5 ms·

I fail to see how north of 80k$/mo is a reasonable salary. Maybe things are more costly in America, with private insurance and whatnot, but where I live (Italy)

I fail to see how north of 80k$/mo is a reasonable salary. Maybe things are more costly in America, with private insurance and whatnot, but where I live (Italy) few people earn more than €10k/mo after taxes.

akvadrako 9y ago
It does seem counterintuitive, but the justification is that cutting a top employee's salary in half only frees up less than a percent increase in all the lower-level position salaries. I know about 20 years ago, Ben & Jerry's tried to hire a CEO for a reasonable salary and decided they couldn't make it work. So maybe it really does make sense.
Sylos 9y ago
It's because there's so much competition for experienced people in Silicon Valley. If Mozilla wouldn't pay her that much, another company would.
- Shorel 9y ago
  As if no other city or country in the world had any competent developer willing to work with them. Frankly, whoever solves the remote work 'problem' will make a lot of money.
- hennsen 9y ago
  Has anyone ever tried to hire someone requiring less than or up to max say 20k for such a job? I wonder which qualifications that are that you find only in people asking for >50 or even 100k/month. I am from Europe so i might miss something that’s different in US. But 20k USD would make for a very good living here. Ok you only can afford one house with that an no 1000sqm villa and no Ferrari... but i state you don’t need either.
  - esrauch 9y ago
    20k USD/month is in the range that Google/FB/Microsoft pays for direct managers of ~10 person teams: basically that would be the level of credentials that you would be competing for in that pay area.
    - hennsen 9y ago
      Interesting info - but what does that mean in conclusion? what proves us that the skills necessary to lead bigger teams or whole companies are so scarce that they have to be paid orders of magnitude more? Put another way: is it proven that the pay needs to rise with the same or even any multiplier as the people you are “responsible for”? (and i even have to understand what that responsibility means - i saw too many bad managers doing bad in terms of people as well business. who takes responsibility for thousands of failed and misconducted IT projects,their exploded costs and burned out people, to speak only of my personal area of work? Ok, maybe it’s the money you are responsible for... if you have to decide about a certain amount of money, especially in expenses, you might be prone to bribery as somebody who wants to sell your company something for a few millions could easily give you an “extra” of a few hundred thousands to buy from him and this would make uou “earn” a multitude of a months wage with just one signature. But besides this? I see no proof that skills to handle certain management tasks are really so scarce that those who get these jobs get hundreds or some even millions a month for doing them. And they certainly don’t work hundred or thousand times more than others - that would make for extreeeeeme long days. It might sound like bashing, but to me these questions are real, and i wanna know the answers.
    - rlanday 9y ago
      That’s low for a manager. Many individual contributors make more than that at large companies.
      - hennsen 9y ago
        What do they contribute that no one else could for this „low“ amount?
        9y ago
  - therealdrag0 9y ago
    I'm curious about this too. My impression is studies show high-level CEO salary don't correlate at all with company performance. Surely there are folks who have run small businesses that have just as many stress, meetings, communication, and forethought as running a large business. There might be a bit of a learning curve, but there's that for anything. Basically we need a Money-Ball approach to CEOs...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nickpsecurity 9y ago
That's what I was saying. It mostly seems to be a thing that happens in Silicon Valley and some big cities. There's good programmers in places with lower cost of living that are cheaper. Even the high end of them would approach the low end of the typical salaries in Silicon Valley. One approach I'd explore was a mix of highly-experienced people in the domain with large checks plus good programmers in the cheap areas supporting their work. There's also a few companies in my area that will pay for smart folks college if they do a 3-4 year agreement with the company. If they already program and have good mentorship, they should start getting pretty good in the first year. The salary combined with the yearly college expenses is usually about half of a Silicon Valley programmer. Multiply by several hundred people to get a lot of savings that could accelerate features or get into new markets. If I was Mozilla, I'd doing the later buying small companies doing user- and privacy-focused variants of popular services. Then, they could have a whole umbrella of stuff to offer to differentiate them based on reputation. I'd at least try a paid offering in the enterprise space as well.

akvadrako 9y ago

It does seem counterintuitive, but the justification is that cutting a top employee's salary in half only frees up less than a percent increase in all the lower-level position salaries. I know about 20 years ago, Ben & Jerry's tried to hire a CEO for a reasonable salary and decided they couldn't make it work. So maybe it really does make sense.

