There has been a debate over whether a story which was published recently about a Google engineer who makes $3 million a year including compensation, bonuses and stock is true.
It could be if the engineer is in the senior ranks or handles very exclusive tasks at the company which require exclusive talents.
However, reports from a number of websites which report on what those who have landed dream jobs earn seem to agree that the average base salary for a Google software engineer is $158,000. $148,000 puts Google in the ranks of tech companies which pay the highest salaries to their engineers noting that the average salary for a software engineer in the U.S is currently $133,722.
Salary Differences Between Levels of Software Engineer at Google?
Of course freshly recruited engineers do not get as much as the old timers. Senior engineers at the company reportedly earn a total compensation of $211,000. This is data collected from 246 respondents who answered interview questions about their salaries. The highest paid in this lot earns $630,000 and just slightly below 1 million if you added $80,000 in cash bonuses and $300,000 in stock grants.
Unless you hold a very senior position or handle very exclusive tasks, you earn between $100,000 and $850,000 as a Google engineer. Those who earn above 1 million or even 3 million are very senior and talented.
Google Software Engineer Starting Salary
No one expects to get recruited at Google and begin earning $1 million immediately unless they are poached from another tech company which Google likes doing from time to time. Engineers fresh from college who are lucky to be recruited by the company earn $100,000 as base salary. When the bonuses come in, the sum adds up to around $150,000 a year. Of course this will increase depending on how well an engineer is able to prove that their talents deserve a better pay.
Just to give an example, Andy Rubin who is acknowledged for creating Android is still at Google albeit he is working on robots. They must be paying him a lot to keep his talents.
Google Software Engineer Top Salary
Data from respondents show that top engineers get $850,000 from Google every year. It’s a good sum noting that very few programmers earn over $1 million a year. However, it could be true that some of the executives and talented engineers make up to $3 million.
Jeff Dean who is credited for the speed of the company’s search engine is one of such engineers whose talents are worth a salary in the millions otherwise he would already have been snatched by other tech companies. Although they pay well, salary at Google is proportional to an engineer’s worth.