Some engineers are being paid between $250k and $1m, says salary survey
- Reference: 1672824607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/01/04/tech_salary_survey/
- Source link:
Based on more than 150,000 salary submissions, [1]the research shows entry-level engineers with up to two years of experience can expect a salary of around $274,000 from New York's Two Sigma, which specializes in applying data science to the financial services industry. Second place went to Stripe, the online payment specialist, which offered around $266,000, and in third was $238,000 from Cruise, the self-driving car company.
On the standard engineering grade, Databricks offers the highest salary of around $443,000, while Cruise and online gaming platform Roblox came in second and third, respectively with $361,000 and $354,000. At the other end of the scale, a principal engineer might expect $1,044,000 at the highest payer, social media giant Facebook. In this tier of engineers, Stripe came in second with $900,000, while Airbnb was third with $796,000.
[2]
Some companies did not get enough reports to be statistically valid so were not included in the salary survey, Level.fyi said by way of a disclaimer. It also noted the changing pattern in demand for skills through the year and aligned variation in salary.
[3]Apple 'created decoy labor group' to derail unionization
[4]IT recruiter settles claims it snubbed American workers
[5]Google cut contractors off from online 'Share My Salary' spreadsheet, union claims
[6]Microsoft boss Nadella's compensation pack swells 10% to $55m
"As quickly as the market heated up at the beginning of [2022], it has come to a stark cooldown by the end," Level.fyi said in its commentary. "Layoffs and hiring freezes punctuate the fourth quarter closing out the year with growing uncertainty for 2023. Despite this, compensation has still generally increased relative to last year at the topmost companies and levels."
The salary research firm also noted geographic variations in pay for 2022. In the US, the top three paying cities were the San Francisco Bay Area ($234,000), Greater Seattle Area ($213,000) and New York City ($187,000). In Europe, the highest paying city was Zurich ($178,000), followed by London ($116,000) and Dublin ($112,000).
[7]
Despite Big Tech lay-offs and overall economic headwinds throughout the globe, Gartner [8]has predicted that global IT spending will hit $4.6 trillion in 2023, up 5.1 percent from 2022. ®
Get our [9]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.levels.fyi/2022/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y7VcS7wy84iiv-NYjrVFjQAAABU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/16/apple_decoy_labor_group/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/15/secureapp_doj_us_workers/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/04/google_nlrb_complaint/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/28/microsoft_nadella_2022_pay_karma/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y7VcS7wy84iiv-NYjrVFjQAAABU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/19/gartern_sees_enterprise_it_as/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The light that burns twice as bright..
That's how it is in every workplace...
Re: The light that burns twice as bright..
It shouldn't be. But goals have become very short term and any hint of even the smallest downturn and some companies start shedding staff. So you end up with an odd mix of fresh hires and those who are good at avoiding the axe.
And what are the expected working hours? 80+ hours a week?
Thanks, but I work to live, not live to work.
If you work at that level, you don't need to spend 80+ hours a week. If someone is pulling all-nighters it means they over promised and now try to not under deliver and are certainly not worth being paid that much.
Rule of thumb is that the more money you make, the less time you spend working, because you typically know how to do your stuff and it doesn't take you 80 hours, but more like 8 hours to do the same thing.
Middleman
In the UK the salaries could be as big, but thanks to IR35 and brown envelopes, most of the money is slurped by agencies and workers only get scraps.
You know the mythical £500 per day, where half of it goes to tax man, but agency actually charges £2000 per day and offshores the profits, while you are being called a tax scrounger.
IT people in the UK have been played.
Well most of those are at FAANG and Fintech startup companies where your job in 2023 is not exactly safe from the scrutiny of the analysis and application of basic business fundamentals. There are far more jobs well below that compensation and less and less at these levels as the economic headwinds bite.
By the end of this decade there will be a whole new round of companies paying these levels but I suspect more often than not they won't be at FAANG companies.
Yet Another BS "survey"...
I remember these "surveys" back ten / twenty / thirty years ago. And the idiot job candidates who came into job interviews believing we should be paying up to two or three times the actual salary we were offering (very competitive ones at the time) because of what they had seen in the trade publications or on the web regarding "average salaries".
These "surveys" only sample a small easily accessible part of the business. Public companies usually. Then lump in stock options / etc with the base salary. Which is what you actually get paid. What they never factor in is vesting is not the same as having cash in hand. Or that the tax becomes liable when you buy not sell etc. I turned down one job during the first dot com bubble because in theory the options were worth many millions p.a. If the price kept going up. But the tax liability of the time, several million dollars p.a, was going to have to be paid up front. They do employee options different now because of this huge tax issue. Less concrete tax liability up front. (it was 40% plus at the time) But not that much upside potential to pay future capital gains on either. Compared to the old days.
These "surveys" often come up with truly fantastical valuations for benefits as well. Plus they never ever factor in your actual tax home pay. Post tax. Those very high salary numbers for NY and CA become rather less impressive once you have paid the state income tax. Compared with TX or WA with no state income tax. Your after tax income in TX and WA is usually higher for equivalent positions despite the most lower base pay. In California unless you make very serious six figures about one third of the income tax you pay is state income tax. And that is double taxed. You pay state income tax on your Fed income tax. Unless it was worth your while ( good six figures income) to do itemized deductions. When you could deduct state income tax payed.
So yeah, those numbers are total garbage. You can find pure Dot Com scam companies paying stupid salaries like those "survey" numbers to do pointless work which never ships. For the four to five years they have VC money. If that's your thing, being part of a financial engineering fraud, good for you. But it wont look good on your resume after they are gone. But for real tech positions doing real work developing product for paying customers, start dividing those "survey" numbers by two or three to get the real world ballpark salaries.
The light that burns twice as bright..
"entry-level engineers with up to two years of experience can expect a salary of around $274,000"
The danger here is you will be the first up against the wall when things go badly. Especially in fintech.