The (Overdue) Collapse Of Big Tech Salaries
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2024
- Big tech is known for paying some of the highest salaries in the world, often throwing around hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars like it’s nothing. With years of seemingly infinite growth and massive profit margins, this was rather sustainable. However, as big tech reaches maturity and starts focusing on maximizing efficiencies and margins, they’re naturally turning to cutting salaries. These salary cuts are much more slyer than you might think though. They don’t just offer new hires lower upfront figures. Rather, they employ sneaky frontloaded vesting schedules to make their offers seem much more appealing than they really are. This way, they can quote the same hiring salary to new hires but these individuals will actually end up earning as much 25 to 50% less over the next 4 years. This video explains the sneaky ways that big tech is cutting comp and the overdue collapse of big tech salaries.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Big Tech Salaries
1:56 - Predatory Vesting
5:07 - Front Loaded Vesting
8:40 - A Salary Collapse
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Late to housing boom,
Late to software engineer boom,
Gen z is truly screwed.
So if you are to participate in any industry that literally just started you are screwed? What kind of logic is this?
truth logic@@granddefectus4602
@@granddefectus4602 use your brain a little grandpa. Take a break, read my comment again, and simply delete your comment
@@granddefectus4602 what industry just started
im 18 and just graduated with a diploma in ai and analytics and i feel quite fucked cos of how high competition is
Every generation has its challenges, yours isn't special.
$182k(2023) is about what my dad earned in 1961 ($17,900). He designed flight test instrumentation for Lockheed.
Average home values in the early 60s where also in the $11-18k range, but now they're way above the rate of inflation.
Median house price in the US in 1961 was 19K so your dad could almost afford a house with one year worth of salary
Seems like if you adjust for inflation and cost of living increases, tech salaries are essentially what was once considered blue-collar, middle-class back in the 50's and 60's. Now what we're seeing is the squeezing of the last of the middle class off of the ladder.
no they aren't. people back then were living in smaller houses, they were poorly insulated, they had no airconditioning... people were dying much younger. tech people started getting paid like bankers, who were always getting paid, not like the middle-class.
The problem really is freaking housing. Housing just has to be changed this clearly doesn't work.
@@rtothec1234 weird how there are still milllions of actual construction workers then. and they're getting paid nothing close to software engineers. yall are rich, and crying poverty, and it's not pretty.
@@quAdxify tech needs to employ people in places like peorio or how about west virginia or any town where you can by a house for less than 200k.
@@perfectallycromulent not to mention how hard construction really is compared to tech.
i think its a tendency: new job appears, there is little people that can do the work, they get super high salaries because they cant be substituted and become the new super star job, then all people start to study the area to become one and the market gets satured, now the big companies can reduce their salaries because they can be substituted
no it's the lucrative nature of the tech companies getting all kinds of free money from investors looking for the next big thing and also how software can scale at lightning speed. once you develop some application you can just copy it a million times in a heartbeat. and now every software is a service so they keep milking it . they stop supporting older versions that you purchased. now you have to subscribe and pay multi thousands a year for it.
@@ronblack7870you’re also right but what he said is also a big factor, if not the biggest. IT is saturated and not just in USA. That’s why salaries are falling or stagnating
@@markonikolic7957I think both of you have valid pieces to the puzzle of why (saturation/ end of investor fomo). The last piece I'd add is: the macro-economics. High interest rates have dried up cheap money. Naturally, salaries will be effected and the most bloated sectors (IE tech) will be effected the most.
@@markonikolic7957 quick, ratio ron!
I don't think high skill software dev jobs are saturated. People are still pulling multiple offers and having FAANG outbid each other over them. The idea of saturation implies there is a fixed need for software developers.
I think you missed the mark here; this is how the compensation has always worked. The top tier companies have retained the pay rates they bumped up to during the pandemic era. What has changed is the valuation of the stock (which has always been volatile) and the massive signing bonuses (which aren't thrown around with such abandon). Overall - salaries are still substantially higher than they were pre-pandemic, they just aren't as ridiculous as during the peak frenzy of that era.
yep
Yes, I agree. Anecdotally, I work for one of the companies often shown on this channel, and salaries are lower now than peak pandemic, but they are higher now than the years before 2019 and earlier.
I'm going by new offers because a lot of times the comp you get offered to start anchors your future raise / promotion numbers. And you don't really get your salary cut at these places
Also worth noting, if you got a peak offer, your comp was still highly in stock, and so the actual value would have gone down as stock fell between grant and vest dates.
