The UK has horrendous pay for the same level of work. I left that country for California as soon as I realized this.

@@kyleb3580 Doesn't the cost of living almost balance this out? Remote work is on the rise, which is nice, but I have heard others basically feeling like they're living paycheck to paycheck with Six Figures in california.

@@dragoon9554 It absolutely does. My country, one of the wealthiest in the world, has a 50% smaller rent average compared to the US.

@@bobbobber9211 I live in a low-wage, low cost-of-living country in southern Europe. While it's great that my rent and food are relatively cheap, there are some things that don't vary that much in price from country to country, or are even more expensive here. Things like a litre of petrol cost more or less the same in Spain as they do in the UK. Also, tools you need for your job, electronic goods, things like that, are not cheaper. A €2,000 iMac could be two months' net salary for a graphic designer here, while their counterpart in the US might be able to pay for it with just a week's labour. Another difference to consider is that, even with a proportionally higher cost of living, the absolute amount that people are able to save in higher-wage countries could easily be an order of magnitude greater. If I'm able to put away a couple of hundred a month for a rainy day, someone in Norway, the US, or UAE might be putting away a couple of thousand a month. Even an average skilled worker in the US probably *saves* more in a year than their counterparts are able to *earn* doing similar work elsewhere.

Talent is not the same though.

Lol I’d say it’s going well so far 😁🚀

No we dont

@@ConnerArdman New company name??

​@@guapeousa sounds like Aloe Dessert. not to be confused with its competitor Pete Chode

Interesting, I didn't realize that was specific to American culture 🤔

I'm sure many cultures are uncomfortable talking about salaries, but apparently, not all of them.

Thank you! 😊

Why would a good dude work for one of the world's evilest companies?

@@mark_fi for money duh, and tech exposure is unmatched.

@@harshpatel105 "the money doesn't smell", - right 😁???

Thanks for always supporting! 😀

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

I can’t really speak for others since I haven’t worked at many other companies, but levels.fyi is a great free website to check out with salary information for most tech companies 😀

You’re a an engineer with a masters? If anything you’re part of the problem as I’m sure you’re making bank dude.

@@Astrothunder_ Not when you're a single income family living in Bellevue. I'm barely within the middle class range, and single family homes are going for well above $1 million on average over here. It's truly insane.

@@ericwood9961 I live in Bellevue but do industrial real estate. The pay is pretty good and not labor intensive.

I actually majored in Informatics as well! I just focused on taking all of the programming classes in INFO and I took basically every CS nonmajor class. It’s definitely not too late to make that switch if it’s something you want to do. Really 14x and data structures (373 I think?) are the only CS classes you actually need to get a job, but if you have time to supplement that with a few others it would obviously be great. Go Dawgs! 🐶

@@ConnerArdman Wow. You don’t know how much this encourages me lol. Will subscribe for more content! Best of luck dude!!

Thanks!

Thank you, it's been really great so far 😊

In Brazil, as a Middle Level Fullstack developer, I make 13000 USD a year give or take, each year you might get 100 USD raise if you get a good company.

@@HowlingBird Damn that's messed up. You need to move to America

Strange. Everybody thinks of Japan as equal to Switzerland.

Thanks! I was pretty surprised by how large the change was tbh 😂

It depends a lot on you and your learning style as well as your goals. There are some great coding bootcamps out there, although I can’t really recommend one specifically (that’d be like asking which university I recommend, there’s just too many). If you want to self-study, I really like ProgrammingExpert. Of course disclaimer there, I work for the company that created it, but I had no involvement in that product and have no financial incentive towards people buying it. If the goal is just to learn, I’d go the online course route. If the goal is to make it a career, then you’ll need to decide for yourself, but it can be very hard to get interviews without a related degree/bootcamp/experience. It’s not impossible, but that’s just something to keep in mind. I don’t know anything about the Meta coursera course, although in the past I’ve found most educational products put out by non-education organizations to be pretty subpar. It could be good though 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the kind words! As far as I know having a CS or related degree doesn't have any impact on salaries at most big tech companies. Landing interviews might be more difficult, but once you do I wouldn't expect your education to directly impact potential salaries.

That's what socialism gets you.

