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> The amount of money you can make in the US as an experienced engineer is probably 5 fold if not more. Senior engineers are easily pulling 7 figures here

This statement is inaccurate for most people.

The salaries for H1B visa holders are actually public [1] and starting salaries for foreigners are more 100k to 200k and nowhere close to 7 figures.

Also the salary levels at FAANGs are mostly known [2] and you have to get very, very far up to even make 7 figures at a fang. An L6 (staff engineer) makes 500k total comp.

[1] https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=Software&city=San+Fra...

[2] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,SAP,Google&track=Soft...



When I say senior engineer, i don't mean e5 senior engineer. You can get there within a year or two. You can get to e6 in what it takes to do PhD.


Well, you can also stay at L5 forever. It's a terminal level afterall. L6 typically needs at least 9 years of experience and the majority of people will never reach it. And at L6 you make half of 7 figures.

L5 still make great money and it is a multiple of what you get outside of SV. Just inflating to 7 figures is a bit exaggerated

Edit: this comment from 6 months ago provides a bit of inside view on getting L6 at Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965492


Sure. But i think it takes less than 9 to reach to 6 too. Depends on how much you care about it, i suppose (let's say you are really good at what you do, but you may be at e5 because you never cared and your manager never cared either - this sort of stuff happens too).


H1Bs pull the same salaries as everyone else, always the real money is in equity.




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