I wasn't going to weigh in but since everyone else is.
With 14 years experience in enterprise software (J2EE, 3tier transactions systems, etc) , you can see anywhere from 105-130k+10k here in SD, before bonus and that usually does not involve the hassle of managing people. The low end is typically found at defense companies like BAE.Northrop,etc. The higher end is on larger/non-defense software companies. Add a manager title and/or architect level position, and you'll see around 150k-160k. Bonus vary by company, with again the low end being from defense company. My company has typically handed out around 20% each year for the past couple of years, though my company is also starting to demand more now.
Qualcomm: Staff Engineer/Manager embedded software folks can see roughly 130k+-10k (pecking order is Engineer/Senior/Staff/Senior Staff.) The "manager" title at qualcomm imho isn't really a "manager" in the strictest sense in that you really aren't "managing" people on your project.. Qualcomm's structure is matrixed, such that your reporting structure is completely different from your work structure. You work for a Lead but your manager typically does your reviews and typically you don't work for. So the manager's role is roughly every 6 months to collect feedback for the managee from his/her peers, present his/her findings to a compensation meeting. A manager title roughly translates into a 6% pay raise, which while isn't much, is pretty good considering the only thing you really need to do is fill out a bunch of forms and attend a meeting every 6 months to review people that never worked for you. (Yes, I know, pretty weird). Bonus recently has been good so i'm told. In general, Program Manager's at QC aren't highly regarded, and pay probably is not that comparable to what you would see at a defense company for a PM. Note, QC is one of the few remaining companies that still do 6 months compensation reviews. Everyone else is doing 1 year.
Compared to the Bay Area: I for the longest time was saying that the pay here isn't too different from the bay area (at least not from my perspective). Well, apparentlly I haven't checked with latest comps being offered for a comparable position up there for me. A few startups have offered approximately 25% more than what I currently have down here, which is consistent with the 25% differential folks have stated seeing from moving from here back there or vice versus. Adobe, for example, I have heard is offering senior software engineers around 150-160k, though the flip side is it's hard to get into some of those companies with the top salaries.
Frankly with a W2, you hit a point of diminishing returns. The numbers look great on paper, but after taxes it's really not worth the extra 5-10% gross pay differential if the company is demanding you to work 20-30% more. Maybe it's just because I'm getting older. Also, when you're in a bigger role, if some always-on enterprise service ever breaks for an extended time, some heads are going to roll, and more than likely it will be yours. As far as overtime and being on call. Everyone that works in a company that has an online presence has some level of on-callness at critical points in the season. Usually, there is an escalation process, so those doing the development *should* be the last to get called. There's usually an I.T./operations team which are paid to work 24/7 normally are the ones that deal with the immediate emergencies. Hopefully, you spent the time training them to understand the thing you put online and have put enough emphasis in your system design to ensure manageability and monitoring is easy to do. That said, this is even more of a reason why you don't want to fvck up. The more crap you put online that isn't tested or can't be diagnosed, or contains fragile failure points, the more you're going to end up getting paged, and your development team that worked with you is never going to want to work with you again on a future project.