Thanks for sharing this! 😁 This really sheds some light on some of the differences that need to be considered when comparing pay by region. For instance, my rent was about 4x that, tuition for a 4 year CS degree can be anywhere from like 30k to 200k USD (although usually on the lower end of that if you stay in state), and healthcare is certainly not free (although like I mentioned in the video Meta does have pretty solid insurance for its US employees). At the end of the day, I do think the US is probably the place where software engineers can save the most money, but salaries alone definitely don't tell the whole story.

Taxes are generally lower in America and that's why pay is so much higher. The market just has less government involved friction. And we prefer it this way.

@@farzana6676 that used to be true. but california for example (including federal and state taxes) now has higher income tax (highest tax bracket), corporate tax and capital gains tax than for example sweden. also there is no gift or estate tax in sweden whereas in the US it’s like 40%. furthermore, the regulatory burdens are higher in california than in almost all european high tax countries. what used to be the land of the free is low the land of the highly taxed and highly regulated.

@@Bcutter Yeah I agree but that's only California and New York. That's why there's a mass exodus out of these two states. That's why this dude got this job in Seattle Washington where there are zero state taxes(he probably pays around 25% in total federal taxes & social security.) Great thing about America, if the liberals make some shitty regulatory and taxation policy, you just move to another State. You won't believe the numbers of Californians and New Yorkers coming to Texas and Florida. It's crazy, everywhere I look it's Californians here in Austin.

@@farzana6676 yeah i think that’s what’s gonna happen in the future. california and new york will be drained of all entrepreneurial or ambitious people. and i agree, that is what is great about the US. let the stupid states suffer the consequences of their poor decisions

Thanks! And yeah, I would imagine even before layoff rumors the general vibes were probably pretty bad given how much the stock price impacts income 😞

Do bear in mind that getting into Meta is like getting into an Ivy League. Very few can get in. You have to be very smart and hardworking to get these quick promotions and raises as well.

IT is a fundamentally different career than software engineering. It's basically the same difference as there is between being a plumber and being a civil engineer. Both are important, just not much overlap in skill set or what kinds of projects they work on.

​@@iThoughtOfaUsername Right but I am not just talking about a DBA or SYSAdmin...I am talking about people with software engineer titles at different companies I have been at that still fall under an 'IT' umbrella at some of those places(the pay structure is really similar). Not small places either....some are large cap companies ...sometimes 100+ billion market cap. With that said obviously Facebook is recruiting very high talent but still blew my expectations away how fast they promote and how aggressive the salary increases are.

​@@edthelazyboy Definitely they are hiring from good schools with a very tough interview process but I'm trying to put this into perspective. He's still a new grad who's not making that much less than most Senior Software Engineers in my area when you account for cost of living. Thats just really impressive and it means Meta has insane FU money to throw around at hiring. I mean he started full time August 2020 and left 10 months later. Meta hired a college grade an $85k signing bonus who left 10 months later. Just a different world there.

Honestly I don’t think it matters too much. Unless you’ve turned a project into a legitimate business or something else super impressive, specific projects probably won’t make you stand out more than others. Just do projects that you find interesting and that use a similar tech stack to the companies/roles you are applying to. Bonus points of course if you are creative and do something other than the common generic projects.

Yeah the bar is definitely high for hiring, but it's hard to quantify and they are much more interested in your ability to solve technical interview questions than the resume itself. That said, a huge portion of my coworkers either went to a highly ranked CS university or came from another FAANG company, so the resume certainly helps (probably just for getting the initial interview though). As for how the income made me feel, that's an interesting question. Initially, there was definitely a shock factor that was pretty exciting and validating. Although that quickly wore off and it just felt "normal". I'd say the only feeling I'd associate with it is the feeling of freedom and security. I don't really need to worry about paying rent or buying food, and I have the freedom to not say no to things purely out of financial necessity (at least within reason obviously). There's definitely a point where I don't think it has any measurable impact on my current life though. I'd basically live the exact same way making 100k as I would making 250k, just without the benefit of potentially retiring early.

Thanks for watching 😊

Thank you!

