Companies like Airbnb, Pinterest and Dropbox are often praised for their employee engagement tactics and for valuing characteristics like creativity, collaboration, flexibility and a go-getter attitude.
But after peeling back the layer of warm-fuzzy employee perks, what do these unicorns have to offer tech employees in the way of career advancement and earning potential? Here are some numbers from us, examining top-notch unicorns (including Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, Lyft and Snapchat), that can help you decide if the unicorn path is right for you.
Unicorns vs. Everyone Else
Unlike other leading technology companies, unicorns have all but done away with employee bonuses and have significantly upped the ante for equity. On average, unicorns offer nearly three times as much equity to their employees compared to other Tier-1 tech leaders like Amazon, Apple or Facebook. That gap quickly jumps to five-fold and seven-fold for Tier-2 (Microsoft, PayPal, Adobe, etc.) and Tier-3 tech companies (Dell, HP, Yahoo!, etc.) respectively.
It’s important to note that tech employees from Tier-1 companies (including unicorns) change jobs in less than three years on average, well before a standard four-year vesting period is complete. This means this substantial equity increase among tech unicorns may be lost or not matter to the typical tech employee.
Unicorns are often associated with young, fresh-faced talent. This might be due to the fact that half of their developer workforce joined the company with only a bachelor’s degree. While unicorns have comparable amounts of candidates with their Masters and Doctorates as other Tier-1 tech companies, the majority of their engineering teams are comprised of Bachelors-level employees (as opposed to around 40 percent of other leading tech companies’ engineering teams). This statistic might also indicate that while unicorns value the benefits of advanced degrees, they also assign merit to employees that may have more years of experience under their belt.
The significant jump in overall compensation is also something for which unicorns are famous. At an average of around $303k per year, including equity, unicorns beat out other Tier-1 companies’ compensation average by about $90k, Tier-2 companies by about $141k and Tier-3 companies by $175k.
While outliers like a Tier-1 Netflix (with a whopping $300k base salary and no bonus or equity) or Tier-2 Cloudera (with a higher end base salary of $152k, a $48k bonus and about $140k in equity — comparable to a unicorn) exist, overall the compensation numbers favor the unicorn in the eyes of the employee. This goes to show that unicorns won’t hesitate to shell out the big bucks for the right tech talent, especially when it comes to competing with other well-established tech companies.
Unicorns and Job Changes
Frequently changing jobs has been a standard practice among tech employees for a long time, but it’s becoming more prevalent than ever. Across all three tiers of technology companies in our data, employees are switching jobs more frequently now compared to 10 years ago.
Tier-1 employees switch jobs more frequently than employees from Tier-2 or Tier-3. Tier-1 employees only stay at their jobs for an average of 2.8 years as of 2015, notably shorter than Tier-2 or Tier-3 with average stays of 3.25 and 3.35 years respectively.
Even while job changing, tech employees do tend to stay within their tier while the economy flourishes. In contrast, there is more inter-tier movement when the economy is struggling. For example, an engineer at Salesforce (Tier-1) might move to Square (Tier-1) while the economy is thriving, but is more likely to move from Salesforce to a company like Oracle (Tier-2) when the economy isn’t doing as well. This could be due to the elasticity of the job market in relation to the economy; job seekers might be more flexible when looking for new jobs in a less forgiving economy. Overall though, the most common employee movements are within the same tier, with movements to an adjacent tier being the second most common. Jumps from Tier-1 to Tier-3 and vice versa are the least common.
With these employee moves to consider, where are unicorns mining their talent from? According to our Company Rank technology, unicorns draw their tech talent from the current top six companies, as opposed to other top-tier tech companies which only select talent from the current top two companies. This potentially gives unicorns an edge over other top tech companies by drawing from a more diverse pool of talent.
What Is the Recipe for Success at a Tech Unicorn?
Uber (Paysa Rank — 1)
Degree Prerequisites
- 63% Bachelors
- 38% Masters
- 37% Undisclosed
- 7% Doctorate
Top 3 Engineering Skill Prerequisites
- 52% Java
- 51% Python
- 39% C++
Compensation Facts
- Average Market Salary: $279k
- Average Base Salary: $146k
- Average Annual Bonus: $16k
- Average Annual Equity: $118k
Airbnb (Paysa Rank — 2)
Degree Prerequisites
- 69% Bachelors
- 32% Undisclosed
- 28% Masters
- 9% Doctorate
Top 3 Engineering Skill Prerequisites
- 33% Java
- 32% Python
- 32% C++
Compensation Facts
- Average Market Salary: $271k
- Average Base Salary: $143k
- Average Signing Bonus: $23k (no annual bonus)
- Average Annual Equity: $105k
Pinterest (Paysa Rank — 4)
Degree Prerequisites
- 70% Bachelors
- 39% Masters
- 31% Undisclosed
- 12% Doctorate
Top 3 Engineering Skill Prerequisites
- 64% Python
- 64% Java
- 46% C++
Compensation Facts
- Average Market Salary: $272k
- Average Base Salary: $141k
- Average Signing Bonus: $29k (no annual bonus)
- Average Annual Equity: $102k
Dropbox (Paysa Rank — 6)
Degree Prerequisites
- 72% Bachelors
- 29% Undisclosed
- 25% Masters
- 7% Doctorate
Top 3 Engineering Skill Prerequisites
- 47% Python
- 41% Java
- 37% Javascript
Compensation Facts
- Average Market Salary: $299k
- Average Base Salary: $142k
- Average Annual Bonus: $22k (and a $31k signing bonus)
- Average Annual Equity: $127k
Lyft (Paysa Rank — 11)
Degree Prerequisites
- 67% Bachelors
- 34% Undisclosed
- 26% Masters
- 5% Doctorate
Top 3 Engineering Skill Prerequisites
- 37% Java
- 37% Python
- 34% Javascript
Compensation Facts
- Average Market Salary: $300k
- Average Base Salary: $157k
- Average Signing Bonus: $29k (no annual bonus)
- Average Annual Equity: $115k
Unicorns are really shaking things up with their skyrocketing compensation for today’s tech workforce. Of course, there are more things than just the numbers to consider whether you are thinking about working for a Unicorn or any top tier company. It all depends on what career, salary and overall financial and personal goals you’re working towards. If you are lucky enough to work for a unicorn, though, you might just be able to achieve your goals sooner than you bargained for — wouldn’t that be nice?
Originally published at www.paysa.com on November 23, 2016.
