6 ms·

Sorry, your friend at google feels under-paid? No offense to your friend or you, but It's hard for me to really understand that because of several reasons. Firs

by dzlobin 17y ago

Sorry, your friend at google feels under-paid? No offense to your friend or you, but It's hard for me to really understand that because of several reasons. First of all, he/she likely makes at least what..80k? 90k? I understand it's not a million dollars a year but that's not a bad salary. Second of all, there are people that would accept a lot less than that simply to work at google. I used to cook professionally, and was at one point working for FREE at Corton, in NYC, solely so that I can say I worked and learned there. All the cooks who work in fine dining get paid horribly but work there to learn from the best. This should be the same for hackers. Of course your friends from these great companies wouldn't have a hard time finding a wall street job for a lot more pay, but you'd have to agree that they are learning a LOT more than they would there, and that has to be worth something.

gaius 17y ago
$80-90k doesn't go very far in Mountain View or Manhattan.
- dzlobin 17y ago
  Believe me I know, I'm from NYC. But that's the average STARTING salary for hackers at the big companies, and surely it will be a nice stepping stone to bigger, better places.
  - OmniLarry 17y ago
    I'm curious, when people say salary, do they mean compensation? 80-90k starting in NY is almost month to month, but there's a nice pot of bonus..
  - polynomial 17y ago
    Starting salary for hackers? My ex made starte in that range with just her modest fluency with html. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that number is really low for NYC, in my personal exp.
    - GFischer 17y ago
      Oh crap - stop posting those salaries :P I'm in the 3rd world right now making 12000 U$D a year - and taxed like hell for being in the upper range. I'll most probably emigrate within the next year, but I know it won't be a bed of roses...
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  If you're < 5 years out of college it does. Useful knowledge is that if you work hard, and don't tie yourself to one job, every job change you get for the rest of your career involves a salary increase. You've set a good base.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    Not necessarily. I went from a smallish (40 person) company to a huge fortune 100 megacorp which has hip new offices and wins awards for being a great place to work and they flat out told me I was outside their pay range for the position so I'd have to accept a 4% paycut to go there. Maybe I'm terrible at negotiating but it was the first time I had a company dictate the salary rather than do the "desired salary" song and dance. I do sometimes feel like it is all a massive fraud perpetrated by HR people who, in exchange for some hip decor and free food, can get engineers to trade raw salary. All in all I learned that all the external reputation, perks and lime green paint in the world don't matter one whit compared to the competence of your immediate peers and you certainly don't need to go to a namebrand software shop for that. written on a mobile phone so apologies for any egregious misspellings
    - nostrademons 17y ago
      You had the option of not going there though, right?
      - dschobel 17y ago
        Yes, had I had the hindsight gained after a year at the megacorp when I accepted the offer. But thanks for the sincere and insightful question.
  - ismarc 17y ago
    I had a long rant here, edited it to remove the vulgarities, edited to keep it fairly anonymous, and was left with just this sentence: Why on earth should someone have to change companies to get paid what they're worth?
- smcq 17y ago
  Exactly what compensation do you think entry level employees should be getting? Exactly what should the be making 10 years later after you've (nearly) doubled their salary.
dnsworks 17y ago
It's all relative. There is no money for the workers in the service industry because the competition for most roles is unlimited. The supply of technologists is far smaller, however. Every once and a while Google calls me up asking to interview, I politely tell them no. When they ask why I wouldn't want to work there, my response is "You will pay me $100k-$120k. I can make $140k-$160k elsewhere". They start going into this schpeel about their 20% "free time", their stock grants, their free shuttle (Living in SF and would have to commute 2 hours a day to get there). Their culture. They're working really hard to sell me on why I should make $20-$40k less working for them, then to take some other crappy job at a mature startup within 4-6 blocks of my apartment.
- dzlobin 17y ago
  You have a good point, I wasn't making the connection to say that cooks should be paid more (which they should because a 100 hour work week is average at that level) but rather to emphasize the sacrifice they make to learn and work for the best chefs
- dzlobin 17y ago
  Out of personal curiosity, if you don't mind telling me, what's your age/education/job? I'm curious as to who Google actively recruits. BTW: feel free to email me if you don't want to post that
  - angelbob 17y ago
    Google constantly emails me asking if I want to apply, though I'm not sure they'd hire me if I had the patience to go through their interview process properly. I'm 34, have a bachelor's in math and one in comp sci from Carnegie Mellon, and I have about 11 years of full-time software engineering experience on my resume, primarily in C and C++.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    30/high school drop-out/systems administrator (with 18 years experience)
rickmode 17y ago
"...that's not a bad salary." That's entitlement thinking and it ignores economics. Salaries in software (and in most white collar jobs) are a negotiation. If all goes well the employer feels they are slightly overpaying and the employee feels slightly undervalued. If either side is happy then there's an inequity. One is not entitled to specific salary, nor is one limited by a specific cap on salary. The second point that there are non-monetary values to a job is well said though.
- ehsanul 17y ago
  If either side is happy then there's an inequity. Or you might get into the position where the employer and employee think they got a great deal. I've heard of it happen before. In any case, making sure neither side is happy is not really any way to ensure that there's no inequity.
- gorbachev 17y ago
  The negotiation is rarely in equal footing, however. During high unemployment, the employers are dictating the terms. During low unemployment, the employees are dictating the terms. I can't wait till the employment rates go up again. Unfortunately according to experts it won't for a LOOOONG while.
nickmolnar2 17y ago
There is also the benefit of down-the-line wages you can earn from having great experience on your resume. Maybe by turning down a 200K job for an 80K one, it makes the candidate eligible for a 350K job two years later. Saying you worked for Google, or Corton, or any other top-of-their-field employer is something that has long-lasting benefits. The payment is just deferred and spread over 30+ years.
- ytinas 17y ago
  Has this actually been verified? I haven't happened on any stories yet about someone "doing their time" at google to go pick a job making way above their normal range.
  - sokoloff 17y ago
    At this point Google is probably too large for there to be a sense of exclusivity about it. I'm sure that being one of the first 50 at Google or Amazon would be a particularly effective resume builder (though given where those companies went, perhaps a financially unnecessary one). I've been recruited to positions specifically because of D. E. Shaw on my resume/LinkedIn profile. Whether that got me way above range or not is impossible to say, of course, but I've never been one to complain about salary in my life either. At my current company, I took a significant pay cut to come here in 2003, N years pre-IPO. N turned out to be 2.5.
  - jlees 17y ago
    there's a mention higher up this exact comment thread of people doing exactly that. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098358 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098358
    - ytinas 17y ago
      It was posted 6 hours after my post. :)
- ulrich 17y ago
  It is the other way round, at least in Germany. During your interview you will always be asked how much you got at your last job. Then there is a magical cap at say 20% above the last salary (depends on how much they want you of course). So it is very important to have a good salary at the beginning, because it will always be a reference point.

