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Slackers are the number one reason I do not enjoy corporate America anymore. I don’t care if you are not able to perform and need help or produce crap, as long

Slackers are the number one reason I do not enjoy corporate America anymore. I don’t care if you are not able to perform and need help or produce crap, as long as you put in the effort and try to pull your weight. In my decade of experience I have witnessed people, technical people, who magically manage to just not do anything at all, ever. They jump from initiative to initiative without producing anything, and somehow still manage to get some credit with management. Paradoxically, I find these people more among “tech lead” and managers roles, where their leverage is much higher and they could be having massive positive impact in the organization. I am acutely aware of how incredibly effective a tech lead or manager can be by providing the right context to a team in need even without directly contributing. Here I am not talking about this profile, I am talking about people who have no freaking clue, they are literally leeches who go from meeting to meeting pretending to make some insightful observation, then leave and repeat. The organization is too messy and they can move “faster than they can shoot them”. The solution in my experience tends to be to go in small startups that are not run by mentally unstable founders: you’ll get paid less but typically people with zero/negative productivity won’t be found there, there’s not enough bureaucracy to support their façade. They’ll start coming once the headcount surpasses 200 or so.

datavirtue 5y ago
"and they could be having massive positive impact in the organization" That's adorable. Startups do not pay less. I'm bringing in $300k as a developer in Ohio. Individual contributor.
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  In my experience, they do pay less for senior roles, especially the ones below 200 people who don’t suffer from politics mentioned in my original post. I’m paid $1.2M as IC at a FAANG, not in Bay Area or NYC. To get a similar compensation I would have to get very, very lucky at a growing startup. Instead here I entered through the front door last year and got basically that comp (experienced some mild stock growth so far as a nice bonus). I will concede the argument that a person might not need that much, but I’d rather milk it until it lasts and get a $300k job when I’ll have no alternatives. I’m actually kind of hoping it will stop so the opportunity cost of doing something else, more interesting, will be less steep to pay :-)
  - gbjw 5y ago
    This is insanity -- you get paid $1.2M as an IC?! How? Is this total comp?
    - deanmoriarty 5y ago
      Total comp with some mild stock appreciation. My entry offer was $950k+ when I joined last year. https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi has several data points similar to mine, look at the L6/L7 IC tracks at most FAANG. I feel we are going a bit off topic here, but I’ll say that you have to deal with a lot of frustrating situations in these large organizations, so it tends to wear you out. Startups, in my experience, are more fun if you are a person who thrives off being productive. Still to this day, I look fondly at my “early startup employee” phase, I have never been able to be so fulfilled in my professional life ever since, despite my compensation going up 10X+ from those days. Plus, a lot of people on HN routinely and proudly state how they would never want to work for companies like Meta or Google for ethical reasons, so there’s that too.
      - tubby12345 5y ago
        That's funny with your use of L I figured you'd be at Google and that that tracks with my experience at FB but no one calls it meta except people at meta so I guess I'm just saying that tracks lol
      - guynamedloren 5y ago
        "some mild stock appreciation".. quite an understatement. $250k (annual) appreciation in a year. Whew.
        deanmoriarty 5y ago
        My perspective is skewed by several friends who made it HUGE by joining unicorns at the right time. My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs of 2020/2021, most after having been there less than 3 years. Crazy stuff. From that perspective, a FAANG growing 30% yoy looks like a risk-free rate of return :-)
- ohyeshedid 5y ago
  > Startups do not pay less. Depends on which startups. Making the statement of "Startups do not pay less.", in reference to someone stating their experience to the opposite, comes across a bit, err, stiff.
hidudeurcool 5y ago
jsprogram 5y ago
Could you write from your experience the methods to identify those types of people? Would be a useful guide.
- rurban 5y ago
  Eg needing a month to move one ticket from one queue to another. Because only this guy has the permissions to do so, but 5 other guys are blocked. That's why you name the blockers in your standup.

datavirtue 5y ago

"and they could be having massive positive impact in the organization" That's adorable. Startups do not pay less. I'm bringing in $300k as a developer in Ohio. Individual contributor.

deanmoriarty 5y ago
In my experience, they do pay less for senior roles, especially the ones below 200 people who don’t suffer from politics mentioned in my original post. I’m paid $1.2M as IC at a FAANG, not in Bay Area or NYC. To get a similar compensation I would have to get very, very lucky at a growing startup. Instead here I entered through the front door last year and got basically that comp (experienced some mild stock growth so far as a nice bonus). I will concede the argument that a person might not need that much, but I’d rather milk it until it lasts and get a $300k job when I’ll have no alternatives. I’m actually kind of hoping it will stop so the opportunity cost of doing something else, more interesting, will be less steep to pay :-)
- gbjw 5y ago
  This is insanity -- you get paid $1.2M as an IC?! How? Is this total comp?
  - deanmoriarty 5y ago
    Total comp with some mild stock appreciation. My entry offer was $950k+ when I joined last year. https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi has several data points similar to mine, look at the L6/L7 IC tracks at most FAANG. I feel we are going a bit off topic here, but I’ll say that you have to deal with a lot of frustrating situations in these large organizations, so it tends to wear you out. Startups, in my experience, are more fun if you are a person who thrives off being productive. Still to this day, I look fondly at my “early startup employee” phase, I have never been able to be so fulfilled in my professional life ever since, despite my compensation going up 10X+ from those days. Plus, a lot of people on HN routinely and proudly state how they would never want to work for companies like Meta or Google for ethical reasons, so there’s that too.
    - tubby12345 5y ago
      That's funny with your use of L I figured you'd be at Google and that that tracks with my experience at FB but no one calls it meta except people at meta so I guess I'm just saying that tracks lol
    - guynamedloren 5y ago
      "some mild stock appreciation".. quite an understatement. $250k (annual) appreciation in a year. Whew.
      - deanmoriarty 5y ago
        My perspective is skewed by several friends who made it HUGE by joining unicorns at the right time. My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs of 2020/2021, most after having been there less than 3 years. Crazy stuff. From that perspective, a FAANG growing 30% yoy looks like a risk-free rate of return :-)
ohyeshedid 5y ago
> Startups do not pay less. Depends on which startups. Making the statement of "Startups do not pay less.", in reference to someone stating their experience to the opposite, comes across a bit, err, stiff.

hidudeurcool 5y ago

jsprogram 5y ago

Could you write from your experience the methods to identify those types of people? Would be a useful guide.

rurban 5y ago
Eg needing a month to move one ticket from one queue to another. Because only this guy has the permissions to do so, but 5 other guys are blocked. That's why you name the blockers in your standup.