That's insane. The residency program is a way for people from unique backgrounds to enter into the software engineering field with less stringent interview requirements. SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.
This was an incredible opportunity and it's an absolute shame that internal protests killed it. Yes, you get less pay and a smaller stock refresh, but I know a few people who's careers began with this residency and they'd still be struggling without it.
I don't even know how to describe this. You get less pay but an amazing opportunity, and then you look back and are upset that you weren't given more? Google took a large risk on these candidates with the assumption that they'd fail and eventually have to be let go. But they did it anyway just to create opportunities.
To clarify, I can say from experience (having personally helped convert 6 engineering residents at Google), I'm pretty confident the "less pay and a smaller stock refresh" in the article is referring to conversion offers to FTE and stock refreshes after the first year of FTE employment, not to their pay during their residency. Those FTE conversion offers were terrible, from what I saw, with no room for negotiation. The residency program had given these candidates 1 year to build a proven track record of performance and they were fully ramped up by the end, so there was no risk to Google at the time of those offers; if a resident was given an offer, it was because they were a pretty sure thing (far more than any normal interviewed hire). As such, I think their offers should have been higher than a regular hire, not lower. (As someone who was hired direct out of college with little experience, I can confidently say the offers my residents got were _significantly_ lower than my starting offer at the same level.) The article states this a bit unclearly, but I'm pretty sure this is what it means, because it doesn't make sense to refer to year-end bonuses or stock refreshes during residency because they aren't long enough to get these regardless (and I never heard anyone complain about this).
That said, as a side note, I do think articles like this tend to sensationalize Google as a whole as the "bad guy". Try to remember, Google is a huge company with lots of people managing its many parts. I personally feel there was a failing here, but if so, it was the fault of a relatively small number of people, not "Google". Even most of the people running this program were good, and the program itself was great (as you said) other than what I said above. There's hundreds of thousands of decisions happening every day at Google. If just a couple bad ones get to define the company as a whole, then no large company can ever be good, no matter how good all the rest of those decisions are.
SWE can pay upwards of $500-600k after 5-10 years of experience.
I don't think that's really true.
I'm not arguing that there aren't SWEs whose total comp is $600k. There definitely are. However, those people aren't really SWEs. They're managers, architects, and strategists. They have a lot of people reporting to them, they make decisions about very high level things that are only tangentially related to code, and they work on guiding other engineers to find solutions to hard problems. No doubt being a developer before getting to that role is incredibly helpful and makes you better at it, but if you're earning $600k I very much doubt you're spending more than 25% of your time sat at a keyboard with an IDE open.
If you want to earn that much after a decade in work you'd be much better off polishing your management and strategy skills than learning how to write better code.
And yes, I realise I'm totally falling in to the 'no true Scotsman' trap here. But sometimes a Scotsman is just an MBA in a kilt. :)
(Opinions are my own. I know nothing about this program.)
Using StackOverflow's [0] aggregated statistics of pay based on experience + location we can get some rough estimates
Over a 5 to 10 year span as a developer at Google you'd probably touch: Java, Golang, C++, Python, and some part of GCP (or very similar tech). Pay is also different from market location so if we look only at the USA we can look at SF and Manhattan.
This is also ignoring the FAANG bump that you get from being Xoogler. Also, if you don't get a promotion or are unhappy with your compensation Facebook's levels are an approximate 1:1 mapping to Google and from what I've heard going from Google to Facebook and back to Google is quite common. Some people have joked that there are people that are on a 2 year rotation back and forth.
500k+ is L6+, while very difficult to obtain, seems doable if you are determined, know your stuff, know how to find the "right" projects, and are also an inspiring leader.
“ way for people from unique backgrounds to enter into the software engineering field with less stringent interview requirements” - sounds like discrimination and should be illegal. meanwhile, people in their 40s are dealing with leetcode BS to get a reasonable position with that sort of compensation even though they have an extensive track record.
discrimination can either be legal or illegal. google legally discriminates by giving offers to those who get the hiring committee's approval. i think getting the hiring committee's approval is a form of legal discrimination.
It seems like this engineering residency program is essentially an extended internship, which converts to a full time role if the worker does well. Google searches say residents are paid ~$95k a year. This is by no means bad pay for entry level work.
I'm really struggling to see the injustice of this program. It seems to me that axing it only leaves the people who used this role as a stepping stone to reach a full time role with no opportunity to get their foot in the door.
