Compensation data is sourced from [Levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi/) and shows Software Engineer offer submissions between November 1st 2023 and November 1st 2024. The chart shows the top 5 highest median total compensation packages, organized by company, which includes base salary, equity grant, and any bonuses. Google Sheets was used to create the chart and Figma was used to clean it up and add labels.
Wow. Incredibly salaries! Hopefully my future kids love coding
Absolutely insane salaries at every level.
CS has really became a feast or famine field. I have friends who barely make 100k after 7 YOE and then others who are making 300k with similar YOE and complaining they are underpaid. SMH.
As someone who doesn’t work in tech – what does each level represent (amount of people managed, how many positions like this exist in a company of that size, rough time to get promoted between levels…). Thanks for the insider info
Is there a graph that shows the make up of base salary and RSO’s/bonuses in the TC?
I suddenly feel very underpaid.
Living in Seattle with a lot of friends at big tech companies, these ‘top paying’ company compensation values make no sense. I know an L4 at Amazon who makes a quarter of the numbers shown here. I think this data/graphic creates a false impression about a field that is already viewed as overcompensated.
Before you bring out the pitchforks, it looks like the TC isnt annualised.
In all of the well paid SWE positions you’re offered X USD yearly compensation, and sometimes 5-10X more in total stock compensation that vests over 3-4-5 years.
So technically someone that got offered 200k base +1M in stock options that vest over 5 years “made” 1.2M USD the first year. In reality though he/she “”””””only”””””””” earns 400k a year.
And that’s how these extreme numbers need to be interpreted
Source: I work on the field (hardware engineering, but our fields are really similar)
Not to be salty or anything but tech workers are overpaid for what they do, imagine making more than a Dr. when all you do is sit on your ass 70% of the day doing nothing. Looking forward to AI to replace these overpaid bums
My wife is in the field and this is not accurate. The principal engineers on her team with 10-15 years experience get paid about 150-175k a year.
I’m sorry but why are people mad that these are the salaries for TOP PAYING COMPANIES? Like, do they realize this is not the average?
Oracle absolutely does NOT pay that for Engineers; that’s definitely a very senior management role. Their pay is quite low for tech.
this chart is worth nothing without location
outside of SF and NY you will highly likely get nowhere near these salary levels
Laughs in UK minimum wage until L2
so a company like Jane street offers $400k for an entry level swe, but can’t even offer the same for a L2 experienced engineer? This data looks incomplete.
This chart makes no sense in that it’s comparing apples to oranges. Why, for example, is Uber only shown in the last grouping (“Principal”) vs. Meta which appears in multiple groups? Levels.fyi has comp data for all of these companies across all of these levels.
20+ years of experience here. I’ve never known anyone to make that sort of money. Experienced devs are in 120-180 range imho, and as backed up by all the green on the map.
It’s possible to make more with side gigs. I’ll be making 350+ this year due to side work on top of my full time job. This was by far my best year. But I’ve never seen a salary even close to what this post suggests
These are flat out misleading. If anything these may be individual outliers at those levels, definitely not the average/median or what someone should expect to receive at those levels. Better comparison would be to add 2 levels to each (eg “staff SWE” is L6 at most of these companies)
As a southern European in tech, I’m very jealous lol
I’m a recruiter in the tech space, I know people at these companies and this data is 100% fake. This is only accurate if the currency is in pesos.
People often doubt data from levels.fyi, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding around it. Here’s some helpful context from my experience working in Silicon Valley since 2008.
* **Levels** vary widely across companies. For instance, the “L1” on this chart corresponds to “L4” at Amazon, “L3” at Google, “L59” at Microsoft, etc.
* **Titles** aren’t standardized either. At Amazon, L4 (L1 on this chart) is Software Engineer 1, L5 is Software Engineer II, L6 is Senior Software Engineer, L7 is Principal, and L8 is Senior Principal. At Google and Meta, L3 is SWE I, L4 is SWE II, L5 is Senior SWE, L6 is Staff SWE, L7 is Senior Staff, and L8 is Principal. Principal Engineers at Google are at the same level as Directors, whereas at Amazon, they’re a level below Directors. So everytime you see Principal replace that with “Technical Director”.
* **Individual Contributors (ICs) vs. Management:** These levels apply to IC roles, but there are equivalents in management. For example, a Senior Engineer aligns with an entry-level manager (M0), who leads a small team of ~3-5 people. Staff Engineers are on par with M1 managers, who lead larger teams (6-10). Sr. Staff are equivalent to M2 / Senior Managers (managers of managers), who lead teams of 11-50. Principal Engineers function like Directors, often overseeing multiple teams with 100s of engineers.
* **Compensation:** Total pay generally includes base salary, stock (like RSUs that vest over four years), bonuses, and additional performance-based stock grants. The higher your level, the more your pay depends on stocks. For instance, a Principal Engineer or Director might make $250k–$350k in base pay, plus $700k–$1M in RSUs per year.
Each tier often doubts the existence of the tiers above them. At Meta, Google and Amazon a Principal Engineer shapes the direction of products and services involving hundreds of engineers over multiple years. It’s a challenging level that only a few engineers ever reach. Most stop at Senior Engineer.