@@fark69Part of the problem is that places like levels.fyi does a poor job of distinguishing between the parts of an offer (e.g. what's your target comp and what's exceptional). That said - the entire premise that newer hires get paid less because of the vesting schedule is just wrong. They get cash equivalent to bring them to their target comp, that cash is paid monthly instead of vesting a couple times per year, and it's a predictable amount. I'd happily trade my RSUs for more predictable cash flow. I think the channel owner lacks experience here and therefore doesn't quite understand what's going on.
yeah... you should realize stock compensation is not actually something that the company pays but rather it comes from diluting the existing shareholders so more like the investors and stock owners who are paying for their salary. works well while stock is going to the moon but shareholders wont be happy if the stocks are performing poorly. you do this while company is not growing and shareholders will probably vote to force the board to cut stocks vesting or fire the CEO or something
@@IamAWESOME3980 yeah it turns out tech was just gambling the entire time. real companies with sustainable business models wouldn't do this RSU-heavy compensation
That's right, we should slash the salaries of people who create new products, while boosting compensation for traders and bankers who do nothing but shuffle the same bunch of assets back and forth 'extracting value'
we shouldnt reward new products we should appropriately reward good long term sustainable products only
Thats right. Overpaid tech workers 90% of who do NOTHING while pretending to WFH.
The bankers & investors are the ones who make all these things possible. Show some respect and be thankful
R&D is, and always was, and always will be a cost centre. It does not create value directly. All those "bankers and traders" are essential for turning R&D output (in fact, tiny fractions of it) into a value.
Sorry y'all's salaries are being cut but as someone working in an essential industry working with people etc. I hate to say that tech industries and others are being paid way too much. There's no reason why an EMT should not be paid more than a software engineer, you can list all of the skills everyone does it still doesn't match the skills and mental dexterity and focus the emt has to do to do their job. As well as other industries....social workers, CPS, mental healthcare workers, nurses etc. It's totally out of control and needs to be reigned in. No reason why people working in these industries need your salaries hanged over our heads making us feel like we made the wrong choices in our lives when we do honest hard work that is essential and should be valued and paid as such. It sucks all around and I just see it as karma and the universe hopefully fixing or turning things finally. Maybe this would get everyone on the same side to go against these CEO's, government officials and insurance companies to deal with this wage stagnation and treating their employees across the board fairly and keep up with inflation.
@@Dr.Beetlejuice110 you're absolutely right, but I would not expect a long overdue correction of obscene salaries of the coders to result in increase of incomes of the true essential workers, sadly.
After this I know I am poor compared to these crazy salaries. I got 400 dollar bonus for Christmas and I thought that was generous….
I was delighted with $500 - First decent bonus I got in a long time. They even worked it out to pay me more so that after taxes I'd have a $500 cheque. Nice.
The way I look at bonuses is, I already get paid for my work, so anything extra is not expected, but appreciated. In my last job I think I got a hat. I was still thankful..because they had to give hats to EVERYONE ..so it cost money
Lul senior developer here. Barely make over 100k. This was only ever the case for top tier level graduates in HCOL areas.
Yep true
What language do you typically write in, what is your role and how much have your skills advanced since beginning your careerr?
I wouldn't say 100k is a small salary though
HCOL yes, but not necessarily only for top tier level graduates
A senior developer should make double that. I live in MCoL (Denver) and the salary for a senior is a LOT more than 100k. 100k is what I make right now as a junior.
Paying employees less for moving to lower cost of living areas isn't going to go over well with a lot of people. You can still do the same quality of work wherever you're located.
The government does the same thing
It's no different than paying someone more for living in a high cost of living area, cost of living adjustments of that nature are extremely common.
They just started in the high cost of living area with big tech.
You can just be tax resident of higher cost of living country with lower taxes.
It’s to sustain jobs for people in the hiring locations. If everyone moves to the city just to poach lucrative jobs and leave, that deprives the remaining locals of both the work opportunity and the income and the local community of the taxes. Adjusting income per living cost is fair
@@bp24964s No its not. Companies don't give a shit about the local community or "fairness". At best they'll use those as justifications for PR purposes. They do it purely because it saves them money and boosts their profit margins. The bottom line is the _only_ thing publicly-traded companies care about, because its the only thing shareholders care about.
At a certain point, what will people be going to school for? Doesn't seem like most jobs are worth it after taxes anymore.
Hahaha
@@LogicallyAnswered I worked in tech jobs before and got pretty far, but when companies want to pay staff overseas and cut your wages, makes trying harder a waste of time. I made more money opening my own business and putting it towards stocks instead.
What makes you think *everyone* will still be able to go to school anymore?
@@Darth_Bateman There's billions of dollars in the college industry, those institutions will find a way to sucker their customers back.
Yeah what's even the point of working for only 200k tbh
Dude, management gets overinflated salaries not only in tech, but in finance also.
Yeah, but management is a tough position to be in. It's probably super stressful now with a whole generation that will get offended over anything and feels the company owes them for just being there.
This limitation around salaries doesn't apply to technicians, scientists and project managers that Big Tech companies like Apple do poach from smaller but more skilled companies like Maximo...
