when i started my ux design tech career five years ago i would have never thought that i would be
making multiple six figures at my nine-to-five job i thought this kind of compensation was reserved
for people in leadership with 10 plus years of experience and even just a couple years back i
wasn't making this much and if you want to know how much i was making my first two years as a ux
designer watch this video here so in today's video i'll be breaking down my total compensation of 400
000 i'm editing the video right now and there's just one thing that i really wanted to emphasize
and that is more money doesn't necessarily equate to more happiness even though this
is the most i've ever gotten paid at a job this past year has also been one of the most stressful
times in my career i had a lot of anxiety i got sick very often and i ended up getting burnt out
so i left corporate and now i'm freelancing so there's always a cost to something when it's that
good in my opinion i'm seeing a pattern with these companies that offer really high compensation
packages usually there's a catch and the catch is most of the times really intense work environment
no work life balance so be careful what you wish for a few things to keep in mind when
you're looking at a compensation package there's a lot of different factors that you have to look at
one is location so if you're living in an expensive city like san francisco or new york
your compensation will be a lot higher because companies do take into consideration the
ridiculously expensive rent and cost of living there's also years of experience
and how many competing offers you have on the table will give you a lot of leverage
on negotiation and getting a higher compensation package to give you a little background about
myself if you're new here i'm christine hello and i'm based in san francisco and i've been
a designer for over five years and my title is senior product designer so my compensation
package will be based on these factors the reason why i'm sharing my salary so publicly is because
i've personally benefited so much from designers sharing their salaries with me and i want to
practice more pay transparency because the more data points we have and the more informed we are
of what we can possibly make and what we can ask for we can work towards having equal pay
for equal work it was honestly crushing for me when i found out that a lot of my peers with
the same title and years of experience were making significantly higher salaries simply
because i didn't know better i didn't know that these were numbers that i could ask for
until i started having these conversations with friends and other close coworkers let's first
talk base salary so i thought i was getting a lot and then i talked to other designers
and then i was shocked so the range for senior designers with four to five years of experience
nowadays is 180 to 210k now these are numbers that i've never heard of just a couple years back so i
do think right now the market is hot for product designers if you are looking for a new job i have
some job postings up on my job board that range from junior to senior position so do check that
out but yeah these numbers are not very normal i think right now product designers are in high high
demand so companies are willing to pay a lot to hire product designers so the second piece is
sign on bonus this is a lump sum cash amount that companies give out to candidates to incentivize
them to accept the offer so this is usually 10 to 15 of your salary which equates to 20 to 25k which
is the range that i received and if you leave within a year you do have to pay that money back
so the catch is that you do have to stay for at least a year to keep that sign-on bonus before we
get into the part of my compensation package which i think is most important that made up more than
half of my compensation i want to introduce you to today's sponsor if you want to get into ux design
a great way to start is by enrolling in a bootcamp which is what i did five years ago
if you're looking for a boot camp to join coding dojo has a flexible part-time program
for working professionals who are looking to gain design skills to level up or change their career
coding dojo has over 8 000 students who have successfully completed their boot camps with a 89
job placement rate you can also google your way into design or take all the free courses out
there but investing in a more structured program will accelerate your career transition because
when you have more skin in the game you start to take more actions towards achieving your goals
so i highly recommend that you invest in yourself and invest in your education the most critical
part of my compensation package was equity this is what makes a lot of techies millionaires and
billionaires so my equity package was 200 to 250k per year and equity looks different for
private and public companies but when you have equity it means that you hold partial
ownership of the business and its profit so you become a stockholder and you own a piece
of the pie of the business companies like to offer equity because it fosters an ownership mentality
right when you own something you tend to take better care of it you want it to succeed so you
work harder also companies are more willing to give you more equity even if they're not willing
to budge on their base salary and that's because a lot of times certain levels have salary bans
and they really can't give you more than what that level should make and so you can negotiate
by asking for more equity so equity comes in the form of stock options or rsus restricted stock
units private companies give out both while public companies only give out rsus and private companies
when they're early on they're like a small startup they'll give out stock options and as they mature
and they're closer to becoming public they will start giving out rsus instead of stock options to
their employees it's important to note that just being granted stock options or rsus doesn't result
in actual ownership of that equity until they vest and in order for them to vest there's usually
certain conditions that have to be met one of the main ones being how long you stay at the company
usually there's a one-year cliff which means you have to stay at least a year in order for
one-fourth of your stocks to vest so when you get an offer letter it'll say something like
8 000 stock options granted over four years so you divide that by four and so after a year you will
have 2 000 stock options to best and this is why you see a lot of times at startups people really
try hard to stay at least a year and leave because otherwise you don't make any gains on your equity
a stock option is a right to buy a fixed number of shares at a fixed discounted price also known
as the strike price so the earlier on you join a startup your strike price will be a lot cheaper
and lower than if you had joined years later when the company's valuation goes up this is how
people who joined facebook google amazon really early on are now multi-millionaires because their
stocks probably 10x or more there's definitely pros and cons of having stock options and rsus
so let's take that example of being granted 8 000 stock options over four years after a year you
have 2 000 stock options that have been vested and now you have the choice to exercise those
options which simply means you have to buy those options i mean you have the choice to buy you
don't have to buy it but your strike price is 10 and you have 2 000 shares so in order to exercise
all of those 2 000 stock options you need 20k now when you do you're making a bet that the stock
options that you've purchased at a low price well hopefully 10x or 15x by the time the company ipos
and you start selling your stocks the pro of stock options is that you'll probably make more gains
if you join the company early on and the con of it is that you do need cash up front so the key
difference between stock options and rsus is uh rsus don't have an exercise price you don't have
to put your money up front to exercise your shares they just become yours once they best so let's say
after a year i have 2 000 rsus that are vested and the value per share is 100 and a liquidity event
happens so the company goes ipo or gets acquired then i'm taking home two hundred thousand dollars
and that will be also taxed as my ordinary income for public companies like apple google facebook
that are on the stock market they only give out rsu's and they usually have
a plan called espp stock purchase plan and this is a program where you can set aside a certain
percentage of your income towards purchasing your company's stocks at a discounted price so if your
company does really well then it this can be very lucrative for you other things to look out for in
your compensation package are benefits so certain companies have better health care than others
some have unlimited pto and some have limited pto dropbox i heard gives a five thousand to seven
thousand dollar stipend for dining which sounds honestly amazing blind and levels dot fyi are
also really great resources for you to check out if you wanna see how much people are getting paid
i also have a live stream that's coming up in a few weeks where i'll be bringing in a
hiring manager from a tech company and we'll be talking about how to negotiate your first design
job offer and some negotiation tactics so check out the link down below and i hope you found this
video helpful please leave a comment below if you did and i will see you next time bye