11 ms·

It's hard to compete with FAANG, Finance, and Consulting. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of people end up.

osrec 5y ago
Comfortable money + marketing hype keep it that way unfortunately. If governments really wanted to prioritise innovation, they should consider giving a banker's salary to a research scientist.
- b112 5y ago
  Governments do, if they work on bombs. Or spying. Or on figuring out the other guy's bombs.
  - vostok 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this? Spying sounds like a pretty interesting job if you can make something similar to FANG.
    - b112 5y ago
      Algo coders, predictive analysis of publicly available data, large societal trends prediction, using social media data to detect malign intent prior to action, analyzing the same to look for foreign activity, hacking foreign infrastructure, etc etc, CIA/NSA and other agencies hire these types right from University typically. They also fund startups which may be used for national interests and so on. Much of the time, they contact you, not the other way around.
      - reasonabl_human 5y ago
        Source? Lived and worked in D.C. and have a TS/SCI, sat for FSP…. The IC doesn’t pay even close to big tech rates. There is also no mystery around someone contacting you, just apply to the NSA / CIA / etc. if those paths pique your interest. Startups working on IC-relevant tech getting funding via non-traditional means is absolutely true but not guaranteed.
      - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
        I looked at NSA/CIA when I was graduating college and the compensation was notably below market and with very rigid structures. I was given to understand a common path was to put in some time at the actual agencies and then go over to a contractor where you could make good money. That was 30 years ago, though. Could be completely different now.
        rdtwo 5y ago
        Same deal when I graduated. They told me there was no big paycheck and no glory and I just noped out mid interview.
    - tigerlily 5y ago
      There's that fantasy crystal ball company...
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Then why are the NSA and NRO postings always so uncompetitive? DoE research postings are even worse.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  At least in the US, they're generally limited to salaries on the "general schedule", and management gets paid more than technical people, because "it wouldn't be fair" to have subordinates that make more than you. So there's a built-in glass ceiling for tech careers. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/22Tables/html/GS.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    “They” (political leaders) choose to limit salaries, and if a problem is urgent enough, they can somehow find a way pay more. It is just politics. Paying more today increases cash spend today, and that looks bad for them come election time.
  - halpert 5y ago
    Maybe “it’s not fair to have subordinates earn more” was the justification given to you, but businesses rarely make decisions based on what’s fair. Engineers are valuable, but individual engineers are largely replaceable. Being able to coordinate a large group successfully also has a lot of value.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Think it has a lot more to do with proximity to those controlling the purse-strings. Intra-firm compensation is not nearly as "rational" as you are making it out to be.
      - halpert 5y ago
        Is it really proximity to the purse string? Because even large, profitable founder-led tech companies, where founders have full control and motive to run the company efficiently, adopt middle management. And what evidence is there that middle management is unnecessary? The only evidence presented is theoretical critiques from engineers who feel they stand to gain from the removal of management.
    - 5y ago
- sseagull 5y ago
  The annual budget of the entire NSF is $8.28B. The NIH is $42B Google's net profit was $40B in 2020. Apple's was $94.6B in 2021. (all according to wikipedia). Edit: The above is net income, so AFTER paying all the exorbitant salaries. Apple alone makes enough money that it could fund pretty much all current publicly-funded science happening in the US at the current rate. That is a ridiculous amount of money, and publicly-funded science just cannot compete at that level. (Currently on publicly-funded grants. Underpaid relative to what I could make elsewhere, but happy to be contributing to the greater good rather than helping some advertising company).
- amoorthy 5y ago
  I'm torn on this. No doubt money is important but how much is needed? I've been thinking about this for a while [1] and I think more important to drive innovation is to change our culture to admire people who dedicate themselves to solving big problems over a long period of time. And a close second would be a culture that prizes modesty and eschews material wealth. I realize this may be a pipe-dream but it feels like a better long-term strategy than "pay researchers more than FAANG". [1] https://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/89407/How-much-salary-is-enough-Apparently-75-000-year https://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/89407/How-much-salar...