I work in FAANG and even with compensation normalizing I'm still not gonna complain. Sure I'm not gonna be a millionaire in a short amount of time but it's still better paid than in other industries.
I do too. How are you not gonna be a millionaire in a short amount of time? It's pretty easily doable on a mid-level FAANG software eng salary in 10 years or (likely) much less
@@fark69 I'm not based in the US so my TC is in the low 6 figs. Also I'm still entry level. But yes 10-ish years is probably doable if i consider career progression, although I consider "short amount of time" to be a few years so that's the subjective term there.
I make 150k working 20 hours a week in restaurants 😂
FAANG job is pretty smooth-brain
@@magicxsquare_doing what
I think you underestimate the joy many of us engineers get from optimization and maximizing efficiency 😂
Underestimate the joy of being underpaid? Maybe lol
@@fr5229 Engineers are massively overpaid. And for the most honest of us this evident inefficiency is painful.
@@vitalyl1327 Maybe. I have the belief that people tend to undervalue themselves. If the average engineer really felt overpaid, there wouldn’t be so many clamoring around a handful of big companies where they will have relatively less impact
@@fr5229 if you graduate from mcdonalds, then yes you will be underpaid
Just another way of saying I'M GREEDY
They are outsourcing it for cheap
True
And then they have to pay for it by hiring private contractors at a steep price
This isn't really true. Outsourcing is becoming quite expensive. Good Indian eng packages are getting close to and sometimes beating MCOL and LCOL US eng salaries for the same level
Outsourcing has always existed, but the quality eng move to the US for those high salaries. No company can afford to stop paying those without losing innovation to their competitors
The market is oversaturated. Hopefully a reset happens with salaries and the housing market so that everything stabilizes
What no one talks about is how startup salaries got so insane. Often, they paid more than stable companies, even more than places like Google. There are people at startups, not even programmers or salespeople, who make $200K at age 25.
No there’s not
@@Solofopholothere most definitely are
It’s true
Startups depend on high quality employees far more than larger and more stable companies, so they have to be able to attract the most experienced and high valued people. Meaning, they have to compete with the top of the market (e.g., finance), not with the market average.
The old wisdom used to be "Startups for higher salary, established companies for stability" but layoffs all across the industry sunk that logic.
This would have been fantastic. The talent drain towards the overheated sectors (such as finance) is detrimental to the development of the rest of the industry.
I was a software engineer working for these companies for precisely these salaries. The salaries never made sense to me.
Imagine earning 120K/yr at 22? Damn, I'd be grateful! I hope that we all get the compensation package we desire some day!
Cost of living can't be ignored.
$120K/yr in the bay area is more like $60K in an area with reasonable cost of living. Still well above US median-income (2x), but not crazy.
This was a pretty average new grad package in the bay back in 2017. Nowadays an average new grad package at a reputable company (or startup, but they don't hire many new grads anymore) is higher than this by about $50-60k
Wow that's decent! I appreciate this knowledge. I'm really new to USA so I'm trying to understand and learn allot about the country. In fact, I'm still not sure how to use the train system in Ney York and sometimes get lost. @@fark69
120k a year now isn't even middle class
@@alastairhewitt380damn, I wonder how the average American survives then…
tech salaries are a huge distortion to the market for engineers who are not doing software like mechanical , industrial etc. it makes it more difficult for traditional industry to recruit . the profits are not there to pay astronomical salaries for an engineer working in say a machining operation or an equipment manufacturer. can cat or deere pay 250k for an entry level engineer?
John Deere needs to make products that are compelling and can command better profits. Then they'll be able to pay better. Facebook makes like $10-20 per user and has billions of users. That's why they pay so well.
deere can easily handle that salary, in fact they may need less engineers with all the violations to right to repair nonsense they are constantly implementing
Gross profit of $23B in 2023. Yes they can pay that.
Oh no the 250k in stock they gave me will only be worth 250k...
Even with the collapse it's still impossible to hire programmers. I build robots and need people on site. It's a hands on job. Programmers simply WILL NOT leave their houses. They are only willing to work remote.
The struggle is real hahaha
Maybe you are only able to attract shady developers who plan on working multiple jobs at the same time. Or maybe your office premises are shit. Are they located close to your candidates or are you asking them to do hours of daily commute? Do your offices offer a good work environment? Sometimes developers are being offered crappy open office spaces full of noise. Terrible environment to perform focused work.
it's a really hard sell to go back to commuting every day when you don't have to - such a waste of life
Who hurt you, 😆
@@kevinjomes5753 Bud, you're being a giant f49.
What folks always forget when they hear these big numbers is that
A) unless you're a genius you've got to do an absolute shit ton of outside work to even get interviewed by one of these companies and
B) The salaries are for extremely high cost of living areas. I have a friend in indiana who lives in her own apartment and works at a bakery. in NYC where studio apartments often go for 3k starting and you need 40x the rent as salary to be approved and milk is six dollars a gallon, you might start to understand why these folks often still feel poor even when they're making 90k a year.
