Google salaries for new graduates w/a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from a good school are $170k, all-in. Here is a full break-down by compensation component, as well as the main drivers of value:
Salaries vary based on the various types & depth of your skills, past experience, location, as well as your school.
While Google is competitive from a compensation point of view, you should know that google is NOT the highest paying company for technical talent…in fact, Google does not even make the top 10. Top 10 are Netflix, Lyft, Dropbox, Uber, Facebook, Pinterest, AirBnB, MSFT, LinkedIn, and Open Table. See full list here.
Salaries for new graduates starting at Facebook, ranked #5 in terms of highest paying companies, are more than 20% higher. Check it out:
It amazes how many of those companies aren’t profitable. I think that’s a very bad sign when the highest paying companies are losing money. How are they going to scale to profitability with those compensation packages? The companies on that list are very young.
Doesn’t that show how overvalued the unicorns are? That or any future profits will be significantly watered down by the extra shares. Imagine the flood of shares once employee lockup expires. It’s not that different than dotcom millionaires working at companies that are losing money. Uber lost $1.7B. The current economics are they loose money on every ride. At what point does revenue scale to make them profitable? With that sort of comp, expenses are going to grow fast.
Twitter pays over 20% of revenue in stock comp. You can seee how that one worked out.
Doesn’t matter so long there are angels willing to fund them. As you’ve pointed out in another post, use other people’s money (in this case, Angels) to overpay others (in this case, software engineers) is easy. In Facebook’s/ Pinterest’s case, other people would be those advertisers who are willing to spend big money to reach those who are willing to let others steal their personal data. Life goes on.
It drives me nuts that people constantly confuse “take home” with “salary”. The “salary” is your base salary that you can guarantee and count on. The bonus and RSUs are extra comps which will DISAPPEAR IN THE BAD TIMES. Did folks learn nothing in the dot com days?
These stats are a great example of the current bubble. How on earth can a company which is literally hemorrhaging money afford to pay their staff that well? That is insane. The secondary, unregulated markets which allow folks at uber and airbnb to sell their shares as if they were real shares is to blame for this fiasco.
When this pops, it is going to be bad. Sure, you might say that it is only the rich investors that will get hurt…but guess what… Sh*t flows downhill.
Only half of the top 10 are startups. The biggest spender, Netflix, has been around for 20 years and is publicly traded. I don’t think we can chalk it all up to unicorn excesses.
I did a little bit research on OpenTable. Surprised to find it too has been around for almost 20 years. Went IPO and then got bought out by Priceline. Since Priceline itself is publicly traded I count OpenTable as well.
I don’t think people are in over their heads. I am not saying all unicorns will succeed. Far from it. Startups are supposed to be risky and more than a few should die. These companies can afford to pay employees so well because they have a very small, very elite workforce. Netflix has has 3,100 employees. Facebook has 15,700 but last 4 quarters made over 7.5B in profit. That works out to almost 500K profit per employee. So even if they pay everyone 500K they still double their money.
Even dinosaur like Microsoft is in for the fun. I am sure they can justify how much they pay people…
That is five too many. I have no problem with Microsoft/Facebook/others on that list. However, unprofitable startups that have been around for a long time should not be up there. In the old days, you worked at a startup and got paid a crap salary, and got given shares that were worth nothing until the company was acquired or IPOd. Now, you get paid a top ten wage, and have the luxury of selling your equity on secondary markets, DESPITE losing money year after year? That is a distorted market, caused by the fact that folks are somehow treating private unicorn shares as if they were real money. I don’t care how you spin it, that is distorted, dangerous, and won’t end well.
Still true for all non engineering functions in these companies…the above salaries are not for non engineering functions…
There is a huge fight going on for engineering talent. In a technology driven startup talent makes all the difference, if the idea is right:). A lot of room for growth unlike what people are saying here as there aren’t many levels.
Its all about demand and supply. Uber burned $3 Billion VC money last year. Who cares? Blame the hose where the money is flowing freely from and not the person who is lapping it up.
We also must differentiate the companies who are actually losing money (and many time in each transaction) vs those who are not showing profits.
Yes. In each transaction Uber does. But many other companies have positive FCF and OCF. They are bleeding because they continue to invest aggressively in building a competitive moat.
In some job functions, quality of the worker is extraordinarily important. In a small software company, 3 engineers at 250k each can achieve more in less time than 10 engineers at 100k each. You save money by paying more to each worker but achieve more with less workers. Some low quality employees are reducing the corporate value, their work is worse than nothing, it has a negative value. In knowledge economy, unqualified workers are real disasters, they are merely a waste of corporate resource.
I’m thinking to pay the Wall Street salary to good and honest journalists and fire all the other unqualified or dishonest journalists. The unqualified or dishonest journalists are cancers of our society, they are worse than nothing. They created an enormous negative energy black hole and make 300 millions of people confused and misled.