Yeah I worked with plenty of people without CS degrees. Many had related degrees (math, engineering, etc.), but there were a few with completely unrelated degrees. Getting interviews in this case can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. If you’ve had other developer jobs or went to a bootcamp, focus on that with the resume. If not, try to make some impressive projects to focus on. Really the goal is just to find a way to demonstrate that you can be as productive of a software engineer as someone who has a CS degree.

@@ConnerArdman thank you so much

@@ConnerArdman extremely inspiring as I'm someone that just completed a bootcamp and algo expert member

It's hard to quantify the level of knowledge needed, but most of my interviews for both full-time and intern positions asked medium level questions, and occasionally I was asked an easy/hard. I'm not sure on the difficulty in India vs. USA, but it's definitely a high bar regardless.

The level of DSA kind of depends on the competition. In India there are more young people who want to get into FAANG so you are competing with all of them.

I agree that we should stop bitching and add our value add. However you don't get job stability when you have a normal/low pay somewhere else. So, it's better to get a high pay even when the job might not be stable.

Or maybe just to not live in shithole country....

Generally speaking, it is considered a pretty fast paced company. That said, I think that is much more team and individual dependent than anything else. I had great work life balance, and basically never worked over 40 hours in a week (and usually worked well below that). And no, you don't get paid for overtime. It's a salaried job, so you don't track your hours in any official way. You're paid to get the job done, not to sit in a seat for x hours per day.

It’s hard to quantify the difficulty of the questions, but for the most part they are testing knowledge of data structures and algorithms. There are plenty of websites online with example interview questions (AlgoExpert, Leetcode, etc.).

@@ConnerArdman thank you for reply

I have a video on this, but I really didn’t work that much tbh. I probably averaged around 30 hours a week, and I don’t think I ever worked over 50 hours in a single week. That said, it can vary a lot from person to person and team to team. I certainly knew people who worked 40-60 hours every week.

I live in Seattle, so taxes are lower than California. I usually end up paying about 25% of my income in taxes.

@@ConnerArdman Awesome, thanks for reply :)

It isn't any different than any other company, you just apply on their website or through a recruiter/career fair if you have one. I think the applications for most tech internships tend to start opening up around September when all of the US universities are back in session. From there it's just about your resume and a few coding interviews.

@@ConnerArdman thanks a lot sir 😊 hopefully I can catch up to you in your new company if you ever have internship positions :D

Job postings in US show yearly salary before tax.

@@nessat1783 got it. Thanks 🙂

I was in Seattle, although my understanding is that at the time offers were the same between Seattle and MPK. I _think_ Seattle salaries are like 5% lower than MPK now, but I'm not completely sure. Whatever the difference is, it definitely doesn't account for the difference in taxes and cost of living.

@@ConnerArdman that makes sense. Thanks for the info!

I need to apply to Facebook! Crap. I never followed through with recruiters from Amazon/Facebook/Google and I have a computer science degree from the same school, UW. After 13 years of professional experience, I have never made anything remotely close to what you made in your first year. Well, I am not dead yet. Graduated near 2008. This video makes me equally sad and motivated, such strange emotions. Lol

I mean my base salary has exceeded what you mentioned, but total compensation. I think you missed the part of the stock options not actualizing? Since it was on a 4 year vesting cycle? Or I'm likely mistaken?

are you kidding me??? these techies get paid more than nurses!!! how is that even right?! techies should be paid less....i mean RNs don't make bad money but they definitely deserve some of these good perks that these techies have like free food in the office, free health/wellness money for the gym, etc!!!

@@11pinkie11 more demand more value techies should earn kore because engineers and scientists are at the centre of the world without them no industry could stand.they also have more knowledge and brain than some mere nurses lol.🤣

@@AmritenduRana31082000 theyre more lifeless than nurses. they are literaly robots

He'd an laude degree honor remember that

@HOW TO but these are general common numbers regardless of honors. I do have a near 4.0 GPA too

@@winterheat Same here with 2.5 years exp also. This salary is almost 6x higher than mine in Europe. Its really unbelievable

@@XxCoNtRaDiCTxX1 What do you expect. You can't compare earning potential in socialist countries with a capitalist country like the United States.

When I was an intern someone started a Google Sheet and shared it with all of the interns. I don’t think I have that anymore, but it had a few hundred return offer details for different positions. From my experience levels.fyi is very accurate though.

