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In this thread: SF engineers realize how well paid they are. Did not complain about 2x salary bump when moving to SF. Will complain about 0.5x when moving out o

In this thread: SF engineers realize how well paid they are. Did not complain about 2x salary bump when moving to SF. Will complain about 0.5x when moving out of SF. Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill yet to be seen.

buboard 6y ago
Stage of grief: 1 to 2
- zaptheimpaler 6y ago
  Existential crisis in 5... 4...
pascalxus 6y ago
If you have a family with kids in daycare at 3000$+ each! and paying 6000$ a month for a crappy 2bd apartment, you'll happily move to the midwest for half the salary. You'd be better off, in terms of standard of living in a midwest town/city at half the SF salary. Now if you're a single person in SF, that's a different story.
- hesdeadjim 6y ago
  Colorado is the sweet spot if you don't require access to lakes or the ocean. I'm about ~$1850 for daycare and a nice house in Boulder is around $1mil. For a FAANG level engineer out here that's not much of a stretch at all.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    Boulder or Seattle are the two places I'd like to move to the most. Sadly I'm stuck in WI for now.
  - pascalxus 6y ago
    1850$ for day care is still somewhat high. In TX, you can find daycare for 600$ or so.
    - hesdeadjim 6y ago
      Oh $1850 is high without a doubt, but Boulder is a desirable and somewhat high cost of living area. Compared to California though? Affordable.
- tschwimmer 6y ago
  6k is rent a luxury 2 bedroom in the heart of Soma in SF. You can do a lot cheaper for a decent place.
OrangeMango 6y ago
> Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill This is of course the big problem. Facebook is admitting that developers elsewhere in the world are just as good as developers in Silicon Valley. Or if you want to put it another way: if Silicon Valley is special, it's NOT because the developers.
- paxys 6y ago
  It is special not because of the quality of developers but because there are so many of them together in close proximity. It still remains to be seen whether the 100% remote experiment will work out or not as an industry standard, so let's not write the Silicon Valley obituaries just yet.
- zaptheimpaler 6y ago
  Personally, i think there was a time where we genuinely needed to solve hard engineering problems - around 2010-2015 when a ton of companies figured out concurrency, distributed systems, scaling, way better web tech, smartphones etc.. in those times companies needed a LOT of good devs, so the network effect Silicon Valley had was valuable. And the VCs saw huge empires to be built and so much money on the table, so high salaries were easy to justify. Now the market is crowded, scaling is a simple economic problem, the network effect is turning on its head and there isn't any revolutionary software to build on the horizon. Times have changed but the narrative hasn't caught up yet.. its going to suck when it does honestly. Software is just so commoditized and cookie cutter at this point i can't see it being a great career for much longer.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    There are still hard engineering problems to solve, they just aren't related to scaling out services as much (there's still optimizations and improvements to be made in that space, but not nearly as much). You can't seriously think all the hard engineering problems have been solved, right?
    - zaptheimpaler 6y ago
arachnids 6y ago
I think a lot of people don't understand how pay works. The price of a good is determined not by how important it is to you, but by its marginal utility i.e. how difficult it would be to get more if you need it. Water, for example, is critical for life, but is basically free in most civilized areas in the first world because it is abundant. The price a company is going to pay for your labor depends on how hard it is for them to replace you. If FB can replace a SWE in Atlanta with another for 90k$, that is what they will pay. It has nothing to do with the value of the work you're doing.
- Atlas26 6y ago
  Value of work definitely is a major part of it depending on priorities, but also everything else you said. It’s not a black and white thing as some make out, all revolving around one element.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > Water, for example, is critical for life, but is basically free in most civilized areas in the first world because it is abundant. I largely agree with your comment, but I disagree with this sentence. Water is almost free in most civilized areas because it's not subject to free market economics (for good reason). Basic water supply is usually provided by the local government (and this applies to places where it is scarce). If water were treated the same way health is in the US, its price wouldn't be anywhere close to free.
  - jpxw 6y ago
    Everything is subject to “free market economics”, no matter how much you try and force it not to be. It just happens that it’s very easy to “control” the price of water, because the supply far outstrips the demand anyway.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    Beer costs about $0.50 a liter here in Shanghai. At 50L a day, $25 that’d be $750 a month. Doable in most of the first world. If you want to know the realistic upper bound for local price of water see how much Coke costs. That’s not something the government much concerns itself with anywhere. Or look at the price of water in someplace like Gurgaon our Dubai, cities so hideously planned that drinking water and sewerage are transported by tanker. Water can be provided for very low cost even with less than competent governments.
Tehchops 6y ago
You sound like someone with an axe to grind.
Tade0 6y ago
This hit me the hardest when for a brief, beautiful moment I was in Switzerland making roughly 4x my normal salary. Those companies are only paying this much because the cost of living there is so high. It's so obvious that I now feel silly for not realizing this fully before experiencing it myself. Then again if companies can still turn a profit offering these salaries, then perhaps the work is actually that valuable? On the other hand there might be an upside to being paid half: you're unlikely to deliver less value than your cost. Any corona-related layoffs start with the most expensive (comparing to value brought) employees.