At the scale of these companies paying them a million dollars to build, maintain, and run products and services that generate billions in profit is an absolute no-brainer.
On the flip side the expectations are pretty high. You get thrown into the deep end of a huge, ambiguous problem spanning teams of 100s of people. You have to come up with a solution, convince execs and teammates about the right direction and get them to deliver.
Yeah, but being a PE at one of these big companies is like a 1 in 1,000,000 job in the field. You are literally a god on Earth and have a deep skill set that almost nobody else in the entire world has – if it wasn’t for you the world could actually fall apart. “Entry level” software and engineers on the other hand, if you want to call it that, are also highly trained experts with 2-5 years of work experience and many of them have top degrees and even graduate degrees. Actual entry level jobs don’t exist anymore… Also these dollar amounts of not accurate. Divide by 2, and in some cases by 3 in most markets.
I was an IC5 at Meta and I made an amount that would put me in the Entry Level section of this chart. Friends I shared information with had similar ranges. Where is this information coming from?
Edit: If I consider RSUs and ESPPs Bonuses etc. maybe I make it into the low end of L2 on the chart.
OP any chance you’d do this for manager tiers based off levels salaries?
This is way off. L5 is nowhere near $1M.
The data source is incentivized to give fake numbers. They sell access to people looking for jobs and hiring workers.
The more people feel insecure about their current job the more likely they are to buy the website’s service. Ergo you should consider this an unreliable source.
Lol, Roblox’s entry level pay four times better than a Senior Dev job I have in Poland and a Senior job there is what I earn in almost 10 years. Could actually pay my mortgage and still have money to live with a bit over quarterly salary.
Coupang as the Korean Online Shop coupang?
Those levels are off, it’s L0-L9 which everyone uses. L9 is principal engineer, L7/8 is staff, senior is L5/6, L3/4 is just engineer, and L0/1/2 are co-op terms. And that’s total comp which includes salary and RSUs. Stock options if you get those have a strike price so you have to factor that in too. Plus if the company is not public you aren’t making that equity money and might never.
And most people don’t go past L6. Staff and above is just too much of a time and stress commitment.
Divide all Numbers by 2 and its accurate again
Any of these companies treat their employees well?
Curious how many of these companies are actually worth the stress they put you through for that paycheck.
33 comments
Compensation data is sourced from [Levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi/) and shows Software Engineer offer submissions between November 1st 2023 and November 1st 2024. The chart shows the top 5 highest median total compensation packages, organized by company, which includes base salary, equity grant, and any bonuses. Google Sheets was used to create the chart and Figma was used to clean it up and add labels.
The decision on leveling comes from Levels.fyi’s standard leveling system, which can be found [here](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Standard,Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer).
You can check out more information on Software Engineer salaries [here](https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer?countryId=254).
Wow. Incredibly salaries! Hopefully my future kids love coding
Absolutely insane salaries at every level.
CS has really became a feast or famine field. I have friends who barely make 100k after 7 YOE and then others who are making 300k with similar YOE and complaining they are underpaid. SMH.
As someone who doesn’t work in tech – what does each level represent (amount of people managed, how many positions like this exist in a company of that size, rough time to get promoted between levels…). Thanks for the insider info
Is there a graph that shows the make up of base salary and RSO’s/bonuses in the TC?
I suddenly feel very underpaid.
Living in Seattle with a lot of friends at big tech companies, these ‘top paying’ company compensation values make no sense. I know an L4 at Amazon who makes a quarter of the numbers shown here. I think this data/graphic creates a false impression about a field that is already viewed as overcompensated.
Before you bring out the pitchforks, it looks like the TC isnt annualised.
In all of the well paid SWE positions you’re offered X USD yearly compensation, and sometimes 5-10X more in total stock compensation that vests over 3-4-5 years.
So technically someone that got offered 200k base +1M in stock options that vest over 5 years “made” 1.2M USD the first year. In reality though he/she “”””””only”””””””” earns 400k a year.
And that’s how these extreme numbers need to be interpreted
Source: I work on the field (hardware engineering, but our fields are really similar)
Not to be salty or anything but tech workers are overpaid for what they do, imagine making more than a Dr. when all you do is sit on your ass 70% of the day doing nothing. Looking forward to AI to replace these overpaid bums
My wife is in the field and this is not accurate. The principal engineers on her team with 10-15 years experience get paid about 150-175k a year.
I’m sorry but why are people mad that these are the salaries for TOP PAYING COMPANIES? Like, do they realize this is not the average?
Oracle absolutely does NOT pay that for Engineers; that’s definitely a very senior management role. Their pay is quite low for tech.
this chart is worth nothing without location
outside of SF and NY you will highly likely get nowhere near these salary levels
Laughs in UK minimum wage until L2
so a company like Jane street offers $400k for an entry level swe, but can’t even offer the same for a L2 experienced engineer? This data looks incomplete.
This chart makes no sense in that it’s comparing apples to oranges. Why, for example, is Uber only shown in the last grouping (“Principal”) vs. Meta which appears in multiple groups? Levels.fyi has comp data for all of these companies across all of these levels.
