2 ms·

> it's easy for people to feel that their perfectly normal salaries are low. Part of a free market is realizing that, if others are earning more money for the

> it's easy for people to feel that their perfectly normal salaries are low. Part of a free market is realizing that, if others are earning more money for the same work, there is a good chance that you are undercharging your employer for your services.

lbotos 8y ago
Do you agree that this stance ignores the idea of local economies factoring into why dollars are not valued the same everywhere? Most companies I've known charge what they would consider "base rate" + some kind of Cost of Living multiplier. See Buffer's example: https://buffer.com/salary/staff-engineer-web/average https://buffer.com/salary/staff-engineer-web/average
- tathougies 8y ago
  No? Salaries ought to be compared in real values. This is econ 101. The author made no claim his figures were in real terms. He gave the nominal amounts and that is quite clear in the post. It's up to the astute reader to convert them into real values based on the purchasing power of the nominal amount provided in their locale. Your claim was that > HN is full of West Coast FAANG SV employees who are outliers. There are two ways to interpret this claim. Way 1 is to assume that you are talking about West Coast 'FAANG' employees being outliers in the sense their nominal salaries are outliers. Way 2 is to assume you claim that West Coast employees are outliers in the purchasing power sense. If I assume way 1, then your claim that 'it's easy for people to feel their salaries are low' doesn't make sense, because salaries would be compared in real terms. Moreover, the SV employees wouldn't really be outliers. They'd be perfectly average. If I assume the latter, which is that the salaries are outliers in real terms, then what I said stands: if someone else is making more money for the same job, you're probably being underpaid.

2 ms·

> it's easy for people to feel that their perfectly normal salaries are low. Part of a free market is realizing that, if others are earning more money for the

by tathougies 8y ago

lbotos 8y ago
Do you agree that this stance ignores the idea of local economies factoring into why dollars are not valued the same everywhere? Most companies I've known charge what they would consider "base rate" + some kind of Cost of Living multiplier. See Buffer's example: https://buffer.com/salary/staff-engineer-web/average https://buffer.com/salary/staff-engineer-web/average
- tathougies 8y ago
  No? Salaries ought to be compared in real values. This is econ 101. The author made no claim his figures were in real terms. He gave the nominal amounts and that is quite clear in the post. It's up to the astute reader to convert them into real values based on the purchasing power of the nominal amount provided in their locale. Your claim was that > HN is full of West Coast FAANG SV employees who are outliers. There are two ways to interpret this claim. Way 1 is to assume that you are talking about West Coast 'FAANG' employees being outliers in the sense their nominal salaries are outliers. Way 2 is to assume you claim that West Coast employees are outliers in the purchasing power sense. If I assume way 1, then your claim that 'it's easy for people to feel their salaries are low' doesn't make sense, because salaries would be compared in real terms. Moreover, the SV employees wouldn't really be outliers. They'd be perfectly average. If I assume the latter, which is that the salaries are outliers in real terms, then what I said stands: if someone else is making more money for the same job, you're probably being underpaid.