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I've been approached by headhunters for contract work at Intel. They want all kinds of machine learning knowledge & experience and the pay is.... $45/hr. I kid
by UncleOxidant 6y ago
I've been approached by headhunters for contract work at Intel. They want all kinds of machine learning knowledge & experience and the pay is.... $45/hr. I kid you not. I just sort of laugh and tell them that that's about 1/3 of market rate for that kind of thing.
- mc32 6y agoSometimes recruiters get things wrong, mix things up. That might have been for a different position that got redefined without commensurate pay adjustment. That said, 45 is really low for any position in an engineering company, unless it’s ancillary support services that get farmed out. Something like ‘Lab Admin’ type of thing.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoThis happened more than once over the last few years. If it was a mistake I could see it happening once. But not three times.
- pvarangot 6y agoI don't think it is. I got approached by consulting companies and recruiters to work on embedded development for Intel, including on-site work in Santa Clara, CA and travel to Asia. The hourly rate was 60 and days in Asia were 250 each plus accommodations. I've never done a trip to Asia were I was working less than 10 hours per day.
- MaxLeiter 6y agoAmazon software development interns (undergrad) in SF get $65/hr + a housing stipend. 60/hr seems far too low
- giantg2 6y agoI have 9 years experience, an MSIS, and make a salary that works out to less than $45/hr, but of course there are benefits.
- Unklejoe 6y agoThat's what I make at my full time job in NJ with 7 years of experience. Damn.
- mc32 6y agoYou have to ask yourself if the raise is worth the COLA as well as quality of life in the Bay Area which include housing stock quality per dollar as well as nuisance crimes you have to deal with (garage, car break ins and dealing people suffering metal health issues in the street, etc.) It works out for some people but it will not work out for everyone.
- munk-a 6y agoAlthough right now the math is rather different - you can easily remain living in NJ with all your nice local things while switching employers to someone in CA - most people are hiring fully remote people though you may be required to work west coast hours. And, honestly, I think that after the pandemic companies are going to have a lot of trouble trying to pull employees back into in-office full time work.
- pvarangot 6y agoYeah it's nothing. I'm at staff level, 15 years experience, and owned whole boards and projects from product requirements to final assembly and testing for at least five years. I don't know how they get people for that money unless it's some kind of shady situation where they are not actually living in the bay area.
- walshemj 6y agoThat's cheap 20 years ago I looked at a secondment in Malaysia and that was full ride tax free expat - house and servants! provided.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y agoA quick search shows average US software engineer's salary is $92,046 / yr. Divide that by 251 working days and 8 hours to arrive at $45/h.
- ivalm 6y agoI am guessing it is very location specific.
- BeetleB 6y agoI don't think they got it wrong. A recruiter contacted me for a contractor position in Amazon. It involved Perl coding (I'm guessing some legacy SW they have). They said the max they can pay is $50/hr.
- stephencanon 6y ago$45/hr is about what I was paid as a grad-student intern at Apple ... 15 years ago.
- akiselev 6y agoIt's also about what a Mozilla intern would get paid ten years ago.
- saagarjha 6y agoThis is also around what an Apple intern would get today as an upperclassman in college. (Without including benefits, of course.)
- dharmab 6y agoIt's way less than I made working in the IT departments of medium-size non-tech companies.
- giantg2 6y agoI have a salary that would work our to less than $45/hr, with extra hours dragging it down further.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 6y agoMost people do - but don't hesitate to put more value in your labour and look for other career opportunities. The world is pretty unjust at a basic level and if you're waiting for someone to acknowledge your excellence and land a big payday in your lap you'll be waiting for a long time. A big piece of career advice I have for any folks that feel like they're in dead-ends or are just getting started is that, in modern society, you should be constantly expending time and energy to ensure you're in the most personally rewarding position - the world is a cruel place where the socially awkward and introverted have a constant uphill battle to not be exploited. Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a lot of other fields there is just no way to advance yourself.
- selimthegrim 6y agoThey were paying Eclipse and Java UI contractors a little less than that about 7-8 years ago. Maybe the MBAs have them all in the same bucket
- staticautomatic 6y agoHeadhunters for contract work at one FAANG company offer me $50 an hour for gigs utilizing the same skill set I’ve billed them $500 an hour for in the past.
