4 ms·

Stuff like this really puts my work into perspective. It makes my hardest problems seem like trivialities compared to lifting a cruise ship out of the ocean.

sansnomme 7y ago
And yet your average engineer (barring oil and gas) in the marine industry will never earn as much as a software engineer.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  One rock star earns a lot more than one orchestra member, too. Why? Well, the orchestra member is one of several dozen people. The rock star performs for the same audience, but concentrates his compensation by being one of maybe 5 people performing. Similarly, the one software engineer produces a lot more per capita than the marine engineer does, by working on problems that don't require so many people.
  - abduhl 7y ago
    Facebook employs over 30k employees. The parent company of the company who performed this lift employs 11k employees working 900 ships. I don’t think your analogy makes sense from a “Don’t require so many people” perspective when you look at the numbers tbqh
    - adventured 7y ago
      It makes perfect sense when you look at the business results comparing the two companies. Facebook currently has over 43,000 employees, they don't have 43,000 engineers however. That number is likely under 10,000 based on their past statements about the company structure. Facebook has extreme margins. Their gross profit margin last quarter was 82%, their operating profit margin was 41%. Over the next four quarters Facebook will produce $75b-$80b in sales, with ~$30b in operating profit. They're one of the dozen most profitable companies on the planet. $3+ million in operating profit per engineer. Boskalis is worth $3 billion. Their sales for 2018 were about $2.7 billion and they had a tiny $75 million operating profit. To match Facebook's operating profit per engineer figure, Boskalis can only have 25 engineers. Back in 2015 they had a far better ~$569m in operating profit, at that level they could have perhaps 190 engineers to match the Facebook ratio. Simply put, Facebook generates enormous profit per engineer. Very few companies match it.
    - drew-y 7y ago
      But if you look at the per capita value of facebook vs this company, facebook produces a lot more revenue. In 2018 facebook made 55.8 billion[1], that same year boskalis made about 2.8691 billion usd[2]. If facebook has 30k employees that means they make 1.86 million per employee (holy crap) whereas boskalis makes just 236k. So I think the parent commenter makes a fair point. 1. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Facebook-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2018-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... 2. https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/detail/boskalis-posts-higher-revenue-against-lower-full-year-result-in-line-with-expectations.html https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/d...
      - abduhl 7y ago
        Sure, if we move away from the analogy and into real dollars and cents we can see that certainly the numbers show that Facebook, as a company, has higher revenues both in total and per capita. But that wasn’t the poster’s point with his analogy. His point was that the boat bro and the software engineer are equally skilled (they’re not - the boat bro is usually more educated/skilled) and the main difference for their pay is that the boat bro is just one amongst many while the software engineer is one of a few. The numbers don’t support this conclusion. In fact, the opposite appears true: software engineers appear to be entirely interchangeable cogs that are employable at scale while the boat bros are specialized tools employed to solve specific problems. If his argument was that the market has placed a higher value on the software engineer then I wouldn’t have an issue, but that narrative doesn’t feed the Software Mythos. Even the terms selected for the analogy show this desire to self fellate (“Rock Star”).
        thaumasiotes 7y ago
        How many audience members does one orchestra member serve? And how many does the rock star serve? Now, how many users does one Facebook engineer serve? The incredibly low ratio of workers to work done in software isn't a secret. People have been making this point for decades.
- aeternum 7y ago
  Because those engineers in the marine industry still use software to design those impressive ships, balance the ballast tanks, and successfully complete their jobs.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  I employee a number of high caliber software engineers (MS and PhD level folks). I'm pretty sure there's a balance between interestingness and pay. If you are an eningeer in adtech, you should reasonably expect to get paid in gold bars. We should make it expensive for companies to be in that business. If you are solving cancer, lifting giant boats, or going to Mars, then you have a much more interesting problem to work on. Should we pay those folks more? Sure? But they like doing the work. Perhaps we should also demand far higher salaries from adtech companies. Like, $10M annual.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I think you can find interesting problems in the most mundane of subjects, not much meaning though.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    On the other hand, engineers working at self driving cars at Waymo earn much more than engineers making CRUD apps at random non-tech companies. The pay discrepancy has nothing to do with interestingness. It's just that total demand for software engineers is extremely high -- programming has become almost like accounting in that virtually every business that's not very small needs some -- and there are a good number of massively profitable tech and tech-oriented companies that can and must compete for strong coding talent.
  - rebolek 7y ago
    > If you are an eningeer in adtech, you should reasonably expect to get paid in gold bars. Why? It makes no sense.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    High end research has always been able to attract tier one candidates to work for them at low pay as they want to do a PHD. Unfortunately this depresses pay -when I started at a world leading hydrodynamics research in the UK in the late 70's I was paid about 1/3 of the equivalent grade in the civil service! which is why I left technically interesting programming job and sold my soul to the commerce.
W-Stool 7y ago
You left out: ... while the lifting body is also floating on the ocean. That's the mind bending bit for me.