by dzlobin 17y ago

gaius 17y ago

$80-90k doesn't go very far in Mountain View or Manhattan.

dzlobin 17y ago
Believe me I know, I'm from NYC. But that's the average STARTING salary for hackers at the big companies, and surely it will be a nice stepping stone to bigger, better places.
- OmniLarry 17y ago
  I'm curious, when people say salary, do they mean compensation? 80-90k starting in NY is almost month to month, but there's a nice pot of bonus..
- polynomial 17y ago
  Starting salary for hackers? My ex made starte in that range with just her modest fluency with html. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that number is really low for NYC, in my personal exp.
  - GFischer 17y ago
    Oh crap - stop posting those salaries :P I'm in the 3rd world right now making 12000 U$D a year - and taxed like hell for being in the upper range. I'll most probably emigrate within the next year, but I know it won't be a bed of roses...
ojbyrne 17y ago
If you're < 5 years out of college it does. Useful knowledge is that if you work hard, and don't tie yourself to one job, every job change you get for the rest of your career involves a salary increase. You've set a good base.
- dschobel 17y ago
  Not necessarily. I went from a smallish (40 person) company to a huge fortune 100 megacorp which has hip new offices and wins awards for being a great place to work and they flat out told me I was outside their pay range for the position so I'd have to accept a 4% paycut to go there. Maybe I'm terrible at negotiating but it was the first time I had a company dictate the salary rather than do the "desired salary" song and dance. I do sometimes feel like it is all a massive fraud perpetrated by HR people who, in exchange for some hip decor and free food, can get engineers to trade raw salary. All in all I learned that all the external reputation, perks and lime green paint in the world don't matter one whit compared to the competence of your immediate peers and you certainly don't need to go to a namebrand software shop for that. written on a mobile phone so apologies for any egregious misspellings
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    You had the option of not going there though, right?
    - dschobel 17y ago
      Yes, had I had the hindsight gained after a year at the megacorp when I accepted the offer. But thanks for the sincere and insightful question.
- ismarc 17y ago
  I had a long rant here, edited it to remove the vulgarities, edited to keep it fairly anonymous, and was left with just this sentence: Why on earth should someone have to change companies to get paid what they're worth?
smcq 17y ago
Exactly what compensation do you think entry level employees should be getting? Exactly what should the be making 10 years later after you've (nearly) doubled their salary.