That's awesome, big congrats on all your success! I couldn't agree more. I think there can be an over-romanticizing of tech/engineering when in reality there are tons of other ways to make a great living 😊

@@ConnerArdman at the end of the day in 20 years my salary probably won’t break past 200k but your will probably be more like 500k lol. Congrats to us both. Anyone reading this, all it takes is hard work and a mastery of a skill set & never taking no for an answer.

@@nicholasbarrett7131 in my experience the biggest issue we have with most companies nowadays is hard work + skill is not rewarded.... HR seems to be the biggest issue in my eyes if you are friends/drinking buddies/related i have seen more people get promotions wage increases etc... also the belief that degrees equate to being a more likely skilled employee i make good money but I'll be honest cards had to all line up in order for this to happen and I ended up being in the right place at the right time...

@@wnxdafriz The great thing about America is that you can always change jobs or change States. There are just so many opportunities out there. From Austin to California, to Miami.

What is TC?

@@farzana6676 total compensation

@@jakstrike1 That's crazy. Even IB and Hedge Fund associates don't make that.

This guy only worked a little over 1 year. You’re watching videos of people who have been working 5-10 years

There are a lot of paths to getting the initial interviews (applying online, referrals, career fairs / recruiting events, etc). Prior internships, research, teaching, etc. type positions are definitely helpful, but not required. In my case, I met a recruiter at a university career fair and got the interview. Beyond that, it is almost entirely just about interview performance. I don't think grades matter much at all. My GPA was on my resume, but they never asked about it or to see my transcript.

Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous. At some point I think Facebook learned they can attract talent away from other big tech companies without increasing salaries much (i.e. long term expenses) by just giving a big signing bonus. It’s just a recruiting expense to them. For a while they even gave out a good number of 100k signing bonuses to returning interns.

@@ConnerArdman Holy smokes…I could pay my house off instantaneously. With that said, the tech space is a little shifty right now. Especially for the big companies. I am terrified of jinxing it, but - I am in love with my role to the point that, even while making far less that amounts referenced in this video, it would take a lot to make me jump ship. The fit is a dream, they value people, and I feel a bit safer than I might at Google. I know it’s contextually fuzzy, but what are your thoughts on that sort of value? I’ve been a freelance dev for over a decade and just two years ago devoted myself to a stellar edtech company.

Once you can afford to pay your bills and live a comfortable life, I'd value the other benefits a lot more personally. It sounds like you've got a pretty great gig! Also, once you account for the cost of living in the Midwest vs. SF/Seattle/NYC, the pay difference is much less. For example, that $100k signing bonus wouldn't even be a down payment on a house here unless you want to live in a rundown 1920's shack or have a 1hr+ commute to work.

Yeah levels.fyi has data about a bunch of different roles. For non-engineering roles in tech (pm, design, etc), the salaries tend to be fairly similar but with less stock/signing bonus. Outside of the tech org (ops, recruiting, sales, etc), it can vary a lot by role, but most are significantly less than engineering.

Thank you!

Putin wants to have a word with you

Be careful. You badmouth Putin's economy 🤣 Most of Russian tech bros are leaving anyway. Get out while you can.

@@farzana6676 I don't know where to go. I don't want to go to any city that is in autocracy, or joined anti-Russian sanctions, or has lower living standards than Moscow does. I can't find any city that satisfies my 3 simple requirements.

@@luck3949 Your problem is anti-Russian sanctions. You should support anti Russian sanctions like Gary Kasparov and move to America.

@@farzana6676 supporting anti-Russian sanctions contradicts my moral standards, and is therefore not an option

You mean to do another coding interview or are you suggesting something different than that?

@@ConnerArdman I mean you should do interview with your subscribers.

Ah I see, that could be a fun idea! I'll write that down as a potential video idea for the future. Thanks! 😊

The terms are pretty much interchangeable. There is some interesting history there, because in some countries the term "engineer" can only be used if you have a specific certification (similar to how you must pass The Bar Exam in the US to be an attorney). Because of this, I think the term developer tends to be more common outside of the US, while engineer seems to be the preferred term in the US where such requirements don't exist. At the end of the day, it's the same job though. I've never seen a company hire both software engineers and software developers as different positions. At Facebook I worked in the privacy organization. I'm actually not too sure what I can/cannot say (I don't think I signed any NDAs, but honestly I don't remember fully), but broadly speaking I worked on internal tools used by legal/policy/etc. to manage and mitigate any privacy incidents that might happen. For the most part I worked on the frontend, so I built user-interfaces that these people would use for their day-to-day work.

