tech engineer compensation

No, not typical.

Silicon Valley is one issue. Second issue is this guy is getting really good stock awards.

Don't ask me how much fun it is to recruit engineers after they read stuff like this.
 
I think the most I received was 100K RSU stock grant and 30K bonus in one year. I was not working at Facebook, but at a highly profitable Tech company outside of Silicon Valley. More typical was 25K stock grant at other far less profitable companies.

A contract house that I worked with told me that Facebook offers ridiculously high compensation.

With that kind of compensation, wouldn't these engineers retire early after just working a few years, and create retention problems for Facebook?
 
austin944 said:
I think the most I received was 100K RSU stock grant and 30K bonus in one year. I was not working at Facebook, but at a highly profitable Tech company outside of Silicon Valley. More typical was 25K stock grant at other far less profitable companies.

A contract house that I worked with told me that Facebook offers ridiculously high compensation.

With that kind of compensation, wouldn't these engineers retire early after just working a few years, and create retention problems for Facebook?
Click to expand...

I don't earn anywhere near that at a 15BB "bank" as a top engineer. Although I know guys in IT sales that are envious of my salary, and IT engineers that almost 2x what I get living in states with no income tax so its all relative.

I am grateful. I've made a career I can hang my hat on. I'll be able to ER at 50 and never really have any direct reports or need to "fire" anyone along the way. My salary has recently sorta leveled off but I could go get more if I left.
 
I have never used or will ever use fazebook.


What I find fascinating is the huge amount of people being used as [-]suckers[/-] product and how much money there is to made on them.
 
Seems to me his base salary/cash bonus aren't much higher than the places I know about, but his stock compensation history is more than any engineer I know. Where I work rank and file engineers base up to ~200k, tech leads go up to 300-400k, and engineering R&D managers can get upper six figures depending upon level and function. In my own experience stock grants are small, usually close in value to cash bonus. My brother works for a different tech company and his stock grants are much higher, roughly on par with his annual base salary, although I believe he's a tech lead. It usually takes a director-level or higher to pull in RSUs worth several times base.

Therein lies the rub, a really good engineer will produce enough to feed himself plus all the layers of hierarchy above him (aka MLM uplines) along with his less-skilled and/or less-motivated colleagues. In companies with a flatter management structure (and let's face it, fewer employees in our age cohort) more of the stock comp flows to the "really good engineer". Still if he really is in the top 1% of performers at FB, he probably gave up a 9-figure net worth by choosing not to set up his own shop all those years ago.
 
Not typical. I am an electrical engineer and know several software engineer friends. Typical total compensation at the prime age of 45 is around $200K in a MCOL metroplex.
 
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Yeah, the stock grants that this guy says he has are off the charts.

Note also that companies with a Valley presence struggle to give stock grants to any other site in the corp. They tend to have to pile it into the Valley for retention.

It is really becoming a have or have nots in the electronics tech world. The Valley continues to become the center of arrogance.

And then there are the real engineers (mechanical, civil, etc.) who keep this country running. They are getting hosed. Not joking.
 
It is kind of crazy how much stock grants he is getting. All I know is that this engineer never got any stock grants or large cash bonus, but I still made it to FIRE on salary less than what this guy started at.
 
Well, if it turns out these numbers really are in any way common, I'd imagine we'll be seeing a LOT of 30-something FIRE-folk joining this forum over the next few years.
 
38Chevy454 said:
It is kind of crazy how much stock grants he is getting. All I know is that this engineer never got any stock grants or large cash bonus, but I still made it to FIRE on salary less than what this guy started at.
Click to expand...


Same here.
 
38Chevy454 said:
It is kind of crazy how much stock grants he is getting. All I know is that this engineer never got any stock grants or large cash bonus, but I still made it to FIRE on salary less than what this guy started at.
Click to expand...

Same here.... and I started late since I did Social Work for the first decade.

