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So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately f

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area. Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes higher ). Only the most well paid Quants working in horrible environments made 500k+ There's a good portion >E5 engineers at these companies making well over that. Anti-competition is bad.. but they are at the top of the industry on compensation. :( So again, don't know how to feel about this.

izzydata 7y ago
Who gets to judge how much an engineer is worth to a company making billion upon billions of dollars a year? If some of these engineers are what is enabling these companies and their executives to make millions then maybe they really are worth a 1 million dollar salary.
- inlined 7y ago
  Also, this happened many years ago. Wages have soared since this was uncovered. Now (actually 4hrs ago, the last I checked) a college hire’s signing bonus is 2/3 my base salary was 6yrs earlier.
- DannyBee 7y ago
  Sure, but the ones who aren't doing that are also getting paid really well. In your scheme they would not :)
  - defen 7y ago
    > Sure, but the ones who aren't doing that are also getting paid really well. So, don't require a 4.3 GPA from Stanford/MIT/Caltech for entry-level back-office/maintenance type developers. It seems like you're claiming that FAANGs are overpaying non-contributors, or at least those whose impact is not easily measured. So, stop paying so much and see what kind of developers you get.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I think the fair thing to realize, as a society, is that corporate profit taxes just make sense. If a company is operating in a high profit margin line of business it has more than enough money to invest in future growth, fairly compensate employers and owners _and_ provide a societal benefit for all those other community members that work in less high profit margin societies. Sure, you've got good healthcare and what not, why not make sure your barista has the same access before buying that third house. I applaud anyone who decides to do this of their own volition, but I think we can agree this makes sense societally and it'd just be easier if a third party was responsible for shifting the money around as needed and made sure everyone was paying proportionate to their ability.
  - fjp 7y ago
    I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would not benefit them. Can you imagine how many more inventions and advancements there would be if everyone had access to good education? Didn't have to worry about going bankrupt or dying because they can't meet medical expenses? If we put money into things that don't necessarily directly directly go into corporate bottom lines by next financial quarter? (roads, transportation infrastructure, clean water and air...)
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      When you're super rich, you already have that better society, it just costs a bit more (nothing you can't easily afford). Who cares about the rest of the hoi polloi. That's how our society works and we applaude it by promising the potential to become one of the super rich, when much of obtaining that degree of wealth isn't earned through hard work and innovation but instead, pure situational luck and ability to curb your morals and ethics to climb over people and pull the ladder behind you.
      - Frondo 7y ago
        You know, this, and you see this in the way the super-rich politicians elected to represent most of the country act. "We want to grow the pie, rather than redistribute anything, so everyone can live the American dream" -- when in reality, the pie is plenty big but verrrrry badly distributed when you're among the working poor. There was also a great video making the rounds recently about Rep. Katie Porter grilling Jamie Dimon about the base wages at his bank in Irvine, CA. She got out a posterboard and did the math on a hypothetical single mother working full-time as a teller ($16.50 an hour). After some very straightforward math, the hypothetical single mother is in the hole $587 every month. She kept pressing Dimon for how he expects that role to be filled, and he had no answer (repeating "I'll have to think about it.") Obviously, on some level he doesn't give a shit, but I think it's the sort of thing where he's also simply never confronted with the reality for someone who doesn't make $31 million a year plus whatever other non-cash he takes home.
- keepper 7y ago
  you're right. But there's MANY other companies making similar profits.. yet not of them pay anything similar? I think you guys can't separate your dislike for these companies, with an actual, thoughtful analysis. Most oil companies make similar profits.. yet the average oil engineer makes 80-100k. With a lot more risk, and in similar high demand as a software engineer.
  - lawrenceyan 7y ago
    The skill required is much lower though. With a lower bar, it’s much easier to work as a oil rigger. All it requires is a high school degree. To be clear though, the people doing data analysis, land exploration, etc. for oil well discovery get paid much more by the way. They make similar amounts to what tech companies can offer in fact.
kjar 7y ago
This argument is very weak IMO. Paraphrased “I got paid happily, industry collusion to suppress wages is therefore OK”
- skybrian 7y ago