dnsworks 17y ago

It's all relative. There is no money for the workers in the service industry because the competition for most roles is unlimited. The supply of technologists is far smaller, however. Every once and a while Google calls me up asking to interview, I politely tell them no. When they ask why I wouldn't want to work there, my response is "You will pay me $100k-$120k. I can make $140k-$160k elsewhere". They start going into this schpeel about their 20% "free time", their stock grants, their free shuttle (Living in SF and would have to commute 2 hours a day to get there). Their culture. They're working really hard to sell me on why I should make $20-$40k less working for them, then to take some other crappy job at a mature startup within 4-6 blocks of my apartment.

dzlobin 17y ago
You have a good point, I wasn't making the connection to say that cooks should be paid more (which they should because a 100 hour work week is average at that level) but rather to emphasize the sacrifice they make to learn and work for the best chefs
dzlobin 17y ago
Out of personal curiosity, if you don't mind telling me, what's your age/education/job? I'm curious as to who Google actively recruits. BTW: feel free to email me if you don't want to post that
- angelbob 17y ago
  Google constantly emails me asking if I want to apply, though I'm not sure they'd hire me if I had the patience to go through their interview process properly. I'm 34, have a bachelor's in math and one in comp sci from Carnegie Mellon, and I have about 11 years of full-time software engineering experience on my resume, primarily in C and C++.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  30/high school drop-out/systems administrator (with 18 years experience)

rickmode 17y ago

"...that's not a bad salary." That's entitlement thinking and it ignores economics. Salaries in software (and in most white collar jobs) are a negotiation. If all goes well the employer feels they are slightly overpaying and the employee feels slightly undervalued. If either side is happy then there's an inequity. One is not entitled to specific salary, nor is one limited by a specific cap on salary. The second point that there are non-monetary values to a job is well said though.

ehsanul 17y ago
If either side is happy then there's an inequity. Or you might get into the position where the employer and employee think they got a great deal. I've heard of it happen before. In any case, making sure neither side is happy is not really any way to ensure that there's no inequity.
gorbachev 17y ago
The negotiation is rarely in equal footing, however. During high unemployment, the employers are dictating the terms. During low unemployment, the employees are dictating the terms. I can't wait till the employment rates go up again. Unfortunately according to experts it won't for a LOOOONG while.

nickmolnar2 17y ago

There is also the benefit of down-the-line wages you can earn from having great experience on your resume. Maybe by turning down a 200K job for an 80K one, it makes the candidate eligible for a 350K job two years later. Saying you worked for Google, or Corton, or any other top-of-their-field employer is something that has long-lasting benefits. The payment is just deferred and spread over 30+ years.

ytinas 17y ago
Has this actually been verified? I haven't happened on any stories yet about someone "doing their time" at google to go pick a job making way above their normal range.
- sokoloff 17y ago
  At this point Google is probably too large for there to be a sense of exclusivity about it. I'm sure that being one of the first 50 at Google or Amazon would be a particularly effective resume builder (though given where those companies went, perhaps a financially unnecessary one). I've been recruited to positions specifically because of D. E. Shaw on my resume/LinkedIn profile. Whether that got me way above range or not is impossible to say, of course, but I've never been one to complain about salary in my life either. At my current company, I took a significant pay cut to come here in 2003, N years pre-IPO. N turned out to be 2.5.
- jlees 17y ago
  there's a mention higher up this exact comment thread of people doing exactly that. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098358 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098358
  - ytinas 17y ago
    It was posted 6 hours after my post. :)
ulrich 17y ago
It is the other way round, at least in Germany. During your interview you will always be asked how much you got at your last job. Then there is a magical cap at say 20% above the last salary (depends on how much they want you of course). So it is very important to have a good salary at the beginning, because it will always be a reference point.