Increasing total comp. in DC?
Product designer with 2yr+ experience making around $85k TC. I like living in the DC area and I’d like to settle within this city. On the other hand, I’d also like to grow my career and savings (current life goal is to become financially independent and retire early). Do you think a DC based designer with 2-4yr experience can hit $150-200k TC like the rest of the FAANG designers on the west coast? If so, which companies/institutions should I target?
Nope.
Negative ghost rider
I work for AWS in the DC area and am compensated around 150k as an SDE I. There are offices in DC, Arlington, and Herndon.
Developer? Didn't know Amazon had offices in DC.
Yep. The major engineering office is in Herndon (probably one of the largest ones outside of Seattle by now), but there were also SDE positions in Arlington last I checked. Amazon pretty much seems to have major development offices in or near every major city.
Not that many designers in the bay area even make that much. You would be better moving to the bay area for a while and then try to go remote. The supply for designers is almost entirely in the bay area and so are all of the companies and jobs. Without the competition the pay won't go up.
Thanks for the reply. Do you have any thoughts on NYC?
NYC is better but still not comparable to bay area. You could try Google in NYC.
Nope. You need to understand that the cost of living on the west coast (SF in particular) is *WAY* higher it is in DC - at least 25% if not 50% higher. So expecting west coast compensation in DC isn’t realistic. If you knock it out of the park performance wise and land a promotion (and continue to knock it out of the park thereafter) your compensation will grow considerably. We are a pay for performance company.
DC is pretty expensive. There was no CoL adjustment for me when I moved back to DC, and we don't pay hires here any differently than Seattle. I know of several SDE college hires in this office making the standard ~150k TC - no different than college hires in Seattle.
DC is just as expensive as SF. The benefit is that if you are willing to commute 30 min it's way cheaper.
DC can be expensive as fuck. Live outside the city and metro in
No. Sad but true - you have very limited option. AWS has pretty much no UX in DC. We had designer ex-coworkers/friends in c1, success factors, APT, MIcrostrategy/alarm/angel, Appian, defense contractors, consulting companies, and non of them making TC > 150k afaik. Eventually after a few years many if not all moved to SF or Seattle. As for the living expense..DMV is pretty much the same as SF except for the housing. We have two houses inside the beltway, and mortgage combined is less than what We pay for rent in SF now. On the other hand, we tripled in TC in two years comparing to what we made back in DC. We do love DC and think that at some point of our career it might be a great idea to go back and raise our kids there. But no, not at the beginning of your career.
I work in DC. Only tech work making 150-200k (salary) are architects and senior devs.
Did you even read the thread bro. You're wrong
Wrong about what exactly, bro?
No way