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It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is t

It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?

treyfitty 5y ago
I do something like this as a first pass, but prune based on Values. I wouldn’t ever consider Amazon… but at $1MM… that’s kinda “change your values” type money.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  At a certain point, I guess you'd have to say to yourself (or I'd have to say to myself, would be a better way to say it), "I'll whore myself out for X amount of time for X amount of money, then I can do whatever I want or work for whomever I want for X amount of time, after."
  - chucksta 5y ago
    "Everyone has a price"
    - 0des 5y ago
      Im no streetwalkin floozy but 20 bucks is 20 bucks.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    flexible ethics? not everybody.
    - tempestn 5y ago
      There are different degrees of flexibility. Perhaps some people are utterly inflexible, but I wouldn't much want to know them! As for this specific case, it's not like you're going to be breaking legs for the mob. A person might believe that Facebook or Amazon are a net negative for the world, but that doesn't mean that everything they do is bad or that one's individual contribution can't be good, or at least neutral.
    - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
      There are certain lines people won't cross, of course. Too much rigidity, on the other hand, is a disorder. If there's no traffic at 4 a.m. and I jaywalk, does that mean I have flexible ethics because the cost to benefit ratio is right for me... I guess. Would I murder a child for a billion dollars? No. That's over a line for me. I guess then, yes. My ethics are flexible, depending. I have also followed the two second rule, even though I find eating food off of the floor abhorrent =(
- bally0241 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what turns you off about Amazon?
  - chrismcb 5y ago
    Not the OP. But I interviewed once got a contract to hire position. The recruiter said after about six months I could apply for full time. If I got accepted then immediately the expectation is to put in 60 hours a week or more.
    - rvba 5y ago
      "We will squeeze you like a lemon with hope of getting a full time job and after 6 months whrn you get burned out, we will throw you away".
  - cebert 5y ago
    Most of the feedback I’ve read about working at Amazon seems to be negative. It’s hard for me to reconcile though. As a user of AWS, I love many of their services and the possibilities AWS opens. Most of the negative feedback I’ve read centers around: PIPs, management, work/life balance, on-call, and frugality. If Amazon wants more folks to consider working there, I think they really need to get in front of this from a PR perspective and address these concerns.
    - redredrobot 5y ago
      Lol when I said that at an org-level all-hands everyone laughed, but the need for improved PR is very real. But it’s important to remember that there are a ton of extremely happy people at Amazon (or at least AWS, where I worked) they just aren’t as vocal online - management, scope and culture were incredible in my experience (it’s a huge company where managers have a lot of flexibility, YMMV). And some of the biggest day-to-day issues you hear about like crappy offices or excessive frugality were a thing of the past when I was there. And in terms of PIP, I only had one experience with it - having a mechanism for identifying and getting rid of the people who are a drain on everyone else was very nice.
- Riseed 5y ago
  I'm not sure there's "change your values" type money for everyone. Though for me, $1MM is enough to consider working for Amazon to attempt to change it from the inside. Perhaps we're saying the same things with different words.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    Amazon is not going to change from the inside for anyone making $1M. If you go in thinking it is, you're deluding yourself and will be much less effective than if you just accept that Amazon is what Amazon is and you're whoring yourself out to them for $1M/year. Your paygrade needs to be at least $100M/year to have a reasonable shot of changing the culture of a large company. Most likely, by the time you get up there you realize that companies are what they are for reasons, and if you try to change that you will end up changing yourself out of that $100M job rather than changing the world.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      I know a guy in there (who most likely isn't making anywhere near 100M), who transferred into the HR org to try to make a dent into the problem of employee turnover, PIP BS, etc. Last I heard, he was giving middle managers a hard time for perpetuating the sorts of bad behaviors that give Amazon its bad reputation as an employer. Maybe Amazon is a lost cause, maybe it isn't, but you won't know if you can fix it unless you try. </two-cents>
      - TideAd 5y ago
        PIP culture at Amazon comes from the very top. Bezos was a huge fan of it and so is the new CEO. There's no way your friend is going to be able to fight institutional power like that.
    - nostrebored 5y ago
      $100m/yr? You have some very interesting ideas about corporate ceo/SVP salaries
walrus01 5y ago
I expect exactly this from a person who humblebrags about their exercise routine and says they "live and die by Asana"
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  It's a blog post, I kinda expect a little bit of bragging about what they feel like they're doing right.
jjulius 5y ago
>... so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way? I wouldn't say that. Everyone views things differently. You may place more value on product/industry/global impact, whereas others don't care, they just want the cash.
paxys 5y ago
There's no right or wrong way. He optimized for the money. You can pick personal interest or societal benefit or work life balance or whatever else.
Teknoman117 5y ago
I believe it's extremely common? I don't really have any data though. Everyone I know changes jobs whenever someone comes along offering more. I'm the odd one out having been with my current employer for >5 years. I've been getting healthy raises every year, but many of my friends have averaged a 40% pay increase every hop... I guess it depends on what you want. Do you want your job to be something you're excited about doing every weekday? Or is it a means to provide for the things you'd rather be doing?
- rhacker 5y ago
  My salary did the same thing, practically doubled every hop. That ends eventually and you find out there's a ceiling.
  - Teknoman117 5y ago
    Well obviously, and then it would come down to who treats you better or lets you work on more interesting things. But the ceiling is typically way higher than what the people who don't hop around get.
nly 5y ago