  It was never OK but was settled long ago and compared to the many, many other forms of injustice in the world that are ongoing and more severe, why focus on this one? Even if you limit your scope to tech companies, there are more important things.
- keepper 7y ago
  Have you actually look at wages in other industries? Why are we focusing on the companies that actually do PAY ABOVE. how about we focus on the industries that UNDER pay. Someone getting compensated many times the average income is not the person we should trying to advocate for. The market can decide that. That industrial or service worker not getting paid a living wage. THATs who we should be fighting for. I love how i'm getting downvoted for my parent comment, but no one has taken the time to compare to other industries and companies with similar profits, who pay their engineering talent SUBSTANTIALLY less. Oil industry has similar profits, yet pays engineers 80-100k.
  - sage76 7y ago
    > The market can decide that. How, since they were not allowing the market to decide that. > THATs who we should be fighting for. It's not binary. Both fights are important.
samirillian 7y ago
Yeah, until you compare how much they spend on wages to their market cap, which is just insanely low relative to most other industries.
deogeo 7y ago
Now compare the wages against CEO and shareholder compensation.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Yea, this is where things get really stupid. The contribution of shareholders is very close to nil - the CEO may be the most impactful employee (though I think they're honestly not nearly as important as modern society says, being a replaceable cog themselves) but they are not worth the equivalent of 20 or 5000 employees.
- keepper 7y ago
  How about we compare to engineering wages in other companies with similar profits? Pretty much any other large engineering company. Or how about the oil industry? where profits are higher, the risk to life way higher, yet engineers make 80-100k? What you have in these companies are single large shareholders vs institutional or family shareholders. That's what you're ultimately uncomfortable with. One person having so much net work.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > How about we compare to engineering wages Why? Why not vs. CEO compensation? Is there some rule that CEOs and shareholders must make absurdly more money than workers, or society will collapse? CEO salaries are routinely defended with "that's what they're worth" - why does this not apply to the lowly worker?
dropit_sphere 7y ago
"Remember kids, profit is for capital, never labor. Know the difference!"
- omega3 7y ago
  Are you paraphrasing here or quoting directly? What is the source?
- skybrian 7y ago
  When compensation includes stock options and RSU's the lines are somewhat blurry. And isn't this what such financial incentives are for, to align incentives? But then, you have multiple classes of stock which undoes that somewhat. Incentives are never fully aligned; there are always things like principal-agent problems. So I agree in substance if not in snark: it is important to understand these things.
cobookman 7y ago
There is a lot of ageism in this industry. I'd be curious if SWE at FAANG is equivalent to football players in the NFL. Aka, Sure you might make more but what's the earnings over total career?
- skybrian 7y ago
  The salaries and other compensation are often high enough that if you live modestly, invest your money, and most importantly, the stock goes up, the career might be over when you realize you have enough to retire early. But as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
fullshark 7y ago
Remember this happened before FB / Netflix / Unicorns started an open war for talent and blew salaries up.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ummonk 7y ago
You've got the timeline backwards. The compensation only went up after this collusion ended.
defen 7y ago
> So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. Just to be clear: you are saying it's possibly ok for a cartel of billionaires to collude to suppress wages for a bunch of people making six figures? Because those employees have it "pretty good" and should be happy with what they're given, even though they are working to build world-historical fortunes and power for the business owners?
- kjar 7y ago
  Serfdom
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Serfdom doesn't pay that well. Note well: I'm not saying that this is OK, either legally or morally. I'm just saying that the parent is way overhyping the problem.
    - goobynight 7y ago
      Naw. You're underhyping it. Creating this artificial ceiling in the low 6 figures is awful, regardless of how badly people making less than that are getting screwed. As far as I'm concerned, they're as hopeless as a bucket of crabs and we shouldn't use them as a bar or relative bar for anything. Do I-bankers look at they're comp and say "yeah that's pretty good. I'm ok getting screwed out of any more"? I think we should always be advocating for our group as hard as we can.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Absolutely everything you say could be true, and that still wouldn't make it serfdom, nor even close.
      - skybrian 7y ago
        These aren't the only choices. I think our industry is actually a little better with that, where we have some software engineers advocating for more money for the contractors. [1] [1] https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18293900/google-contractors-benefits-policy https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18293900/google-contractors-ben...

