from Hacker News

Salaries at Facebook

by samueladam on 12/3/20, 9:24 AM with 9 comments

• by pc86 on 12/3/20, 1:58 PM

  The thing people always forget when comparing salaries is that a huge portion of FAANG comp, especially at senior levels, is stock grants. It's a relatively recent phenomena that stock grants equal or beat cash comp, and 99% of employers in the US don't grant any stock to anyone below the C level. A lot of places don't have any bonus, or do a pro-forma "Christmas bonus" type of thing - I worked one place where every February 1, every person in the company got a bonus that was 7.5% of their salary, no matter what.

  Comparing a FAANG's total comp to your total comp is a fool's errand. You need to compare cash to cash unless you are also getting a variable performance bonus and stock grants. $190k for an E5 at FB (which is basically "Senior Engineer") is still above-average for the US as a whole but it's not insane. You can certainly reach that in Chicago or DC or Austin but it might take a level higher and a few extra years. I can say pretty confidently that you're not going to be making $380k (FB E5 total comp) in Chicago or DC or Austin unless you're doing HFT and even then you're not likely to get anything in terms of stock that could provide long-term value, it's going to be mostly bonuses and probably $150k cash comp.

• by jtsiskin on 12/3/20, 10:42 AM

  @samueladam - what’s the context here?