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This article is comparing starting salary for professional sports, vs "Staff engineer" salary. The average MLB salary dropped slightly in 2019, but still north

This article is comparing starting salary for professional sports, vs "Staff engineer" salary. The average MLB salary dropped slightly in 2019, but still north of $4million src: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28341983/average-mlb-salary-drops-second-straight-year https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28341983/average-mlb-sal...

adventured 7y ago
The article is so far off as to be laughable. Here's the top salaries in MLB: https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/ https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/ The top 141 players are making $10m or more per year (and that keeps rising year after year). The big five in tech don't come even remotely close to paying the way professional sports does and that includes the top thousand engineers. It's closer to a 5%-10% total compensation ratio at best (including stock-based compensation), in terms of elite athletes to elite engineers. There are too many engineers and they're too replaceable, versus a Lebron James or Mike Trout. Those players are among the few best in the world at what they do, in a field with a very small number of people being compensated and from a relatively massive pie (MLB money is being split between just ~750 primary players; ~1200 including reserves). Everything about the comparison is off by a large margin.
- tclancy 7y ago
  Are you questioning the article where the link to the 500k salary is a 404? For shame!
- chrisco255 7y ago
  The top paid software engineers own their own companies.
- mrr54 7y ago
  The top 141 'elite engineers' are certainly making more than $10m/yr and their careers will last much longer.
save_ferris 7y ago
And the minimum NBA salary for a rookie dictated by the 2017 CBA is over $800k, and rises to 1.3M with one year of experience[0]. I don’t think that the data the author used reflects what he think it does. There have to be minor league/partial contract players in those averages to make sense. 0: https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/info/minimum_scale https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/info/minimum_scale

adventured 7y ago

The article is so far off as to be laughable. Here's the top salaries in MLB: https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/ https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/ The top 141 players are making $10m or more per year (and that keeps rising year after year). The big five in tech don't come even remotely close to paying the way professional sports does and that includes the top thousand engineers. It's closer to a 5%-10% total compensation ratio at best (including stock-based compensation), in terms of elite athletes to elite engineers. There are too many engineers and they're too replaceable, versus a Lebron James or Mike Trout. Those players are among the few best in the world at what they do, in a field with a very small number of people being compensated and from a relatively massive pie (MLB money is being split between just ~750 primary players; ~1200 including reserves). Everything about the comparison is off by a large margin.

tclancy 7y ago
Are you questioning the article where the link to the 500k salary is a 404? For shame!
chrisco255 7y ago
The top paid software engineers own their own companies.
mrr54 7y ago
The top 141 'elite engineers' are certainly making more than $10m/yr and their careers will last much longer.

save_ferris 7y ago

And the minimum NBA salary for a rookie dictated by the 2017 CBA is over $800k, and rises to 1.3M with one year of experience[0]. I don’t think that the data the author used reflects what he think it does. There have to be minor league/partial contract players in those averages to make sense. 0: https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/info/minimum_scale https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/info/minimum_scale