That was my impression as well. The eng residency program is intended as an entry point for those who aren't yet qualified for Google's entry level engineering positions. It's a kind of apprenticeship. I have heard (but can't confirm) that folks are sometimes invited to apply for residency after not passing an ordinary engineering interview. I also got the impression that there are strong incentives to always convert residents at the end of their residency. I have had limited experience with residents on the job so I can't really comment on their qualifications.
I'm pretty sure that I agree with you, but if I had to steelman the argument against Eng Res it would be that since pay and promotion seems to follow percentage increments year to year, if you start at a lower point than someone else, you are going to be consistently behind them. So, having this program essentially creates a second class of engineer at google, predominantly URMs, who will be given lower pay and lower prestige assignments.
Personally, I don't buy this because the alternative is not that these Eng Residents would have been given entry level roles at google with the commensurate pay and benefits but rather no role at google.
Made an HN account to respond to this. I was in the Eng Res program, and that's not how it worked.
When you converted to being a regular SWE, they gave you a BIG pay bump -- comparable to a new-grad starting salary, but rather higher than average. My comp the year after Eng Res was higher by 20-40% than my friends who started at Google right out of school.
> since pay and promotion seems to follow percentage increments year to year
So ... leave?
Put a couple years of FAANG on your resume to bootstrap and then bail out to the job that pays correctly. That's what everybody has to do to keep their salary from lagging.
If the analysis only includes those who haven't bailed at least once, it's for sure going to have lagging salaries.
A more interesting question would be what those who bailed and then came back to Google are making.
I don't know how Google does their salary, but a lot of big corps do salary bands by level, and when the 2x a year (one of which might not be advertised) company adjustments come up, they determine merit based rases and then adjust to try to tighten the bands. So if you're underpaid, you'll probably get a bigger raise than otherwise and if you're overpaid, your raise will be adjusted down.
You might not ever catch up to someone who started higher (and certainly won't for the integral of compensation), but the gap should narrow over time.
I once went out with a nurse in the UK who worked in palliative (end of life) care. On a daily basis she was responsible for life-changing decisions concerning medications; she had to comfort the dying and tell bereaved people that their relatives had died (frequently ending up in tears herself); she had to give bed baths and clean up human waste daily. She had to undertake continuous training and assessment with her career at risk if she failed; she did not know more than a week in advance what shifts she would be working which on any given day could start at 6am or 9pm (and go through to 4am the next day).
For all of this she was paid £25,000 (USD 35,000) / year.
The injustice is that software engineers and the tech sector in general are being so insanely rewarded as most of the rest of society stagnates and living standards fall (I say this as an insanely rewarded software engineer).
Software engineers are rewarded what the market demands, not some prize because they're seen as better for humanity than nurses. Some would argue the field of nursing has a lower bar to entry than software development.
I'm not commenting on whether these programs are a good idea or not. But I wanted to point out one thing about these programs I find funny is while the candidates races may be diverse their educational background is usually quite similar. A program at my work is very similar, and the majority of students went to the top ten CS schools.
The education system’s admission criteria is heavily correlated with the hiring criteria, even without taking the prestige of their degrees into the account.
> Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor white, Asian and male workers
Google was 51.7% white in 2020, down from 54.4% in 2019 *. The US is 61.5% white, meaning whites are under-represented at Google, and increasingly so. How can one then argue they are favored? Why do reporters not apply even the smallest degree of scrutiny to such claims?
I think it's worth considering the following points:
* The critics are talking about Software Engineering (~1/3rd of the company?), whereas the source you cited is about all of Google. I wouldn't be surprised if the White/Asian/Male splits are far worse when you only look at software engineers.
* Google has many international offices (e.g. there's > 1000 employees in Google Japan).
Oh, okay. So we can keep claiming Google, a US company, favors white workers until when? Until less than 10%* of their US workers are white? Is that what being favored means? That companies in your own country look elsewhere to import workers?
Race is self-reported. There isn't someone in Google HR researching your ancestry, they ask you what race you identify as when you join. If you self-identify as white then you are white according to Google HR.
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This was an incredible opportunity and it's an absolute shame that internal protests killed it. Yes, you get less pay and a smaller stock refresh, but I know a few people who's careers began with this residency and they'd still be struggling without it.
I don't even know how to describe this. You get less pay but an amazing opportunity, and then you look back and are upset that you weren't given more? Google took a large risk on these candidates with the assumption that they'd fail and eventually have to be let go. But they did it anyway just to create opportunities.
