5 ms·

It seems like a strange premise to share salaries on the basis that if we both have the same experience and work at the same paygrade, we are worth the same amo

It seems like a strange premise to share salaries on the basis that if we both have the same experience and work at the same paygrade, we are worth the same amount of money - or even for me to know the range so I know whether to ask for a raise. The underlying problem is still that it is very hard to accurately measure someone's worth as a developer (or manager for that matter) and that there are many who are "experienced" who have not improved in any meaningful way over time and that's why they might not get a rise or a promotion. Pay grades are quite arbitrary and personally, I don't think that a lot of these "super coders" are worth as much as they think unless they also do management (except perhaps for really niche skillsets).

fock 7y ago
well, if it's the same company and you think your work/participation is of similar worth you know then whether they pay a fair price for your work. and if you're a grad you know, what your degree is worth somewhere else. and generally that's what this is about: creating a job real job market, where both parties can have knowledge of the environment beyond a "you are not good at salary negotiation"-point. probably we should just have laws that every interview invitation has to include the salary they are offering (better yet: write it into the ad)
- Zaheer 7y ago
  California actually has this. Employers must disclose to interviewees the salary range for a position [1]. The big loophole in this is that for tech companies a significant portion of compensation comes from equity (ex. RSU, options, etc). The law is relatively recent and I'm hopeful it'll improve over next few years. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2018/09/13/californias-pay-equity-law-gets-clarified-what-every-employer-needs-to-know/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2018/09/13/californi...
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
This is a big lie. It’s not hard. There are no 10x developers. Most people doing a job of the same title in a similar team are likely worth the same money. People on HN say all kinds of crazy nonsense about it being hard to measure software engineer productivity. It’s nonsense that helps suppress wages and keeps the situation set up as a fight between engineers who should be cooperating for mutual betterment. Companies don’t approach measuring the worth of any employee with any sort of fine-grained metrics except in highly commoditized jobs. Also, as a software engineer your value is not all (or even mostly) from writing software. There’s reviewing resumes, attending recruiting events, evaluating new technology the company might adopt, filling out forms, sitting in meetings, sitting in diversity training, etc., etc. You might even be adding value just by being a name on a sheet of paper. Your headcount tells a small portion of a story that wins the next funding round or puts the company in a better position with an acquirer or gets the company a high rating from a regulating agency or brings hope that causes other key employees to stay at the company or whatever. These are reasons why some people make 100% bonuses and millions in equity while others get 15% of a low-ball base salary in options they end never able to exercise. The reason pay is wildly unequal is not because it’s hard to measure productivity. Companies aren’t doing that anyway. Even if they were, they’ll do anything to avoid paying what you’re truly worth. Pay is unequal because developers don’t know their worth or what forms of compensation are negotiable, because it’s all kept very secretive. Developers don’t develop good negotiation skills and they let themselves often very foolishly believe less tangible and less enforceable properties of a job (like “interesting”) are worth a big pay trade-off. It all boils down to the same thing. We have crappy pay (compared to the real value we add) and we get stuck in open-plan hell hole offices and on and on because developers won’t say “no” to these jobs and seriously negotiate under the willingness to walk away if conditions and pay don’t improve.
walshemj 7y ago
More transparency does lead to improvements for every one and also exposes discrepancies that female and disabled workers face. Ironically it also leads to an increase in C level compensations.
- apta 7y ago
  > discrepancies that female That is not a given, you have to show proof that there exists a discrepancy in the first place.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    I though we where supposed to answer in good faith on here, however: I personally know of surveys that have proven this both by gender and disability.
    - apta 7y ago
      Did they take into account the fact that women usually work in jobs that pay less compared to men?
      - walshemj 7y ago
        Yes this was a tech company so like for like comparison
        apta 7y ago
        Could you cite those studies?
lacker 7y ago
At the engineering departments of most large tech companies including Microsoft, people at the same pay grade are supposed to be making about the same amount of money. The idea is that if you deserve a raise, you deserve a promotion too. So your job title and your salary aren’t like two different things. Differences arise for many reasons. The most common in my experience is people who negotiate a higher starting salary. You don’t want to just give them more money forever so every year they get their salary tweaked back a bit toward the average for their level. There are also some bonuses that operate outside the normal system.
- DP0o4Dy4jWe2 7y ago
  > At the engineering departments of most large tech companies including Microsoft, people at the same pay grade are supposed to be making about the same amount of money. The idea is that if you deserve a raise, you deserve a promotion too. So your job title and your salary aren’t like two different things. This is not true. At FAANG companies and Microsoft, the total compensation bands for levels at or above "Senior SWE", "Senior SDE" are really wide. This is by design, and its widely communicated that this is the case. Most of the variation is in equity grants and bonus, rather than salary - if your management chain recognizes that you made a huge impact last year, you'll probably get huge equity refreshes and a giant bonus, although your salary might not rise by much. Promotions are a separate thing, because promotion beyond "Senior" implies a change to your role and expectations (more leadership, more "people coordination" even if you're not a people manager, etc.) It's totally possible that you're making an amazing impact in your current role in a way that merits additional compensation, but you're not meeting all the criteria for the next step on the ladder. That's fine - you're still going to get paid a huge amount more than the average for your level.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > This is not true. At FAANG companies and Microsoft, the total compensation bands for levels at or above "Senior SWE", "Senior SDE" are really wide. Ehh, not really. Up to the director level (well above senior), if you give me someone's level and last two performance evals, I can probably tell you their TC to within 5%. There's certainly a wide variance within senior and above levels, but it's not as bonus based as you suggest, and sustained high performance will often (although not always) lead to promotions. It's not like there are two senior SWEs with one making 2x what the other does. At least not at Amazon, M, or G. Since netflix doesn't have levels, that's possible, and my understanding is facebook has huge bonuses on occasion, but I'm also pretty sure you'll just end up getting promoted if you get too many of those.
Zaheer 7y ago
Levels / Pay grades are quite well defined at most companies. Nearly every company maintains a career leveling guide with specific criteria that should be looked for at a level. The difficulty is in evaluation of that criteria. People get mis-leveled all the time. Additionally there's pay grades can be very wide and most levels have significant overlap. Why? Although someone may have been brought in at level X based on interview, they may be performing at X-1 due to other circumstances (personal situation, rest-and-vest, etc). This goes the other way too. Most companies will promote quickly if a candidate was under-leveled coming in and is performing at the next level.
dgop78hu 7y ago
“The underlying problem is still that it is very hard to accurately measure someone's worth as a developer...” This is true with all roles and with most technology. Hundreds of millions have been spent researching how much value a rockstar CEO creates or email, for example. Zero answers. Meritocracy is a myth. Our brains like to in believe in myth. No one person is more important than any other. It’s emotional propaganda in our social structure. A legacy emotional effect of years of hand me down thinking that some can be more pious and go to Heaven while everyone else goes to the other place. There’s is exactly no scientific basis for any belief that one person is better than another.
wutbrodo 7y ago
Fully agreed that the notion that pay is (or should be) a deterministic function of a couple of visible variables is ludicrous. But knowing the range can be useful, since you can also have a qualitative sense of how productive you are and how much weight you pull relative to most others at your level. Obciously you might be over- (or under!) estimating your ability, but that's something you need to resolve regardless, and a rough sense of where you fit in the salary distribution is independently useful.

