I asked what the role was in the comment you are replying to. Do you have data to back up the "huge swath" assertion? Certainly there are a few individual companies that have been able to provide specialized roles a $380k base salary, and companies who have been able to provide that and above on total comp thanks to an amazing run on equity value over the past 10 years. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are situations when this happens, that's not the point. It's irregular, it's naive to think that is the norm.The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future. Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k.
rco8786|3 years ago
htormey|3 years ago
It's basically what the salary looks like in the USA at a top tier company in a top tier city. Go look at https://www.levels.fyi/ for base salary excluding equity. Equity goes up by level.
As for this role, it sounds basically like a mid career engineers salary. i.e 5-12 years of relevant experience. Hard to know exactly because geography impacts salary bands at Coin.
I can't remember what HR tells us, but I think we are targeting pay for the top 25% of companies/engineers in the USA.
"The OP specified salary- if they're referring to total comp, that'd be an important distinction for them to make in the future."
I work at Coinbase, it's not salary, it's total comp. I'm assuming the OP was a bit confused. At least half that figure is equity.
"Its anybodies guess what the actual value of equity in a total comp package will be a year from now. As an example, if you took a $380k TC package at Shopify 6 months ago and 40% of that was equity, it's now looking like $280k."
As I mentioned earlier, each year Coinbase give you a new equity grant priced at the start of the year. I.e thirty day average, I believe.
So if the equity tanks one year, the next year you will be reset to 380k total comp. Assuming of course we are not in a multi year bear market and you don't get laid off, which is always a possibility in tech.
Also some companies, such as Netflix allow you to take a cash only salary that would be comparable to this.