Strategy for me has just been to contact a 2 or 3 good recruiters and let them find me the best opportunities. Often a recruiter can get you in the door at big companies quicker than you can applying directly. I just never let a recruiter interfere with my instincts, since even the good ones can get pushy when they sense that they're close to a big pay-off. I felt bad for a really nice, hard working recruiter last year because, although i had 2 offers on the table through opportunities found through him, the companies just felt wrong. I ended up going with a company who head-hunted me directly on LinkedIn.
AsusToss 5y ago
It’s wild to me that the only reason his wife gave him 30 mins/day of personal time was because of the financial payoff. Bizarre dude and story.
- hn_user82179 5y ago
  FWIW I assume that's because they parent a 1 year old, and it's important to trade-off on caregiving time.
  - antisthenes 5y ago
    Not if his wife doesn't work.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      If his wife doesn't work then the 30m of me time becomes even more costly and even more important to clear. Work is often the only reprieve from a very young child. The first year of our child, my favorite thing in the world was to go to work, no matter how shitty the task. The thirty minute commute alone was orgasmic, without the sound of a screaming colicky child unrelenting during day and night alike.
      - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
        The absolute joy of being around other, quiet adults who will not cry and not need their diapers changed.
    - rhizome 5y ago
      Parenting is work.
      - xanaxagoras 5y ago
        Parenting is not the kind of thing where you exchange your labor for money. It's not work in the sense that the parent comment meant it and you know that full well.
xwdv 5y ago
Yes you are wrong. You’re confusing career with purpose.
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  Could be. I got into this stuff because of hacker ethos stuff I read as a kid, not because tech is more lucrative than working in finance.
  - Arubis 5y ago
    I feel that, but remain indecisive if the best way to enjoy tech. Is it to just find the closest approximation of a fit in a job at a reasonable wage, or to crank compensation to generate better options? As I get older, the latter seems more sustainable.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    This is me. I derive great satisfaction simply being around tech. Maybe it is from watching my father take apart and work with the family PC at age 4 or 5. Now I'm in a rat race against Adderall addicts on hedonic treadmills.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Comp is king, everything else is window dressing; only the comp pays the bills and gets you closer to financial independence (wealth is options, options are freedom).
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  Cutting expenses also gets you closer to financial independence: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si... In fact, it's doubly effective. If you can learn to reduce your expenses by $10k and live happily, not only do you have an additional $10k to save/invest, but you need less each year to live independently.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Some expenses you have no control over (alimony, child support, chronic healthcare costs, elder care come to mind from my circle of associates). Yes, don’t spend frivolously (luxury vehicles, eating out all of the time), but sometimes (at least in tech), you have far more control over the income side of the equation. If you can switch jobs and make $100k/more a year, that’s easier than trying to cut all of your expenses to the bone, or expenses that are non-discretionary and simply can’t be cut. Run hard, every hour you work is an hour you’ll never get back, so max the comp for each of those hours. Your future self will thank you. (Huge mmm fan btw)
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Yeah the other issue is if you increase income, your imputed income for child support is now effectively permanently higher. Child support imputed incomes ratchet up with raises, generally not back down. You will never be able to 'relax' back at a slower/less lucrative job because now the judge says pay the higher rate or go to jail. Another way to view it: say you get a pay boost 90k -> 190k. The custodial parent will request the imputed income to be recalculated. You now owe an extra 20k PER YEAR. That's your new imputed income, even if you don't get a job like this again and it only lasts a year. Eventually you lose that job and can't find one like it again -- fast forward 10 years. You've paid an extra $200k, just to make an extra 50 or 60k net in one year. You lost $200k by working a higher paid job for a year. One year of raise followed by 17 years of a slightly more relaxed job at your original income means you LOSE money. In this example, falling from 190k back to your 90k income means child support went from 1/3 of your net check to 2/3 of your net check. A brutal risk to take if you don't think you'll be making the high wage for life.
QuikAccount 5y ago
I find it weird that you find this weird. Most people I know and know of optimize like this. They are in it for the cash and trying to make as much as possible and then get out as soon as possible. Doesn't matter what the impact is, doesn't matter how unsavory the work is.
- ganbatekudasai 5y ago
  Most people I know don't, and a lot of them still do pretty well for themselves, so... to those wo do: Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better I guess, but don't pretend that it's universal for justification.
  - oblio 5y ago
    What people say and what they think and do are wildly different things. It's called "revealed preference". Think of how many people don't switch jobs at least every 5 years and how many change for a job paying the same or less.
bee_rider 5y ago
Facebook is pretty evil, but there are of course people out there who've worked for much less, at much more evil organizations.
nluken 5y ago
Just a case of different priorities for different people. Some people are just in it for the cash and in that case applying to the top-paying companies would be optimal.
anm89 5y ago
99% of people in tech aren't changing the world. They are building accounting and metrics and shopping and add platforms to get marginal increases to marginal revenue so some business can make a bit more money than they were making before. I'm honest that I trade my time for money. There are many times when I'll prioritize other things like working with people I like or not working with people I dislike, the same thing for processes or schedules or whatever. But I'm not going to sit around and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars so I can go play with the latest JS framework instead of the one that was cool 6 years ago or so I can be in a sexier sounding industry. I'm going to trade my time for money and work towards financial freedom so hopefully I can go work on stuff that's interesting to me on my terms at some point.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  On that note, is anyone else getting a little tired of all the pretentiousness going about in tech? Suddenly, every tech company is claiming to "change the world" and "not like the others". You know, hyping these adds, metrics, platforms, etc. up as if they're going to really change life in a noteworthy way for Average Joe. Whatever happened to just putting in a good day's effort and admitting we're doing it for the money so we can pay the bills and a nice dinner?
