12 ms·

I completely agree with your conclusion, this is why I feel that European tech companies can't compete with US ones at all. They just refuse to pay enough to at

by Dig1t 4y ago

I completely agree with your conclusion, this is why I feel that European tech companies can't compete with US ones at all. They just refuse to pay enough to attract the best engineers.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Well here's a North American company clearly not willing to pay competitive software engineering rates even within the continent, and trying to take advantage of sub-regional low rates. Like, they're not in Toronto, but just west of it, and companies there are paying less, so, hey, they should pay less, too, right? You get what you pay for. This is what happens when HR drones are allowed to do naive "compensation range surveys" for regions. They do not understand the subtleties of the market and try to lump people with specialized skills, lots of experience, etc. in with people fresh off the boat from overseas, pumping out bug fixes for boring internal legacy J2EE systems at ancient insurance companies. Companies like this will be in real trouble if remote work continues to be a thing. They better hope it doesn't.
- denkmoon 4y ago
  >Companies like this will be in real trouble if remote work continues to be a thing. They better hope it doesn't. Would be much healthier for humanity overall if these poorly managed companies, you know, just died from their poor management.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Or at least outsourced the software engineering to companies that would do a proper job of it.
    - usefulcat 4y ago
      Which would probably still cost more than what they’re willing to pay, assuming that (cost) is indeed the problem.
      - flir 4y ago
        I've found that paying companies a big pile of cash to do a thing is much more acceptable than paying an individual a big pile of cash to do the same thing. I don't know why. Risk management maybe.
        irrational 4y ago
        If the person is a full time employee you have to pay benefits and you can’t just fire them when the project is done. Easier to just contract it out.
        ismailegilmez 4y ago
        Yeah, I totally agree with that. It might be better to just contract the job out.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    If recent US policy is any indication, it's far more likely that we'll give them billions of dollars of direct subsidy in a misguided attempt "protect American interests."
    - denkmoon 4y ago
      We're protecting jobs you see. People need jobs to survive, so we have to protect the jobs, not the people. By giving companies money.
      - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
        Won't somebody think of the meta-people?!
        nopenopenopeno 4y ago
        i.e. the corporations!
      - cbozeman 4y ago
        Too bad, so sad. They can adapt or die. Reminds me of a back and forth I had with an NYT staff writer who claimed it was "inhumane" to expect people to totally relearn a set of skills every ten years. People seem to forget that how they "feeeeeeeel" doesn't matter. The job market dictates what you do and don't have to do, and we live in a time when you must consistently learn new skills to be competitive.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        denkmoon 4y ago
        I fully agree. Businesses can adapt or die. They shouldn't receive handouts because they're "job creators", and they certainly shouldn't be rewarded for having inefficient labour practices.
        4y ago
- brailsafe 4y ago
  This is very true. I now work for a massive global company with offices here in Vancouver. They bought the company I was contracting for, and lowballed me on salary saying it was competitive with the region, but in the same month, I was I interviewing across the street at Amazon for a hell of a lot more. If I had got the job it wouldn't have been even remotely worth considering. I tried negotiating, but no budge, so we'll see how long that lasts I guess. Not even competitive with other smaller companies in the city. Companies don't seem to get that even though software devs tend to make more than most, the reality is that in the GTA or GVA it literally costs between $600k and $2m for a modest home. Even a renter would be stupid to not factor in the likelihood their rent will dramatically increase during the time they'll be employed. Ya, great that I can afford a tiny studio basement suite while splitting rent, but I can't yet whether any significant emergencies or really think about eventually renting a place with a bedroom in it. Everyone in lower income brackets is just really scraping by more than they'd care to admit.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  The issue is that firmware engineering is strongly adjacent to EE which is sorely underpaid in the US considering the skillset the jobs require. Hiring managers are looking for EE refugees used to being underpaid.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    That definitely is part of it.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Many of these traditional manufacturing OEMs have software outfits in the bay that clutter up my LinkedIn inbox. They're usually offering 130-170k with limited to no additional compensation in the same cities where FAANG is paying 100k+ over their rates in base alone. It's not just that they're doing silly regional surveys, they have fundamental misunderstandings of market rates.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Or they understand it perfectly and have made a conscious choice to target a lower tier of talent. In a way I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the boardroom when this is discussed. Because really, it's sad. I would have taken a significant salary drop to go work on something like this because the Ford office was local to me and the work sounded interesting and potentially more impactful than what I was doing at the time. Except it's so far below a reasonable rate... and you pretty much know the place would be a crappy workplace producing a substandard product...
