoor is a job search site. And like every job search site I've ever seen who posts average or median salaries they tend to inflate them. They'll claim the average income for a designer in NYC, for example, is $100k a year. Then you look at the job listings for the same position and you're lucky if they break $70k.
Their entire business model is based on getting people to look for work, so of course they're going to do whatever they can to make you believe everyone is earning more than you are.
That was true a few years ago but not at the moment. A 3-bed house in a reasonable (tree-lined, largish yard, probably no pool but the space to have one) will cost you ~$400k to $500k. There was a house down the street sold for $450k a few weeks back, where I live in San Jose. I've got a 10k square-feet lot with a 1500 sq ft 3-bed house, pool, pond, solar power etc. There's a couple of parks around within 5 minutes walk, and the neighbourhood is one of the aforementioned tree-lined leafy areas. There's nearby (walking distance) bars, high-end shops, cafes, cinemas, even a mall, and there's good access to freeways. My commute is ~10 minutes.
I work at Apple, and my salary is (before RSU's, bonuses etc.) ~190k but I'm a senior engineer. According to the IRS, my income last year was ~350k once you take into account the accrued shares and yearly bonuses (before tax, of course). On the other hand I'm paying two mortgages (our own house and my wife's old condo, which we rent out because its underwater and we can't sell it without making a loss. The rent doesn't cover the mortgage either, let alone the additional expenses). My wife has just given up her job to look after the new baby - totally worth it :)
Apple does from time to time expect you to put in extra work, but it usually comes with some sort of benefit afterwards - in the most-recent case a larger-than-normal bonus since it was close to review-time. Roundabouts and swings.
At the moment our family is about cashflow-neutral with just my salary (I try not to cash the shares, so it's the cash figure that I'm talking about here) coming in, but with Apple stock ever-rising I'm hopeful that I'll be paying off the mortgage on at least the house in a couple of years, and money worries will become less important. We'll see.
If you think the 128K is low, then the amount paid to the other workers must be even more dismal. Read this:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/10/15/the-billionaires-next-door/
The writer quotes Google ex-CEO Eric Schmidt with regard the income "polarization" at top IT companies: "Many tech companies solved this problem by having the lowest-paid workers not actually be employees. They're contracted out."
So, basically, these "cool" companies are income-wise pretty much like the Greek democracies of ancient times. On one hand you have the citizens, adult males, and then the rest, including the chidlren, women and slaves. Of course, a typical corporation is even worse than such a flawed "democracy", being run like a Communist Party.
Yes their salary is higher but if they're working many more hours then they're paid less. People need to start talking about the hours people have to put in to earn their wage.
Technically, you don't understand the use of "rounded" here.
Neither does Apple, and its on the list!
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
I got about 4 acres of land with a 3, 500 sq ft home. Mortgage payment is around $1000/month. I live 20 minutes from work.
Oh, I live in Louisiana, not that other LA. But our home prices haven't bottomed out, so I can live with it.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
$40K is a big quality of life difference in the short and long term. It affects the vacations you can take with your family, non-insured medical issues, the type of college your kids can go to and , the lifestyle you can have when your kids move out. Our schools are good and my kid can have a decent hearing aid because I put in the extra time.
Quite frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. As someone who has been looking to buy in that range for the past YEAR, I can tell you with certainty that you are full of shit.
1. There is very little 3-bed inventory at all in the $400K-$500K range right now.
2. 3-bed houses in this range are almost all in South San Jose or the East Side, where the neighborhoods/schools are crap and you have a lot of gang activity.
3. What inventory IS at that range and not in the ghetto is getting multiple offers and generally selling at 25% above asking. I just saw 60 offers on one $500K house and it ended up going for above $600K.
For $400K-$500K (closing price, not offer price), your options are: ...or something at least an hour commute to the valley
* East Palo Alto (get a bullet proof vest)
* Lakewood in Sunnyvale (East P.A.-lite)
* East Side (good luck)
* Hayward
*
At the moment, there's really nothing I'd consider BOTH livable and commutable that is actually selling for less than $650K.
Is TFS implying that Google engineers are fat? Cause that's what I euphemistically answered my wife one time when she asked me that no-win question, "Do these jeans make me look fat?" Me: "No dear, they make you look well fed."
This isn't interesting news.
1. Salary is a smaller subset of compensation in larger companies and becomes less significant as you move up the food chain.