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    I think it taps into peoples' inherent religious desires and motivates them to put in more work and possibly do things they wouldn't otherwise. There's a reason it's called drinking the kool aid.
    - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
      See I do agree on surface level it makes sense to decorate things. But I have yet to see any empirical evidence of this, let alone weighted against the long term costs of burnout, disillusion, embitterment, increasing costs using third parties to fix the problems, and more. Anecdotally, the far majority of "we really love to work here!" people I met seemed to either stop caring very soon, were clearly faking it or were barely distinguishable from their more skeptical co-workers performance-wise, bar a few individuals with a savior complex.
tejtm 5y ago
I think it contributes to why we have what we have. The other part is a system which is free to pay for dodgy products with negative impacts. I can't imagine eliminating how I feel about what I do from the equation.
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roenxi 5y ago
Money is a decent proxy for those things. You'll notice that his list scores pretty well on all those measures for someone with a typical set of moral standards. It is hard for a financially poor company to have good products/impact.
clpm4j 5y ago
I think the fact that he's a power lifter is an important factor to consider in your impression. Power lifters are generally obsessed with their physical metrics and numbers, so this just seems like an optimization exercise in a similar vein. Clearly not a "fulfill the purpose of my life" exercise.
- ikr678 5y ago
  Less metrics, and more that is a sport where you can only really progress and develop with a dedicated, informed training regime. Whether this is unhealthy when carried over into other parts of your life is an exercise for the reader to consider.
FerociousTimes 5y ago
Different strokes for different folks You optimize your job hunting for these criteria and he did his chiefly for $$$, as you put it.
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groby_b 5y ago
Well... one could argue they got the perfect match for their values. So, works as intended. You're only approaching it the wrong way if money is your highest value too and you don't act on that.
88913527 5y ago
If you view a job as just a job, and find meaning in other things in life, optimizing for TC seems incredibly rational. The problem is some people doing that don't actually find meaning in anything but money.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  While I agree you have to also consider WLB and not TC alone. Your actual pay rate for how much you have to actually work are very important. $1 million/yr sounds nice but if you need to put in 100 or 110 hours a week to do it, it may not be as alluring. So TC is important in terms of magnitude and what that alots you but the actual pay rate and total magnitude of work are critical in this perspective. This is basically my perspective, although I factor in the value of my time doing the actual work as well. Even with great WLB and very high TC, if you're working 25 hours a week doing miserable stuff... thats 25 hours of your life spent in misery. Would rather that be enjoyable if possible if all other things can be kept constant.
- jseban 5y ago
  Yeah and this is a perfectly healthy and normal view to have, which really should be the default considering that it really is what the definition of a job is. What is strange is to actually assign other vague emotional needs to a job which doesn't say anything about that in the definition. Which choice will be the more successful here is pretty obvious to me. Any time you start by re-defining something according to your own fantasies, you will probably be disappointed.
ngokevin 5y ago
I think FB makes a natural fit for those that approach it that way
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I wonder if this would become a problem for Facebook. They might end up with a monoculture that doesn't really accord with the outside world. Mind you I suppose all technology companies are at risk of that.
kache_ 5y ago
I don't understand people who don't minmax effort to income. That's why we work, for money. I re-evaluate my employer every 2 years or at the end of a project, because I will always just go to the highest bidder. I'll retire at 35 and then do what I want. But for now, optimizing.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
If the primary purpose of your job is to raise funds for the things that actually matter, what other method would you use? Take the biggest bag that leaves you with enough time to enjoy what you worked so hard to spend that money on.
- ngokevin 5y ago
  Experienced engineers will have plenty of time and plenty of cheese to do whatever they want, up to them whether they choose to go to somewhere like Meta. The only thing I can imagine that $300k can't do that $750k-$1m can is buy up a bunch of property and price people out
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    You can retire far quicker on the higher salary.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      then what?
      - oblio 5y ago
        Be free from pressure and do stuff whenever and however you want.
      - jseban 5y ago
        Sports, hobbies, reading, writing, side projects, volunteer work, travelling, friends/family, culture, music etc. The same things that a rich person would do? Do whatever you want and/or find stimulating and worthwhile. Being free.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        Live your life on your terms, not an employer’s.
yoyohello13 5y ago
Reading these responses is pretty upsetting. No wonder big tech is so evil. So many talented developers willing to sell their soul for more money. No thought to whether what they’re doing is causing harm to the world.
- dangus 5y ago
  The irony of the article is that Meta isn’t even that hard to get into because so many candidates hard no on them because they know Facebook is evil. I read an article that said how Meta has to pay well above market rates to acquire talent due to their negative perception. It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech.
  - ngokevin 5y ago
    That sums it up. I've told friends and family it'd look poorly on them for going there if they have plenty of options.
  - 0des 5y ago
    > It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech. This is not the first time I've heard this at all and each time it is equally relevant. Unless meta gets everyone goggled up fast I think that there will be so much negative stigma nobody will want to be part of it.
