They work on security, mobile, back-end, and "I can't tell you what I'm working on," the last being the most common answer, unfortunately. The common thread is that they're all good developers. I got my offer in large part because of Android development skills on top of low level skills, which on Android means I'm comfortable and experienced with the NDK. But I also know Windows, full-stack web, high performance servers design, scalable server design, multithreaded programming, game development, and a half dozen other interests/skills.
Most of the compensation comes in the form of stock grants and/or signing bonus. My compensation was $160k "salary" plus nearly that much in signing bonus+stock grant. Actually if I hadn't left the company, their new stock price would have meant higher total compensation this year, but I wanted to pursue my own things.
I want to second that the salary tends to top out, and the rest of compensation is very heavily stock based. Also that stock compensation might of not been as worth as much when it was defined, but because the company stock has performed well, it's value has increased significantly.
For example if your 4 year stock grant was rated on the early 2012 price of apple, and now it's about double, then your making a lot more money!
* Google
* Facebook
* Amazon
* Microsoft
* Apple
They work on security, mobile, back-end, and "I can't tell you what I'm working on," the last being the most common answer, unfortunately. The common thread is that they're all good developers. I got my offer in large part because of Android development skills on top of low level skills, which on Android means I'm comfortable and experienced with the NDK. But I also know Windows, full-stack web, high performance servers design, scalable server design, multithreaded programming, game development, and a half dozen other interests/skills.
Most of the compensation comes in the form of stock grants and/or signing bonus. My compensation was $160k "salary" plus nearly that much in signing bonus+stock grant. Actually if I hadn't left the company, their new stock price would have meant higher total compensation this year, but I wanted to pursue my own things.