At the last big company I worked for I took home $35K less salary than at the startup which followed, although if neither stock prices nor salary went up salary would have been less than 60% of my total compensation over 4 years and I'd have done $52K/year better.
2. Salary is highly dependent on where you are in your career making the average within an organization largely a function of typical job level. At the least startup I worked for I was the only early hire under 40 and we were all at the principal engineer / director experience level. At the last big company only three of the engineers I worked with (maybe 1 in 5) were over 30 and lots of people were in their first job after school with matching entry level titles and compensation. When you need six engineers who'll each be responsible for a component you need seniority, can hire that many senior guys, and will have a higher average salary. When you need thousands of engineers and most groups/projects have 4-8 people you don't need the experience, couldn't hire it, will be lucky to make one senior hire after 6-12 months of trying, and will have a lower average salary.
3. Aptitude (Demarco and Lister comment on this in Peopleware if you want a formal cite) is usually fairly consistent within organizations and that can be worth another 25 - 30% (although IIRC Demarco and Lister only report a 10% pay delta). Exceptions exist in good organizations where you might get a few stars that are much better and bad organizations where B grade people hire C grade people to limit competition.
stock ever-rising I'm hopeful that I'll be paying off the mortgage on at least the house in a couple of years, and money worries will become less important.
Famous last words.
but I think $3000+ is about right for 1000 sq ft in a reasonable part of San Francisco, it goes up quickly from there.
The point is, though, that if you are trying to map your current Midwestern (for example) lifestyle to the Bay area or Boston or NYC or whatever, then you are always going to reach ridiculous conclusions like you need to make 3x your salary. That's about as ridiculous as me saying that it would cost me much more to live in Ohio than it does in NYC because I'd have to pay for airfare every weekend to see Broadway shows and I'd have to install my own subway line to have a convenient no-car commute.
Your lifestyle is *different* in different places. You aren't going to get a 2000 sq foot house with a 2 car garage in San Fran. Depending on your situation, you probably aren't even going to get a 1000 sq ft apartment--you'll probably get a couple roommates for a 1500 sq ft place. However, you also get to live in one of the nicest places in the country. There are lots of ways to extract value per dollar.
Hello sir.
At least you are gutsy enough to say you made a mistake in the blurb.
However, neither of the editors on duty caught it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This isn't the one I was thinking of, because for some reason Zillow aren't listing it, but:
this is close by in West San Jose for $424k (albeit a foreclosure, that isn't much of a problem these days, it's not exactly exceptional any more), or
this one for $500k.
That took about 4 minutes to find. If either of the above don't suit, perhaps (just maybe, with a bit of effort looking) there are more ?
So quite frankly, it is you, sir, that is full of shit and don't know what you're talking about.
That's about my salary, and I work at home pretty much all the time. And I just solved a 5 beer problem. You smart people - you really need to start acting smart. The world is yours for the taking as a good, competent software engineer. So take it! And take no shit.
At the moment, there's really nothing I'd consider BOTH livable and commutable that is actually selling for less than $650K.
I'd be curious to know what your definition of livable is. 7 homes within 3 blocks of me in San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood have closed for sub-$600K in the past 9 months. 4 of those were sub-$500K, and all 7 were 3-bed 2-bath or larger. The neighborhood public school is only middle-of-the-pack, but I can live with that. Perhaps my standards are below yours.
There are Javascript "engineer" positions going for 160k/yr in SF, and I know many folks making 150k-160k as Senior engineers, http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/3343883515.html
I'm talking selling price, not offer price. Guarantee those both go for well above asking.
If they've had open houses and were over, say 1,200 sq.ft. or so, I probably was in each of them :-) I've seen so many dumps in the past year it's not funny. Anything that actually closes under $500K probably needs about $50K of remodeling.
I think studies like this are useless. Cost of living must be a factor.
For example, 85k in Ann Arbor, MI is roughly 128k in Mountain View. I've had so many recruiters contact me from California trying to get me to move out to the valley for 85-95k. Looking at the data, it would be a real pay cut for me. They pray on idiots who can't google for a cost of living calculator. 95k sounds good here but it's not shit there. What is wrong with these people.
Yeah, the houses near me are 40-50 years old, so they have some wear and tear, and could benefit from some updating. It's not $50k for me, but that's because I'm less fussy than most. Upgraded to dual-pane windows last month for $7k. Best wishes finding a place, and saving up in the meantime.
worth this much money? i have yet to meet one