    - danuker 5y ago
      I think you are misjudging the speed it will happen. I think the Metaverse will be a slow death march, eventually ending up teaching others what not to do. Unless the VR experience is flawless, and I mean better than reality, people can't get hooked. If the hardware lags even a bit, the headaches and dizziness become unbearable. Depth-of-field is another disorienting factor, and field-of-view yet another. I believe we do not yet have the technology to offer such an experience, let alone cheaply. As such, Facebook is prematurely investing in it.
      - 5y ago
djcapelis 5y ago
You’re not wrong at all. A lot of us agree with this but the type of people who write blog posts about their process as if searching for a job is a totally generic thing wholly untethered to someone’s goals in their own life outside of pure capital motives don’t cover the interesting bits. If you want to be a mercenary, read these blog posts. If you want a job you like working on stuff you care about, avoid this stuff like the plague. Will you make more in the end? Unclear, but I like to assume that people who work on stuff they care about eventually win under capitalism too. But even if not, I feel like I do fine.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Selling your time and knowledge is a business. Why shouldn't you try to do the best deal? Saving the world is not something you do as an employee of a corporation. That's more suited to a government or NGO position. And if you care about saving the world, you can do it better in your free time. There's no reason business should be impacted by ideology. And before having duties to others, you have duties to yourself and your family.
stevekemp 5y ago
I'm a sysadmin (or these days "cloud engineer"/"devops person"), and to a large extent I've never cared what the company I work for does. I like networks, multiple servers, interesting deployments. The actual stuff that is being executed upon those systems is a little interesting, but also a little irrelevant. There are fields I'd never touch, and technologies which are more interesting to me, but when it comes to looking for a job I'll just google "sysadmin helsinki" and apply to those companies that come top - or to places that friends have recommended. So honestly? Ordering companies by salary seems like a reasonable enough approach to me.
everdrive 5y ago
I just don't think many or most tech companies have anything positive to offer the world. All these companies simply exist to make money. Generally speaking, most companies just exist to make money. To the extent that they improve anyone's lives, is that they support the economy and allow citizens to pay taxes. There are certainly some minority of tech companies which do good in the world, but actually getting hired at them is not necessarily likely. They have limited roles available, and need specific skillsets. A large generic tech company needs just about any skillset, and so practically speaking you're likely to find a job there.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- caffeine 5y ago
  > I just don't think many or most tech companies have anything positive to offer the world. All these companies simply exist to make money. IMHO, making money IS providing something positive to the world. A lot of people are employed, and those people get to buy art or cookies or college for their kids or whatever. A lot of customers are served, and presumably got something they wanted.
  - rprospero 5y ago
    > A lot of customers are served, and presumably got something they wanted. The question is how often you run into the broken window fallacy there. An arsonist makes money burning down houses. A real estate developer makes money since they can now get the land for cheaper. The arsonist also supports local restaurants and gives to charity. But the total economy is still down one house.
  - russellendicott 5y ago
    I agree. Just be careful not to call it "trickle down" because it's a trigger word for people. For example, who cares if a billionaire buys a yacht--the building of said yacht employed dozens of craftsmen, caused thousands of supply chain orders, and will support hundreds more in maintenance over time. Also, for luxury goods you can be sure that the margins at each step are quite healthy. The real problem would be if the people making all this money just hoard it which often happens. The only way that gives back is by providing bigger balance sheets for banks to lend out more money which has a miniscule effect.
mibollma 5y ago
While $$$ certainly was on my list, last time I switched other points were more important to me - distance from home - work-life balance - tech stack - smaller project size <50 ppl - smaller office rooms <5 ppl In the end I picked the highest paying that fit all the criteria above and so far I'm happy with my choice.
- ghaff 5y ago
  The dollar deltas matter a lot too. 10% more money might be sort of in the noise of a bunch of other factors. In the unlikely event it's 10x for whatever oddball reason, assuming it's nothing illegal/dangerous/etc., that would be hard not to give it a shot for a couple years and see how it goes.
caffeine 5y ago
< Is that a common strategy? Yes. And it’s a good one. Even from the point of view of job satisfaction. The more $ you are paid, the more expensive it is for the company to waste your time. Also, it means you are working with other high-paid people, which means they are results-oriented - not there for some childish, naive crusade to change the world.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  > some childish, naive crusade to change the world I went into a shoe store recently and the salesman showed me a shoe that had Bluetooth which I could hook into my phone. I guess this is the kind of innovation being spun out nowadays. One sign someone is naive is if their crusade to change the world depends on what corporation they choose to work at.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  As someone who recently left a very well compensated position at a hedge fund, I disagree with all of this. >Even from the point of view of job satisfaction. The more $ you are paid, the more expensive it is for the company to waste your time. Having the company not waste your time is not in the top 10 most important factors for job satisfaction. And anyway, that just means you have less down time and less personal time. It's not a good thing. >it means you are working with other high-paid people, which means they are results-oriented - not there for some childish, naive crusade to change the world. Yes, they have optimized for income (not "results", in any meaningful sense!) over other considerations. At the extreme you will be surrounded by talented psychopaths. That is not the path to a happy life.
  - caffeine 5y ago
    > As someone who recently left a very well compensated position at a hedge fund Why did you leave?

