Ask HN: Are there “regular” SWE jobs that pay $200k+?

[el_benhameen]

There’s been a lot of discussion about the bimodal distribution in entering pay (specifically at the “senior” level). Blind and Levels.fyi have plenty of data on $300k+ FAANG pay packages. There’s plenty of hiring going on outside the hotspots at the $120-160k level. But are there non-FAANG jobs (ie sane hiring process, small teams) that pay senio engineers $200-300k? If so, where are they?

[ddoolin]

I make ~225K (all cash/salary) at a regular/non-FAANG company. The dev team of a couple dozen was in Southern California pre-COVID, now basically all remote with people across the country. I've never worked for a FAANG company so I can't say much about how it compares, but my workload is more than a simple web developer and likely has more depth and breadth than FAANG roles which, as far as I know, tend to be more specialized.

I've been here for five years making mostly the same amount, and five years at a smattering of other places making half or less.

[fire]

Are... you hiring?

[d82nsjk9]

> ... but my workload is more than a simple web developer

Oof... "simple web developer" is not very nice of you.

[iainctduncan]

Background: I'm a consultant for a company that does technical due diligence on tech companies being purchased by private equity firms. When we do one, we get all the information, including comp and totally salary to revenue, etc.

FWIW, there are a surprising number of companies that pay senior contributors this well in unglamorous fields. The world is full of what we call "tech enabled service companies", and some of these do very, very well. They depend very much on their secret sauce - the software they develop that makes them special. My perception, however, is that they probably aren't generally hiring at those kind of rates, but rather promoting/raising the devs that helped get them where they are. Some of them seem like very nice places to work.

The old adage applies: you make money doing what other people don't want to do or can't do. If it's not glamorous and hip and shiny new tech, the competition is a lot less fierce and rates must rise accordingly.

[callmeed]

At least where I’m at–which is a tier or two below FAANG companies to many–you hit 200k at L3 and L4 SWE roles (staff and principal). Usually that’s gonna require 5+ years of experience. Senior SWEs (L2.5) touch 200 for high COL locations. Keep in mind this is base salary and doesn’t include bonuses (10%ish) or RSUs.

Shameless plug: I have SWE roles open at every level on some small teams doing cool stuff at Indeed. Feel free to email.

[alex504]

I'm at a company that is about one tier below FAANG and I'm making 250 total at a senior 1 role. Or I was before the stock market started tanking, now I'll be making about 220.

[portlander52232]

If you haven’t tried FAANG, it might be worth considering. I took a FAANG job on a lark, intending to stay a short time just to have it on my resume, and ended up liking the job way more than I expected and stuck around much longer than planned. In particular, my expectations about the job were completely inaccurate. The office politics, corporate bureaucracy, interpersonal dynamics, and overall stress level are all way better than I ever experienced at small companies. You cite a lack of small teams as your reason for avoiding FAANG (and I know there are probably others), but I’m generally working with 1–4 people at a time.

[brailsafe]

In my interpretation of this question, and what attracted me to read the thread, was an indication of wanting to avoid trying to compete for FAANG positions and not being in a position where they couls simply "accept a job at FAANG on a lark". While I'd certainly consider my preferences if I was offered a job at Amazon, I'm not being offered jobs at Amazon, I'm being offered abstract timed algorithm screening questions.

[avmich]

To somebody considering a position in FAANG - ask yourself: is it a good company to work in? Does this company help the society, does it make lives of people better? Or is this company focusing on bringing monetary benefits using existing monopolistic position? Can such a company be created again today, or is it just employing previously favorable conditions, which are long since skewed to avoid creating meaningful competition? Does this company shares the wins obtained from massive data gathering and analysis - or does it use them to cement its unique position in IT, while refusing to give back to societies which still figuring out how to work in these new markets? If you're going to work in these companies - will you be proud or will people point to you and saying that you're the causes of their griefs or that you participated in robbing people of values and valuables?