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    My brother-in-law is pretty high up at a traditional manufacturing OEM. To be clear, they don't manufacture anything that has electronics or software in it (but there is a pretty decent chance your car has something they made). They have a Bay Area software office that does general tech stuff - manufacturing software, business software, etc. Internal things plus some B2C stuff for people buying/installing replacement equipment. I asked how they liked the software and how the office was working out. The response: "Oh, we don't do it for the software. We can hire 100 people out of Ohio State or Michigan and pay them midwest wages and get the same quality. The SV office is for the connections and investors we get." It's entirely possible that they know exactly what they are doing ;)
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      I know they're not stupid, but it's still very frustrating when you have to go and use anything such offices produce. So many unnecessarily cut corners and penny wise, pound foolish decisions.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Canadian companies always lowball Canadians. 20 years ago I worked in the US branch of a Canadian company - we weren’t paid richly but they were paid much less. As a new grad I made 20% more than a 5 year SWE as a Unix SA.
- m000 4y ago
  > Like, they're not in Toronto, but just west of it, and companies there are paying less, so, hey, they should pay less, too, right? Hiring managers should really read [1], posted previously here in HN. TL;DR: It is not where you or the candidate are located. It is whom you're competing against for hiring talent. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...
megablast 4y ago
What a strange comment. Ford is a us tech company. Most people in Europe don’t want to leave.
- jonnybgood 4y ago
  Ford is not a tech company. > Most people in Europe don’t want to leave. I believe they're saying if European tech companies want to compete in business with US tech companies they need to pay their engineers more money.
  - jbay808 4y ago
    > Ford is not a tech company. By what standard?
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      Software is not their primary business.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        If you mean ‘software company’ then say that - software isn’t the only form of technology - drive trains are also technology.
      - jbay808 4y ago
        Is SpaceX a tech company?
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    > Ford is not a tech company. By their CEO's own admission, Ford sees itself as a "data company": https://www.autoblog.com/2016/01/06/ceo-mark-fields-ford-data-company/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/01/06/ceo-mark-fields-ford-dat... Their software chops are certainly dubious, but there is no questioning their intent when it comes to entering the surveillance economy.
sleepydog 4y ago
Are there any professions in European countries that are paid as well as US tech workers, for similar levels of skill and/or education? Moreover, if EU tech companies are not willing to pay the best software/hardware engineers what they're worth, where do they all go? Not everyone wants to live in the US or work remotely.
- boc 4y ago
  Despite the general online sentiment, it's important to realize that the average American makes an absurd amount of money compared to their global peers. Even adjusting for PPP and other factors, average disposable household income for the US - a nation of 340M people - blows the doors off Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, etc. [1]. What's more though, median disposable income per capita ALSO places the US at the very top in the world, which is super impressive. All of this is to say that the US is actually a very wealthy place for the white collar worker demographic, so companies need to pay high salaries to attract employees. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
  - greesil 4y ago
    And yet, I can't afford a house. I guess I'll go buy another Tesla.
    - brigade 4y ago
      As much as you can't afford a home in the US, you wouldn't be able to afford to buy a home in Europe even harder.
      - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
        A flat in a nice part of Barcelona can be had for €300k.
        suction 4y ago
bergenty 4y ago
How does Europe make it work? Lower salaries, higher cost of living. Is it just that so many essentials are handled by the government? Or are they still coasting on the colonial wealth (this doesn’t seem likely)
- Strom 4y ago
  Cost of living is way lower in Europe, especially if you also account for health care and higher education.
- rasz 4y ago
  Europeans use weird tricks like charging two digit margin on medication, socialized education, and taxing fuel to pay for road maintenance.
  - ceeplusplus 4y ago
    They also use weird tricks like underpaying health staff (doctors and nurses make 40% of what they do in the US, look at NHS salary tables), relying on US defense subsidies, and taxing everyone making over 100k at insane rates. We already have "socialized education" in public schools in most blue states if you make under 120k. The financial aid is generous enough that you aren't paying any tuition. The 70k sticker price is only paid by wealthy students, as a means of price discrimination.