That said, as a side note, I do think articles like this tend to sensationalize Google as a whole as the "bad guy". Try to remember, Google is a huge company with lots of people managing its many parts. I personally feel there was a failing here, but if so, it was the fault of a relatively small number of people, not "Google". Even most of the people running this program were good, and the program itself was great (as you said) other than what I said above. There's hundreds of thousands of decisions happening every day at Google. If just a couple bad ones get to define the company as a whole, then no large company can ever be good, no matter how good all the rest of those decisions are.
The only room for negotiation is being willing to walk (usually because you have an offer somewhere else).
Otherwise, it's not negotiating, it's just begging.
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I don't think that's really true.
I'm not arguing that there aren't SWEs whose total comp is $600k. There definitely are. However, those people aren't really SWEs. They're managers, architects, and strategists. They have a lot of people reporting to them, they make decisions about very high level things that are only tangentially related to code, and they work on guiding other engineers to find solutions to hard problems. No doubt being a developer before getting to that role is incredibly helpful and makes you better at it, but if you're earning $600k I very much doubt you're spending more than 25% of your time sat at a keyboard with an IDE open.
If you want to earn that much after a decade in work you'd be much better off polishing your management and strategy skills than learning how to write better code.
And yes, I realise I'm totally falling in to the 'no true Scotsman' trap here. But sometimes a Scotsman is just an MBA in a kilt. :)
Just like stores have "up to" 70% discounts. One item is marked off that much, and the rest are given modest discounts.
We shouldn't normalize this number as some plain old average, it'd be aspirational for many.
Using StackOverflow's [0] aggregated statistics of pay based on experience + location we can get some rough estimates
Over a 5 to 10 year span as a developer at Google you'd probably touch: Java, Golang, C++, Python, and some part of GCP (or very similar tech). Pay is also different from market location so if we look only at the USA we can look at SF and Manhattan.
5 years:
10 years: This is also ignoring the FAANG bump that you get from being Xoogler. Also, if you don't get a promotion or are unhappy with your compensation Facebook's levels are an approximate 1:1 mapping to Google and from what I've heard going from Google to Facebook and back to Google is quite common. Some people have joked that there are people that are on a 2 year rotation back and forth.Some more data can be gleamed from here: https://www.levels.fyi/
500k+ is L6+, while very difficult to obtain, seems doable if you are determined, know your stuff, know how to find the "right" projects, and are also an inspiring leader.
[0] - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary
IME the "unique backgrounds" are "doesn't have a CS degree or a couple years of experience at a big software shop".
discrimination can either be legal or illegal. google legally discriminates by giving offers to those who get the hiring committee's approval. i think getting the hiring committee's approval is a form of legal discrimination.
This seems at odds with the article:
>Nearly all residents converted to regular employees, according to the presentation
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So people from underrepresented backgrounds should be paid the same as top engineers regardless of output.
Where? lol
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I'm really struggling to see the injustice of this program. It seems to me that axing it only leaves the people who used this role as a stepping stone to reach a full time role with no opportunity to get their foot in the door.
Personally, I don't buy this because the alternative is not that these Eng Residents would have been given entry level roles at google with the commensurate pay and benefits but rather no role at google.
When you converted to being a regular SWE, they gave you a BIG pay bump -- comparable to a new-grad starting salary, but rather higher than average. My comp the year after Eng Res was higher by 20-40% than my friends who started at Google right out of school.
So ... leave?
Put a couple years of FAANG on your resume to bootstrap and then bail out to the job that pays correctly. That's what everybody has to do to keep their salary from lagging.
If the analysis only includes those who haven't bailed at least once, it's for sure going to have lagging salaries.
A more interesting question would be what those who bailed and then came back to Google are making.
You might not ever catch up to someone who started higher (and certainly won't for the integral of compensation), but the gap should narrow over time.
For all of this she was paid £25,000 (USD 35,000) / year.
The injustice is that software engineers and the tech sector in general are being so insanely rewarded as most of the rest of society stagnates and living standards fall (I say this as an insanely rewarded software engineer).
This will not end well.
Google was 51.7% white in 2020, down from 54.4% in 2019 *. The US is 61.5% white, meaning whites are under-represented at Google, and increasingly so. How can one then argue they are favored? Why do reporters not apply even the smallest degree of scrutiny to such claims?
* https://diversity.google/annual-report/
* The critics are talking about Software Engineering (~1/3rd of the company?), whereas the source you cited is about all of Google. I wouldn't be surprised if the White/Asian/Male splits are far worse when you only look at software engineers.
* Google has many international offices (e.g. there's > 1000 employees in Google Japan).
It's closer to 2/3.
*Ballpark white global population.
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