- Magic Leap has had a heck of a 2020.
- Earlier this year, the much-hyped augmented reality startup had a massive layoff as part of big restructuring and shortly after it installed a new CEO.
- Throughout it all, the company was hiring and today it lists dozens of jobs.
- So how much can you make working at Magic Leap? Business Insider dug into data on actual salaries paid to workers through disclosures made via the H1-B visa program to find out.
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Magic Leap, the much-hyped augmented reality startup that raised billions for its augmented-reality goggles, has had a roller coaster of a 2020.
The Florida-headquartered startup had raised over $3 billion by the end of 2019 from a who’s who of big-name investors. But then its first product launched in 2017 to middling reviews and poor sales.
By 2019, Magic Leap rebranded as an enterprise product, putting it in head-to-head competition with giant Microsoft. In April, the company restructured and reportedly laid off almost half its workforce and shortly after, CEO Rony Abovitz announced he was stepping down.
In July, the company hired Microsoft’s famed dealmaker, Peggy Johnson, to replace Abovitz as CEO.
There was considerable damage before Johnson came on board. Nearly all of those big-name mutual fund investors who bought in during the hype marked down the value of their shares, viewing the company as now worth $450 million, down from a $6.7 billion valuation in April 2019, according to PitchBook data.
But through it all, the one-time unicorn has been hiring and currently lists dozens of open jobs on its careers web page. And it remains one of the few dedicated AR companies working on products for what is still considered to be an area with enormous potential.
So, how much can you make working for Magic Leap? We can learn something about that from looking at what Magic Leap pays the workers it hires from overseas. Corporations have to disclose to the federal government how much they pay employees through the H-1B visa program, a major part of how Silicon Valley fills its offices. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification makes that information public annually.
Business Insider went through data released in 2020, which included jobs hired for up to the last six years, to discover how much Magic Leap pays software and hardware engineers. This is salary information only and doesn’t include other compensation such as stock. When there were multiple jobs with the same title, we included a range.