I would love to see more details on the actual compensation at Google.
My anecdotal feeling after discussing with multiple googlers is that the top performers are overly well paid, but most engineers are paid under what they could get at another company.
They use their marketing hype/PR and their brand name to be able to achieve this, with an unlimited supply of fanboys that want to get in even possibly while being paid under market rate.
I used to work in fintech, and yes, the pay was substantially better there (I'm at Google now - I took a pay cut to go across).
Likewise, I had an offer from Amazon around the same time as Google's offer - which was actually quite a bit higher. So from my own experience, and from friends, Amazon does indeed pay substantially more than Google.
I've heard other tech is sightly higher - however, I didn't go to Google for the pay (although I wouldn't say no to competitive pay, haha), but there were other drivers for me (work/life balance etc.).
Are you accounting for levels here? It may well be that Google pays better than almost anyone for a given level, but a given engineer at Google may be able to level up by leaving.
I really can't imagine a job that I could leave to go to that would pay as well or better. And I'm by no means high up the level ladder. Maybe a startup that I got lucky at, but no regular 9-5 job would be able to match.
In tech, Facebook and LinkedIn are clearly higher payers, especially when you account for Google’s tendency to down level. AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft also provide much higher base pay than Google so assuming they have half decent IPOs their total comp will be higher, particularly after accounting for downleveling.
Google is clearly in this too tier of companies that compensate well, but it seems to rely on its brand name to be a little stingy. Anecdotally though, a lot of Google engineers seem to work a lot less than people at these other companies, except maybe LinkedIn.
And of course it is significantly better paying then Amazon and Apple.
Free food is standard across all the top companies. I imagine most would be providing transit perks as well (obviously Lyft would haha). 401k match might be lacking at Lyft and AirBnB though.
I'd say the general pattern is that Lyft and AirBnB are more selective in their hiring (which they can do with their smaller employee numbers), in exchange for paying more. There is also a risk premium since the value of their RSUs probably has more variability for companies that haven't IPO'd yet. And just a few years back it wasn't even clear when employees would get liquidity for their stock, though that has obviously changed now with the pending IPOs.
LinkedIn is an interesting case though. It's consistently the highest compensating company with liquid comp, and has a good reputation for work life balance. It's also not any more selective than Facebook or Google in hiring. I think being only a small division of Microsoft means it can be bankrolled and has less pressure to cut costs (I haven't seen any numbers for Github but it wouldn't surprise me if their comp is similar for the same reason). LinkedIn also likely compensates more to overcome the brand value / reputation that Facebook and especially Google have in comparison.
I should say though, having joined Facebook recently, that I'm noticing there are a ton of miscellaneous things that the company does to make employees' lives easier that may not have all that much monetary value, but really add up towards life quality. E.g. on-campus medical centers and insurance provider with really good customer service, e-waste dropoffs, and so on and so forth.
All of them, except maybe Pinterest, have clear functioning business models, and even Pinterest seems like a safer prospect than Snapchat given that it has already successfully accomplished a decent amount of monetization.
None of those things mean that the current valuation is warranted. Uber for example is valued at 120B. That valuation likely rests on them being able to monopolize autonomous drivers, which isn't likely.
Otherwise, they're only profitable in some markets and have gotten regulated out of others. That leaves them with the options of scaling back or running at a loss. Neither if those confidently signal "value me higher than Costco or Adobe".
No, it's valued at 70 billion. Though at that valuation according to https://www.levels.fyi/2018 numbers, its compensation is below other top paying companies, so it would likely have to IPO at something like its target 120 billion IPO to beat other companies' compensation.
Uber already has more net revenue than Adobe. It has slightly negative profit margins but is growing significantly faster than Adobe, suggesting that there is plenty of room to let off the gas and let profitability take over at the expense of rapid growth.
In that light, it seems perfectly reasonable that it would IPO at a valuation similar to Adobe.
This is a fallacy, and it only holds up because Google stocks went up over the past years. You need to account for the value of the stocks at the time of signing your offer. (As the increase of stock is not foreseen and as nothing to do with your offer).
Not true, refresh grants happen every year and even if the stock stayed flat, the value of them is very high.
Now if Google lost 50% of its stock value overnight, that'd be a different story. But that would be reflected in the next round of refreshes, which are based on a monetary value at the time of grant.
My anecdotal feeling after discussing with multiple googlers is that the top performers are overly well paid, but most engineers are paid under what they could get at another company.
They use their marketing hype/PR and their brand name to be able to achieve this, with an unlimited supply of fanboys that want to get in even possibly while being paid under market rate.