20+ years of experience here. I’ve never known anyone to make that sort of money. Experienced devs are in 120-180 range imho, and as backed up by all the green on the map.
It’s possible to make more with side gigs. I’ll be making 350+ this year due to side work on top of my full time job. This was by far my best year. But I’ve never seen a salary even close to what this post suggests
These are flat out misleading. If anything these may be individual outliers at those levels, definitely not the average/median or what someone should expect to receive at those levels. Better comparison would be to add 2 levels to each (eg “staff SWE” is L6 at most of these companies)
As a southern European in tech, I’m very jealous lol
I’m a recruiter in the tech space, I know people at these companies and this data is 100% fake. This is only accurate if the currency is in pesos.
People often doubt data from levels.fyi, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding around it. Here’s some helpful context from my experience working in Silicon Valley since 2008.
* **Levels** vary widely across companies. For instance, the “L1” on this chart corresponds to “L4” at Amazon, “L3” at Google, “L59” at Microsoft, etc.
* **Titles** aren’t standardized either. At Amazon, L4 (L1 on this chart) is Software Engineer 1, L5 is Software Engineer II, L6 is Senior Software Engineer, L7 is Principal, and L8 is Senior Principal. At Google and Meta, L3 is SWE I, L4 is SWE II, L5 is Senior SWE, L6 is Staff SWE, L7 is Senior Staff, and L8 is Principal. Principal Engineers at Google are at the same level as Directors, whereas at Amazon, they’re a level below Directors. So everytime you see Principal replace that with “Technical Director”.
* **Individual Contributors (ICs) vs. Management:** These levels apply to IC roles, but there are equivalents in management. For example, a Senior Engineer aligns with an entry-level manager (M0), who leads a small team of ~3-5 people. Staff Engineers are on par with M1 managers, who lead larger teams (6-10). Sr. Staff are equivalent to M2 / Senior Managers (managers of managers), who lead teams of 11-50. Principal Engineers function like Directors, often overseeing multiple teams with 100s of engineers.
* **Compensation:** Total pay generally includes base salary, stock (like RSUs that vest over four years), bonuses, and additional performance-based stock grants. The higher your level, the more your pay depends on stocks. For instance, a Principal Engineer or Director might make $250k–$350k in base pay, plus $700k–$1M in RSUs per year.
While these numbers don’t reflect the whole industry, they are real for top tech companies in Silicon Valley. This [article](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal-nature-of-tech-compensation) from a former Uber engineering leader explains the “tri-modal” nature of tech compensation.
Each tier often doubts the existence of the tiers above them. At Meta, Google and Amazon a Principal Engineer shapes the direction of products and services involving hundreds of engineers over multiple years. It’s a challenging level that only a few engineers ever reach. Most stop at Senior Engineer.
At the scale of these companies paying them a million dollars to build, maintain, and run products and services that generate billions in profit is an absolute no-brainer.
On the flip side the expectations are pretty high. You get thrown into the deep end of a huge, ambiguous problem spanning teams of 100s of people. You have to come up with a solution, convince execs and teammates about the right direction and get them to deliver.
Yeah, but being a PE at one of these big companies is like a 1 in 1,000,000 job in the field. You are literally a god on Earth and have a deep skill set that almost nobody else in the entire world has – if it wasn’t for you the world could actually fall apart. “Entry level” software and engineers on the other hand, if you want to call it that, are also highly trained experts with 2-5 years of work experience and many of them have top degrees and even graduate degrees. Actual entry level jobs don’t exist anymore… Also these dollar amounts of not accurate. Divide by 2, and in some cases by 3 in most markets.
I was an IC5 at Meta and I made an amount that would put me in the Entry Level section of this chart. Friends I shared information with had similar ranges. Where is this information coming from?
Edit: If I consider RSUs and ESPPs Bonuses etc. maybe I make it into the low end of L2 on the chart.
OP any chance you’d do this for manager tiers based off levels salaries?
This is way off. L5 is nowhere near $1M.
The data source is incentivized to give fake numbers. They sell access to people looking for jobs and hiring workers.
The more people feel insecure about their current job the more likely they are to buy the website’s service. Ergo you should consider this an unreliable source.
Lol, Roblox’s entry level pay four times better than a Senior Dev job I have in Poland and a Senior job there is what I earn in almost 10 years. Could actually pay my mortgage and still have money to live with a bit over quarterly salary.
Coupang as the Korean Online Shop coupang?
Those levels are off, it’s L0-L9 which everyone uses. L9 is principal engineer, L7/8 is staff, senior is L5/6, L3/4 is just engineer, and L0/1/2 are co-op terms. And that’s total comp which includes salary and RSUs. Stock options if you get those have a strike price so you have to factor that in too. Plus if the company is not public you aren’t making that equity money and might never.
And most people don’t go past L6. Staff and above is just too much of a time and stress commitment.
Divide all Numbers by 2 and its accurate again
Any of these companies treat their employees well?
Curious how many of these companies are actually worth the stress they put you through for that paycheck.
Comments are closed.