To the inevitable person who says "well they just need to live more frugally", thanks! so you agree they're not rich then
This video made no sense. You are arguing first against backloaded vesting, then frontloaded vesting, when those 2 options literally have exactly opposite pro/cons. You can't say that they are both secret paycuts at the same time. Also, Amazon offers huge multi-year sign-on bonuses to offset the backloaded vesting, and Google also does things to offset the front-loaded vesting. And none of this is a "collapse", Amazon has been doing backloaded vesting since I was job hunting 6 years ago. Nothing is new about these compensation strategies.
yeah, he is completely clueless how faang level tech companies' compensation works lmao
I understood his point, tough. He's saying that Amazon expects most employees leave within the first years, while Google flips it to make it look more attractive when you join.
@again, that’s cause you have no idea how these companies comp work. Amazon pays massive cash bonus first two years and google pays refresher that stacks. The only time your salary goes down is in your 5th year when your initial stock grant runs out. He has no point so there is no point to be understood
It's still absolutely amazing pay, especially where I live where cost of living is much lower. Those salaries would make you rich here and afford you a mansion on dozens of acres.
"It's still absolutely amazing pay, especially where I live where cost of living is much lower."
Don't worry, they factor that in so that you living in a lower cost of living area means you get less money. Check their job postings and it almost always says "location" as one of the variables.
Yup but where these companies are located, it's middle class
Losing my corporate job half a year ago was a blessing in disguise. Now I managed to escape the corporate world, and I help others do the same. At last loving what I do, and it is so rewarding. 😊
Glad to hear you were able to turn it into a positive Daniel!
@@LogicallyAnswered Thanks Hari. Good luck to you too. Watching all your videos. Loved to see how you explained how faceless AI videos will take over, and started rebranding a bit to show yourself. Great stuff. Continue what you do, it's great 🔥✌️
AI will take over your tech job.
It can't as I don't have a tech job anymore :)@@sawadeeh
if it does get ready for skynet to take over
@@sawadeeh
I've been in tech for 20 yrs, NEVER met anyone making more than $280k, who are these indivisuals making salaries of over $300 k??
Do you work for Google or Meta? I’ve heard those two pay the most
Not all big tech companies utilize this strategy to the same extent. Some, particularly those with strong growth prospects, may still offer more traditional compensation packages.
Your explanation would be true, if the vested stocks are sold immediately. However, if the employee hold on to the vested stocks they can keep the stock gain.
You mean i cant work from home for 2.7 million a quarter!?!? 😮
Damn it!!!! That's why I didn't get the job. I asked for 5 million🤣🤣🤣🤣
Great video as always
Thank you Balpreet!
Meanwhile the rest of the tech world that has to make the stuff the big tech companies produce work in the field get compensated a lot less for their efforts. For those of us in IT outside of the big tech companies who just keep the network, PCs, and servers running at the non-tech companies, we won't shed any tears if big tech has a major long overdue collapse.
We recognize and appreciate their expertise in building the tools and products we use, however whether or not they're actually worth the money many of them are making has always been a matter of contention. Especially when big tech was doing all that hiring and had literally had people doing no value work making more money than overworked engineers who keep IT systems up and running at non tech companies.
Sooner or later the bubble of inflated tech worker salaries had to start letting the air out and start coming down to earth. The market will always eventually correct and the bloat will be cut. If FANG can do more with less and just make the crazies willing to stay work more, they're going to do it if they haven't started already. Just look at what Musk did to X when he gutted the company and X is still somehow online and full of controversy as per normal. Microsoft, Google, and others will be more than happy to start doing that at some point.
You're having too much of a short term, narrow view on this. Currently, those big tech companies are shifting to profitability and consistency, but those companies haven't been the trend setting compensation companies for years. Companies like Stripe, Roblox, Databricks, Cruise, and OpenAi are all currently the trend setters in comp. Until the MASSIVE shortage of tech talent is filled, tech salaries will continue to rise. Also, you make a big point of pointing out big tech, but in a previous video you spoke about how the current big tech ensemble is gen 2, while gen 1 companies like intel and sony have fallen to the waist side. The companies that will bring the salaries up in the future won't be your googles and metas, they'll be companies you've never heard of. This might be the best time to major in cs, as because of the downturn in tech there's less people majoring in it currently, meaning in 3-4 years there will be significantly less talent on the market which will lead to more competition for the talent that is out there. We saw this same thing is 2000, 2008, and now we're seeing it.
Does it make sense to you to major in IT or should I pivot to another degree when I get my AA in IT?
