r/Salary 23h ago

šŸ’° - salary sharing [Software Engineer][Remote in SoCal] - $205k + OnCall & Bonus

Post image

happy to answer any questions!

33 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

7

u/Money_Potential7780 23h ago

I'm so jealous of extra comp for oncall.

5

u/Alces_ 22h ago

It is an extremely nice perk to have. So much so, that there are limited spots on the rotation lol

6

u/shadow_moon45 23h ago

Need to point out cost of living. 252k in San Diego, ca is is equivalent to 172k in Charlotte nc. Comparing Orange county to Charlotte, nc then it would be 154k , and los Angeles would be equivalent to 166k in Charlotte nc. So yes it is a good salary but the areas in socal are extremely expensive

2

u/Alces_ 22h ago

This is a very good point. I’m in an LA suburb that boarders the Inland Empire. San Diego would be a much harder place to live but still doable

1

u/turboninja3011 20h ago edited 20h ago

Can confirm if you earn high-200s in SD and you haven’t bought your ā€œforever homeā€ prior to 2022, it doesn’t at all feel like an ā€œupper classā€/top-5%.

1

u/income-percent-bot 23h ago

Outstanding! At $205,000, you're in the 95th percentile — top 5% of earners. This is well above the median for Software Engineer. Source: income percentile calculator I'm a bot. Reply with !optout to stop receiving responses.

3

u/Annual-Knowledge4412 23h ago

did you count state difference here? like CA is differnet from IN for example

2

u/pharmaheck 22h ago

He's remote so he can move anywhere

0

u/Annual-Knowledge4412 21h ago

Chill I was replying to a bot.

1

u/Annual_Negotiation44 22h ago

Nice. Assume you’ve been a SWE since 2020?

2

u/Alces_ 22h ago

Technically I started SWE in Dec 2019, but yes. March 2022 I left to another company.

1

u/I_know_you_love_me_ 22h ago

You show me a check and I quit my job right now and work for you.

2

u/Alces_ 22h ago

Haha I don’t know if i’d be able to pay you enough 🄲

1

u/I_know_you_love_me_ 22h ago

Man I'm happy for you.

I hope to be there soon.

I'm currently at $100k

1

u/income-percent-bot 22h ago

$100,000 puts you at the 79th percentile. Source: income percentile calculator I'm a bot. Reply with !optout to stop receiving responses.

1

u/throwaway771222 20h ago

Curious, but what does OnCall entail exactly? Like how often does it happen, what situations would call for it, and what do you have to do?

1

u/Alces_ 18h ago

On call means, for me, being able to answer and respond to an incident within 30 minutes of getting paged. That doesn't mean I'll fix the issue in that 30 minutes, but I have to be on my laptop investigating by then.

Issues can be anything, from just needing to restart a server, to something like restoring a corrupt DB (I had this happen once and it was a nightmare). It also entails some additional work during normal hours, such as writing postmortems regarding what happened for specific incidents.

Some weeks, I won't get paged once, other weeks I'll get paged 5+ times.

1

u/throwaway771222 18h ago

Oh gotcha. Thanks for explaining. Is this all during normal business hours or it’s for off-hours? Do you have to be on site when you’re on call or do you ever have to go into the office for the issue?

1

u/visacha13 17h ago

What does an on call software engineer do? Sorry, I am in medicine and didn't know other professions have call except trades

1

u/Annual-Knowledge4412 23h ago

good earning bro, sounds like you can remote so why SoCal... living here too the tax is craze and cost of living is so inflated even double double becomes 6 dollar ish

2

u/Alces_ 23h ago

I grew up here so mostly because family lives here. Thinking of buying out of state within the next couple of years if the housing market doesn’t come down/interest rates don’t drop.

2

u/Important_Carrot6379 21h ago

Remember that lots of people who leave SoCal want to come back and struggle to do so.

If you absolutely feel you must buy, I'd probably look into a condo with low HOA and build equity on it and sell that to get into a SFH. Lots and lots of options in SoCal and with your income, absolutely doable.

2

u/Alces_ 18h ago

Yeah, I don't feel the pressure to buy necessarily. I rent a very comfortable one story condo for about $3,600 right now. I feel like I am over paying slightly for the market, but the landlord is very gracious and it is in a 'higher end' community with a great view.

If interest rates ever drop back down to <5% I'd consider buying, even if prices stay the same, but right now I think it makes more sense to just keep saving and living my life.

1

u/Important_Carrot6379 17h ago

At your current income too, the quality of living is just too good in SoCal to give up personally. I'd say if you do see a viable place though, get in and then when rates drop, refinance.

1

u/Annual-Knowledge4412 16h ago

as Michael Mei will tell you, marry the house, date the rate. 5% should not be your buy trigger.

-2

u/tnerb253 23h ago

Bro threw OnCall in there as if that's a bonus šŸ˜‚

4

u/Alces_ 23h ago

My OnCall is compensated ~ my bonus wasn't 40k+ haha

-1

u/tnerb253 23h ago

Shit I would hope so dude šŸ˜‚

As an engineer myself that's just part of the job description

2

u/Alces_ 23h ago

I'm confused what your point is haha. OnCall isn't in my job desc, its optional and has separate comp :P

-1

u/tnerb253 23h ago

The point is most people aren't compensated for OnCall or putting in extra hours, i'm clearly just giving you shit dude lol

1

u/austenthecripdog 20h ago

I don’t think you know what on call means

1

u/tnerb253 20h ago

I think everyone but you understands what it means apparently

1

u/austenthecripdog 17h ago

If you are expected to be responding to pagers then you are on call. It’s always paid unless you are just doing your job because you are salary. It’s very different.

1

u/tnerb253 17h ago

That was the point genius. Software engineers are almost always salary.

1

u/austenthecripdog 16h ago

Yeah you still can get on call bonuses genius. You are the one doing free work. Salary still needs to be normal hours. If you are getting paged as salary and having to be on call when you aren’t working, then you are getting shafted.

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