- giantg2 6y ago"I’ve billed them $500 an hour for in the past" !!!...
- eganist 6y agoFor unsteady contracted project work, this doesn't sound off the mark for high-value niche skillsets at a senior or principal level. I wouldn't expect FAANGs to pay it for steady work, though. Well, Netflix might come close. I can count two principal-level architects pulling north of 700k/y, but I doubt they work just 40 hours a week.
- giantg2 6y agoI just have trouble wrapping my head around how someone can be that valuable. I'll never even hit $75/hr (excluding inflation).
- usmannk 6y agoNew grads in SFBA make well north of $75/hr. Sometimes it's all about geo.
- leesalminen 6y agoHere in Boulder $100/hr is the cheapest you can find for a freelance developer worth their salt.
- giantg2 6y agoI'm just worthless
- giantg2 6y agoWow. I make less than $45/hr (salary with extra hours dragging it down further, but with benefits). Edit for background: I have 9 years experience, an MSIS working at a financial company.
- ptmcc 6y agoIf that's as a developer in a US city that's pretty underpaid
- giantg2 6y agoIt's in the suburbs of an east coast city. I don't really see higher paying intermediate jobs (switched stacks a few times).
- djrogers 6y agoNote he's salaried, that's not contract rates. Salaried employees also get health, 401k, ESPP, and other benefits that contract workers have to cover themselves - not to mention self employment taxes etc. He may still be underpaid, but it's not apples/apples.
- Jtsummers 6y agoFinancial companies, pharmaceutical companies, automotive companies, aircraft (component or manufacturing) companies. They all fail to understand the criticality of software and IT to their long term objectives, and greatly undervalue people in those fields. A recurring issue I've found is, "Jack the EE picked up programming in a week, why are you worth as much or more than him when you aren't even a 'real' engineer?" Substitute another field for EE based on industry. Software is simultaneously too easy for them to take seriously, and too hard for them to fathom its depths.
- munk-a 6y agoI disagree - non-software companies feel entitled to price employees based in relation to their peers rather than in relation to the value they add to the business (and possibly misuse their tech labour because they never hired an architect that could actually steer it to be as valuable as it could be) but Jack the EE might be a perfectly servicable developer. There's a lot of theory we learn in school that Jack would need to pick up himself but don't assume you're imbued with a special skill that sets you apart from the rest of the employees. The company should definitely be paying more out of their pocket to employ good tech talent, but I'm not so certain whether it's good for society for all that created value to be given to the developer who happened to create it. I think there is a big value gap in how much developers can produce with relatively little labour compared to, say, a car mechanic - but I think that it might be best for everyone if a really big proportion of that value gap was sliced up and distributed more evenly across society in the form of social programs to benefit us all.
- darth_avocado 6y agoI am 100% in the same boat. Had a recruiter reach out to me who wanted me to leave my more than comfortable six figure SV job to do cutting edge contract work in machine learning as a lead engineer for about $50/hour. I was so amused I actually spent the time listening to their pitch and eventually told them that anything less than $200/hour wouldn't even cover my current pay + benefits. Let me know if you can do better. They hung up. Lol
- spicybright 6y agoI genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.
- 0xffff2 6y agoSome people don't care so much about the money. I'm barely over the six figure mark in the bay area. I could probably make a lot more money somewhere else, but I wouldn't get to do anything nearly as interesting as my current work.
- _benj 6y agoI don't think is about not caring about the money... it seems to me that the salary is just the manifestation of the value the company places in the individual, and thus a company that pays 1/3 of the industry average shows very little care for their engineers, at least in my book
- n4r9 6y agoThe salary is the most tangible and measurable manifestation, but it's not necessarily complete. Companies can make efforts in other ways e.g. ensuring good work-life balance (which could entail hiring more people), providing allowances for mental health, parental care etc... . All these things can become relatively very valuable once the salary crosses a minimum threshold.
