13 ms·

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they in

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.

prepperpotts 6y ago
Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.
- mrnook 6y ago
  Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.
  - prepperpotts 6y ago
    True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.
    - paulcole 6y ago
      It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.
      - mrnook 6y ago
        Of course, but what about Austin or Denver? The tech industry has brought high paying jobs to a lot of smaller cities that weren't accustomed to such high salaries.
  - TomVDB 6y ago
    I wish I could find back the article that I read, years ago, that demolished the $75k claim of that paper, simply by having a different look at the same numbers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- z3rgl1ng 6y ago
  This is untrue: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/6/20/8815813/orange-is-the-new-black-piper-chapman-happiness-study https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/6...
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  It is worth noting that "happiness" is distinct from "life satisfaction" in these studies. The latter does scale with income up to very high levels. Just being happy on a day to day basis is a low standard, many people aspire to more in life somewhat independent of happiness.
- SubuSS 6y ago
  It definitely starts there, it misses on a key aspect: 70k for how long and how assuredly? Usually once you start making that, your next goal would be - To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal. - Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above) - Then you want to ensure this is on top of your car, house, child costs. (Depending on where you like to live and your car choice, add anywhere between 200k -> 2MM) - Then you realize this car/ house kinda bumps into the 70k limit - especially if you went for a giant house because reasons. And so on. So yes, folks can definitely start to feel 'safe' at 70k, but that's nowhere close to the checkout point. Once you figure out a target number based on above, you will realize you need to make so much more than 70k to get to that comfort state.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal. > Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above) A buffer?? Assuming 2% inflation, the "buffer" you're adding is just over 100% of the original amount.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mytailorisrich 6y ago
Management and upper management is not friendly, it is cut throat. The skill people who go up the ladder have mastered, though, is to be deceitful and to maintain appearances, you might call that being professional at all times (at least to know when to be and when it is OK to be more natural).
- amznthrowaway5 6y ago
  I wouldn't consider cutthroat deceit "professional" behavior, but that's the depressing reality of how the world works.
tidepod12 6y ago
This is demonstrably incorrect if you look at some of the highest paying companies in SV. FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires", and yet they are well known for still being ruthless political cultures and backstabbing. Execs might be congenial because at that level, congenial is just how you play the game. It's still cutthroat, but overt backstabbing doesn't get you very far in a tight knit group of execs. But in other groups like a team of devs, IME high pay just attracts the kind of person who wants even higher pay and will do whatever it takes to get it.
- dlp211 6y ago
  > FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires" Do they though? Quality of Life is not just how much you make, it's relative to what you have to spend. You can't realistically afford a home -even for most of the engineers- with a decent school with a sub 30 minute commute anywhere around one of these companies unless you want to be house poor or you are a dual earning family.
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    Yes, they do. This comes up every time compensation gets mentioned on HN. Engineers claim that "I only make $500k/yr at Google and I'm poor because SF prices :(" which is just bullshit. In a previous thread, someone mentioned that they make $300k/yr in SF, and even after paying for housing in a nice area and food/utility expenses, they had over $11,000 per month left over in discretionary income. That is insane. Unless your material needs and desires are to own a superyacht, even "just" $200k/yr starting salary is still far more than enough to satisfy you.
    - dlp211 6y ago
      Most Engineers do NOT make $500k total comp per year at FAANG companies, most engineers don't make $300k TC/yr at these companies, and those aren't the engineers I'm talking about anyways. These companies are made up mostly of engineers who make between $100k-$250k. That's still not a small amount of money; and I never claimed that these people are poor; just that these salaries don't satisfy their needs and desires and these salaries certainly do not feel like you make $100k-$250k. Part of that is anchoring our expectations to what those amounts of money mean to when we first really began to understand the concept of money which is usually in our tween-teen stage of life, but it's also that these are in incredibly high COL areas.
eyegor 6y ago
There are many companies in our industry that disprove this. Culture can be toxic/abusive despite well paid employees. Culture certainly flows down, but it's the execs/managers who create it, not the compensation. See Tesla, Uber, Yelp, and most major video game studios.
sigstoat 6y ago
> You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal. i assume this is some sort of very subtle reductio ad absurdum? > When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. i was working at a place where the salaries were flat across the board, and set at a perfectly reasonable level, and it still didn't eliminate concern for appearances and bickering.