If Stripe is a trendsetter in tech salaries, he's right. Look on levels to see their new offers for a given level of engineers and it's definitely declined over time
@fark69 A temporary slowdown due to macroeconomic factors. Once the economy comes back full steam many large startups will start offering mega salaries again. It's an inevitability
@@Denastus IT is still a great degree with a ton of options. If IT is what you want to do, then don't let anyone dissuade you from pursuing it
You showed me the money in this video...I am frothing at the mouth from this salary data video-- this is your best video yet. Anthropic and OpenAI are the places to go with massive pay packages.
Nah, those pay packages are mostly "stock" and there's a whole lot of politics, investors vs shareholders, etc. stuff that needs to go right for you to get that whole pay package. Most likely the shares are 0.60¢ on the dollar unless your chosen company kills all the other AI companies and dominates (I believe it's unlikely for that scenario)
@@fark69 base salary is still 300k to 500k. Runs on par with Netflix. Unless you with HFT, that's about as good as it gets in tech.
The only thing I've learned in this video is how massively overpaid tech workers are.
From what i hear now the market is incredibly competitive and the jobs are becoming much harder to get.
This video was well reasoned and made a smaller claim making it easier to back up; nevertheless, it was just as engaging and worth watching…nice job!
With years of industry experience and pursuing a phd in biochem rn. I don't think I can even expect that level of compensation at my mid 30s. Software engineers getting paid like crazy fresh out of colleague is still mindboggling. The fact that it takes next to nothing to start these companies do save a ton of cash to pay for workers.
Exactly. Many jobs even with phds will never earn the same tcomp as some fresh grads from tech in 2021
This is not normal. 99.999% of engineers will never land a job at those companies. The vast vast majority are working corporate tech jobs for a fraction of that comp.
It would be interesting if you would cover not only the engineers but the executive compensation package during these changes. Because I guarantee you the top of senior management and executive packages are still increasing.
4:55 i know you said triple but it sounded like "...play a crucial role in helping the company cripple" 😂😂
Very informative.
🙏
I need to correct this. When company grants you RSUs, it is not the $ that are vesting, but the number of stocks. Say the company gives you $100k in stock, that $100k is instantly converted to invested stocks at the current stock price. What is means is that it doesn't matter if Google vests 40% in first year and 10% in last, you get the same amount of stock regardless and if the price of stock goes up, it goes up for both vested and unvested RSUs
You are wrong about Amazon. Amazon does an all cash replacement for the stock vesting by providing employees with a year 1 and year 2 bonus which is paid out on a per month basis.
I want to make a correction: Amazon has a back loaded RSU vesting schedule but they have a bonus structure that equalizes pay between the first and 2nd years with the 3rd and 4th years. I know this because I worked at Amazon.
Can you explain with an example?
You get large bonuses in the first 2 years that roughly equal what the larger stock amounts would be in the later 2 years.
Ex:
120k Base + 5k stock + 50k bonus 1st year.
120k Base + 55k stock 4th year.
Assuming that the stock amounts stay the same, you would get the same total pay in years 1 and 4.
@@tydal6516 thank you
One of my coworkers moved to CA and bought a house for 1.5 million at 6.5% interest. That comes out to over $9k per month. Add to that taxes, insurance, costs of living, he needs to spend at least $15k per month. He is married with 2 kids. He works for a big tech company and gets RSU's but still I can't stop thinking about it. Is this money going to continue in the future, not guaranteed. If RSU's stop since it's pulling from the market, everything breaks down. How much money can companies keep pulling from the market?
Never heard of such crazy mortgage loan before
yeah even an average $400k house at 6.5% is north of $3k, it's crazy. I was so lucky they fired the director at my old job in CA 8 years ago and brought in a crazy nut. I probably would have stayed for the RSU's if it wasn't for him (they are nice but the taxes suck), the idiot ended up not finishing the year. Unless the house is a dream house I would not recommend a young person buying a house. @@dieglhix
That is the new normal. Kids see it as normal and they get FOMO. If the housing market goes south and it starts to cascade down it's going to be rough for many people. I was months away from living out of my car once (after a divorce I then lost my job) and it was scary. No one cares about you when you are having tough times. It did make me realize I needed to save money and I was lucky the economy picked up. It could have been the time we went into a depression. I try to tell people to live cheap and not take on too much debt. I was lucky to get a house before prices went even more cray at 3% and I was just lucky. $400k at 7% is not a good option. @@dieglhix
I put all my money in crypto. I feel that's even less riskier than a multi-decade loan with these market changes. Hope I can buy a home with this lifetime bet.@@rockpadstudios
the amazon back loaded stock vesting is actually good, becasue since the first year is 5% of stock and the second year is 15%, You got two massive sign on bonuses for two years to make up the difference, so all your total compensation is all cash for amazon at least your first two years unlike the other players.
