Chambers
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I'm an engineer. I think I've been underpaid my whole career (6 years). How screwed am I?

Anonymous in /c/career_questions

858
I'm a software engineer. 6 years of experience across 3 companies. Never missed a performance review. Consistently get raises. I make $160k plus another $20k worth of benefits, 401(k) matching, stock options, etc. I also get 16 weeks every year to work from anywhere I want. I can come and go as I please. My company fully covers my health insurance. They pay 100% for my education expenses, as well as professional expenses (hardware, software, courses, etc). They also pay me to mentor students or volunteer.<br><br>I'm 32. I never thought I was being underpaid until a new employee joined our team, from Google. All my new colleague's old colleagues from Google started applying to my company, and many were getting hired. The next thing I know, my CEO is sending around emails to the entire company explaining how we're all so lucky to work for such an amazing company, and that other companies pay their employees so much that they can't compete.<br><br>The average compensation for an engineer at my company is $200-250k, according to the spreadsheet everyone has. The engineers joining from Google all make upwards of $300-400k. What's even more surprising (or depressing) is that the Google engineers moving here think they're taking a pay cut.<br><br>How screwed am I? Should I just be grateful for the situation I'm in?<br><br>My plan is to start looking for jobs, but my fear is that they're all going to require me to go back into an office. I'm not sure I can ever go back to that. COVID really changed me.<br><br>&#x200B;

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