  - osrec 5y ago
    If you want to stop the brain drain from more worthwhile areas to less worthwhile areas, you need to at least pay better starting salaries in the more worthwhile fields. Otherwise, you'll end up with potential Einsteins playing with spreadsheets in investment banks rather than discovering relativity, simply because they wanted a bit of disposable income. Stupid, yes, but that's the situation we're in.
xvector 5y ago
TC isn't everything. I'm pulling truly bonkers TC at 26, and yet I feel a deep void inside me. I recently realized that this void is because I am not living by my ideals/purpose. I know what I want to do in life, I know how I want to contribute to the story of humanity, and yet I am letting my greed overrule me and force me into a different path. Essentially, I am betraying myself, and this causes that feeling of unfulfillment/void. I suspect I am not the only FAANG/unicorn/quant engineer that feels this way. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy the day to day technical work I do. But my day job does not help me work towards what I have defined as my existential purpose. Recently I decided I will change this, whether through volunteering or a new job (even if it might pay less.) I'm more excited than I have been in months. I will die happy if I can positively impact humanity towards the direction I hope for it to go towards.
- stackbutterflow 5y ago
  Trust me it's not better on the other side. Followed my dreams and I'll forever be financially decades behind you (i.e I'll never catch up) unless I win the lottery or something. I'm 100% sure if I were in your shoes I too would feel exactly as you do. The lesson here is to be content with what we have and what we've done. At least now you have the financial freedom to spend the rest of your life more or less as you see fit.
  - b112 5y ago
    This. For whatever reason (personality, genes, whatever), I do not seem to be one who gets caught up in the envy of greener grass. https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/grass-is-always-greener https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/grass-is-alway... I've spent a large part of my life as a high end specialist, consulting, and thus, have had incredibly encompassing exposure to a huge variety of companies. Whether non-profits, government departments, or corps, it's humans which cause the often ineffectual result, of our loving attempts to being order, and stability to our labourious output. People are the same everywhere, and thus, so your endeavours will be. The grass is not greener on the other side. So what I would say is: * if you strike out on your own, you can at least move on past things which bore you * you need true financial independence to achieve this, to become a relaxed garage tinkerer of tech * right now, we are at a moment of golden opportunity. The markets are down. This is where you buy in. The returns are buying in these times, not in time of feast. So... maybe this is a good time to reassess. Invest. And plan to retire once you profit?
nicoburns 5y ago
Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.
- yarky 5y ago
  What's the logic here? Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? Anybody can compete, but apparently most of us choose not to. Who forces a young talent to settle for a job instead of taking the risk to innovate ? Maybe risk-taking for innovation is what could be the encouraged through taxation.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? That's what some EU members think. Ask us how that's going :) That's why most of the big and wealthy companies hare are around 100 years old or more, vs about 30 years old in the US. Here in Austria you can get various government and EU grants for your startup and tax waivers on social security, and if by some miracle, you don't crash and burn like 95% of startups and manage to produce a semi-profitable company in the end, then you have to pay to the government retroactively all the social security contributions and taxes that have been previously waived over the past years, which is the final nail in the coffin for most companies here never growing or scaling beyond a couple of guys from uni in an apartment kind of company. Therefore most of the innovation happens nearly exclusively within academia, as "outside" it's a pretty hostile tax environment that mostly favors those 100 year old companies that already have solid revenue streams.
    - wowokay 5y ago
      I must be misunderstanding your comment. You are saying that younger companies in the US are becoming more wealthy and innovating more or at the same level as a few entrench EU companies that have successfully stifled the EU market ensuring they never lose there market share or have a need to innovate to complete in a free market, is that correct?
gumby 5y ago
There are plenty of people who prefer a different environment and culture from what those big companies have. Once the pay reaches level X ( different for each person) other factors become more important. Who knows what this person wants? He probably doesn’t either.