    - m000 4y ago
      > doctors and nurses make 40% of what they do in the US Oh, those US nurses living the high life. > relying on US defense subsidies It's more like "keeping the US defense industry afloat by buying expensive gadgets we don't need".
      - ceeplusplus 4y ago
        > Oh, those US nurses living the high life. More like oh, those UK nurses in the poorhouse. They deserve to make what their US counterparts are making. > It's more like "keeping the US defense industry afloat by buying expensive gadgets we don't need" Yes, because that's what's defending Europe against Russian invasion, right? Expensive gadgets you don't need? Or is Germany's broken down, dysfunctional army [1] going to do that? [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-biggest-enemy-threadbare-army-bundeswehr/amp/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-biggest-enemy-thread...
woevdbz 4y ago
Having worked in both US and Europe I think this is very much less about average engineer and much more about engineering management and product management. There are many excellent software engineers in Europe already, and they are generally OK being paid much less than in the US. But the strategy, ambition, and execution discipline imparted by management are not there, so folks end up being underutilized there. The average engineer - even at a FAANG - often gets lionized but really isn't that amazing IMO.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Yes, in the industry Euro engineers are considered to be generally high quality and underpaid. A good value. The danger being there are awful ones too that are hard to fire. In my experience Euro devs are really good though if you interview well. Individual contributors from Europe are generally a great value. Euro managers however are generally thought to be of extremely low quality and unreliable as well as 20-30 years dated in terms of running an org. Except at the top, never rely on senior or middle management in Euro to be much more than followers. Never let them run an org unless you really know them as their management techniques do not apply to modern software companies. Managers from Europe are generally of poor quality.
  - spaniard89277 4y ago
    Sad to hear. What differences did you notice?
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      You see it everywhere but in general I see a lot of superficiality in Euro managers. They love to have direct reports, but because they need them but because it makes them feel more official. This is more frequent in Euro in my experience. You don't see outside the box thinking as much. Very vanilla approaches to things that are generally dated approaches. A culture that lacks innovation. You see a bit of gaming the system to meet KPI goals. Things that are probably not useful to the company but help them hit a defined goal. Just not very aggressive in their approach to the business. A very conservative business culture that doesn't really understand scale and is obsessed with throwing lots of bodies at a problem rather than finding novel and innovative approaches. Insistence that "this won't work here" when that's just not generally true. It's that they don't understand why the approach works and are stuck in older approaches to things that are not relevant to todays business world. Secretive and inward looking.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
It's not just the pay, it's the attitude of both middle and upper management that is woefully inadequate as well.
jfim 4y ago
Do they have the margins that allows them to pay equivalent salaries? From what I recall, Meta and Google have gross revenues on the order of one million in revenue per employee, while SAP AG has revenue per employee around 200k.
- grog454 4y ago
  What is their profit per employee ignoring employee compensation? That tells you more about how much they can pay employees.
- assttoasstmgr 4y ago
  This. The OP wrote: > They tried to lowball him badly. Like 1/2 the rate he asked for (contract) and probably 1/3rd or 1/4 what we made at Google FAANG arrogance never ceases to amaze me. It's like these guys live in a different universe blissfully unaware of the world around them. Did it ever occur to him maybe Ford is paying normal average human salaries and not grossly inflated Google wages? Remember Ford (and this analogy extends to most companies in traditional industries) still has to be able to sell cars to the average blue collar Joe at a price point he can afford, and still turn a profit. Outside SV most people don't drive $80k Teslas. Somebody's still gotta write software for the $16k econoboxes. I'm sorry but nobody deserves to get paid more than e.g. a specialist doctor to hack JavaScript code I don't care how smart you think you are, when there's a guy in India probably just or nearly as good at it who'll do the job for $40k/year. FAANG is swimming in money and can afford to piss away $$ in talent wars, artificially driving up salaries and the prices of everything else, which is why no average person can afford a house in SF anymore. Those that won the FAANG lottery and managed to cash in? God bless them. But don't let the reality distortion field make you think that's how the rest of the world works.
  - WatchDog 4y ago
    I agree mostly with your points, other than when you get into how much the cars cost. The unit price of the cars isn't really relevant to the cost of developing it's software. A low cost model that moves sells a lot of units, can likely afford to spend more on software compared to a high cost model that moves only a few units.