treyfitty 5y ago

I do something like this as a first pass, but prune based on Values. I wouldn’t ever consider Amazon… but at $1MM… that’s kinda “change your values” type money.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
At a certain point, I guess you'd have to say to yourself (or I'd have to say to myself, would be a better way to say it), "I'll whore myself out for X amount of time for X amount of money, then I can do whatever I want or work for whomever I want for X amount of time, after."
- chucksta 5y ago
  "Everyone has a price"
  - 0des 5y ago
    Im no streetwalkin floozy but 20 bucks is 20 bucks.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  flexible ethics? not everybody.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    There are different degrees of flexibility. Perhaps some people are utterly inflexible, but I wouldn't much want to know them! As for this specific case, it's not like you're going to be breaking legs for the mob. A person might believe that Facebook or Amazon are a net negative for the world, but that doesn't mean that everything they do is bad or that one's individual contribution can't be good, or at least neutral.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    There are certain lines people won't cross, of course. Too much rigidity, on the other hand, is a disorder. If there's no traffic at 4 a.m. and I jaywalk, does that mean I have flexible ethics because the cost to benefit ratio is right for me... I guess. Would I murder a child for a billion dollars? No. That's over a line for me. I guess then, yes. My ethics are flexible, depending. I have also followed the two second rule, even though I find eating food off of the floor abhorrent =(
bally0241 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what turns you off about Amazon?
- chrismcb 5y ago
  Not the OP. But I interviewed once got a contract to hire position. The recruiter said after about six months I could apply for full time. If I got accepted then immediately the expectation is to put in 60 hours a week or more.
  - rvba 5y ago
    "We will squeeze you like a lemon with hope of getting a full time job and after 6 months whrn you get burned out, we will throw you away".
- cebert 5y ago
  Most of the feedback I’ve read about working at Amazon seems to be negative. It’s hard for me to reconcile though. As a user of AWS, I love many of their services and the possibilities AWS opens. Most of the negative feedback I’ve read centers around: PIPs, management, work/life balance, on-call, and frugality. If Amazon wants more folks to consider working there, I think they really need to get in front of this from a PR perspective and address these concerns.
  - redredrobot 5y ago
    Lol when I said that at an org-level all-hands everyone laughed, but the need for improved PR is very real. But it’s important to remember that there are a ton of extremely happy people at Amazon (or at least AWS, where I worked) they just aren’t as vocal online - management, scope and culture were incredible in my experience (it’s a huge company where managers have a lot of flexibility, YMMV). And some of the biggest day-to-day issues you hear about like crappy offices or excessive frugality were a thing of the past when I was there. And in terms of PIP, I only had one experience with it - having a mechanism for identifying and getting rid of the people who are a drain on everyone else was very nice.
Riseed 5y ago
I'm not sure there's "change your values" type money for everyone. Though for me, $1MM is enough to consider working for Amazon to attempt to change it from the inside. Perhaps we're saying the same things with different words.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Amazon is not going to change from the inside for anyone making $1M. If you go in thinking it is, you're deluding yourself and will be much less effective than if you just accept that Amazon is what Amazon is and you're whoring yourself out to them for $1M/year. Your paygrade needs to be at least $100M/year to have a reasonable shot of changing the culture of a large company. Most likely, by the time you get up there you realize that companies are what they are for reasons, and if you try to change that you will end up changing yourself out of that $100M job rather than changing the world.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    I know a guy in there (who most likely isn't making anywhere near 100M), who transferred into the HR org to try to make a dent into the problem of employee turnover, PIP BS, etc. Last I heard, he was giving middle managers a hard time for perpetuating the sorts of bad behaviors that give Amazon its bad reputation as an employer. Maybe Amazon is a lost cause, maybe it isn't, but you won't know if you can fix it unless you try. </two-cents>
    - TideAd 5y ago
      PIP culture at Amazon comes from the very top. Bezos was a huge fan of it and so is the new CEO. There's no way your friend is going to be able to fight institutional power like that.
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    $100m/yr? You have some very interesting ideas about corporate ceo/SVP salaries

walrus01 5y ago

I expect exactly this from a person who humblebrags about their exercise routine and says they "live and die by Asana"

rootusrootus 5y ago
It's a blog post, I kinda expect a little bit of bragging about what they feel like they're doing right.

jjulius 5y ago

>... so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way? I wouldn't say that. Everyone views things differently. You may place more value on product/industry/global impact, whereas others don't care, they just want the cash.

paxys 5y ago

There's no right or wrong way. He optimized for the money. You can pick personal interest or societal benefit or work life balance or whatever else.

Teknoman117 5y ago

I believe it's extremely common? I don't really have any data though. Everyone I know changes jobs whenever someone comes along offering more. I'm the odd one out having been with my current employer for >5 years. I've been getting healthy raises every year, but many of my friends have averaged a 40% pay increase every hop... I guess it depends on what you want. Do you want your job to be something you're excited about doing every weekday? Or is it a means to provide for the things you'd rather be doing?

rhacker 5y ago
My salary did the same thing, practically doubled every hop. That ends eventually and you find out there's a ceiling.
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  Well obviously, and then it would come down to who treats you better or lets you work on more interesting things. But the ceiling is typically way higher than what the people who don't hop around get.

nly 5y ago

Strategy for me has just been to contact a 2 or 3 good recruiters and let them find me the best opportunities. Often a recruiter can get you in the door at big companies quicker than you can applying directly. I just never let a recruiter interfere with my instincts, since even the good ones can get pushy when they sense that they're close to a big pay-off. I felt bad for a really nice, hard working recruiter last year because, although i had 2 offers on the table through opportunities found through him, the companies just felt wrong. I ended up going with a company who head-hunted me directly on LinkedIn.