Comfortable money + marketing hype keep it that way unfortunately. If governments really wanted to prioritise innovation, they should consider giving a banker's salary to a research scientist.

b112 5y ago
Governments do, if they work on bombs. Or spying. Or on figuring out the other guy's bombs.
- vostok 5y ago
  Do you have a source for this? Spying sounds like a pretty interesting job if you can make something similar to FANG.
  - b112 5y ago
    Algo coders, predictive analysis of publicly available data, large societal trends prediction, using social media data to detect malign intent prior to action, analyzing the same to look for foreign activity, hacking foreign infrastructure, etc etc, CIA/NSA and other agencies hire these types right from University typically. They also fund startups which may be used for national interests and so on. Much of the time, they contact you, not the other way around.
    - reasonabl_human 5y ago
      Source? Lived and worked in D.C. and have a TS/SCI, sat for FSP…. The IC doesn’t pay even close to big tech rates. There is also no mystery around someone contacting you, just apply to the NSA / CIA / etc. if those paths pique your interest. Startups working on IC-relevant tech getting funding via non-traditional means is absolutely true but not guaranteed.
    - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      I looked at NSA/CIA when I was graduating college and the compensation was notably below market and with very rigid structures. I was given to understand a common path was to put in some time at the actual agencies and then go over to a contractor where you could make good money. That was 30 years ago, though. Could be completely different now.
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Same deal when I graduated. They told me there was no big paycheck and no glory and I just noped out mid interview.
  - tigerlily 5y ago
    There's that fantasy crystal ball company...
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Then why are the NSA and NRO postings always so uncompetitive? DoE research postings are even worse.
mysterydip 5y ago
At least in the US, they're generally limited to salaries on the "general schedule", and management gets paid more than technical people, because "it wouldn't be fair" to have subordinates that make more than you. So there's a built-in glass ceiling for tech careers. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/22Tables/html/GS.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  “They” (political leaders) choose to limit salaries, and if a problem is urgent enough, they can somehow find a way pay more. It is just politics. Paying more today increases cash spend today, and that looks bad for them come election time.
- halpert 5y ago
  Maybe “it’s not fair to have subordinates earn more” was the justification given to you, but businesses rarely make decisions based on what’s fair. Engineers are valuable, but individual engineers are largely replaceable. Being able to coordinate a large group successfully also has a lot of value.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Think it has a lot more to do with proximity to those controlling the purse-strings. Intra-firm compensation is not nearly as "rational" as you are making it out to be.
    - halpert 5y ago
      Is it really proximity to the purse string? Because even large, profitable founder-led tech companies, where founders have full control and motive to run the company efficiently, adopt middle management. And what evidence is there that middle management is unnecessary? The only evidence presented is theoretical critiques from engineers who feel they stand to gain from the removal of management.
  - 5y ago
sseagull 5y ago
The annual budget of the entire NSF is $8.28B. The NIH is $42B Google's net profit was $40B in 2020. Apple's was $94.6B in 2021. (all according to wikipedia). Edit: The above is net income, so AFTER paying all the exorbitant salaries. Apple alone makes enough money that it could fund pretty much all current publicly-funded science happening in the US at the current rate. That is a ridiculous amount of money, and publicly-funded science just cannot compete at that level. (Currently on publicly-funded grants. Underpaid relative to what I could make elsewhere, but happy to be contributing to the greater good rather than helping some advertising company).
amoorthy 5y ago
I'm torn on this. No doubt money is important but how much is needed? I've been thinking about this for a while [1] and I think more important to drive innovation is to change our culture to admire people who dedicate themselves to solving big problems over a long period of time. And a close second would be a culture that prizes modesty and eschews material wealth. I realize this may be a pipe-dream but it feels like a better long-term strategy than "pay researchers more than FAANG". [1] https://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/89407/How-much-salary-is-enough-Apparently-75-000-year https://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/89407/How-much-salar...
- osrec 5y ago
  If you want to stop the brain drain from more worthwhile areas to less worthwhile areas, you need to at least pay better starting salaries in the more worthwhile fields. Otherwise, you'll end up with potential Einsteins playing with spreadsheets in investment banks rather than discovering relativity, simply because they wanted a bit of disposable income. Stupid, yes, but that's the situation we're in.

