Google's Engineers Are Well Paid, Not Just Well Fed 342
D H NG writes "According to a study by the career site Glassdoor, Google tops the list of tech companies in the salaries it pays to software engineers. Google paid its engineers an average base salary of $128,336, with Microsoft coming in second at $123,626. Apple, eBay, and Zynga rounded off the top 5."
Re:That's it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Filter error: You can type more than that for y (Score:3, Informative)
Technically, you don't understand the use of "rounded" here.
Re:$128,000? (Score:5, Informative)
I work at Google and don't have long hours. I am on an on call rotation, but for a lot of teams, there are dedicated people on call, with a resulting salary bonus. (And the work load for being on call is really very minimal.)
Re:Off Topic: Facebook?! Really?! (Score:4, Informative)
Not to ruin a perfectly good rant, but if you take a look at that (such as it is) you see that Facebook is mentioned as being close behind Google in terms of overall salaries (not just engineering ).
Not accurate, smaller companies pay more (Score:4, Informative)
This survey must be only talking about companies above certain size. Our Sillicon Valley startup has about 50 employees and the average engineering salaries are north of $150,000. Large companies like Google actually don't have to pay that much, because the hours are more reasonable. I know there are other companies too that pay more than Google in the area.
Not the whole story... (Score:4, Informative)
The article doesn't mention but I suspect that is base salary only. Google is known to have a very good benefits package (at least by today's standards). There may be a stock and/or bonus component that is not included. I find it hard to believe that 128K is the total comp for an engineer at Google.
Having said all that, my experience is that salaries in CA are far too low given the cost of living there. Where I live (it's a large city, not out in the sticks) you can buy a nice house for 250-300K. Same house in Silicon Valley or LA? Well over a million and that's being conservative. Taxes are also much higher in CA. So you would think that salaries are 4x as high there as they are here but they are almost the same.
Sure, CA is really nice. I love going there. Great weather, all that. But living there? Forget it.
Re:$128,000? (Score:5, Informative)
I work at Google and don't have long hours. I am on an on call rotation, but for a lot of teams, there are dedicated people on call, with a resulting salary bonus. (And the work load for being on call is really very minimal.)
+1.
I'm not on an on-call rotation at the moment (though I'm thinking about asking to get back on it, because the extra cash is quite good). I typically work 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM Tuesday and Thursday(*). So, not counting lunch hours, that's 42 hours per week. On occasion I put in some extra hours during crunch time, but that's not common. For example, two weeks ago I worked a normal day, then got home, spent some time with the family and then worked from home from 10 PM until 3 AM to get some stuff done to meet a deadline before an internal release (dogfood release). That sort of thing seems to happen once per month or so, but outside of that I pretty much work a 40-hour week.
So, no, the hours at Google aren't insane. Now, *lots* of Google employees do work very long hours, but that's because they want to. I would actually like to work more myself, because I really enjoy what I do, but I also like time at home with the family and I have church responsibilities. Perhaps in a few years when my kids have all moved out I'll ramp up my hours. In the meantime, no one is putting the slightest pressure on me to work more. Now, I could probably do more if I worked more, and maybe eke out a slightly higher performance rating, which might translate into more money... but I'm already pretty comfortable with my compensation, and my manager is quite happy with my current performance.
As for cost of living... I'm at the Boulder, Colorado office (which is hiring, BTW :-)).
(*) The reason for my MWF / TTh schedule split is that I ride my bicycle to work MWF. It's a 25-mile ride so when you include showering time it takes me about 90 minutes each way. So what I actually do is leave home every day at 6:00 AM and arrive home at 6:00 PM. The days I ride that works out to a 7:30-4:30 work schedule. The days I drive, I work the two hours "saved" from my bike commute.