Amid the frenzy to hire top software engineers, the top names don’t necessarily pay the top salaries, according to a new report from Glassdoor. The report is based on the self-reported salary data of more than 33,000 software engineers. Juniper Networks leads its list at $159,990 in base pay, with LinkedIn ($136,427), Yahoo ($130,312), Google ($127,143) and Twitter ($124,863) rounding out the top five. But Walmart, at No. 8 ($122,110), comes in ahead of reported salaries at Facebook, eBay, Amazon or Microsoft. Michael Cox, Walmart’s vice president of HR and talent acquisition, told Dice News that the company, in aiming to re-invent e-commerce, is looking for people who can “do more, to do it differently and to do it better than in the past.” The New York Times reports this summer Walmart hired 150 people from companies such as Yahoo and eBay. As for Yahoo, since Marissa Mayer became CEO in July 2012, the company has hired nearly 1,000 engineers. In a single week, it received more than 17,000 resumes for various positions. Indeed, a full 68 percent of Yahoo engineers say things are looking up for the company. Just 29 percent believe they’re getting worse, according to separate Glassdoor numbers. That compares with 38 percent of Apple employees who see a decline. At Oracle, 41 percent of engineers expect a business improvement over the next six months, compared with 37 percent at Cisco, 31 percent at Microsoft and 29 percent at Hewlett-Packard.
Focus on the Bay Area
Seventeen of the 25 highest-paying companies are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, so it’s not surprising that the region leads in average annual base salary ($111,885), followed by Seattle ($103,196) and San Diego ($93,993). Robert Half Technology recently predicted base salaries will rise 7.5 percent in 2014 for software engineers in San Francisco, to a range of $121,611-$185,976. That compares with a national range of $89,750-$137,250. The Bay Area also leads in the number of employers hiring software engineers (3,846), according to Glassdoor’s numbers, followed by New York City (2,264) and Washington, D.C., (2,139).
