/Compensation

Software Engineer Pay Heatmap

tl;dr: Explore the interactive heatmap of total compensation pay ranges across the United States, organized by DMA regions and accompanied by a color-coded legend. Click into a region and uncover insights on salary percentiles, breakdown of total compensation components, and top paying companies.

featured in #558


Software Engineer Pay Heatmap

tl;dr: Explore the interactive heatmap of total compensation pay ranges across the United States, organized by DMA regions and accompanied by a color-coded legend. Click into a region and uncover insights on salary percentiles, breakdown of total compensation components, and top paying companies.

featured in #557


End Of Year Pay Report 2023

tl;dr: Trends from 2023: (1) Median comp for technical roles. Software engineers comp was the same in 2022 as in 2023. Compensation rose in the second half of 2023. (2) Companies that paid the most across different levels were Jane Street, Databricks, OpenAI and Facebook. (3) US and European cities where software engineers earned the most were SF and Zurich.

featured in #475


Performance & Compensation (For Eng Execs)

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses: (1) The conflicting goals between those designing, operating, and participating in performance and compensation processes. (2) How to run performance processes, including calibrations, and their challenges. (3) How to participate in a compensation process effectively. (4) How often you should run performance and compensation cycles. (5) Why your goal should be an effective process rather than a perfect one.

featured in #446


What Is A Senior Software Engineer At Wise And Amazon?

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: Gergely delves into senior software engineer roles at Wise and Amazon. At Wise, senior engineers lead significant projects, contribute to feature planning, and require good communication and problem-solving skills. At Amazon, the equivalent role deals with ambiguity, leads projects, communicates technical ideas efficiently, and ensures that the team's success doesn't solely rely on them. While definitions of 'senior' vary across the two companies, clear expectations across companies include project leadership, problem-solving skills, and effective communication.

featured in #436


Compensation Heuristics

tl;dr: It’s hard to answer your question without knowing more details about the situation. So I’ll propose some compensation heuristics that I think likely apply, and for each, a quick test of whether you’re on the right track strategically: (1) Compensation won’t make people happy on its own. (2) Compensation alone can make people very upset. (3) Compensation helps to create owners.

featured in #428


2023 Engineering Salary Expectations Trends Report

- Sam Graham tl;dr: Key findings: (1) State of the job market is leading reason engineers are lowering salary expectations. Newly heightened emphasis on non-monetary benefits i.e. career growth, work-life balance, and company culture. (2) Mid-level engineers are reducing salary requirements more significantly than entry- and senior-level peers. (3) Engineers in top tech hubs earn higher salaries than those in other metros, but their salary expectations have fallen more significantly. (4) Gender pay gap is still a big problem.

featured in #427


Should You Optimize For All-Cash Compensation, If Possible?

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: “Although still rare in the industry, companies like Netflix and Shopify let employees choose how much of their total compensation is stock. What are the approaches to take?”

featured in #421


Compensation At Publicly Traded Tech Companies

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: "Over the past few weeks, the majority of US publicly traded companies have published their median total compensation numbers for 2022." Gergely has collected data on 100 tech companies and analyses the results. 

featured in #413


Eight Graphs That Explain Software Engineering Salaries In 2023

- Tekla Perry tl;dr: Based on 2022 reports, these graphs show how (1) tech salaries rose but below inflation. (2) The best paying jobs. (3) Software engineering skills employers want you to have. (4) Software engineering skills by demand. And more.

featured in #399