Illustration: The Verge
Google and Meta tend to pay their software engineers more than their peers in Big Tech, according to new data from Blind, an anonymous forum for tech employees.
Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, pay the least for entry-level engineers on average, though compensation tends to become more comparable across Big Tech for senior talent. Amazon’s promotions can take longer than its peers, and its pay ranges for engineers are the widest.
The data is based on self-reported compensation packages from Blind users from January of last year to this month. While public companies have to report the average annual compensation for all their employees compared to what their CEOs make, this kind of level-specific pay data is closely guarded unless you are applying for a specific job. Blind is an anonymous platform, but it does require people to verify where they work by using their work email.
Here’s an interesting chart that illustrates the findings Blind recently published:
Image: Blind
A couple of other interesting tidbits from Blind:
“Meta engineers appear to level up the fastest and have some of the highest pay.”
“Microsoft has many job levels for software engineers, which might give the company more flexibility to hand out more promotions. However, their total compensation is lower than their peers across the board up until staff software engineer.”
If you’re still curious, another resource I’d recommend is the recent midyear compensation report from Levels.fyi, which also factors in what private tech companies pay across various levels of seniority. For example, an L5 engineer at OpenAI can make over $900,000 a year!