xvector 5y ago

TC isn't everything. I'm pulling truly bonkers TC at 26, and yet I feel a deep void inside me. I recently realized that this void is because I am not living by my ideals/purpose. I know what I want to do in life, I know how I want to contribute to the story of humanity, and yet I am letting my greed overrule me and force me into a different path. Essentially, I am betraying myself, and this causes that feeling of unfulfillment/void. I suspect I am not the only FAANG/unicorn/quant engineer that feels this way. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy the day to day technical work I do. But my day job does not help me work towards what I have defined as my existential purpose. Recently I decided I will change this, whether through volunteering or a new job (even if it might pay less.) I'm more excited than I have been in months. I will die happy if I can positively impact humanity towards the direction I hope for it to go towards.

stackbutterflow 5y ago
Trust me it's not better on the other side. Followed my dreams and I'll forever be financially decades behind you (i.e I'll never catch up) unless I win the lottery or something. I'm 100% sure if I were in your shoes I too would feel exactly as you do. The lesson here is to be content with what we have and what we've done. At least now you have the financial freedom to spend the rest of your life more or less as you see fit.
- b112 5y ago
  This. For whatever reason (personality, genes, whatever), I do not seem to be one who gets caught up in the envy of greener grass. https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/grass-is-always-greener https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/grass-is-alway... I've spent a large part of my life as a high end specialist, consulting, and thus, have had incredibly encompassing exposure to a huge variety of companies. Whether non-profits, government departments, or corps, it's humans which cause the often ineffectual result, of our loving attempts to being order, and stability to our labourious output. People are the same everywhere, and thus, so your endeavours will be. The grass is not greener on the other side. So what I would say is: * if you strike out on your own, you can at least move on past things which bore you * you need true financial independence to achieve this, to become a relaxed garage tinkerer of tech * right now, we are at a moment of golden opportunity. The markets are down. This is where you buy in. The returns are buying in these times, not in time of feast. So... maybe this is a good time to reassess. Invest. And plan to retire once you profit?

nicoburns 5y ago

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

yarky 5y ago
What's the logic here? Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? Anybody can compete, but apparently most of us choose not to. Who forces a young talent to settle for a job instead of taking the risk to innovate ? Maybe risk-taking for innovation is what could be the encouraged through taxation.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? That's what some EU members think. Ask us how that's going :) That's why most of the big and wealthy companies hare are around 100 years old or more, vs about 30 years old in the US. Here in Austria you can get various government and EU grants for your startup and tax waivers on social security, and if by some miracle, you don't crash and burn like 95% of startups and manage to produce a semi-profitable company in the end, then you have to pay to the government retroactively all the social security contributions and taxes that have been previously waived over the past years, which is the final nail in the coffin for most companies here never growing or scaling beyond a couple of guys from uni in an apartment kind of company. Therefore most of the innovation happens nearly exclusively within academia, as "outside" it's a pretty hostile tax environment that mostly favors those 100 year old companies that already have solid revenue streams.
  - wowokay 5y ago
    I must be misunderstanding your comment. You are saying that younger companies in the US are becoming more wealthy and innovating more or at the same level as a few entrench EU companies that have successfully stifled the EU market ensuring they never lose there market share or have a need to innovate to complete in a free market, is that correct?

gumby 5y ago

There are plenty of people who prefer a different environment and culture from what those big companies have. Once the pay reaches level X ( different for each person) other factors become more important. Who knows what this person wants? He probably doesn’t either.