fock 7y ago

well, if it's the same company and you think your work/participation is of similar worth you know then whether they pay a fair price for your work. and if you're a grad you know, what your degree is worth somewhere else. and generally that's what this is about: creating a job real job market, where both parties can have knowledge of the environment beyond a "you are not good at salary negotiation"-point. probably we should just have laws that every interview invitation has to include the salary they are offering (better yet: write it into the ad)

Zaheer 7y ago
California actually has this. Employers must disclose to interviewees the salary range for a position [1]. The big loophole in this is that for tech companies a significant portion of compensation comes from equity (ex. RSU, options, etc). The law is relatively recent and I'm hopeful it'll improve over next few years. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2018/09/13/californias-pay-equity-law-gets-clarified-what-every-employer-needs-to-know/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2018/09/13/californi...

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

This is a big lie. It’s not hard. There are no 10x developers. Most people doing a job of the same title in a similar team are likely worth the same money. People on HN say all kinds of crazy nonsense about it being hard to measure software engineer productivity. It’s nonsense that helps suppress wages and keeps the situation set up as a fight between engineers who should be cooperating for mutual betterment. Companies don’t approach measuring the worth of any employee with any sort of fine-grained metrics except in highly commoditized jobs. Also, as a software engineer your value is not all (or even mostly) from writing software. There’s reviewing resumes, attending recruiting events, evaluating new technology the company might adopt, filling out forms, sitting in meetings, sitting in diversity training, etc., etc. You might even be adding value just by being a name on a sheet of paper. Your headcount tells a small portion of a story that wins the next funding round or puts the company in a better position with an acquirer or gets the company a high rating from a regulating agency or brings hope that causes other key employees to stay at the company or whatever. These are reasons why some people make 100% bonuses and millions in equity while others get 15% of a low-ball base salary in options they end never able to exercise. The reason pay is wildly unequal is not because it’s hard to measure productivity. Companies aren’t doing that anyway. Even if they were, they’ll do anything to avoid paying what you’re truly worth. Pay is unequal because developers don’t know their worth or what forms of compensation are negotiable, because it’s all kept very secretive. Developers don’t develop good negotiation skills and they let themselves often very foolishly believe less tangible and less enforceable properties of a job (like “interesting”) are worth a big pay trade-off. It all boils down to the same thing. We have crappy pay (compared to the real value we add) and we get stuck in open-plan hell hole offices and on and on because developers won’t say “no” to these jobs and seriously negotiate under the willingness to walk away if conditions and pay don’t improve.