AsusToss 5y ago

It’s wild to me that the only reason his wife gave him 30 mins/day of personal time was because of the financial payoff. Bizarre dude and story.

hn_user82179 5y ago
FWIW I assume that's because they parent a 1 year old, and it's important to trade-off on caregiving time.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  Not if his wife doesn't work.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    If his wife doesn't work then the 30m of me time becomes even more costly and even more important to clear. Work is often the only reprieve from a very young child. The first year of our child, my favorite thing in the world was to go to work, no matter how shitty the task. The thirty minute commute alone was orgasmic, without the sound of a screaming colicky child unrelenting during day and night alike.
    - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
      The absolute joy of being around other, quiet adults who will not cry and not need their diapers changed.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    Parenting is work.
    - xanaxagoras 5y ago
      Parenting is not the kind of thing where you exchange your labor for money. It's not work in the sense that the parent comment meant it and you know that full well.

xwdv 5y ago

Yes you are wrong. You’re confusing career with purpose.

claudiulodro 5y ago
Could be. I got into this stuff because of hacker ethos stuff I read as a kid, not because tech is more lucrative than working in finance.
- Arubis 5y ago
  I feel that, but remain indecisive if the best way to enjoy tech. Is it to just find the closest approximation of a fit in a job at a reasonable wage, or to crank compensation to generate better options? As I get older, the latter seems more sustainable.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  This is me. I derive great satisfaction simply being around tech. Maybe it is from watching my father take apart and work with the family PC at age 4 or 5. Now I'm in a rat race against Adderall addicts on hedonic treadmills.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Comp is king, everything else is window dressing; only the comp pays the bills and gets you closer to financial independence (wealth is options, options are freedom).

ForHackernews 5y ago
Cutting expenses also gets you closer to financial independence: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si... In fact, it's doubly effective. If you can learn to reduce your expenses by $10k and live happily, not only do you have an additional $10k to save/invest, but you need less each year to live independently.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Some expenses you have no control over (alimony, child support, chronic healthcare costs, elder care come to mind from my circle of associates). Yes, don’t spend frivolously (luxury vehicles, eating out all of the time), but sometimes (at least in tech), you have far more control over the income side of the equation. If you can switch jobs and make $100k/more a year, that’s easier than trying to cut all of your expenses to the bone, or expenses that are non-discretionary and simply can’t be cut. Run hard, every hour you work is an hour you’ll never get back, so max the comp for each of those hours. Your future self will thank you. (Huge mmm fan btw)
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Yeah the other issue is if you increase income, your imputed income for child support is now effectively permanently higher. Child support imputed incomes ratchet up with raises, generally not back down. You will never be able to 'relax' back at a slower/less lucrative job because now the judge says pay the higher rate or go to jail. Another way to view it: say you get a pay boost 90k -> 190k. The custodial parent will request the imputed income to be recalculated. You now owe an extra 20k PER YEAR. That's your new imputed income, even if you don't get a job like this again and it only lasts a year. Eventually you lose that job and can't find one like it again -- fast forward 10 years. You've paid an extra $200k, just to make an extra 50 or 60k net in one year. You lost $200k by working a higher paid job for a year. One year of raise followed by 17 years of a slightly more relaxed job at your original income means you LOSE money. In this example, falling from 190k back to your 90k income means child support went from 1/3 of your net check to 2/3 of your net check. A brutal risk to take if you don't think you'll be making the high wage for life.

QuikAccount 5y ago

I find it weird that you find this weird. Most people I know and know of optimize like this. They are in it for the cash and trying to make as much as possible and then get out as soon as possible. Doesn't matter what the impact is, doesn't matter how unsavory the work is.

ganbatekudasai 5y ago
Most people I know don't, and a lot of them still do pretty well for themselves, so... to those wo do: Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better I guess, but don't pretend that it's universal for justification.
- oblio 5y ago
  What people say and what they think and do are wildly different things. It's called "revealed preference". Think of how many people don't switch jobs at least every 5 years and how many change for a job paying the same or less.

bee_rider 5y ago

Facebook is pretty evil, but there are of course people out there who've worked for much less, at much more evil organizations.

nluken 5y ago

Just a case of different priorities for different people. Some people are just in it for the cash and in that case applying to the top-paying companies would be optimal.

anm89 5y ago

99% of people in tech aren't changing the world. They are building accounting and metrics and shopping and add platforms to get marginal increases to marginal revenue so some business can make a bit more money than they were making before. I'm honest that I trade my time for money. There are many times when I'll prioritize other things like working with people I like or not working with people I dislike, the same thing for processes or schedules or whatever. But I'm not going to sit around and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars so I can go play with the latest JS framework instead of the one that was cool 6 years ago or so I can be in a sexier sounding industry. I'm going to trade my time for money and work towards financial freedom so hopefully I can go work on stuff that's interesting to me on my terms at some point.

