Ask HN: Am I underpaid?

51 points

13 years ago

I'm currently living in SF and working at a fairly prolific late stage startup. I've got a Bachelor's of CS and am a Front End Engineer with roughly 5 years of engineering experience. The first half of those years was spent working full stack, and the last half working very closely with Backbone, jQuery, Require, and other modern JS frameworks. I've launched numerous very successful products, and consistently get nothing but positive remarks in annual reviews.

I make roughly 115k a year, which at first seemed like a ton after moving here from a relatively low COL area. Lately though, the combination of looking at my account balances after paying rent + seeing people talk about salaries on HN make me think that I am on the very low end of the pay scale. Combine that with the paltry amount of equity I have and the fact that my company gives absolutely zero bonuses, and it all leaves me thinking that there might be greener pastures in other companies in the Valley.

So what's your opinion HN: Are the people paid above the median the vocal minority, or should I reevaluate my situation for more fair compensation?

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