sansnomme 7y ago

And yet your average engineer (barring oil and gas) in the marine industry will never earn as much as a software engineer.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
One rock star earns a lot more than one orchestra member, too. Why? Well, the orchestra member is one of several dozen people. The rock star performs for the same audience, but concentrates his compensation by being one of maybe 5 people performing. Similarly, the one software engineer produces a lot more per capita than the marine engineer does, by working on problems that don't require so many people.
- abduhl 7y ago
  Facebook employs over 30k employees. The parent company of the company who performed this lift employs 11k employees working 900 ships. I don’t think your analogy makes sense from a “Don’t require so many people” perspective when you look at the numbers tbqh
  - adventured 7y ago
    It makes perfect sense when you look at the business results comparing the two companies. Facebook currently has over 43,000 employees, they don't have 43,000 engineers however. That number is likely under 10,000 based on their past statements about the company structure. Facebook has extreme margins. Their gross profit margin last quarter was 82%, their operating profit margin was 41%. Over the next four quarters Facebook will produce $75b-$80b in sales, with ~$30b in operating profit. They're one of the dozen most profitable companies on the planet. $3+ million in operating profit per engineer. Boskalis is worth $3 billion. Their sales for 2018 were about $2.7 billion and they had a tiny $75 million operating profit. To match Facebook's operating profit per engineer figure, Boskalis can only have 25 engineers. Back in 2015 they had a far better ~$569m in operating profit, at that level they could have perhaps 190 engineers to match the Facebook ratio. Simply put, Facebook generates enormous profit per engineer. Very few companies match it.
  - drew-y 7y ago
    But if you look at the per capita value of facebook vs this company, facebook produces a lot more revenue. In 2018 facebook made 55.8 billion[1], that same year boskalis made about 2.8691 billion usd[2]. If facebook has 30k employees that means they make 1.86 million per employee (holy crap) whereas boskalis makes just 236k. So I think the parent commenter makes a fair point. 1. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Facebook-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2018-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... 2. https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/detail/boskalis-posts-higher-revenue-against-lower-full-year-result-in-line-with-expectations.html https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/d...
    - abduhl 7y ago
      Sure, if we move away from the analogy and into real dollars and cents we can see that certainly the numbers show that Facebook, as a company, has higher revenues both in total and per capita. But that wasn’t the poster’s point with his analogy. His point was that the boat bro and the software engineer are equally skilled (they’re not - the boat bro is usually more educated/skilled) and the main difference for their pay is that the boat bro is just one amongst many while the software engineer is one of a few. The numbers don’t support this conclusion. In fact, the opposite appears true: software engineers appear to be entirely interchangeable cogs that are employable at scale while the boat bros are specialized tools employed to solve specific problems. If his argument was that the market has placed a higher value on the software engineer then I wouldn’t have an issue, but that narrative doesn’t feed the Software Mythos. Even the terms selected for the analogy show this desire to self fellate (“Rock Star”).
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        How many audience members does one orchestra member serve? And how many does the rock star serve? Now, how many users does one Facebook engineer serve? The incredibly low ratio of workers to work done in software isn't a secret. People have been making this point for decades.
aeternum 7y ago
Because those engineers in the marine industry still use software to design those impressive ships, balance the ballast tanks, and successfully complete their jobs.
killjoywashere 7y ago
I employee a number of high caliber software engineers (MS and PhD level folks). I'm pretty sure there's a balance between interestingness and pay. If you are an eningeer in adtech, you should reasonably expect to get paid in gold bars. We should make it expensive for companies to be in that business. If you are solving cancer, lifting giant boats, or going to Mars, then you have a much more interesting problem to work on. Should we pay those folks more? Sure? But they like doing the work. Perhaps we should also demand far higher salaries from adtech companies. Like, $10M annual.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I think you can find interesting problems in the most mundane of subjects, not much meaning though.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  On the other hand, engineers working at self driving cars at Waymo earn much more than engineers making CRUD apps at random non-tech companies. The pay discrepancy has nothing to do with interestingness. It's just that total demand for software engineers is extremely high -- programming has become almost like accounting in that virtually every business that's not very small needs some -- and there are a good number of massively profitable tech and tech-oriented companies that can and must compete for strong coding talent.
- rebolek 7y ago
  > If you are an eningeer in adtech, you should reasonably expect to get paid in gold bars. Why? It makes no sense.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  High end research has always been able to attract tier one candidates to work for them at low pay as they want to do a PHD. Unfortunately this depresses pay -when I started at a world leading hydrodynamics research in the UK in the late 70's I was paid about 1/3 of the equivalent grade in the civil service! which is why I left technically interesting programming job and sold my soul to the commerce.

W-Stool 7y ago

You left out: ... while the lifting body is also floating on the ocean. That's the mind bending bit for me.