I am curious to know average salary in big Chinese corporations as an engineer. Specifically, what is annual income for college graduates and average engineers of about 10 years of experience? I read ar article somewhere before that Microsoft China used to pay a lot by Chinese standard before but nowadays companies like Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu and Tencent are paying more. Can someone share rough estimate? My friend told me average factory workers make about $600 per month but software engineers can make 6 digit salary easily if they have good 5-10 years of experience. While I can understand China came a long way but I think 6 digit salary is probably for less than 3% who got lucky with stock mostly given that factory workers make only that much.
As far as I know, new grads who has a master degree get paid like 30k to 40k usd a year. However, outstanding ones could get much more here...
For a senior developer with 10 years experience in a top tier tech company, Alibaba for example, a annual TC of 1-3 mil RMB (150k-450k USD) is reasonable consider the stock appreciation these years. However, I heard that the stock awards in these companies are cut significant as they become more mature, so expect a much lower TC (say half of above?) if you join recently even with the same level/title. And btw, the figure I am talking about is pre tax. The tax bracket at this level is 45%. As for new grads, a typical TC is around 40-50k USD. For other not so prestigious companies, salary could be as low as 5k USD a year. All above are based on anecdotal data from my friends.
Thanks! That is pretty good.
My friend got his Bachelor degree in EE from a Chinese university and joined China Telecom as TPM since he graduated 12 years ago - 0 overseas experience. He got a TPM offer from Alibaba last year. Base salary was 600k RMB (USD 90k) and TC was around 1.5M RMB (USD 230k) at the time - probably much higher now given Alibaba stock appreciation over the past year. He rejected the offer because he did not want to relocate to Hangzhou, where Alibaba HQ is.
Senior dev in Microsoft China can make $100k after tax income.
Well, apart from Google/Microsoft, most of the engineers working in the tech industry in China are severely overworked -- this is the dark side of those big salaries. Typically, companies like Huawei/Alibaba/Tencent are notorious on their 996 (working 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week) or even 997 (working 9am to 9pm, 7 days per week) policies. If anyone refuses to work overtime, HR will fire this person with ridiculous reasons such as "lacking passion in the work" or "workloads are not saturized".
Truth. Do not fantasize working there, it is not nearly as good as here at google
My friend was saying one or two more hours everyday but not the weekends. That sounded about par to many tech companies here. Microsoft and Google are known to provide good WLB so comparison might not be fair.
Graduated 10 years ago from top 2 Chinese university and came to America, my college classmates who stayed at home’s total net worth are much more than mine because of appreciation of housing price in first tier cities. Most of them now own a few 1-3 million usd condos. Besides that they are now Alibaba P8, P9, Tencent L3.1-3.3, or at Huawei earning 3 to 5 million rmb(400-600k usd) per year easily. Feeling like a loser comparing to them. Not sure about new grad comp. But nowadays Chinese top local product companies pay significantly more than western companies’ China branches. Almost no one would choose MS/G over BAT or other unicorns unless they want to immigrate to US on L1 visa, which was not the case 10 years ago, while everyone wanted to work for MS/G.
I worked in China as well as a few other countries. A L5 SDE in Amazon China paid around 400K-700K RMB(60K-110K USD) per annual before tax, and the incoming tax is about 20-25%. In Microsoft China the pay is slightly lower than Amazon China. For an equivalent level in Alibaba (P7), the annual package is around 800k- 1m RMB (120K - 150K) before tax. However, you could only vest your stock after 2 years service which means you will paid less than half of your annual package if you quit before the third year. For fresh grade SDE, the pay is around 300k RMB (45k USD) before tax for most companies. The average SDE pay in China is still less than US but higher than most developed countries like EU, JP, CA. However, you should aware that it takes about 1.5m USD to own a 3 bedroom apartment in city area Beijing.
I thought you weren't allowed to own property in mainland China
Foreigners can own 1 property. Beijing residents can own 1 or more subject to property tax. Non Beijing Resident PRC passport holders cannot own until working in Beijing more than 5 years.
You technically still don't own the land. The state leased it to you for a period up to 70 years. No one knows what happens after 70 years. The upside is, you don't pay property tax. however, there is very active talk from the top to levy property tax. policies are changed often, we never know
Why do u even care?
Just curious. What is wrong with trying to understand the pay rate for engineers around world? This is good for the engineers in general. Some countries like Japan disdain engineers and pay little to them while lawyers, bankers or management make so much more money without making actual output. I don’t think engineers in Japan work less than in China.
Japanese engineers work as hard as Chinese engineers, there’s no doubt in that. But China is the only place beside US with grand scalability challenges, where complexity and innovation are born. Think of the scalability problem for Tencent and Alibaba, which is on par or even greater than FB/AMZN. Since I work at Uber, didi is at least doing 1.5x of our trips, it’s a very very serious engineering problem that needs great talents to solve.
There are big gaps between rich and poor in China. Most of my friends working as software engineers in China make 1 to 1.5 million RMB (Chinese Yuan) per year, which is about 150k to 220k USD. In China, you don’t file tax returns! So that’s the net income!
Wow for real? You are not talking about cream of the crop only, right? If you are talking about engineers who used to work in US, I think the story is little different. Let me rephrase my question. Engineers (like senior engineer level ~10 years) who never experienced outside of China make that much money or is it significantly lower? If they are the one who make this much, I am curious why Chinese will want to remain in US when net income is easily more than they get paid at Microsoft US.
Because the US is better in so many ways!