izzydata 7y ago

Who gets to judge how much an engineer is worth to a company making billion upon billions of dollars a year? If some of these engineers are what is enabling these companies and their executives to make millions then maybe they really are worth a 1 million dollar salary.

inlined 7y ago
Also, this happened many years ago. Wages have soared since this was uncovered. Now (actually 4hrs ago, the last I checked) a college hire’s signing bonus is 2/3 my base salary was 6yrs earlier.
DannyBee 7y ago
Sure, but the ones who aren't doing that are also getting paid really well. In your scheme they would not :)
- defen 7y ago
  > Sure, but the ones who aren't doing that are also getting paid really well. So, don't require a 4.3 GPA from Stanford/MIT/Caltech for entry-level back-office/maintenance type developers. It seems like you're claiming that FAANGs are overpaying non-contributors, or at least those whose impact is not easily measured. So, stop paying so much and see what kind of developers you get.
munk-a 7y ago
I think the fair thing to realize, as a society, is that corporate profit taxes just make sense. If a company is operating in a high profit margin line of business it has more than enough money to invest in future growth, fairly compensate employers and owners _and_ provide a societal benefit for all those other community members that work in less high profit margin societies. Sure, you've got good healthcare and what not, why not make sure your barista has the same access before buying that third house. I applaud anyone who decides to do this of their own volition, but I think we can agree this makes sense societally and it'd just be easier if a third party was responsible for shifting the money around as needed and made sure everyone was paying proportionate to their ability.
- fjp 7y ago
  I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would not benefit them. Can you imagine how many more inventions and advancements there would be if everyone had access to good education? Didn't have to worry about going bankrupt or dying because they can't meet medical expenses? If we put money into things that don't necessarily directly directly go into corporate bottom lines by next financial quarter? (roads, transportation infrastructure, clean water and air...)
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    When you're super rich, you already have that better society, it just costs a bit more (nothing you can't easily afford). Who cares about the rest of the hoi polloi. That's how our society works and we applaude it by promising the potential to become one of the super rich, when much of obtaining that degree of wealth isn't earned through hard work and innovation but instead, pure situational luck and ability to curb your morals and ethics to climb over people and pull the ladder behind you.
    - Frondo 7y ago
      You know, this, and you see this in the way the super-rich politicians elected to represent most of the country act. "We want to grow the pie, rather than redistribute anything, so everyone can live the American dream" -- when in reality, the pie is plenty big but verrrrry badly distributed when you're among the working poor. There was also a great video making the rounds recently about Rep. Katie Porter grilling Jamie Dimon about the base wages at his bank in Irvine, CA. She got out a posterboard and did the math on a hypothetical single mother working full-time as a teller ($16.50 an hour). After some very straightforward math, the hypothetical single mother is in the hole $587 every month. She kept pressing Dimon for how he expects that role to be filled, and he had no answer (repeating "I'll have to think about it.") Obviously, on some level he doesn't give a shit, but I think it's the sort of thing where he's also simply never confronted with the reality for someone who doesn't make $31 million a year plus whatever other non-cash he takes home.
keepper 7y ago
you're right. But there's MANY other companies making similar profits.. yet not of them pay anything similar? I think you guys can't separate your dislike for these companies, with an actual, thoughtful analysis. Most oil companies make similar profits.. yet the average oil engineer makes 80-100k. With a lot more risk, and in similar high demand as a software engineer.
- lawrenceyan 7y ago
  The skill required is much lower though. With a lower bar, it’s much easier to work as a oil rigger. All it requires is a high school degree. To be clear though, the people doing data analysis, land exploration, etc. for oil well discovery get paid much more by the way. They make similar amounts to what tech companies can offer in fact.