[tomcam]

I had a very similar experience. Surprised (and delighted) the hell out of me.

[999900000999]

Yes...

It's not too common, but it's doable.

Most programers make between 120-160 as you said.

Honestly, it's a matter of diminishing returns. Your lifestyle is probably not going to change between making 150, and making 200.

The tax rates are so absurdly high at that level, you might keep about half of that additional income.

Then again, I'm a single person so I imagine if I had a family to support the extra money would matter.

[scarface74]

First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. In fact, from $150 to $206K, your marginal tax rate on anything above $160K only goes up 6%

I went from $150K at the beginning of 2020 to around $225K working remotely. At $150K we could do anything we wanted (married grown children) to a point six months later we could do everything we wanted.

Meaning with $225K, we could:

- “retire my wife” at 45 so she could pursue her passions.

- max out my 401K (and soon catch up contributions) and max out my “after tax 401K” with 10% of my base

- go on multiple decent vacations a year.

- fly my wife out with me on business trips (on my dime) and stay over.

- “Date nights” once a week or so.

- stay in AirBnbs around the country for weeks at a time just for a change of scenery and work from there.

We had to balance those things before. Now we can do all of it.

If I made more, it would go toward my less conservative investments - real estate, opening a franchise, etc.

[Ancalagon]

Plenty, tier 2,3,4 companies all pay in this range for senior engineers (total comp). Additionally, many startups have started realizing that good senior engineering talent also starts around the 200k range now, at least for west-coast based companies/engineers.

I don't know the exact tier bucket that every company falls into, but if FAANG is tier 1 (300-400k), then uber, abnb, lyft, mcsft, etc are tier 2 (also 300-400k), Walmart, Intuit, VMWARE, ServiceNow are tier 3 (200-300k), etc. etc.

(I'm going off the compensation numbers Ive seen on levels.fyi so feel free to disagree with any of my placements but you get the idea).

[hemloc_io]

I may be an outlier, but I finished interviewing recently and I can give you some insights.

I would say that there are plenty of jobs that pay around 200-250k cash for mid career anyway. (Including bonus and salary.) Usually in high growth startups.

For example I interviewed with a company going into series B that offered that much in cash comp + remote, and it was a smallish team of 50. Very sane hiring process, a pair programming exercise and a bunch of walking through prev projects. Had a couple startups that I ended up canceling with just b/c I got an offer I liked from someone else, but I'd assume it's the same.

If you don't like algo questions some high paying companies like Stripe have alternative processes too.

Other public startups, like Spotify, which pay about that much and have a pretty reasonable process compared to FAANG. Easier algo questions, less toxicity in hiring.

I will caution you for my anecdata, I have some FAANG experience out of college and I passed multiple FAANG processes, as well as working for an HFT in school doing backofficey work. So maybe since I was well prepared for interviews + had some branding they were willing to pay higher than usual for me.

If you or anyone else in the thread wants to chat about it feel free to email/dm me :)

[xu3u32]

Is there a specific tech stack that matches most of these roles or is one of Python/Java/JS good enough?

[olliej]

It’s important to realize that when people are throwing around 3,4,500k etc at FAANGs they’re not generally reporting the base salary, but rather salary + RSUs.

The vast majority of FAANG jobs are below 200k base salary, but if you then throw in a few 10s of thousand in bonuses, a few hundred k of stocks vesting, and suddenly you get to stupid levels of income (worked a multiple FAANGs as a reasonably high level IC)

[el_benhameen]

That's fair. This may be better phrased as "total semi-liquid comp of $200-300k". So not $200k all-cash, but also not $90k cash + (maybe $10mm but probably $0 in options).

[crate_barre]

200 is not base yet in SF and NYC?

[scarface74]

Why are you acting as if RSUs are not real money? As soon as they vest, I pay taxes on them. As soon as they hit my brokerage account, I can sell them and spend the money.

[scarface74]

Because it doesn’t take much to be a “good enough” CRUD framework “full stack developer” or mobile developer. Companies hiring in that market don’t have the scale and you’re just another employee.

