$3million/year as a programmer

[89coupe]

Don't waste your time trying to get into the Oil & Gas game. Programming is where it's at.

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-a-500000-salary-at-startup--because-hes-already-making-3-million-every-year-2014-1

Thanks to all its money, Google is a big winner in the war for talent in Silicon Valley.
The latest evidence is a story we just heard from the founder of a large, successful enterprise startup.

This founder told us that his startup tried to poach a "programmer" currently working at Google.

The startup made the programmer what it thought was a big offer: a $500,000 salary.

"He blew us off," said the founder.

The programmer told the startup thanks for the offer, but Google was currently paying him $3 million per year in cash and restricted stock units.

(Restricted stock units, or "RSUs," are as good as stock in that the programmer won't have to buy them to get them.)

A compensation of $3 million per year, or even $500,000 per year, is well above the Silicon Valley average for an engineer. Recruiter Scott Purcell says the software engineers he's placing typically make a base salary of $165,000. The average base salary for a Google engineer is $128,000.

But there are outliers besides our $3 million engineer. Twitter's senior vice president of engineer, Christopher Fry, earned $10.3 million last year.

Google has an industry-wide reputation for getting — and keeping — the people it wants.

It's pretty impressive, for example, that Google was able to remove Andy Rubin from the top of Android and still manage to keep him inside the company, working on robots.

This is a credit to CEO Larry Page. He's made Google into a place where really bright people get to work on extremely ambitious, large-scale problems. Before he took over Google as CEO in 2011, the company was losing a lot of people to startups like Facebook and Twitter. Now, not so much.

It is also a credit to the power of money, which Google has a lot of.

[woodywoodford]

And to think. There was a time I preferred AltaVista.

[ZenOps]

Its California, he will need that much to pay for the vehicle infractions that will happen twenty times a year.

[EM2FTL]

Originally posted by woodywoodford
And to think. There was a time I preferred AltaVista.

lol wow, that triggered a memory or two. altavista.digital.com was the best in the late 90's

[Thomas Gabriel]

I've heard of programmers billing out $1M/year in Calg. Same with O&G engineers. Same with surgeons. If you're the only one that can do something important, you're going to get paid a lot. Problem if most programmers are outsourced to India and all have the same general skill level replaceable by about five million other Indians. So if you want to be a programmer you better be excellent.

[max_boost]

Even rage2 turned down half a mill.

[Xtrema]

That said, leaving out the extreme cases, average software engineer salary in Silicon Valley is $122K.

[eblend]

My biggest regret in life is ditching comp sci to go into MGIS instead. I went into comp sci only because it had the word computer in it haha, and I was good with them so just went with it, hate programming. At the time computer programming was just a bunch of grease monkeys, now with all the mobile apps they can make a cheap ass $1 app and become millionaires. Sigh....maybe next lifetime

[kobe tai]

My old friend is a programmer with google. I wonder if he is raking it in too? I guess 10 years of school pays of at some point haha

[NoMoreG35]

10 years of school :eek:

[kobe tai]

Originally posted by NoMoreG35
10 years of school :eek:

Has a masters I believe.

[ZenOps]

Financial motivation does not always breed success.

Microsoft spent a ridiculous amount of dollars on Encarta, which they fully expected to replace the printed form of Encylopedia Britannica.

Then along came a basically free service, that cost next to nothing to create (but a small amount to maintain) Wikipedia.

[clem24]

Originally posted by eblend
My biggest regret in life is ditching comp sci to go into MGIS instead. I went into comp sci only because it had the word computer in it haha, and I was good with them so just went with it, hate programming. At the time computer programming was just a bunch of grease monkeys, now with all the mobile apps they can make a cheap ass $1 app and become millionaires. Sigh....maybe next lifetime

Hahaha Math 271 sealed the deal for me... After dropping out of that course (pre-req for comp sci), I too went into MGIS after spending a year to up my marks to get into the stupid faculty. That didn't pan out either - completely waste of time with useless courses. Still got my b.comm and now an accountant LOL.

[G]

Originally posted by clem24


Hahaha Math 271 sealed the deal for me... After dropping out of that course (pre-req for comp sci), I too went into MGIS after spending a year to up my marks to get into the stupid faculty. That didn't pan out either - completely waste of time with useless courses. Still got my b.comm and now an accountant LOL.

Math 271 with Dr Sands and CPSC331 with Dr Eberly nearly killed me.

[Recca168]

Originally posted by G


Math 271 with Dr Sands and CPSC331 with Dr Eberly nearly killed me.

All I remember from Eberly was his damn monotone voice. Never could stay awake for a full class :zzz:

[SmAcKpOo]

Originally posted by eblend
My biggest regret in life is ditching comp sci to go into MGIS instead. I went into comp sci only because it had the word computer in it haha, and I was good with them so just went with it, hate programming. At the time computer programming was just a bunch of grease monkeys, now with all the mobile apps they can make a cheap ass $1 app and become millionaires. Sigh....maybe next lifetime

I think most infrastructure guys look at the salary of developers and regret their choice in profession.