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Obligatory "^ this." Perpetuating the idea that everyone who comes out of school with a CS degree will end up with such a comfy gig is a disservice to software engineers everywhere, particularly for those outside the United States.

As a mid-level engineer currently job hunting in NYC, the salary range for most non-FAANG companies (including most start-ups) seems to be $90-150k.

From my experience, the idea of "mid-level" and "senior-level" employees in our industry seems to be skewed to the left. Mid-level employees are generally 2-5 years into their careers, and senior-level can be anywhere beyond that. When you think of senior-level employees in other industries, you generally assume they have 10-20+ years of experience under their belt.



From my anecdotal experience the breakpoints in engineering experience seem to be:

0-3 years-Junior:You don’t know what you’re doing.

3-8 years-Mid-level: You think you know what you’re doing.

8+ years-Senior:You know that you don’t know what you’re doing.


At large companies, sure. The proliferation of startups really skew this on average. I know of many people who were "Senior Devs" at startups within the 1-5 years range.


Outside of SF, even FAANG pays considerably less. Canadian employees of the same frequently earn half that.


Software Engineers outside the US make less, full stop. Amazon has a COL adjustment for SF and NYC but it’s not as much as you might think. Not as sure about other companies but I believe Google is similar (they also have a small local office).

The best setup IMO is to work at a FAANG company outside the bay, it’s the best of both worlds. Supposedly Amazon pays p90 of market rate, but in my area it’s more like p99.

Source: live in PDX, work at Amazon.


I’ve heard that working remotely (full time) for Facebook, Google, or Netflix is nearly impossible though unless you’re truly indispensable to the company. This may be 1-3% of their employees that can actually leverage that option?


Not work remotely, work in a distributed office.


Startups pay like shit. Which is why they attract marginal candidates who could not get hired elsewhere.


This is a bit of a blanket statement. I believe it depends a lot on the candidates negotiating ability




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