$168,000 - $350,000 for a Software Engineer seems outrageous. What am I missing?
(I moved from Chicago to the UK and took my salary with me. It's been nice!)
However, those salaries are indeed extremely high. I am surprised given Figma was purchased by Adobe.
That being said: I am a Systems Engineer in South Germany, huge company, 85k€/year, no need to work overtime.
I asked myself what salary I would expect from an US company and factored in
* paid sick leave
* paid child sick leave
* minimum 30 days vacation a year
* job security
* health care prices
* ...
Just for your interest: My salary is too low to buy a house and even buying a 4-room-flat and paying it off before retirement in 30years is out of reach.
Whatever your model, you will find something that works for you.
My previous employer had just switched to an “unlimited PTO” policy and had I not been laid off I planned on taking at least 30 days off.
prior information posted on "what salary does <job title> make" websites was just wrong
that's pretty much it
I need 600k to have this in san francisco.
They post a range, not an exact salary. It's much less useful as it spans entry / mid all the way to staff+.
> prior information posted on "what salary does <job title> make" websites was just wrong
levels.fyi is pretty accurate.
Also, I'm not using the Bay Area as a reference point and have never even been there.
* not counting vacation days that may or may not be provided or possibilities for overtime * simple math is $28 * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks per year
there is a major deficiency in Levels data, as they accept a combination of offer letters, W-2's and Yearly Compensation Statements. So for positions with heavy share based compensation combined with market volatility, the W-2's and can be wildly different than an offer letter. This winds up wasting everyone's times, inflated expectation from every starry eyed employee, and bad data in general. There isn't enough data to smooth that out, for most positions or time frames.
The rest of it varies. Health care costs are mostly high deductible plans but a lot of companies proactively add money to your plan to soften that. In general, for a family you're looking at around $7k out of pocket per year. As long as all is good its fine. When there is the unfortunate situation of family members needing medical care you are saddled with the worry of maintaining your job. This is the spot that sucks the most in my opinion.
K-12 schools are government funded but you pay property taxes. Here again, depending on where you live you can get excellent schools or not so great ones. But I think that's the situation in most places.
The Bay Area maximizes these problems because cost of living is so high there. My point on the misrepresentation was that a lot of places in the US do not have Bay Area cost of living, especially with the real estate. So you can actually have a pretty good quality of life.
I'm aware I could probably earn more, but I don't need it.
- food,
- different housing costs,
- costs for education or
- security situation.
It's great you find a way to justify being horrendously underpaid though. Kudos to your bosses for a spectacular job there.