I started taking my career seriously after staying at my second job for 9 years until 2008. I got into regularly old C# enterprise dev and I saw myself hitting a ceiling at around $150K in most major American cities outside of the west coast. That ceiling remained the same from around 2016 until the present.

I am still an enterprise dev/architect. But I just happen to know AWS and fell into the one niche position at the one major tech company that paid over $200K for dev+cloud in mid 2020.

Even today, from my cursory searching, if I had to find another job, I would probably end up firmly on the mid $100s side again without “grinding leetCode” (tm r/cscareerquestions). So, I don’t know how to find a job outside of “FAANG” that would pay me what I make now.

Not that I’m looking.

[bspear]

A lot of well-funded startups pay SWE $200K+ in base salary. You can find a bunch of examples here: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/?team=...

[crate_barre]

I think you can get close to at 200k benchmark as inflation hits. Regardless, companies that are even edging to that mark are mini wannabe faangs and will use the same hiring process.

[chii]

> 200k benchmark as inflation hits.

but then inflation hits, and so the money is worth less than before - so you didn't really get ahead at all.

[richardsocher]

Even as a small startup at you.com we pay our amazing engineers more than that (full pay package = salary plus equity). Of course, startup equity is hard to plan with since it's not public stock.

These days, being "outside the hotspots" should be an issue since many companies (including ours) are fully remote.

[richardsocher]

Should not be an issue -_-

[gdfgjhs]

I have just started my job search in Dallas/Fort Worth area. I hate to waste my and other's time, so I ask upfront their pay range or tell them my expectations. I am looking for $200-250K as a senior developer, and only a few of employers said it was above their budget.

[softwarebeware]

When you say non-FAANG how do you define it? Technically, the initials each stand for one company so do you mean are there jobs at any company besides those five which fit said criterion?

The only true way to find out is to start talking to recruiters or getting offers.

[el_benhameen]

Totally, that's a fair point. I guess I'm asking this question to try to crowdsource the info more quickly than I can get it from recruiters.

By non-FAANG, I guess I mean some combination of:

1. Companies your uncle might not have heard about (by this I mostly mean not AirBnB or Uber)

2. As an extension of #1, probably b2b

3. Headcount somewhere in the 20-150 neighborhood

4. Probably something established, not seed-stage or a venture rocketship

5. Somewhat less onerous interview processes. I don't mind fun algo and design problems, but I would rather not have to prep for 4 months to have speed leetcode thrown at me for 8 hours

This is all just off the top of my head, though. And I know that all 5 in one company is a lot to ask for.

[european321]

Look for series B+ startups in the U.S. that are aggressively scaling their teams. There is a shortage of good senior software engineers, and these startups are desperate and have the money, so many are offering base salaries that are around $200k

[bradlys]

These are likely not the kind of places they want to join though. They’re gonna have the same leetcode style interviews and likely very bad WLB.

[dacur]

https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards might be a good resource

[boring_twenties]

I'm not very plugged into the startup scene, but I know a few people that work at startups in NYC and SF, and all of them are making more than $200k.

All of them have since been given the option to work remotely from (almost?) anywhere, and their pay hasn't changed (except to the extent for a couple of them, their options are now worth something, too).

Separately from that, if you're interested in finance, it's more like at least $300-500k, and some of those are now becoming available fully remotely, too.

[methusala8]

What would the tech stack be for finance?

[pyuser583]

Look at finance companies.

[ch4s3]

If you have experience in functional programming, especially Elixir shoot me a message.

[closeparen]

Browse levels.fyi. Slack, Robinhood, Twitter, Splunk, Slack, Uber, Airbnb, Stripe, Square, and many other non-FAANG paying >$200k and in some cases >$300k total compensation for the first level past new grad.

[scarface74]

They are specifically looking for companies that don’t require DS&A styled interviews.

[Ancalagon]

You said slack twice