- 6y ago
- grumple 6y agoI’d laugh at triple that. This is a strong indicator Intel will not be turning things around.
- SXX 6y agoWow, $45/hr is just laughtable. I know many freelance web developers from ex-USSR countries who charge more and their effective tax rate is below 10%. Or did you mean this is $45/hr post-tax rate?
- msie 6y agoUgh, I make less.
- ababaiem 6y agoDitto. This whole thread makes me feel out of touch.
- varjag 6y ago$45 is well beyond a median ex-USSR freelancer, although there have to be outliers.
- ivalm 6y ago$50/hr for Ukrainian/Russian dev on upwork is reasonable. Ofc they make less since upwork takes a cut.
- unnouinceput 6y ago47
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wjnc 6y agoA friend of mine was a professor at a US university in ML and came home to NED to work in medical ML and makes about that. I was amazed he wasn't at FAANG and his simple response was "My wife and I agreed that we would raise our children near their grandparents." There's perhaps more diversity in preferences than we can imagine.
- astrange 6y agoWhat is NED?
- selimthegrim 6y agoNetherlands
- edgyquant 6y agoNederlandse = The Netherlands
- astrange 6y agoAh, that's what I thought. There are FAANG offices in neighboring countries of course.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoYikes. As part of my company's (F500) DS group, I'm at < $40/hour. Granted, I'm essentially doing software dev, which is a little out of my wheelhouse, and I was just a technical BSA before this, but still... To be fair, I also have a lot of latitude and was able to work remote prior to covid. Once the vaccines are rolled out and I can find someone for some of my caretaking role, looking elsewhere is a priority.
- ab_testing 6y agoThat kind of positions are usually filled by H1 B contractors - primarily from smaller consulting companies. Usually Intel and other companies pay ~100-125 per hour but then the middlemen keep the rest.
- jandrese 6y agoYou were just the "proof" they needed that there were no domestic engineers with the right skillset for the job they had so they could hire a H1B replacement for that salary.
- not2b 6y agoYes, this is probably it, they might already have the H1B person lined up, but they've got to offer the job to citizens/permanent residents. They often do this in a way that guarantees that they will get no takers. The immigrant will agree to a low salary because the alternative is getting deported.
- rhizome 6y agoThere have been reasonable minimum salary requirements for H1Bs for a few years now: https://redbus2us.com/h1b-minimum-wage-or-lca-prevailing-wage-for-a-position-in-an-area-in-usa/ https://redbus2us.com/h1b-minimum-wage-or-lca-prevailing-wag... $45/hr|$90K would be too low nowadays. GP's experience could have been more than a few years ago.
- jmcguckin 6y agoI worked as a contract employee in Santa Clara about 20 years ago. What do I remember? The corporate infighting and the corporate paranoia (examining the contents of your briefcase and backpacks) and the IT department sniffing your internet use.
- dboreham 6y agoYou won't be able to get someone to fix your car for $45/hr.
- mkhpalm 6y agoMechanics work on your car for a few hours and the job is done forever.
- HeWhoLurksLate 6y ago...unless it's a GM
- deathanatos 6y agoHaaaaa story time. Had a flat. Not a big deal; got the spare on, schedule some time at the mechanics to get a new tire. Tire gets put on, everything is great, time passes. Later, come back for a regularly scheduled tire rotation. "We can't get the lug nuts off. They've been over tightened." the mechanic says. "Well, how do you suppose that happened?" I ask. Of course, it goes a. completely over that their head, (they were the last ones to touch the lug nuts) and of course, b., it's my wallet that pays for their error. They were not the mechanic for a while after that. Aside from that gaffe they did good work, and everybody else I tried for a while was all around worse. Eventually returned to them, and that was really the only problem I ever had…
- m463 6y agoIf you'd be working for a contract firm and not directly for intel, they often take a huge what-the-market-will-bear percentage. Right now there's a lot of uncertainty in the job market. Having contracted a lot in the past, the fact that Intel is hiring contractors signals a hiring crisis. Either nobody wants to work there, or work is ramping up. But a company full of contractors might not be too healthy.
- girvo 6y agoChrist I get more than that as a front end dev in Australia