Great vid, but you got Amazon wrong. Yes the first year 5% is stock, but the total compensation every year is the same, and the first 2 years at "Amazon is practically all cash. So if you're TC is 400k, you will literally get 400k cash for the first 2 years.
yep! i parroted his fact about amazon’s stock on blind and an amazonian quickly corrected me
Yes, Blind is a better source of truth here as you actually have people working in those companies. There's also some misinformation on this vid as generally people get refreshers every year, otherwise the TC between different years would be too drastic.
The bridge cash def makes much of the gap in terms of paper comp, but the average Amazonian who leaves after 2 years ends up with very little stock/stock growth (often the most lucrative part of tech comp)
@@LogicallyAnswered you make no sense. they can give you 200k cash and 200k stock, or they give you 400k cash and you have the option to buy 200k worth of stock from that. You just have more options. Its better in every way.
@victorvaleanu
Logically Explained was saying that since the average tenure at Amazon is less than 2 years, they’re only on average hitting the 5% vesting and maybe the 15% vesting.
Great video, as always!
I have a question pls: where do you get those salary levels? i would like to check them out myself, but i dont know which site are you using.
thanks!
Thanks man!
levels.fyi
Be aware when using levels that the stock based compensation at a non-public company is not equal to cash or stock from a public company. Especially big non-public companies about to IPO. The stock is often not worth what it's valued at on paper when the IPO comes around and your window drops allowing you to liquidate the shares
that's not how front loading vesting, or any vesting package, is presented. when you're given an offer, you are told the total stock grant over 4 years. if it's frontloaded, 25%, or backloaded, it doesn't matter when comparing to other packages from other companies. a company will always tell you the total comp not only for 1 year but for the vesting period.
I was conned into working for a company that offered great benefits. Each month they contributed a good sum of money into my retirement account but it would only be mine after 5 years of working for them. I quit after 2.5 years and didn’t get that money.
This is why I always prefer a straight-up salary to any vested BS or if something does vest it better be 3 years or less. Unless you're switching roles within the same company, staying with the same company for longer than say 3-5 years is a waste of time IMO.
pity that the salaries do not reflect the cost of living, except in india, where you can puchase 2 bed flat in commutable distance from the office for just $10K and your energy bill is just $8.
So happy I dont get paid in company stock tbh
On the flip side, stock comp can be really strong too :)
I like my company stock that's part of my yearly rewards. I don't factor it as part of my direct pay, but it's done nothing but rise and rise since I've been here for almost 10 years 🤷♂️
Oh my, our education did you wrong.
@@LogicallyAnswered only if you do not factor in taxes you supposed to pay
The downside of not getting paid in stock is the taxes you will have to pay if you were to be paid if you were on a salaried position. Claim that you only make $1 and pay almost no tax.
How is front loading a bad thing, you get your money sooner since it's vested already. If you really that vested into the company you work with, why not just use that money and buy the stock at the current market price.
Depends on if the total stock grant is still the same amount. Oftentimes, companies use front loading just to have more attractive first year comp figures.
The celebration of programmers' salaries dropping or getting laid off is cruel, as if all of them are slimy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or NFT hucksters. Most are normal people who enjoy the field or entered it because of the salary hype. Is it so wrong for people to want a comfortable job/life? Market conditions are forcing a correction, which is an unfortunate reality, but is that really something to be celebrated?
What the hell kind of salaries are these people on??? That's insane, even doctors and lawyers would be ecstatic to get these kind of figures. Top 0.1%.
I am writing a book about it titled the unfortunate truth of 7 figure job.
Good luck!
@@LogicallyAnswered
Thanks hari
This is a coincidence it was brought up in a recent prime video
There might be a "collapse", but its hardly the end - more like the period between cycles. The last couple minutes of the video laid out why this is temporary: Smaller companies still pay high while FAANG is "maturing". Sooner or later FAANG will be just as forgotten as a "cool" place to work as IBM and Xerox are today, that is true. But a portion of today's smaller companies will become tomorrow's acronym, a new bubble will start, and the cycle will repeat yet again. Over and over on 10-20 year time frames (until AI finally gets good enough to replace tech workers in general and the only jobs left are those who get to maintain the robots).
but FAANG is buying all the new startups that have potential
@@irfannasim9092 Sure, but that doesn't scale infinitely. As FAANG starts focusing more on their bottom line, they'll get more cautious about their wild spending - including purchases of startups. And some of those startups will have more potential than they realize.
FAANG themselves only exist (well at least 3 of the 5) because Microsoft was too scared of antitrust suits and the other "big" players like Cisco and IBM were too focused on "core products" in the early/mid-2000s as the dotcom bubble was bursting while many of the startups that survived the crash went on to be at least moderately successful, and a handful like Google went on to be massively successful as we all know.
The cycle will repeat. The current 5 will get scared, another tech bubble will come, and new guard will replace the old.
There's a bit of a wildcard at play though - Microsoft. They're doing way better than most of FAANG, and way better than most people realize because they've kept extremely quiet about their goings-on while they silently lap up the likes of Minecraft, World of Warcraft and many others (sorry I'm a gamer so that's what I know - its not limited to that industry). And of course they bought OpenAI as well - kind of a big deal at this point in time.
