I've never hired a software consultant, but most of the time when I hire a company or person to do contract work like roofing, gardening or similar they prefer to be paid by check. Sometimes they accept credit cards, but usually not when the bill is over a certain amount, due to the cut going to the card company.

Furthermore, "Direct Deposit" is basically a special term used for people getting their wages or salary paid to their bank account, as opposed to receiving it by check or cash. Other types of bank-to-bank transfers have different names, like "wire transfer" or "ACH transfer".

Americans love overcomplicating things in general, and particularly love using overly specific and technical names for stuff. There's acronyms everywhere, and things are named after weird technicalities. Like nobody says "retirement account", they call it "401(k)", named after the paragraph in the law which defines it.

You find stuff like that everywhere if you look. Some of their coins don't even have a value printed on them, you just have to memorize how much they're worth.

If you're a self employed contractor, you're taking taxes and insurance out yourself, not from what you'd be paid.

How dare you question his math?! He gets paid 96k /150k for that!

this is about a deposit so it’s take home

401k etc makes this fuzzy

Direct deposit is after taxes. Bi-weekly or weekly deposit is the most common.

They said the US. Ao mathing is hard.

As far as I know, $150K isn't less than the median for software engineers in the entire US . It is less than the median for Senior/Lead Software Engineers though, so maybe that still works for you. In a HCOL city, you likely get far more than this amount, but it wouldn't go nearly as far obviously.

That's not less than median in the US. That's in the upper half, probably upper third of software salaries. Silicon valley shit really warps perspectives.

If it's direct deposit, the $6k is probably for a two week pay period. That's the standard for most corporations in the US. Withholdings, including taxes and retirement accounts and health insurance, is going to take roughly 1/3, so this guy is making $9k x 26 = ~$235k (probably more like $250k/yr).

Same ballpark yeah

I approve of this.

Mr Offerman?

I'm not sure where you're getting your $330k take home figure from. If your paycheck direct deposit is $6197 and you get paid every 2 weeks, that's 26 paychecks per year, or 26 * $6197 = $161,122. if your take home pay was $330k annually, your direct deposit would be $330,000 / 26 ~= $12,692.

Also not sure why total compensation is relevant. Of course if you're getting more money you can save more money but we're talking about being a software engineer and getting $6k checks deposited. Some engineers get equity, but many don't, and of those that do get options many don't stick around long enough for their options to mature, and of those that do, only some of them have matured options that have actually appreciated enough to make them worth exercising. I'm not saying equity can't be very valuable, there are engineers out there who've made serious bank with equity, but it is more often than not a carrot dangled in front of engineers to entice them to tolerate their shitty job a little longer. I don't think assuming a $161k/yr check translates to a $600k/yr return is a sound or accurate assumption. It is, however, a common one. Junior engineers fresh out of college are good at math, and they calculate out what their equity should be worth and get dollar signs in their eyes and sign up. A few of them get that, most do not.