I’ve got several years of experience with top strategic consulting. FB is offering me a business position in London with ~100k salary and 50k RSU over 4 years which, seeing the sde salaries here, is not serious. I’m considering, given I studied applied maths for my masters, to switching to the data science/sde/analytics route - via putting in nights of coursera etc. Is this realistic? P.S. honestly it seems pathetic that business salaries even after several years at a top form are lower than grad SDE
Median tech salaries are not $300k. Very few tech companies pay that much and that too only in few select locations like Bay Area Seattle and NY. Most other places median salary is $100-150k. Cost of living is also insanely high in Bay Area and NY. Seattle folks are the lucky ones with decent cost of living but still insane salaries
Seattle Folks also gets to deal with horrible weather. You get paid boats of cash to fight your depression
Well, what then would you make of the London weather?
From looking at the internal compensation group it appears that the equivalent London positions get paid about half the USD in GBP so London positions make about 60% of what they would make in the US
That’s insane! But the all the good people must have left London Facebook - either for the US or other firms?
Yeah a lot of people make the move for this reason and Facebook makes it easy to transfer. I think the demand for top talent in London just isn't that high so facebook doesn't have to pay as much there.
Supply and demand explains salary diff between SWE and business. Market is flooded, relatively speaking, with people in UK with business related backgrounds. It's less common to find good SWEs. As for US/UK disparity - the demand in UK isn't as big and they also have a bigger pool currently with all of the EU. The switch is worth considering if you think you'd enjoy it and you'd be willing to take the initial hit to get to equivalent TC in 2-3 years. Being a SWE also opens door to moving to US easier as there are more teams hiring! Good luck!
Do you think there is going to be a hit in salary? From what I see on this app, grad SWE salaries are better than some experienced business salaries, isn’t it the case?
Depends if the values you specified we're in £ or $. If the former then definitely yes on comp (not sure on RSU though).
Get another offer and start a bidding war
UK salaries are also a lot lower than US salaries.
But still, 120-130k usd TC given several years of experience seems low even compared to grad opportunities in data science, nov