walshemj 7y ago

More transparency does lead to improvements for every one and also exposes discrepancies that female and disabled workers face. Ironically it also leads to an increase in C level compensations.

apta 7y ago
> discrepancies that female That is not a given, you have to show proof that there exists a discrepancy in the first place.
- walshemj 7y ago
  I though we where supposed to answer in good faith on here, however: I personally know of surveys that have proven this both by gender and disability.
  - apta 7y ago
    Did they take into account the fact that women usually work in jobs that pay less compared to men?
    - walshemj 7y ago
      Yes this was a tech company so like for like comparison
      - apta 7y ago
        Could you cite those studies?

lacker 7y ago

At the engineering departments of most large tech companies including Microsoft, people at the same pay grade are supposed to be making about the same amount of money. The idea is that if you deserve a raise, you deserve a promotion too. So your job title and your salary aren’t like two different things. Differences arise for many reasons. The most common in my experience is people who negotiate a higher starting salary. You don’t want to just give them more money forever so every year they get their salary tweaked back a bit toward the average for their level. There are also some bonuses that operate outside the normal system.

DP0o4Dy4jWe2 7y ago
> At the engineering departments of most large tech companies including Microsoft, people at the same pay grade are supposed to be making about the same amount of money. The idea is that if you deserve a raise, you deserve a promotion too. So your job title and your salary aren’t like two different things. This is not true. At FAANG companies and Microsoft, the total compensation bands for levels at or above "Senior SWE", "Senior SDE" are really wide. This is by design, and its widely communicated that this is the case. Most of the variation is in equity grants and bonus, rather than salary - if your management chain recognizes that you made a huge impact last year, you'll probably get huge equity refreshes and a giant bonus, although your salary might not rise by much. Promotions are a separate thing, because promotion beyond "Senior" implies a change to your role and expectations (more leadership, more "people coordination" even if you're not a people manager, etc.) It's totally possible that you're making an amazing impact in your current role in a way that merits additional compensation, but you're not meeting all the criteria for the next step on the ladder. That's fine - you're still going to get paid a huge amount more than the average for your level.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > This is not true. At FAANG companies and Microsoft, the total compensation bands for levels at or above "Senior SWE", "Senior SDE" are really wide. Ehh, not really. Up to the director level (well above senior), if you give me someone's level and last two performance evals, I can probably tell you their TC to within 5%. There's certainly a wide variance within senior and above levels, but it's not as bonus based as you suggest, and sustained high performance will often (although not always) lead to promotions. It's not like there are two senior SWEs with one making 2x what the other does. At least not at Amazon, M, or G. Since netflix doesn't have levels, that's possible, and my understanding is facebook has huge bonuses on occasion, but I'm also pretty sure you'll just end up getting promoted if you get too many of those.

Zaheer 7y ago

Levels / Pay grades are quite well defined at most companies. Nearly every company maintains a career leveling guide with specific criteria that should be looked for at a level. The difficulty is in evaluation of that criteria. People get mis-leveled all the time. Additionally there's pay grades can be very wide and most levels have significant overlap. Why? Although someone may have been brought in at level X based on interview, they may be performing at X-1 due to other circumstances (personal situation, rest-and-vest, etc). This goes the other way too. Most companies will promote quickly if a candidate was under-leveled coming in and is performing at the next level.

dgop78hu 7y ago

“The underlying problem is still that it is very hard to accurately measure someone's worth as a developer...” This is true with all roles and with most technology. Hundreds of millions have been spent researching how much value a rockstar CEO creates or email, for example. Zero answers. Meritocracy is a myth. Our brains like to in believe in myth. No one person is more important than any other. It’s emotional propaganda in our social structure. A legacy emotional effect of years of hand me down thinking that some can be more pious and go to Heaven while everyone else goes to the other place. There’s is exactly no scientific basis for any belief that one person is better than another.

wutbrodo 7y ago

Fully agreed that the notion that pay is (or should be) a deterministic function of a couple of visible variables is ludicrous. But knowing the range can be useful, since you can also have a qualitative sense of how productive you are and how much weight you pull relative to most others at your level. Obciously you might be over- (or under!) estimating your ability, but that's something you need to resolve regardless, and a rough sense of where you fit in the salary distribution is independently useful.