These compensation amounts reflect what I am seeing in the market. Whenever I see these amounts, like many others, I am somewhat amazed, but then I stop, look at my own history and reflect on the environment that supports paying a Staff engineer $300k a year.
Here is my story, which may or may not shed some light on working in high tech in Silicon Valley. I was part of a couple of successful startups in Portland, OR and was convinced by a venture capitalist to join a software company as VP of Engineering in 1997. I was paid $225,000, given a bonus schedule and a percentage of the proceeds of the sale should one occur. For a while I flew from Portland to SFO and took a cab to Foster City every week. I eventually moved, trading my unique, top floor apartment with a view of a park for a generic stucco box apartment in Burlingame that cost three times as much. The work was brutal and involved lots of lay-offs, restructuring, working with vendors to avoid defaults and the usual joy of dealing with a company in crisis. It was soul crushing, but the company finally sold and I took my bonus and started another software company in Burlingame.
I did various startups, some good, some bad and ended up at Apple at what was called Engineer/Scientist (some number here). I can't remember what the number meant. I was making $145,000 and received 27,000 options priced at $9.00 a share. I bought a really boring townhouse off of Lawrence Expressway for $300,000 that cost $57,000 in 1967. It is jammed into an already dense neighborhood totally devoid of any personality. The very same townhouse just sold for 1.1 million because you can walk to Apple Parc from it.
Living in Silicon Valley, especially as a young engineer making $185,000 means living either in San Francisco and commuting, or living in one the fairly identical communities all along 101 in a fairly identical apartment building or renting a house. Maybe you can find a situation that is more unique, or boost your commute time and live in the periphery. The commute is no fun, because you and everybody else is arriving at your various mega-campus' around 9:00 and leaving around 18:00.
I often felt like I was going insane. I felt like people were piled on top of me. I would go on two-hour bike rides at lunch everyday into the hills to escape. I was making good money but the "nice" houses in Palo Alto or Woodside were extremely expensive. The cost of living was quite high, so even though one might make a lot, you can expend a lot. When I went out to dinner, everyone around me was talking about their startup, IPO, options, explaining how they were going to tell their early investors to "go pound sand", etc.
This is my experience and of course your mileage may vary. You may love the "hustle" the energy and all that entails. I don't know how people manage to raise kids or have a peaceful life there. I am sure it can be done. When I personally think of having to go back to living in Mountain View/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara and commute to the GooglePlex/Apple Parc/Facebook Hacker Way I am overcome by a deep sense of anxiety, dread and nausea.
Once again, this is my experience and I understand and value people who love this environment. Please don't be blinded by these high dollar compensation plans. I promise you there is more to life than making this amount to work in Silicon Valley. Please factor in all of the environmental values when you decide to move to Gilroy with your family to work at Facebook. There is definitely a cost.
We should also keep in mind how privileged we are to be in the right place (US) at the right time.
A lot of my high school friends (in Queens NY) are turning 30 and still living with their parents, unable to move out because they have to help with rent and bouncing from one dead end job to another.
I visit my friends at Google, who spend half their time doing yoga, and come across contracted security and cafeteria workers who remind me of my old classmates.
My significant other, who spent 3 years getting a graduate degree to work in healthcare is now deep in debt and trapped in a job that has her waking up at 4 am for 12 hour shifts that usually end up tuning into 14 hours, under constant stress taking care of patients on the verge of dying.
SV is what happens when you take typical American suburban hell, and then throw literally trillions of dollars on top without changing anything. Yeah, you can afford a Model S. But you're still sitting in traffic on 101 for hours every day. I don't understand how anyone lives there. It's boring as hell. The weather is "nice" but everything is so brown. The only people left are tech people, like you said.
A very good question, thanks for asking! I think about that a lot. This answer is going to get a little bit deep (for me) so please forgive me.