prepperpotts 6y ago

Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.

mrnook 6y ago
Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.
- prepperpotts 6y ago
  True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.
  - paulcole 6y ago
    It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.
    - mrnook 6y ago
      Of course, but what about Austin or Denver? The tech industry has brought high paying jobs to a lot of smaller cities that weren't accustomed to such high salaries.
- TomVDB 6y ago
  I wish I could find back the article that I read, years ago, that demolished the $75k claim of that paper, simply by having a different look at the same numbers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
z3rgl1ng 6y ago
This is untrue: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/6/20/8815813/orange-is-the-new-black-piper-chapman-happiness-study https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/6...
jandrewrogers 6y ago
It is worth noting that "happiness" is distinct from "life satisfaction" in these studies. The latter does scale with income up to very high levels. Just being happy on a day to day basis is a low standard, many people aspire to more in life somewhat independent of happiness.
SubuSS 6y ago
It definitely starts there, it misses on a key aspect: 70k for how long and how assuredly? Usually once you start making that, your next goal would be - To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal. - Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above) - Then you want to ensure this is on top of your car, house, child costs. (Depending on where you like to live and your car choice, add anywhere between 200k -> 2MM) - Then you realize this car/ house kinda bumps into the 70k limit - especially if you went for a giant house because reasons. And so on. So yes, folks can definitely start to feel 'safe' at 70k, but that's nowhere close to the checkout point. Once you figure out a target number based on above, you will realize you need to make so much more than 70k to get to that comfort state.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal. > Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above) A buffer?? Assuming 2% inflation, the "buffer" you're adding is just over 100% of the original amount.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mytailorisrich 6y ago

Management and upper management is not friendly, it is cut throat. The skill people who go up the ladder have mastered, though, is to be deceitful and to maintain appearances, you might call that being professional at all times (at least to know when to be and when it is OK to be more natural).

amznthrowaway5 6y ago
I wouldn't consider cutthroat deceit "professional" behavior, but that's the depressing reality of how the world works.

tidepod12 6y ago

This is demonstrably incorrect if you look at some of the highest paying companies in SV. FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires", and yet they are well known for still being ruthless political cultures and backstabbing. Execs might be congenial because at that level, congenial is just how you play the game. It's still cutthroat, but overt backstabbing doesn't get you very far in a tight knit group of execs. But in other groups like a team of devs, IME high pay just attracts the kind of person who wants even higher pay and will do whatever it takes to get it.

dlp211 6y ago
> FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires" Do they though? Quality of Life is not just how much you make, it's relative to what you have to spend. You can't realistically afford a home -even for most of the engineers- with a decent school with a sub 30 minute commute anywhere around one of these companies unless you want to be house poor or you are a dual earning family.
- tidepod12 6y ago
  Yes, they do. This comes up every time compensation gets mentioned on HN. Engineers claim that "I only make $500k/yr at Google and I'm poor because SF prices :(" which is just bullshit. In a previous thread, someone mentioned that they make $300k/yr in SF, and even after paying for housing in a nice area and food/utility expenses, they had over $11,000 per month left over in discretionary income. That is insane. Unless your material needs and desires are to own a superyacht, even "just" $200k/yr starting salary is still far more than enough to satisfy you.
  - dlp211 6y ago
    Most Engineers do NOT make $500k total comp per year at FAANG companies, most engineers don't make $300k TC/yr at these companies, and those aren't the engineers I'm talking about anyways. These companies are made up mostly of engineers who make between $100k-$250k. That's still not a small amount of money; and I never claimed that these people are poor; just that these salaries don't satisfy their needs and desires and these salaries certainly do not feel like you make $100k-$250k. Part of that is anchoring our expectations to what those amounts of money mean to when we first really began to understand the concept of money which is usually in our tween-teen stage of life, but it's also that these are in incredibly high COL areas.

eyegor 6y ago

There are many companies in our industry that disprove this. Culture can be toxic/abusive despite well paid employees. Culture certainly flows down, but it's the execs/managers who create it, not the compensation. See Tesla, Uber, Yelp, and most major video game studios.

sigstoat 6y ago

> You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal. i assume this is some sort of very subtle reductio ad absurdum? > When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. i was working at a place where the salaries were flat across the board, and set at a perfectly reasonable level, and it still didn't eliminate concern for appearances and bickering.