by Dig1t 4y ago

I completely agree with your conclusion, this is why I feel that European tech companies can't compete with US ones at all. They just refuse to pay enough to attract the best engineers.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Well here's a North American company clearly not willing to pay competitive software engineering rates even within the continent, and trying to take advantage of sub-regional low rates. Like, they're not in Toronto, but just west of it, and companies there are paying less, so, hey, they should pay less, too, right? You get what you pay for. This is what happens when HR drones are allowed to do naive "compensation range surveys" for regions. They do not understand the subtleties of the market and try to lump people with specialized skills, lots of experience, etc. in with people fresh off the boat from overseas, pumping out bug fixes for boring internal legacy J2EE systems at ancient insurance companies. Companies like this will be in real trouble if remote work continues to be a thing. They better hope it doesn't.

denkmoon 4y ago
>Companies like this will be in real trouble if remote work continues to be a thing. They better hope it doesn't. Would be much healthier for humanity overall if these poorly managed companies, you know, just died from their poor management.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Or at least outsourced the software engineering to companies that would do a proper job of it.
  - usefulcat 4y ago
    Which would probably still cost more than what they’re willing to pay, assuming that (cost) is indeed the problem.
    - flir 4y ago
      I've found that paying companies a big pile of cash to do a thing is much more acceptable than paying an individual a big pile of cash to do the same thing. I don't know why. Risk management maybe.
      - irrational 4y ago
        If the person is a full time employee you have to pay benefits and you can’t just fire them when the project is done. Easier to just contract it out.
        ismailegilmez 4y ago
        Yeah, I totally agree with that. It might be better to just contract the job out.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  If recent US policy is any indication, it's far more likely that we'll give them billions of dollars of direct subsidy in a misguided attempt "protect American interests."
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    We're protecting jobs you see. People need jobs to survive, so we have to protect the jobs, not the people. By giving companies money.
    - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
      Won't somebody think of the meta-people?!
      - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
        i.e. the corporations!
    - cbozeman 4y ago
      Too bad, so sad. They can adapt or die. Reminds me of a back and forth I had with an NYT staff writer who claimed it was "inhumane" to expect people to totally relearn a set of skills every ten years. People seem to forget that how they "feeeeeeeel" doesn't matter. The job market dictates what you do and don't have to do, and we live in a time when you must consistently learn new skills to be competitive.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - denkmoon 4y ago
        I fully agree. Businesses can adapt or die. They shouldn't receive handouts because they're "job creators", and they certainly shouldn't be rewarded for having inefficient labour practices.
      - 4y ago
brailsafe 4y ago
This is very true. I now work for a massive global company with offices here in Vancouver. They bought the company I was contracting for, and lowballed me on salary saying it was competitive with the region, but in the same month, I was I interviewing across the street at Amazon for a hell of a lot more. If I had got the job it wouldn't have been even remotely worth considering. I tried negotiating, but no budge, so we'll see how long that lasts I guess. Not even competitive with other smaller companies in the city. Companies don't seem to get that even though software devs tend to make more than most, the reality is that in the GTA or GVA it literally costs between $600k and $2m for a modest home. Even a renter would be stupid to not factor in the likelihood their rent will dramatically increase during the time they'll be employed. Ya, great that I can afford a tiny studio basement suite while splitting rent, but I can't yet whether any significant emergencies or really think about eventually renting a place with a bedroom in it. Everyone in lower income brackets is just really scraping by more than they'd care to admit.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
The issue is that firmware engineering is strongly adjacent to EE which is sorely underpaid in the US considering the skillset the jobs require. Hiring managers are looking for EE refugees used to being underpaid.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  That definitely is part of it.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
Many of these traditional manufacturing OEMs have software outfits in the bay that clutter up my LinkedIn inbox. They're usually offering 130-170k with limited to no additional compensation in the same cities where FAANG is paying 100k+ over their rates in base alone. It's not just that they're doing silly regional surveys, they have fundamental misunderstandings of market rates.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Or they understand it perfectly and have made a conscious choice to target a lower tier of talent. In a way I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the boardroom when this is discussed. Because really, it's sad. I would have taken a significant salary drop to go work on something like this because the Ford office was local to me and the work sounded interesting and potentially more impactful than what I was doing at the time. Except it's so far below a reasonable rate... and you pretty much know the place would be a crappy workplace producing a substandard product...
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  My brother-in-law is pretty high up at a traditional manufacturing OEM. To be clear, they don't manufacture anything that has electronics or software in it (but there is a pretty decent chance your car has something they made). They have a Bay Area software office that does general tech stuff - manufacturing software, business software, etc. Internal things plus some B2C stuff for people buying/installing replacement equipment. I asked how they liked the software and how the office was working out. The response: "Oh, we don't do it for the software. We can hire 100 people out of Ohio State or Michigan and pay them midwest wages and get the same quality. The SV office is for the connections and investors we get." It's entirely possible that they know exactly what they are doing ;)
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    I know they're not stupid, but it's still very frustrating when you have to go and use anything such offices produce. So many unnecessarily cut corners and penny wise, pound foolish decisions.
Spooky23 4y ago
Canadian companies always lowball Canadians. 20 years ago I worked in the US branch of a Canadian company - we weren’t paid richly but they were paid much less. As a new grad I made 20% more than a 5 year SWE as a Unix SA.
m000 4y ago
> Like, they're not in Toronto, but just west of it, and companies there are paying less, so, hey, they should pay less, too, right? Hiring managers should really read [1], posted previously here in HN. TL;DR: It is not where you or the candidate are located. It is whom you're competing against for hiring talent. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