@@ConnerArdman thanks

I had only been at the company for 4 months, so I don’t know if these refresher numbers are a great data point to generalize. I think in general they give pretty standard refreshers.

Self taught developers absolutely can get jobs as software engineers, but it is much harder. You will be competing with people from bootcamps and universities, so you have to find another way to stand out. I think going from self-taught without a degree to a FAANG or similar job is pretty unrealistic, but you can certainly work your way up to it over time.

Probably around 30. Occasionally more, occasionally less, but never more than ~50 in a single week. It’s very individual/team dependent though. There certainly were people working way more than me.

yeah, it's videos like this that make me think this guy is in the very small minority rather than being the norm.

Yeah I want to eventually make a detailed video breaking down my expenses/cost of living. But the short version is that living in Seattle I paid no state/local income taxes. Rents in areas near the tech offices for decent apartments tend to be 2k-3k if you don't want a roommate (although of course they can get cheaper or way more expensive). One nice perk of working at companies like Facebook is you don't really need to pay for much else if you don't have any other major financial responsibilities. Food was free 5 days a week (excluding covid times when the office was closed of course), healthcare/insurance was very good and close to free, they paid for our gym memberships, and they paid for our public transit cards so living near downtown it was easy to not own a car. I'd say all in, I probably spent 3-5k per month during my time at Facebook as a full time employee, with some months higher than others. I probably could have gotten that lower if I really tried, but that was a spending level I was pretty comfortable with.

@@ConnerArdman How many hours did you put in per week? Great salary though regardless but if you were doing extremely long days all the time then it makes sense.

I didn’t actually work that much honestly. Most weeks I worked around 30 hours, just with an occasionally more stressful week if I was launching some new feature. I don’t think I ever worked more than ~50 hours in a single week though. This is very, very team and individual dependent though. There certainly are people working 60+ hours a week, but I never felt a need to. I probably could have really grinded to get even higher bonuses, but I was more interested in my sanity. It also comes down to time management. I tried to be really good at not wasting working hours. I actually have a whole video on that if you’re interested 🙃

@@ConnerArdman Fair play then. I can imagine some working 15hour days though. In that case the money isn't that good when you consider the hours. Excellent in your case though!

I live in Seattle, so there are no state income taxes. Here’s a good calculator for take home pay that’s been fairly accurate in my experience: smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes I paid roughly 25% of my income in taxes, but it’s hard to get an exact number because I never spent a full calendar year working at just Facebook. Expenses in Seattle are also a lot lower. As a single person without other major financial obligations (medical expenses, bad debt, etc) I found I can live very comfortably on about $3000-$4000 per month. If I had to I could probably get that down to around $2000 living with roommates and lowering my standard of living. I don’t think I could spend much more than around $5000 a month living reasonably, but again ymmv based on your life situation and spending habits. I might make a breakdown video of my expenses if there is enough interest, but generally it’s probably in that range.

The bay will eat one up lol. Nice place to live tho

I paid ~25% in total taxes (federal, medicare, social security). I live in Seattle, so I there's no state/local income taxes.

Lol in a way it does, because those things all impact the stock price and bonuses. 📈

Yeah it is getting almost impossible to get away with anything!!

No it wasn’t. I never really worked all that much to be honest. I left to join AlgoExpert, mostly because I was really excited about the opportunity and it aligned with my personal goals a bit better. I have a full video explaining that thought process 😀

@@ConnerArdman i see, thank you for sharing

I left to join AlgoExpert and create the FrontendExpert frontend interview prep product, which takes up most of my time (along with KZfaq 😊).