What they will do with regards to buying startups as FAANG "matures" is anyone's guess. They are, at least in principle, one of the "mature" companies themselves but aren't entirely acting like one and I don't think anyone knows how their actions will play out as the rest of the industry changes shape over the next decade or so.
Another Great Video From You Guys!
Thank you Mota!
I’ve probably heard the word lucrative 100 times in 2023 and 99 times of it were on this channel :D
Meta's vesting is 1/16 of the grant (and refreshers) every 3 months, which is as fair as it gets.
I am a semiconductor engineer with MSEE & BSEE at top 5 university in the states.
My TC/benefit is far lower than the Big Tech. I am sure a Director in our company "only gets" around 300K, he is in his mid 50/close to 60!
Most Fab jobs are just sweat shop. I am so regretted to study a "hard major", relatively low compensation and long working hours"
I am sure Software engineering job has many issues but at least the TC is much higher even in 2023! Every job has its own issue!
Thanks for sharing!
I was originally an EE major until i realized how few fabs there are and how that strangles the pay. At the time we had fairchild and national semi on the same block, yet they made sure not to compete.
In Germany at least, RSUs are taxed as income at the time of vesting. Hence, subject to up to 49%-ish income tax rate. If you sell the RSUs later with a profit post-vesting date, you must again pay 25% capital gains tax.
Is it different in the U.S?
Capital gain tax on appreciation. So each dollar is taxed once.
Lol how did you get the footage from 6:10?
is stock grant the same as stock it self? such as dividend and voting right etc? or just the compensation in its underlying value?
Yes it's the same except perhaps at Google who have two classes of stock
There are so many mediocre Devs and Managers hiding under the desks of FAANGs who joined 15 years ago and still maintaining some legacy codebase for fat paychecks. They are due for layoffs in big number this year due to AI.
Well that's a whole new way to look at it, these companies might not be so cool in 20 years 😮
They are not now
@@segante lol, idk I’m from Europe-CH
I am not sure about what you are saying about stock compensation, it is a money amount that is converted to stock...say the stock stays the same for the whole 4 year vesting period you will get exactly what they promised...its impossible to not get what you were promised if the stock doesn't tank...but that's the risk with stock comp...it could also sky rocket!
3:10 it's normal to get refresher stock grants every year, so you'd get a stack of 4 grants vesting after 4 years tenure
Watching this video and I have an interview for a 300k position on Monday feels weird
I think he just accounted for 1st vesting in standard vesting. He didn't used other vesting year's amount in his calculations
Did I missed something ?
I don't get Why Frontload vesting ($400,000 for 4 years) is bad than standard vesting ($100,000 / year) for employee.
In standard Vesting ( 4yr vesting period )
1st year - $25,000 ( 1st year stock 1st vesting )
2nd year - $50,000 ( 1st year stock 2nd vesting + 2nd year stock 1st vesting )
3rd year - $75,000 ( 1st year stock 3 vesting + 2nd year stock 2nd vesting + 3rd year stock 1st vesting )
4th year - $100,000 ( 1st year stock 4 vesting + 2nd year stock 3rd vesting + 3rd year stock 2nd vesting + 4th year stock 1st vesting )
Companies like to make money from their employees (by working them harder or paying them less or both), or, by getting free money from shareholders and investors (like WeWork in their heyday, or most of Wall Street today) that they can spend on employees.
You are really wrong about Amazon - they give you fixed bonus over the 4 years but early its paid mostly in cash and later it becomes mostly stock, that is under assumption stock will be worth more in 2 years. First year you will still get a bonus equal to 40% stock but it will be 85% in cash. Its better if you pull out the cash bonus first as your stock appreciates for 3rd and 4th year. This is really good for the employees.
I feel like the point about salary cuts because of remote work doesn't really make sense. If I live in SF I will almost certainly pay around 3k a month for rent but that isn't the case in most places. Count that on top of all other cost of living hikes for a place like SF and I feel like you can easily find a ton more places where that cut of 25% but allowing you to live anywhere, will actually gain you more money. I work in southern California and make 6 figures and I would easily take that 25% cut. Living here is drastically more expensive than anywhere else I've lived so even with that 25% cut I'd still be making relatively more money.
This channel is class betrayal by a working-class traitor, the real reason for salary cuts is the falling rate of profit. They must x2 or 10x their profits for shareholders, cuts in salary is the first thing they do to increase profit. It's just pure greed rationalized as a "salary correction" it's BS.
You gotta apply discounting to these multi-year stock bonuses. Logically, the discount rate would be the probability that you leave your job in any given year, e.g. 7% if you think that 7% of the company will be laid off each year. That way, vesting schedules that are more front-loaded look more valuable because there's a higher chance that you will get the bonuses.
