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I think the idea is that it's worth "overpaying" for a single exceptional employee in a given area, as opposed to underpaying for several. (Which seems to be a

I think the idea is that it's worth "overpaying" for a single exceptional employee in a given area, as opposed to underpaying for several. (Which seems to be a definite truism in my observation of which businesses and teams succeed and fail).

cookiecaper 10y ago
It's hard enough to find a single semi-competent employee by "overpaying". I don't think it's as simple as increasing the salary on the job listing by 20% and watching the super qualified candidates pour in.
- coredog64 10y ago
  I'm not privy to what my employer is advertising for senior DevOps positions, but I can tell you it's not nearly enough: I get resumes where "installed htop" is a prominent bullet point. Literally. The last two hires have been somewhere between oxygen thief and chair warmer. TL;DR: If you are getting crappy candidates, you are likely offering too little and could tempt better candidates with a better offer.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I've looked into the market for Sr. DevOps positions lately and unfortunately found exactly that to be the case. No one is willing to offer enough to lure me away from my current gig, where I'm reasonably happy. The employers that don't immediately scoff at the proposed salary tend to give me grief about it, which makes it not worth the time.
    - morgante 10y ago
      What do you think is a reasonable salary for Senior DevOps engineers these days?
      - thecrazyone 10y ago
        Use glassdoor my friend, the salaries vary a lot by location and company. You should checkout what competitors are paying in your location
- BrandonM 10y ago
  When you say "overpaying", what is that number for you? For context, in 2011, Clorox and other established Bay Area companies paid marketing managers with a few years of relevant experience ~$120,000. Visa is starting fresh Economics grads at $70,000 for marketing roles. If you're not in that neighborhood, good luck. Startups don't seem to value marketing as much as the big companies, and then they wonder why they need 4 people for one job. Offering under $100K for a Director of Marketing (sadly common in startups) is a joke.
  - thecrazyone 10y ago
    Honestly, these salaries seem like a lot as is, from where I come from. Instead of guessing what's a fair pay wouldn't be better to pay or get paid on results - revenue you bring in. The marketing director or others in the team are close enough (in terms of agency they have on revenue) to revenue generation that this should be possible, no?
    - BrandonM 10y ago
      It's not quite that easy. Some marketing content, like blog posts, has long-term value that can't be easily measured in the same fiscal period it was created in. A huge task of marketing is to increase the awareness and value of a brand, getting better search result rankings and helping more people find and trust the company. These effects absolutely affect the bottom line, but they can be pretty hard to measure. Marketing also generally has multiple touch points before a sale actually occurs. Maybe you see a Google paid result that you ignore, then a YouTube pre-roll that you tune out, and then you see their logo on a train ad during your commute. None of those result in a sale, but you finally see the company at a conference, grab some swag, talk to one of their salespeople, and become a customer. In this example, their revenue looks like it was generated by the efforts of the sales department, but in reality marketing had a lot to do with it, too. If your company has all the right tracking in place, you can determine the path your customers took when they ultimately bought your product, provided that they bought it online. That still ignores their prior exposure to the product that helped convince them during the current session. More importantly, if you were to measure marketing performance based solely on those metrics, your marketers would have little incentive to do all of their other important functions.

cookiecaper 10y ago

It's hard enough to find a single semi-competent employee by "overpaying". I don't think it's as simple as increasing the salary on the job listing by 20% and watching the super qualified candidates pour in.

coredog64 10y ago
I'm not privy to what my employer is advertising for senior DevOps positions, but I can tell you it's not nearly enough: I get resumes where "installed htop" is a prominent bullet point. Literally. The last two hires have been somewhere between oxygen thief and chair warmer. TL;DR: If you are getting crappy candidates, you are likely offering too little and could tempt better candidates with a better offer.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I've looked into the market for Sr. DevOps positions lately and unfortunately found exactly that to be the case. No one is willing to offer enough to lure me away from my current gig, where I'm reasonably happy. The employers that don't immediately scoff at the proposed salary tend to give me grief about it, which makes it not worth the time.
  - morgante 10y ago
    What do you think is a reasonable salary for Senior DevOps engineers these days?
    - thecrazyone 10y ago
      Use glassdoor my friend, the salaries vary a lot by location and company. You should checkout what competitors are paying in your location
BrandonM 10y ago
When you say "overpaying", what is that number for you? For context, in 2011, Clorox and other established Bay Area companies paid marketing managers with a few years of relevant experience ~$120,000. Visa is starting fresh Economics grads at $70,000 for marketing roles. If you're not in that neighborhood, good luck. Startups don't seem to value marketing as much as the big companies, and then they wonder why they need 4 people for one job. Offering under $100K for a Director of Marketing (sadly common in startups) is a joke.
- thecrazyone 10y ago
  Honestly, these salaries seem like a lot as is, from where I come from. Instead of guessing what's a fair pay wouldn't be better to pay or get paid on results - revenue you bring in. The marketing director or others in the team are close enough (in terms of agency they have on revenue) to revenue generation that this should be possible, no?
  - BrandonM 10y ago
    It's not quite that easy. Some marketing content, like blog posts, has long-term value that can't be easily measured in the same fiscal period it was created in. A huge task of marketing is to increase the awareness and value of a brand, getting better search result rankings and helping more people find and trust the company. These effects absolutely affect the bottom line, but they can be pretty hard to measure. Marketing also generally has multiple touch points before a sale actually occurs. Maybe you see a Google paid result that you ignore, then a YouTube pre-roll that you tune out, and then you see their logo on a train ad during your commute. None of those result in a sale, but you finally see the company at a conference, grab some swag, talk to one of their salespeople, and become a customer. In this example, their revenue looks like it was generated by the efforts of the sales department, but in reality marketing had a lot to do with it, too. If your company has all the right tracking in place, you can determine the path your customers took when they ultimately bought your product, provided that they bought it online. That still ignores their prior exposure to the product that helped convince them during the current session. More importantly, if you were to measure marketing performance based solely on those metrics, your marketers would have little incentive to do all of their other important functions.