@@ConnerArdman That's cool! Glad you've found your path 🙌

@@ConnerArdman how is the pay at your new job compared to Facebook?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "average". This is pretty typical (although still a bit on the high side) for big tech companies in Seattle, New York or The Bay Area. At the "target" CS universities in the US, getting these jobs is fairly common. At schools that are less heavily recruited from, it's a lot less common to land these jobs, but it's still possible. Outside of the major tech hub cities, compensation tends to be a lot lower, but the cost of living also tends to be a lot lower. Of course this is still a range and it has plenty of outliers. I've heard everything from new grad software engineers in the US making like $40k all the way up to $300k+ at some hedge funds. I'd guess if you took the median of all of them, it would be somewhere in the $80k-$120k range though, because the vast majority don't live in these expensive tech hubs and don't work for FAANG-like companies.

The cost of living in Seattle is high, but not nearly as high as the bay area. There's no state income tax which helps a lot, and you can easily get your rent in the 2000-2500 range (or lower with roommates, or much higher of course if you get something super nice). I'll probably make a video on my exact expenses eventually, but even on the intern salary I think most reasonable people without outside major expenses would still be able to save a good percentage while living well in Seattle.

I left FB, but at the time I worked around 30 hours a week usually, with occasional longer weeks (never more than ~50 hours). I have a full video on this if you’re interested 😀

I have a whole video on this, but the TL;DR is I joined AlgoExpert and created the FrontendExpert product. This just felt like an opportunity to have a lot more "impact" with my work and something I was really excited to work on.

Thank you!

I have a video on why I quit, but it had nothing to do with work life balance. It was more just about the type of work I was interested in doing and a really cool opportunity to join AlgoExpert that I didn't want to pass up. As far as work life balance is concerned, I probably averaged about 30 hours/week. I don't think I ever worked over 50 hours in a week, and certainly never got anywhere near 80.

@@ConnerArdman Thanks for sharing. It must be one heckuva great job to pass up FB. That’s a pay package that most work their entire career to obtain.

Yeah man, I am from Pakistan. This amount is horrible!!! SE salaries, here, are very low comparitively.

I’m not sure the comparison makes perfect sense, because the cost or living in US tech cities is so much higher. That said, the cost of living difference almost definitely doesn't account for the whole difference in pay 😔. Software engineers in the US do just tend to make a lot more than in most other countries, even those with higher costs of living.

@@ConnerArdman Yeah man! This is right too. But, here in Pakistan, some of the fresh graduates start their first job at just $4600/year. There is no comparison with US

@@ConnerArdman I think the quality of life you live in USA will cost the same in India. We think the cost living in India is low because we compromise with the quality of life. If we live with the same quality it will cost the same as USA.

That's the goal 👍

AlgoExpert 👍

I have a whole video on this, but the TL;DR is I left to join AlgoExpert and create the FrontendExpert frontend interview prep product. Nothing against Facebook, I just wanted to work on something where I felt like my individual contributions were more impactful/less replaceable.

Yeah I left Facebook to work at AlgoExpert almost a year ago now 👍

I wouldn't say it is pointless to go into other fields. If you're purely optimizing for income, then sure software engineering is probably the highest ROI from college. That said, I think there are a few strong counterpoints: 1. The income ceiling for some other careers is much higher. It's far more likely for a doctor or lawyer to make 500k-1M+ than a software engineer. 2. Professions like medicine allow you to make extremely good money from pretty much anywhere (at least in the US). Software engineers only tend to make this type of money in San Francisco, New York and Seattle, all very high cost of living areas. 3. There have been pretty good studies showing that happiness derived from income doesn't grow linearly. There's usually pretty sharp diminishing returns once you have enough money to afford necessities and a few reasonable "splurges". For instance, if you could make 100k doing something you love or 250k doing something you hate, I think most people would be much happier doing the thing they love. Of course it's easy to say that coming from a lucky field where the thing I love doing happens to pay really well, but I think it's generally true. I've seen a lot of people come into software engineering just to make money and they end up burnt out pretty fast. I also know many people who chose other fields that pay well, but maybe less than software engineering, and for most of them that was probably the right choice. All that said, it's an amazing field to be in and I am extremely fortunate/grateful that the thing I fell in love with doing happens to also be a lucrative career 😊

😂 It’s actually pretty common to leave right after promotions. It gets you one last bonus, and it sort of “locks in” that higher level if you were to ever come back. It sounds like a funny time to leave, but logically it’s the time that makes the most sense.