I make 80k living in Los Angeles with not so fantastic benefits. I have a BS in Comp Sci from a fairly highly ranked university (top 50). I have worked remotely for a small company since I graduated for a little over a year on a team of 3 (myself and two superiors). Since I am remote I was not given any kind of relocation bonus (but I have to move anyways because the other option is living with my parents??) or stock options. Our 401k match and quarterly bonuses are very minimal. I am not expecting more than 2-3% raise yearly. I do full stack work (react/angular, node, mysql/crm integration) including CI and testing for an application our clients use. I have been making very large decisions about the product since day 1, and have been relied on in making some infrastructure decisions across the entire company. I feel like the things I am doing are well above my pay grade (some of which is understandable because the company is smaller) especially compared to the things my friends are doing at the larger companies they joined for a similar or higher pay. While the hours are fairly relaxed and low stress, I can't help but feel underpaid. Am I underpaid?
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Now relative to the workload and industry and fact you get no equity? Probably yes you are underpaid. Could you make more if you were able to get a job at FAANG? Yes most assuredly. But do you want to? The answer is to always do your diligence and look at other jobs. Or have a direct conversation with your boss about workload vs comp and why you have no equity. Lot of variables. No right answer IMO.
With a smaller company, you will wear mutiple hats, so you will end up learning way more.
It depends on what you value the most, good amount of interesting work or rest and vest? Up to u
As a software engineer, you are definitely underpaid