Sylos 9y ago

It's because there's so much competition for experienced people in Silicon Valley. If Mozilla wouldn't pay her that much, another company would.

Shorel 9y ago
As if no other city or country in the world had any competent developer willing to work with them. Frankly, whoever solves the remote work 'problem' will make a lot of money.
hennsen 9y ago
Has anyone ever tried to hire someone requiring less than or up to max say 20k for such a job? I wonder which qualifications that are that you find only in people asking for >50 or even 100k/month. I am from Europe so i might miss something that’s different in US. But 20k USD would make for a very good living here. Ok you only can afford one house with that an no 1000sqm villa and no Ferrari... but i state you don’t need either.
- esrauch 9y ago
  20k USD/month is in the range that Google/FB/Microsoft pays for direct managers of ~10 person teams: basically that would be the level of credentials that you would be competing for in that pay area.
  - hennsen 9y ago
    Interesting info - but what does that mean in conclusion? what proves us that the skills necessary to lead bigger teams or whole companies are so scarce that they have to be paid orders of magnitude more? Put another way: is it proven that the pay needs to rise with the same or even any multiplier as the people you are “responsible for”? (and i even have to understand what that responsibility means - i saw too many bad managers doing bad in terms of people as well business. who takes responsibility for thousands of failed and misconducted IT projects,their exploded costs and burned out people, to speak only of my personal area of work? Ok, maybe it’s the money you are responsible for... if you have to decide about a certain amount of money, especially in expenses, you might be prone to bribery as somebody who wants to sell your company something for a few millions could easily give you an “extra” of a few hundred thousands to buy from him and this would make uou “earn” a multitude of a months wage with just one signature. But besides this? I see no proof that skills to handle certain management tasks are really so scarce that those who get these jobs get hundreds or some even millions a month for doing them. And they certainly don’t work hundred or thousand times more than others - that would make for extreeeeeme long days. It might sound like bashing, but to me these questions are real, and i wanna know the answers.
  - rlanday 9y ago
    That’s low for a manager. Many individual contributors make more than that at large companies.
    - hennsen 9y ago
      What do they contribute that no one else could for this „low“ amount?
      - 9y ago
- therealdrag0 9y ago
  I'm curious about this too. My impression is studies show high-level CEO salary don't correlate at all with company performance. Surely there are folks who have run small businesses that have just as many stress, meetings, communication, and forethought as running a large business. There might be a bit of a learning curve, but there's that for anything. Basically we need a Money-Ball approach to CEOs...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nickpsecurity 9y ago

That's what I was saying. It mostly seems to be a thing that happens in Silicon Valley and some big cities. There's good programmers in places with lower cost of living that are cheaper. Even the high end of them would approach the low end of the typical salaries in Silicon Valley. One approach I'd explore was a mix of highly-experienced people in the domain with large checks plus good programmers in the cheap areas supporting their work. There's also a few companies in my area that will pay for smart folks college if they do a 3-4 year agreement with the company. If they already program and have good mentorship, they should start getting pretty good in the first year. The salary combined with the yearly college expenses is usually about half of a Silicon Valley programmer. Multiply by several hundred people to get a lot of savings that could accelerate features or get into new markets. If I was Mozilla, I'd doing the later buying small companies doing user- and privacy-focused variants of popular services. Then, they could have a whole umbrella of stuff to offer to differentiate them based on reputation. I'd at least try a paid offering in the enterprise space as well.