Engineer comp in Portland
Hello! I'm at Salesforce in Portland as Principal Engineer (PMTS), total comp $289k and I will probably get a salary bump at annual review coming up. There are some other big tech companies with offices in the area (Google, Amazon, EBay, Intel, probably others), but from what I can query on Glassdoor and Paysa all of them give way less comp for similarly senior dev roles when I restrict the search to just Portland (like under $200k for the most part). Am I very wrong, or should I thank my lucky stars and stay put as long as I can? No guesses please, first hand information only. Thanks! #google #amazon #ebay #portland
Leave pdx
I love and hate PDX in equal measure. For food, music, art and entertainment it's 90% as good as the SF Bay Area for a fraction of the price! Public schools are good, equivalent to high-cost private schools in SF. Yes the city government, taxes, and political monoculture suck and (as we can see here) all developers other than me seem to be underpaid. When/if this Salesforce gig winds down we'll have to scale back our lifestyle or move, but for now we are living way larger than we ever could in California
Always have the option for remote work (Stripe, etc) post Salesforce.
i surveyed my pdx salary pretty thoroughly and found that while it was about 30% lower than bay area (CoL being about 15% lower), it was in average range for pdx. For me, the quality of life and also slower salary growth wasn’t enough to compensate for the salary:CoL difference because the job market was too soft for my partner to get stable employment. So we’re over and out. Your salary is decent for portland. If you’re happy with your quality of Life, and living comfortably on your salary, then it seems like it’s working for you
Yes, if your partner wants a career and can't make it happen locally than you pretty much have to move. Not sure I agree with the 15% difference in CoL, for us it is much more than that: we bought a 2500 sqft house within walking distance of downtown for less monthly cost than a rental half that size in the East Bay, and our kids go to public schools here which are equivalent to private schools that would cost thousands per month where we were living before. So it depends a lot on what your needs are
where do you live btw?
Yoe? This is top tier for Portland. Wouldn't mind going to Salesforce after Google for a few years.
What levels are you looking at at google and amazon? I was lead MTS at Salesforce two years ago and am L6 scientist at Amazon now. My Amazon salary is higher than what you are currently making. Levels.fyi days PMTS maps to L7 in which case the TC is not 200k, even accounting for location.
My understanding from talking to an Amazon recruiter (as well as another thread here on blind) is that PMTS at Salesforce would generally map to the high end of L6 at Amazon, maybe L7 if I was an unusually strong PMTS. I can't find any data for Amazon principal/L7 data for Portland on Paysa or Glassdoor. For L6 I see ranges of $94k-$193k with average a bit over $150 (Glassdoor, Amazon Senior Software Engineer/Senior Software Development engineer etc. in Portland, OR) and $125-$150 with average of $133 (Paysa, Amazon Senior Software Engineer in Portland, OR) Are you in Portland? From what I can see Amazon comp is way higher in the Bay Area and Seattle...tradeoff is what would be a $2.5 million dollar house in SF is like 750k here!
Paysas Amazon numbers are wrong even for Seattle. Glassdoor is always just complete garbage. The amazon recruiter is probably correct in the mapping (high L6, low L7). Use levels.fyi for more accurate numbers. I’m in Seattle. I have no idea if there’s an adjustment for Portland.