4 ms·
My previous company had this triple threat of compensation problems going on: (1) Didn't offer high enough pay, (2) Got burned badly when they did try to offer
by CydeWeys 7y ago
My previous company had this triple threat of compensation problems going on: (1) Didn't offer high enough pay, (2) Got burned badly when they did try to offer higher pay to get senior engineers because they weren't good at identifying top talent anyway (I repeatedly complained and tried to fix this but no one cared), and (3) Was not in an amazingly profitable industry anyway, so they were never going to be able to come close to FANG salaries regardless.
It was sad to see the slow/inevitable march of good engineer being hired essentially by accident (the hiring process didn't recognize them as such and didn't tend to offer them more) and then leaving to greener pastures when they weren't being rewarded properly. When I left, they offered me a near 50% raise as retention offer (why weren't they paying me that already since I was clearly worth it?!), but despite that being a director title, it still couldn't touch the SWE offer at Google ... so here I am.
The biggest overarching problem I would say with most businesses like that is they aren't profitable enough, and engineers can't produce enough value in those companies, to justify really top-tier compensation like what would be necessary to get and retain top talent engineers long-term.
- taurath 7y agoNot really the case at mine. They COULD pay and the amt would be justified.
- djsumdog 7y agoFANG? I am not familiar with this acronym.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoFacebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google (FAANG)
- belltaco 7y agoWhy is Microsoft excluded?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoMy understanding is that the comp is not in the same class at Microsoft as it is at the companies in the acronym.
- belltaco 7y agoVery many years ago Amazon was strictly behind Microsoft and others in comp, hard to believe they pulled ahead.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoJim Cramer invented the FANG acronym to refer to fast growing Internet stocks. He later added Apple. Tech workers now associate that acronym with high paying big tech employers, but Amazon and Apple don't fit that definition.
- CydeWeys 7y agoTo be fair, from the tech workers' point of view, it doesn't much matter whether the employer is technically a tech company (Google), a hardware manufacturer (Apple), or a retailer/cloud provider (Amazon). So long as you're getting paid top-bucks in the industry for doing software engineering, which is possible at all of them, then you're golden.
- shsjxjbsbs 7y agoFacebook, Google, and Netflix are known to make better offers than Apple and Amazon (although those two are capable of great offers and have both employed thousands of engineers who became millionaires after stock appreciation).
- lern_too_spel 7y agoMy point was that Amazon and Apple don't fit the high compensation definition.
- 7y ago