<story><title>Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle</title><url>https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_throwawayyyyy1</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in Boston &amp;amp; went through an intensive FT job search here about 18 months ago. I&amp;#x27;m a mobile developer with 20+ years total experience in desktop, backend, web+mobile, product management, started my own company, etc.&lt;p&gt;Worked with lots of recruiters, personal network etc., felt like I really got a sense of what the salary landscape is here. Some facts:&lt;p&gt;- I was leaving a job at a hot unicorn startup that paid $125K base and I was told I was one of the highest paid engineers on staff (20+ engineers)&lt;p&gt;- I received 2 offers during this job search (was very selective else could have gotten many, many more)&lt;p&gt;- First offer: IOS developer at very large consulting firm for $120K base (with possibility of small bonus).&lt;p&gt;- Second offer: IOS developer position that was comparable in interest to first. Decided to &amp;quot;shoot for the moon&amp;quot; and ask for $145K. They agreed, and that&amp;#x27;s where I&amp;#x27;m (happily) working now.&lt;p&gt;According to this study, SW engineers with my level of experience in these cities are making $181K on &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt;! From what I could see that&amp;#x27;s just not available here to the rank and file, &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; experienced sw engineer. That salary would be more like top-of-range here.&lt;p&gt;Am I doing something wrong? Is Boston really that different than Seattle&amp;#x2F;NYC&amp;#x2F;SF?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morgtheborg</author><text>Yes. You didn&amp;#x27;t really negotiate. Ideally you interview broadly, then use the higher offers at companies that aren&amp;#x27;t you top choice to boost the offers from companies that aren&amp;#x27;t your top choice that offered less---and then use those offers to boost your actual top choice.&lt;p&gt;For example, company A offered 100k, B offered 120k, and C offered 130k. You want company A. You say to company B that company C offered 130k and you&amp;#x27;re interested but not sure with that diff. They up to 135. You say to company C, hey, company B offered 135, can you help me lower the diff? They up to 140. Then you go to company A, say you&amp;#x27;d love to, but you have offers for 135 and 140, so if they could do anything to lower the diff, great. They offer 130. At this point, you have three offers, all higher than you began with and can make a choice.</text></comment>
<story><title>Base salaries offered to software engineers in SF, NYC, and Seattle</title><url>https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_throwawayyyyy1</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in Boston &amp;amp; went through an intensive FT job search here about 18 months ago. I&amp;#x27;m a mobile developer with 20+ years total experience in desktop, backend, web+mobile, product management, started my own company, etc.&lt;p&gt;Worked with lots of recruiters, personal network etc., felt like I really got a sense of what the salary landscape is here. Some facts:&lt;p&gt;- I was leaving a job at a hot unicorn startup that paid $125K base and I was told I was one of the highest paid engineers on staff (20+ engineers)&lt;p&gt;- I received 2 offers during this job search (was very selective else could have gotten many, many more)&lt;p&gt;- First offer: IOS developer at very large consulting firm for $120K base (with possibility of small bonus).&lt;p&gt;- Second offer: IOS developer position that was comparable in interest to first. Decided to &amp;quot;shoot for the moon&amp;quot; and ask for $145K. They agreed, and that&amp;#x27;s where I&amp;#x27;m (happily) working now.&lt;p&gt;According to this study, SW engineers with my level of experience in these cities are making $181K on &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt;! From what I could see that&amp;#x27;s just not available here to the rank and file, &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; experienced sw engineer. That salary would be more like top-of-range here.&lt;p&gt;Am I doing something wrong? Is Boston really that different than Seattle&amp;#x2F;NYC&amp;#x2F;SF?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kwindla</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t hired in Boston in a few years, so my perspective may be out of date, but it definitely was the case up until 2014 or so (my most recent concrete experience making job offers to candidates in Boston) that Boston salaries for engineers were lower than SF and NYC.&lt;p&gt;That seems mostly to be a supply&amp;#x2F;demand thing (which is tangled up with local culture norms, too, in complicated ways). There is much, much less VC funding in Boston than in SF and NYC. But a great supply of engineers because of the universities. And there&amp;#x27;s no equivalent to Microsoft+Amazon (Seattle) and Wall Street (NYC) pushing up both demand and top-end base salaries for experienced engineers.&lt;p&gt;Also, you mention that your search was 18 months ago. In SF (and I think Seattle and NYC, too) the job market is crazily engineer-favorable right now. I&amp;#x27;d bet there&amp;#x27;s been 10% inflation in average base senior engineer salaries in SF in the last 18 months. That would match your $145k against ~$165k (rather than $181k).</text></comment>