buboard 6y ago

Stage of grief: 1 to 2

zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Existential crisis in 5... 4...

pascalxus 6y ago

If you have a family with kids in daycare at 3000$+ each! and paying 6000$ a month for a crappy 2bd apartment, you'll happily move to the midwest for half the salary. You'd be better off, in terms of standard of living in a midwest town/city at half the SF salary. Now if you're a single person in SF, that's a different story.

hesdeadjim 6y ago
Colorado is the sweet spot if you don't require access to lakes or the ocean. I'm about ~$1850 for daycare and a nice house in Boulder is around $1mil. For a FAANG level engineer out here that's not much of a stretch at all.
- packetlost 6y ago
  Boulder or Seattle are the two places I'd like to move to the most. Sadly I'm stuck in WI for now.
- pascalxus 6y ago
  1850$ for day care is still somewhat high. In TX, you can find daycare for 600$ or so.
  - hesdeadjim 6y ago
    Oh $1850 is high without a doubt, but Boulder is a desirable and somewhat high cost of living area. Compared to California though? Affordable.
tschwimmer 6y ago
6k is rent a luxury 2 bedroom in the heart of Soma in SF. You can do a lot cheaper for a decent place.

OrangeMango 6y ago

> Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill This is of course the big problem. Facebook is admitting that developers elsewhere in the world are just as good as developers in Silicon Valley. Or if you want to put it another way: if Silicon Valley is special, it's NOT because the developers.

paxys 6y ago
It is special not because of the quality of developers but because there are so many of them together in close proximity. It still remains to be seen whether the 100% remote experiment will work out or not as an industry standard, so let's not write the Silicon Valley obituaries just yet.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Personally, i think there was a time where we genuinely needed to solve hard engineering problems - around 2010-2015 when a ton of companies figured out concurrency, distributed systems, scaling, way better web tech, smartphones etc.. in those times companies needed a LOT of good devs, so the network effect Silicon Valley had was valuable. And the VCs saw huge empires to be built and so much money on the table, so high salaries were easy to justify. Now the market is crowded, scaling is a simple economic problem, the network effect is turning on its head and there isn't any revolutionary software to build on the horizon. Times have changed but the narrative hasn't caught up yet.. its going to suck when it does honestly. Software is just so commoditized and cookie cutter at this point i can't see it being a great career for much longer.
- packetlost 6y ago
  There are still hard engineering problems to solve, they just aren't related to scaling out services as much (there's still optimizations and improvements to be made in that space, but not nearly as much). You can't seriously think all the hard engineering problems have been solved, right?
  - zaptheimpaler 6y ago

arachnids 6y ago

I think a lot of people don't understand how pay works. The price of a good is determined not by how important it is to you, but by its marginal utility i.e. how difficult it would be to get more if you need it. Water, for example, is critical for life, but is basically free in most civilized areas in the first world because it is abundant. The price a company is going to pay for your labor depends on how hard it is for them to replace you. If FB can replace a SWE in Atlanta with another for 90k$, that is what they will pay. It has nothing to do with the value of the work you're doing.

Atlas26 6y ago
Value of work definitely is a major part of it depending on priorities, but also everything else you said. It’s not a black and white thing as some make out, all revolving around one element.
sangnoir 6y ago
> Water, for example, is critical for life, but is basically free in most civilized areas in the first world because it is abundant. I largely agree with your comment, but I disagree with this sentence. Water is almost free in most civilized areas because it's not subject to free market economics (for good reason). Basic water supply is usually provided by the local government (and this applies to places where it is scarce). If water were treated the same way health is in the US, its price wouldn't be anywhere close to free.
- jpxw 6y ago
  Everything is subject to “free market economics”, no matter how much you try and force it not to be. It just happens that it’s very easy to “control” the price of water, because the supply far outstrips the demand anyway.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  Beer costs about $0.50 a liter here in Shanghai. At 50L a day, $25 that’d be $750 a month. Doable in most of the first world. If you want to know the realistic upper bound for local price of water see how much Coke costs. That’s not something the government much concerns itself with anywhere. Or look at the price of water in someplace like Gurgaon our Dubai, cities so hideously planned that drinking water and sewerage are transported by tanker. Water can be provided for very low cost even with less than competent governments.

Tehchops 6y ago

You sound like someone with an axe to grind.

Tade0 6y ago

This hit me the hardest when for a brief, beautiful moment I was in Switzerland making roughly 4x my normal salary. Those companies are only paying this much because the cost of living there is so high. It's so obvious that I now feel silly for not realizing this fully before experiencing it myself. Then again if companies can still turn a profit offering these salaries, then perhaps the work is actually that valuable? On the other hand there might be an upside to being paid half: you're unlikely to deliver less value than your cost. Any corona-related layoffs start with the most expensive (comparing to value brought) employees.