I presume in Europe it isn’t dropping as much as in the US
Probably hahaha
That's because it was never as inflated as in the US
It still has problematic spots that are nearly as bad, but it's contained. Housing market is a joke.
This video has so much disinformation. What decreased was total compensation, which is a factor of Reserved Stock Units (RSU) + base salary.
Base salary is still the same, even slightly higher due to inflation adjustment.
RSU quantity is still the same in most Big Tech.
What decreased when comparing to peak stock boom of 2021 is the value of the stock, which decreased the RSU value and then led to total compensation decrease.
This just means that Employees enjoyed the stock boom while it lasted. Now that Big Tech is in recession, with revenue, potential future profit, and user base decreasing, it makes sense that stock value is down and affecting bonuses based on stock.
Moral of the Story: plan for the future to count only on Base Salary, as it is a mandated and protected guarantee until they fire you. People who counted on Total Comp were idiots, as the RSU bonus was clearly volatile.
I've never counted stock option as anything meaningful in salary negotiations. Anything that is "vested" can piss right off. Same with 401k matching. Jobs these days rarely last two years and companies will not hesitate to cut you for made up reasons just to bypass your big payout on the vesting schedule. Ask for a good base salary and let them keep their stock.
what sucks is the lack of accountability. its their fault but both employees and job seekers have to pay for it
I made most of my net worth off equity. Something is not quite right here. The front loading is assuming you receive it in cash, you do not, you receive it in equity that is locked once granted sometime during the first year at said market price and fixed. So you get the same benefit front loaded or not, you just hold on and not sell it.
What am I missing?
Hearing about how these people rake in 5 figures typing at a desk made me realize how made up money is as concept. Also a better understanding of how the stock market collapsed. It's infuriating how much of modern life is dependent on imaginary computer space and not tangible honest work.
Also someone who is in the system for longer usually gets short end of the stick unless they are promoted.
Where did people get those salaries ? in Canada its like 60 to 70k Canadian dollars max for entry level xD and 100 - 150k for senior.
It looks like these companies are using a lot of trickery with the year to year stock options. Maybe someday there will be a day of reckoning.
This was bound to happen.
My gf, who honestly is an idiot, got $50/hr for an internship at Apple. Makes me want to go short Apple.
What's wrong with the stock completely vesting each year? Gambling on stock prices skyrocketing seems worse than just getting regular grants.
I think your take on amazon compensation is a bit misguided here. Yes, the stock vesting is skewed in favor of later years, and yes you won't unlock most of your stock till year 3/4. But your sign on bonus is adjusted to cover the TC. For ex, if your offered TC is 200k, that won't change for 4 years - year 1 and 2 will have sign on bonus on top of your base salary, year 3/4 will have stocks. This is unless you get good ratings or get promoted and get additional stock grants. If you did not get any additional stock grants, your TC in 3/4 years will depend on the performance of the stock.
yeah... you should realize stock compensation is not actually something that the company pays but rather it comes from diluting the existing shareholders so more like the investors and stock owners who are paying for their salary
Agree. Overpay and over hiring is the cause for the layoffs. I doubt if there was anyone who did not expect these layoffs.
I called it out in software engineering reddit when first wave if lay off happened . Told them tech is trying to cut back salaries which where over inflated
That’s why they are hiring in India, they have very driven employees who they can pay more than 5x less than in the US.
Before I watch the video, I sure do hope he says something about tech salaries not collapsing yet. I just got into the field, let me have some over paid salaries first 👀
If you just graduated and have a job right now. You're in. Hold onto it
@@fark69what if I just got an internship at FAANG? Pls tell me I’m gud I wanna be rich 🫣😭
Meanwhile for the UK here is a comparison of Median incomes:
Year 1953 2023
Salary (GBP) 468 34963
New car family 358 26705
Years of salary 0.76 0.76
Average house 1,891 310,000
Years of salary 4.0 8.9
Well, this is interesting.
“It’s like the NFL draft” [describes the exact opposite of how the NFL draft works]
Being caught in the FAANGs of temporary outer wealth might make some thirst for permanent inner wealth.....
I disagree about front load vesting, it is still beneficial to you as employee because if average tenure is 2 years you just take money and go to other place if you don’t like Google.
This is why so many talented engineers are going to OpenAI and MSoft
Dam... I know I should be grateful but jeez, seeing vids like this really make my head spin...
10 years in the industry (after I got my BSc in Electrical and Comp Engineering) and still makin a bit above the 100k (around the nyc area).
I guess I've just been doing interviews wrong =(
Makes me wanna start lookin for a next job almost but I hear the job market is rough
You should probably try to get a job with Google or Meta, they pay the most but also do have the most layoffs
Eh, I just got a 270k remote offer recently (coming from 180). They’re still high if you look at the right places and negotiate