So even though I made far less than that guy, living in the mid-west I thought I was in the MONEY compared to my old Social Work friends. :facepalm:
 
~ $200k annual comp as senior engineer for a pharma OEM. Left MC in 2019.

I was in LCOL area but travelled ~15%.
 
Bay Area CA is it's own world. A friend was a VP of engineering for a small, fairly specialized, software company. She was hiring a new candidate and was willing to pay well for this candidate. She thought she had him locked in until they countered saying one of the big 3 (Facebook/Apple/Google) was willing to pay for gender reassignment surgery. My friend queried the board and insurance company and just couldn't match that benefit.

FWIW - this was 10 years ago... and my friend has since retired early and left the tech world behind.
 
No different than sales. I worked with sales professionals in the tech area that made $100K and with some that made $300/400/500K and more in good years.

I realized more money in the prudent exercise of stock options, non contributory pension plans, performance bonuses, and termination settlements than I did in 25 years of base salary and commission.

Not uncommon in various tech sectors.
 
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From a quick scan of the article, it seems to me that this person was in the upper echelon of FB engineers, leading very successful teams working on important FB products. Considering the staggering success of FB as a company (and as a stock) over the past decade, it doesn't surprise me that a top engineer would be making serious bank through stock options/grants and a gold-plated, Silicon Valley salary.

But I don't think there's much of a story here. IMHO, it seems reasonable to expect a top-level contributor to a hugely successful, immensely profitable company to be extremely well compensated. I'm sure there are similar stories about thousands upon thousands of other superstar engineers from companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc., going back many years/decades. Sure, it seems these folks have been blessed with an excess of good fortune compared to others... but that's how the world works. Some will strike it rich, through hard work, good luck, good genes, and other factors, but most won't.

I think of myself as an example on the "good luck, good genes, hard work" side of the equation, albeit at a much more modest scale. I got lucky to join a small, dot-com era startup in the late 90s, and got lucky again when our little company was gobbled up in a series of acquisitions. This eventually led to some stock options/grants and, eventually, a nice base salary with very nice yearly bonuses that I was savvy enough to invest wisely and keep earning/receiving for many years. But rather than telling myself that I truly "deserved" all that, I honestly feel like I just got lucky to be at the right place at the right time and with the right skill-set to take advantage. Very similar to the FB engineer who wrote the article, except he got even luckier to be hired at the right time by one of the most successful companies in the world and to make certain moves in his career that vaulted him up the ranks. It's not all that different from someone winning the lottery or receiving a big inheritance. Luck—both good and bad—is quite random and capricious.
 
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First rule of fight club...

If you are good, the sky is the limit. The question isn’t if tech is paying too much, but why aren’t other companies paying more for top talent? Looking at you hedge funds.

I’d you help a company make or save 10s of millions, it seems reasonable they’d kick back some of that to you. And tech does when it’s it’s obvious there’s a consistent linkage between your work and such outcomes.
 
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TheHobbit said:
First rule of fight club...

If you are good, the sky is the limit. The question isn’t if tech is paying too much, but why aren’t other companies paying more for top talent? Looking at you hedge funds.

I’d you help a company make or save 10s of millions, it seems reasonable they’d kick back some of that to you. And tech does when it’s it’s obvious there’s a consistent linkage between your work and such outcomes.
Click to expand...


Not at big megacorps like Dilbert's. Management is often not smart enough to know who's good and who's not. Or if they do, they give you a 3% raise instead of the average 2%, plus a pat on the back "Attaboy".
 
Apparently not for HW engineers... and definitely not for engineers outside of FAANG...

I've been a HW engineer in Silicon Valley since 2000... 20+ years of working and being very successful and my salary isn't even near the year 1 salary on that table... serves me right to scoff at SW engineering as being "too easy" back in the 90's and decided to pursue HW engineering as a challenge to myself... This was before the explosion of the web and smart phones. I was also never brave enough to walk away and start over with a SW career... Oh well..
 
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