kjar 7y ago

This argument is very weak IMO. Paraphrased “I got paid happily, industry collusion to suppress wages is therefore OK”

skybrian 7y ago
It was never OK but was settled long ago and compared to the many, many other forms of injustice in the world that are ongoing and more severe, why focus on this one? Even if you limit your scope to tech companies, there are more important things.
keepper 7y ago
Have you actually look at wages in other industries? Why are we focusing on the companies that actually do PAY ABOVE. how about we focus on the industries that UNDER pay. Someone getting compensated many times the average income is not the person we should trying to advocate for. The market can decide that. That industrial or service worker not getting paid a living wage. THATs who we should be fighting for. I love how i'm getting downvoted for my parent comment, but no one has taken the time to compare to other industries and companies with similar profits, who pay their engineering talent SUBSTANTIALLY less. Oil industry has similar profits, yet pays engineers 80-100k.
- sage76 7y ago
  > The market can decide that. How, since they were not allowing the market to decide that. > THATs who we should be fighting for. It's not binary. Both fights are important.

samirillian 7y ago

Yeah, until you compare how much they spend on wages to their market cap, which is just insanely low relative to most other industries.

deogeo 7y ago

Now compare the wages against CEO and shareholder compensation.

munk-a 7y ago
Yea, this is where things get really stupid. The contribution of shareholders is very close to nil - the CEO may be the most impactful employee (though I think they're honestly not nearly as important as modern society says, being a replaceable cog themselves) but they are not worth the equivalent of 20 or 5000 employees.
keepper 7y ago
How about we compare to engineering wages in other companies with similar profits? Pretty much any other large engineering company. Or how about the oil industry? where profits are higher, the risk to life way higher, yet engineers make 80-100k? What you have in these companies are single large shareholders vs institutional or family shareholders. That's what you're ultimately uncomfortable with. One person having so much net work.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > How about we compare to engineering wages Why? Why not vs. CEO compensation? Is there some rule that CEOs and shareholders must make absurdly more money than workers, or society will collapse? CEO salaries are routinely defended with "that's what they're worth" - why does this not apply to the lowly worker?

dropit_sphere 7y ago

"Remember kids, profit is for capital, never labor. Know the difference!"

omega3 7y ago
Are you paraphrasing here or quoting directly? What is the source?
skybrian 7y ago
When compensation includes stock options and RSU's the lines are somewhat blurry. And isn't this what such financial incentives are for, to align incentives? But then, you have multiple classes of stock which undoes that somewhat. Incentives are never fully aligned; there are always things like principal-agent problems. So I agree in substance if not in snark: it is important to understand these things.

cobookman 7y ago

There is a lot of ageism in this industry. I'd be curious if SWE at FAANG is equivalent to football players in the NFL. Aka, Sure you might make more but what's the earnings over total career?

skybrian 7y ago
The salaries and other compensation are often high enough that if you live modestly, invest your money, and most importantly, the stock goes up, the career might be over when you realize you have enough to retire early. But as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

fullshark 7y ago

Remember this happened before FB / Netflix / Unicorns started an open war for talent and blew salaries up.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ummonk 7y ago

You've got the timeline backwards. The compensation only went up after this collusion ended.

defen 7y ago

> So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. Just to be clear: you are saying it's possibly ok for a cartel of billionaires to collude to suppress wages for a bunch of people making six figures? Because those employees have it "pretty good" and should be happy with what they're given, even though they are working to build world-historical fortunes and power for the business owners?

kjar 7y ago
Serfdom
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Serfdom doesn't pay that well. Note well: I'm not saying that this is OK, either legally or morally. I'm just saying that the parent is way overhyping the problem.
  - goobynight 7y ago
    Naw. You're underhyping it. Creating this artificial ceiling in the low 6 figures is awful, regardless of how badly people making less than that are getting screwed. As far as I'm concerned, they're as hopeless as a bucket of crabs and we shouldn't use them as a bar or relative bar for anything. Do I-bankers look at they're comp and say "yeah that's pretty good. I'm ok getting screwed out of any more"? I think we should always be advocating for our group as hard as we can.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Absolutely everything you say could be true, and that still wouldn't make it serfdom, nor even close.
    - skybrian 7y ago
      These aren't the only choices. I think our industry is actually a little better with that, where we have some software engineers advocating for more money for the contractors. [1] [1] https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18293900/google-contractors-benefits-policy https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18293900/google-contractors-ben...