Starting Salaries Of Top Technology Companies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook
Online Business Add comments
Here is information on the starting salaries of large technology companies. These tech salary ranges are based on informal observations and anecdotal evidence online.
These starting pay options are from people who have received full-time offers from the company in question, and these figures are approximate. They are for beginning programmer positions.
All companies are notorious for being incredibly secretive about employee pay and do not publish salary ranges. These pay scales were taken from interviews, online forums, job boards and salary aggregators.
Microsoft Starting Salary
Around $90,000 per year on average, can dip as low as $80,000. Typically comes with $50,000 worth of stock over four years.
Google Starting Salary
The standard for large US offices and the Mountain View location is about $100,000/year. This is scaled based on where you live, with a lower salary for areas that have a lower cost of living. Stock grants are between $45k and $71k over a four year vesting period. Google.com can give bonuses of $45,000 per year or more in addition to base pay
Apple Starting Salary
Engineers at apple start at around $90,000 per year with potential cost of living allowances. An average yearly cash bonus of $6000 and around $9000 in stock, placed in your own eTrade account.
Apple offers 25% discounts on all products but is incredibly difficult to get into. Apple is one of the best companies at hiring brilliant, passionate, hip and upbeat people. People at Apple love the company, and it shows in their work. Rumor says that if you see a suit on the 1 Infinite Loop campus, it is guaranteed they are from out of town.
Amazon Starting Salary
Amazon programmers start at about $87,000/year, and the starting salary is pretty standard. Not a lot of room for negotiation. You could receive between $40,000 and $50,000 worth of stock options over 4 years, with a non-uniform vesting period. The longer you stay employed at Amazon.com, the more stock options you get.
Facebook Starting Salary
Facebook starts engineers pay at around $85,000-$90,000/year. The stock options are between 8,000 and 10,000 restricted stock units over four years. This potentially could be worth more than $200,000 if secondary market prices of $28/share continue to hold.
Fun Fact
The word salary comes from the latin word for salt, which was the currency used to pay some Roman soldiers.
Salary image from lsned.
If you have more details about job pay at top tech companies please let us know in the comments. We would love to help programmers and tech specialists know what they should expect to make in the Silicon Valley or elsewhere.
Tags: apple salary, facebook salary, google salary, microsoft salary, tech salary
May 1st, 2011 at 10:33 pm
Wow! I sure would love to have started in one of those companies. thanks for aggregating this info of silicon valley salaries and for the informative illustration about the origins of the word salary.
Steve recently posted..LightScribe CDs
July 12th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Well I’m not surprised. Big companies = big salaries. Thank you for the informative article
July 25th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
[...] ask if they’d mind referring you to a startup that has open positions. You can also see some starting salaries at hot tech [...]
September 14th, 2011 at 3:55 am
My friend i had been only chatting more than this specific issue, britta is planning to prove me completely wrong! I will demonstrate to her this kind of blog post as well as apply it in a small!
November 21st, 2011 at 10:12 pm
I’ve been exploring high quality companies and the way they attract top talent through articles or weblog posts – earning 250,000k is not uncommon at Google.
November 25th, 2011 at 9:18 am
bonjour, je tiens à dire que ce site est vraiment sympa mais il ne parle pas (encore) des recettes concernant les avertissments du web.
December 19th, 2011 at 6:40 am
We are looking to hire but these salaries are out of our range for tech help.
March 26th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Financial, intellectual and physical commitment combine to masquerade as emotional commitment. These are the largest companies in the world, and they should pay their employees better.
April 8th, 2012 at 8:24 am
I was just seeking this information about silicon valley tech salaries for some time. I wonder what is the lack of Google strategy to not pay their employees as much as apple, they rank ther own types of web sites in top of the list and play favorites with their own online properties.
April 30th, 2012 at 3:41 am
Microsoft® Hosting center has starting salaries of about $99,000 per year, which is pretty good for new engineers.
May 15th, 2012 at 9:48 am
This website really is extraordinary to list the salaries of these huge tech firms. I love reading it however, I cry when I compare them with my earnings.
May 22nd, 2012 at 6:58 am
Intimately, the companies listed here are really the greatest on the earth, and we would be honored to work at any of them at any salary.
May 23rd, 2012 at 2:44 pm
The core of Silicon Valley are great tech companies, but the cost of living is not worth it.
June 14th, 2012 at 9:16 am
I would like to thank you for the attempts you’ve made to show us how much we can earn at the top Silicon Valley companies, I would love to work at Apple.com
June 18th, 2012 at 11:35 am
I dont suppose Ive learned something like this before – we have been trying to use forum posts to boost our ranking for our hosting company, but working for one of these top tier firms would make me sleep better.
August 5th, 2012 at 8:19 am
it was really easy to follow the line of freelancers out Microsoft’s door!
October 1st, 2012 at 10:42 am
When searching for more data related to personal loans to high ranking tech officials I found that many break SEC regulations. Be careful what corporate cash advance system you use.
October 7th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Our business sarah nettleton architects in Minnesota needs SEO and we have a difficulty getting new traffic.
October 13th, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Those who are amazed by these salaries should realize that a so-so 800-sq-ft apartment rents for about $2500/month and requires a commute of about 1/2 hour each way. These engineers work 50 hours a week most of the time, with crunch periods requiring upwards of 60 hours a week. So factor that in when you think of these salaries as “high”, they’re really just normalized for the area’s high cost of living and the enormous amounts of work demanded at most of these firms.
March 8th, 2013 at 12:07 pm
the facebook credits generator&adder posted on your site ROCKS !