BlargMcLarg 5y ago
On that note, is anyone else getting a little tired of all the pretentiousness going about in tech? Suddenly, every tech company is claiming to "change the world" and "not like the others". You know, hyping these adds, metrics, platforms, etc. up as if they're going to really change life in a noteworthy way for Average Joe. Whatever happened to just putting in a good day's effort and admitting we're doing it for the money so we can pay the bills and a nice dinner?
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  I think it taps into peoples' inherent religious desires and motivates them to put in more work and possibly do things they wouldn't otherwise. There's a reason it's called drinking the kool aid.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    See I do agree on surface level it makes sense to decorate things. But I have yet to see any empirical evidence of this, let alone weighted against the long term costs of burnout, disillusion, embitterment, increasing costs using third parties to fix the problems, and more. Anecdotally, the far majority of "we really love to work here!" people I met seemed to either stop caring very soon, were clearly faking it or were barely distinguishable from their more skeptical co-workers performance-wise, bar a few individuals with a savior complex.

tejtm 5y ago

I think it contributes to why we have what we have. The other part is a system which is free to pay for dodgy products with negative impacts. I can't imagine eliminating how I feel about what I do from the equation.

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roenxi 5y ago

Money is a decent proxy for those things. You'll notice that his list scores pretty well on all those measures for someone with a typical set of moral standards. It is hard for a financially poor company to have good products/impact.

clpm4j 5y ago

I think the fact that he's a power lifter is an important factor to consider in your impression. Power lifters are generally obsessed with their physical metrics and numbers, so this just seems like an optimization exercise in a similar vein. Clearly not a "fulfill the purpose of my life" exercise.

ikr678 5y ago
Less metrics, and more that is a sport where you can only really progress and develop with a dedicated, informed training regime. Whether this is unhealthy when carried over into other parts of your life is an exercise for the reader to consider.

FerociousTimes 5y ago

Different strokes for different folks You optimize your job hunting for these criteria and he did his chiefly for $$$, as you put it.

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groby_b 5y ago

Well... one could argue they got the perfect match for their values. So, works as intended. You're only approaching it the wrong way if money is your highest value too and you don't act on that.

88913527 5y ago

If you view a job as just a job, and find meaning in other things in life, optimizing for TC seems incredibly rational. The problem is some people doing that don't actually find meaning in anything but money.

Frost1x 5y ago
While I agree you have to also consider WLB and not TC alone. Your actual pay rate for how much you have to actually work are very important. $1 million/yr sounds nice but if you need to put in 100 or 110 hours a week to do it, it may not be as alluring. So TC is important in terms of magnitude and what that alots you but the actual pay rate and total magnitude of work are critical in this perspective. This is basically my perspective, although I factor in the value of my time doing the actual work as well. Even with great WLB and very high TC, if you're working 25 hours a week doing miserable stuff... thats 25 hours of your life spent in misery. Would rather that be enjoyable if possible if all other things can be kept constant.
jseban 5y ago
Yeah and this is a perfectly healthy and normal view to have, which really should be the default considering that it really is what the definition of a job is. What is strange is to actually assign other vague emotional needs to a job which doesn't say anything about that in the definition. Which choice will be the more successful here is pretty obvious to me. Any time you start by re-defining something according to your own fantasies, you will probably be disappointed.

ngokevin 5y ago

I think FB makes a natural fit for those that approach it that way

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I wonder if this would become a problem for Facebook. They might end up with a monoculture that doesn't really accord with the outside world. Mind you I suppose all technology companies are at risk of that.

kache_ 5y ago

I don't understand people who don't minmax effort to income. That's why we work, for money. I re-evaluate my employer every 2 years or at the end of a project, because I will always just go to the highest bidder. I'll retire at 35 and then do what I want. But for now, optimizing.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

If the primary purpose of your job is to raise funds for the things that actually matter, what other method would you use? Take the biggest bag that leaves you with enough time to enjoy what you worked so hard to spend that money on.

ngokevin 5y ago
Experienced engineers will have plenty of time and plenty of cheese to do whatever they want, up to them whether they choose to go to somewhere like Meta. The only thing I can imagine that $300k can't do that $750k-$1m can is buy up a bunch of property and price people out
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  You can retire far quicker on the higher salary.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    then what?
    - oblio 5y ago
      Be free from pressure and do stuff whenever and however you want.
    - jseban 5y ago
      Sports, hobbies, reading, writing, side projects, volunteer work, travelling, friends/family, culture, music etc. The same things that a rich person would do? Do whatever you want and/or find stimulating and worthwhile. Being free.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Live your life on your terms, not an employer’s.

yoyohello13 5y ago

Reading these responses is pretty upsetting. No wonder big tech is so evil. So many talented developers willing to sell their soul for more money. No thought to whether what they’re doing is causing harm to the world.

