Top Software Engineering Salary: Big Tech vs Startups

Key Takeaways

I do remember the first time I heard about the salary range. I thought it was mindboggling that you can make this [music] much money every year, year after year. It does seem pretty crazy, right? [music] I've seen people at this level make way more than a million dollars. Have you ever wondered if there are highpaying tech companies beyond fang? In this video, we'll be diving into some of the top tech companies that offer salaries just as competitive as companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. If that sounds interesting, give that like button a tap and let's get started. Non-fang companies have to offer higher salaries than fang companies because they don't have the same level of brand recognition and reputation that the fangs do. Fang companies also offer other perks and benefits that can make up for a lower base salary. non-bank companies have to compensate for this by offering a higher base salary to attract top talent. I also want to take a moment to explain the reason behind creating this video. My name is Jane and I've been working in tech for 15 years. I believe that salary transparency is crucial to help people increase their earning potential and negotiate better job offers. So, you don't have to be at a dis advantage just because you don't know anyone else who works in tech because you're new or come from a different background. That's why I'm creating this video to highlight some of the highest paying tech companies beyond Fang, so that even those who aren't privileged with salary knowledge can have a better idea of what's out there. Check out levels.fyi. It's a website that's all about helping you figure out what kind of salary and compensation package you can expect for different job positions, especially in the tech industry. They do this by collecting information from people who actually work in these positions at various companies. So, you're getting the real insider info. It's kind of like asking around your friends. You get information on what type of salary to expect, except that through this website, you get to ask thousands of people that you may never usually get to ask. I compare my past salary from Facebook and the salary from our Exaltitude members to the database. And the information on the website was very accurate in our experience. Let us know in the comments what your experience is like. Is it accurate or completely off? I'd love to hear. Now, every year, Levelvels.fyi releases what's called the end of the year pay report. This report provides insights into the current state of compensation and tech, including things like salary trends, job titles, and specific companies that are paying high salaries. So, let's check out the top pay by engineer levels from the report. First up is the entrylevel engineer. This level is pretty self-explanatory, like if you're a new grad or if you're transitioning into tech and have no experience working as a software engineer. At this level, the highest paying companies were Two Sigma, Stripe, [snorts] Cruz, Roblox, and LinkedIn. Two Sigma is a New York-based hedge fund that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to make investments decisions with a reported average compensation of 274,000. Stripe is a San Francisco based payments company that provides an easytouse platform for businesses to accept payment at Exaltitude. We've been using Stripe as well and it's been great. Stripe was thought to be one of the most successful fintech startups in 2022. They offer their entrylevel engineers an average compensation of $266,000. But one thing to note here is that the total compensation here includes salary, bonuses, [snorts] and equity. And if you've been following the news, you would know that Stripe is a private company and they recently cut their valuation to reflect the current market. When I do look up the current average salary for Stripe in 2023, it still does say $246,000, but I would take it with a grain of salt. Cruz is also a private company, so I'm not sure if I would truly count them as the top three companies in the entry-level positions. Whereas Roblox and LinkedIn are public companies, so their compensation is actually worth the dollar amount stated here. Roblox is an online gaming platform that has gained popularity over the years. They offer a total compensation of $234,000, which is pretty impressive for an entry-level position. LinkedIn offered a total compensation of $226,000 for entry-level engineers. Since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, LinkedIn doesn't maintain its own stock anymore. Instead, you will get Microsoft stock as part of your LinkedIn compensation package. The Microsoft stock has been pretty solid for the past year, especially since the collaboration news from Bing and Chachi PT. My bet is that Microsoft will be solid for a while. Moving on to engineer level. This level typically has two to five years of experience. Engineers at this level can develop and own moderate to complex parts of projects, possibly lead a small team or projects. At this level, we see some of the same companies from the entry level. Number one is data bricks, then cruise, Roblox, then tied at force or snowflake and two sigma again. Then number five is bite dance. Again, data bricks, crews, and two sigma are private companies and so is bite dance, but Roblox and snowflake are public. Snowflake lets businesses to store and manage and analyze large amounts of data in real time. You know, big data is a big field in tech right now. And Snowflake has been one of the fastest growing companies in this field. Next is senior engineer with typically five plus years of experience. The report says that less than 30% of employees in a company are usually at this level. As a senior engineer, you would be expected to lead and own complex technical initiatives. For this level, number one is data bricks, then cruise. And for the first time, we see one of the fang companies at this level, which is Netflix on third, then stripe, and snowflake. Again, interestingly, Netflix used to have a strict policy of only hiring senior engineers, but in the recent years, they started hiring junior and mid-level engineers, but is still pretty competitive to get in with average total compensation of $550,000. Netflix went public in 2002, so these are tangible actual dollar amounts. Next is staff engineer levels. FYI says this is typically 10 plus years of experience. But I've seen people make staff level with much less number of experience. Though it is not easy to get to this level. You really need to have impact across multiple orgs and show leadership in setting technical vision crossf functionally. And if you're at this level, highest salary is with Stripe, Coinbase, Pinterest, followed by Airbnb and Whimo. And here we see another fang company, Facebook or Meta, $567,000. [snorts] Interesting thing to note here is that at Facebook, they don't actually have the title staff engineer. They don't really indicate the levels internally, so you wouldn't really know who is an E5 versus an E6 unless a person decides to share it. Facebook likes to think that they are flat by not emphasizing titles and hierarchy and instead prioritize collaboration, impact, and results. but it does actually kind of matter when you're doing performance reviews. Last up is principal engineer, which is a pretty exclusive club with less than 3% of the workforce achieving this level. It's also pretty tough to go from staff to principal as you need to have a lot of experience, domain expertise, and leadership skills. And oftentimes the path to promotion is not very clear. you are lucky enough to become a principal engineer at a company like Facebook, you can you make over a million dollars. I've seen people at this level make way more than a million dollars. So, I looked it up separately from the report on levels. FYI, the current average comp for Facebook at E7 is 972K and the range goes from $779K to $1.4 million. I do remember the first time I heard about the salary range. I thought it was mindboggling that you can make this much money every year, year after year. It does seem pretty crazy, right? But if you think about it, Levelvels said that only 3% of engineers make this kind of money and Apple has around 8,500 engineers. So 3% of that would be 255 people. That's still a pretty significant number of people. I hope you found this helpful.