My career later took me to Los Angeles in 2009 and then to Seattle in 2018. Both my wife and I gave a lot to our careers. My wife also worked at Apple, but had a huge change of heart and went back to school to get a masters in social work. She was also an Army Reservist and was deployed to Iraq a couple of times and various other spots in the world. Regardless of ones opinion of America's foreign adventures, she felt that she was making a difference in the lives of people (she was in Civil Affairs) when she deployed.
After a few years in Seattle at Amazon, we both decided to step back from the fast pace of life. We moved to Tucson, AZ, she worked with veterans and I did some consulting and taught programming to adults wanting a career change for Startup Tucson. Life finally seemed pretty good!
Sadly, my wife passed from cancer a few weeks ago, so I often reflect on our thirty years together. How much time was consumed with the frenzy of startups and Apple, etc? If I could go back in time and spend every possible moment with her rock climbing, camping, skiing, holding hands, working with the homeless, enjoying a slow Sunday reading by the fire, etc. I would do that in an instant.
She was 51 and I am 53. We both thought we had a lot of time left! As for me, I am entirely unexceptional. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for a lot of things. My advice to anyone who may be in a similar position to what I was in a few years ago is to take a pause, zoom out and look at the big picture. We love to talk about IPOs, exits, deal sheets, cap tables and more. This is all fleeting. We only really have each other and the most important capital is human capital, especially when provided by the ones you love and who love you.
Thanks for sharing and raises a lot of points people miss about work-life balance.
A good friend shared Brian Dyson's 1991 commencement speech recently, of which I will quote this section:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls ~ family. health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked. nicked. damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
Here is my story, which may or may not shed some light on working in high tech in Silicon Valley. I was part of a couple of successful startups in Portland, OR and was convinced by a venture capitalist to join a software company as VP of Engineering in 1997. I was paid $225,000, given a bonus schedule and a percentage of the proceeds of the sale should one occur. For a while I flew from Portland to SFO and took a cab to Foster City every week. I eventually moved, trading my unique, top floor apartment with a view of a park for a generic stucco box apartment in Burlingame that cost three times as much. The work was brutal and involved lots of lay-offs, restructuring, working with vendors to avoid defaults and the usual joy of dealing with a company in crisis. It was soul crushing, but the company finally sold and I took my bonus and started another software company in Burlingame.
I did various startups, some good, some bad and ended up at Apple at what was called Engineer/Scientist (some number here). I can't remember what the number meant. I was making $145,000 and received 27,000 options priced at $9.00 a share. I bought a really boring townhouse off of Lawrence Expressway for $300,000 that cost $57,000 in 1967. It is jammed into an already dense neighborhood totally devoid of any personality. The very same townhouse just sold for 1.1 million because you can walk to Apple Parc from it.
Living in Silicon Valley, especially as a young engineer making $185,000 means living either in San Francisco and commuting, or living in one the fairly identical communities all along 101 in a fairly identical apartment building or renting a house. Maybe you can find a situation that is more unique, or boost your commute time and live in the periphery. The commute is no fun, because you and everybody else is arriving at your various mega-campus' around 9:00 and leaving around 18:00.
I often felt like I was going insane. I felt like people were piled on top of me. I would go on two-hour bike rides at lunch everyday into the hills to escape. I was making good money but the "nice" houses in Palo Alto or Woodside were extremely expensive. The cost of living was quite high, so even though one might make a lot, you can expend a lot. When I went out to dinner, everyone around me was talking about their startup, IPO, options, explaining how they were going to tell their early investors to "go pound sand", etc.
This is my experience and of course your mileage may vary. You may love the "hustle" the energy and all that entails. I don't know how people manage to raise kids or have a peaceful life there. I am sure it can be done. When I personally think of having to go back to living in Mountain View/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara and commute to the GooglePlex/Apple Parc/Facebook Hacker Way I am overcome by a deep sense of anxiety, dread and nausea.
Once again, this is my experience and I understand and value people who love this environment. Please don't be blinded by these high dollar compensation plans. I promise you there is more to life than making this amount to work in Silicon Valley. Please factor in all of the environmental values when you decide to move to Gilroy with your family to work at Facebook. There is definitely a cost.