Slashdot Mirror
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?
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
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!
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.
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.
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.