dangus 5y ago
The irony of the article is that Meta isn’t even that hard to get into because so many candidates hard no on them because they know Facebook is evil. I read an article that said how Meta has to pay well above market rates to acquire talent due to their negative perception. It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech.
- ngokevin 5y ago
  That sums it up. I've told friends and family it'd look poorly on them for going there if they have plenty of options.
- 0des 5y ago
  > It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech. This is not the first time I've heard this at all and each time it is equally relevant. Unless meta gets everyone goggled up fast I think that there will be so much negative stigma nobody will want to be part of it.
  - danuker 5y ago
    I think you are misjudging the speed it will happen. I think the Metaverse will be a slow death march, eventually ending up teaching others what not to do. Unless the VR experience is flawless, and I mean better than reality, people can't get hooked. If the hardware lags even a bit, the headaches and dizziness become unbearable. Depth-of-field is another disorienting factor, and field-of-view yet another. I believe we do not yet have the technology to offer such an experience, let alone cheaply. As such, Facebook is prematurely investing in it.
    - 5y ago

djcapelis 5y ago

You’re not wrong at all. A lot of us agree with this but the type of people who write blog posts about their process as if searching for a job is a totally generic thing wholly untethered to someone’s goals in their own life outside of pure capital motives don’t cover the interesting bits. If you want to be a mercenary, read these blog posts. If you want a job you like working on stuff you care about, avoid this stuff like the plague. Will you make more in the end? Unclear, but I like to assume that people who work on stuff they care about eventually win under capitalism too. But even if not, I feel like I do fine.

DeathArrow 5y ago

Selling your time and knowledge is a business. Why shouldn't you try to do the best deal? Saving the world is not something you do as an employee of a corporation. That's more suited to a government or NGO position. And if you care about saving the world, you can do it better in your free time. There's no reason business should be impacted by ideology. And before having duties to others, you have duties to yourself and your family.

stevekemp 5y ago

I'm a sysadmin (or these days "cloud engineer"/"devops person"), and to a large extent I've never cared what the company I work for does. I like networks, multiple servers, interesting deployments. The actual stuff that is being executed upon those systems is a little interesting, but also a little irrelevant. There are fields I'd never touch, and technologies which are more interesting to me, but when it comes to looking for a job I'll just google "sysadmin helsinki" and apply to those companies that come top - or to places that friends have recommended. So honestly? Ordering companies by salary seems like a reasonable enough approach to me.

everdrive 5y ago

I just don't think many or most tech companies have anything positive to offer the world. All these companies simply exist to make money. Generally speaking, most companies just exist to make money. To the extent that they improve anyone's lives, is that they support the economy and allow citizens to pay taxes. There are certainly some minority of tech companies which do good in the world, but actually getting hired at them is not necessarily likely. They have limited roles available, and need specific skillsets. A large generic tech company needs just about any skillset, and so practically speaking you're likely to find a job there.

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caffeine 5y ago
> I just don't think many or most tech companies have anything positive to offer the world. All these companies simply exist to make money. IMHO, making money IS providing something positive to the world. A lot of people are employed, and those people get to buy art or cookies or college for their kids or whatever. A lot of customers are served, and presumably got something they wanted.
- rprospero 5y ago
  > A lot of customers are served, and presumably got something they wanted. The question is how often you run into the broken window fallacy there. An arsonist makes money burning down houses. A real estate developer makes money since they can now get the land for cheaper. The arsonist also supports local restaurants and gives to charity. But the total economy is still down one house.
- russellendicott 5y ago
  I agree. Just be careful not to call it "trickle down" because it's a trigger word for people. For example, who cares if a billionaire buys a yacht--the building of said yacht employed dozens of craftsmen, caused thousands of supply chain orders, and will support hundreds more in maintenance over time. Also, for luxury goods you can be sure that the margins at each step are quite healthy. The real problem would be if the people making all this money just hoard it which often happens. The only way that gives back is by providing bigger balance sheets for banks to lend out more money which has a miniscule effect.

mibollma 5y ago

While $$$ certainly was on my list, last time I switched other points were more important to me - distance from home - work-life balance - tech stack - smaller project size <50 ppl - smaller office rooms <5 ppl In the end I picked the highest paying that fit all the criteria above and so far I'm happy with my choice.

ghaff 5y ago
The dollar deltas matter a lot too. 10% more money might be sort of in the noise of a bunch of other factors. In the unlikely event it's 10x for whatever oddball reason, assuming it's nothing illegal/dangerous/etc., that would be hard not to give it a shot for a couple years and see how it goes.

caffeine 5y ago

< Is that a common strategy? Yes. And it’s a good one. Even from the point of view of job satisfaction. The more $ you are paid, the more expensive it is for the company to waste your time. Also, it means you are working with other high-paid people, which means they are results-oriented - not there for some childish, naive crusade to change the world.

VictorPath 5y ago
> some childish, naive crusade to change the world I went into a shoe store recently and the salesman showed me a shoe that had Bluetooth which I could hook into my phone. I guess this is the kind of innovation being spun out nowadays. One sign someone is naive is if their crusade to change the world depends on what corporation they choose to work at.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
As someone who recently left a very well compensated position at a hedge fund, I disagree with all of this. >Even from the point of view of job satisfaction. The more $ you are paid, the more expensive it is for the company to waste your time. Having the company not waste your time is not in the top 10 most important factors for job satisfaction. And anyway, that just means you have less down time and less personal time. It's not a good thing. >it means you are working with other high-paid people, which means they are results-oriented - not there for some childish, naive crusade to change the world. Yes, they have optimized for income (not "results", in any meaningful sense!) over other considerations. At the extreme you will be surrounded by talented psychopaths. That is not the path to a happy life.
- caffeine 5y ago
  > As someone who recently left a very well compensated position at a hedge fund Why did you leave?