megablast 4y ago

What a strange comment. Ford is a us tech company. Most people in Europe don’t want to leave.

jonnybgood 4y ago
Ford is not a tech company. > Most people in Europe don’t want to leave. I believe they're saying if European tech companies want to compete in business with US tech companies they need to pay their engineers more money.
- jbay808 4y ago
  > Ford is not a tech company. By what standard?
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    Software is not their primary business.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      If you mean ‘software company’ then say that - software isn’t the only form of technology - drive trains are also technology.
    - jbay808 4y ago
      Is SpaceX a tech company?
- speed_spread 4y ago
  > Ford is not a tech company. By their CEO's own admission, Ford sees itself as a "data company": https://www.autoblog.com/2016/01/06/ceo-mark-fields-ford-data-company/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/01/06/ceo-mark-fields-ford-dat... Their software chops are certainly dubious, but there is no questioning their intent when it comes to entering the surveillance economy.

sleepydog 4y ago

Are there any professions in European countries that are paid as well as US tech workers, for similar levels of skill and/or education? Moreover, if EU tech companies are not willing to pay the best software/hardware engineers what they're worth, where do they all go? Not everyone wants to live in the US or work remotely.

boc 4y ago
Despite the general online sentiment, it's important to realize that the average American makes an absurd amount of money compared to their global peers. Even adjusting for PPP and other factors, average disposable household income for the US - a nation of 340M people - blows the doors off Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, etc. [1]. What's more though, median disposable income per capita ALSO places the US at the very top in the world, which is super impressive. All of this is to say that the US is actually a very wealthy place for the white collar worker demographic, so companies need to pay high salaries to attract employees. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
- greesil 4y ago
  And yet, I can't afford a house. I guess I'll go buy another Tesla.
  - brigade 4y ago
    As much as you can't afford a home in the US, you wouldn't be able to afford to buy a home in Europe even harder.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
      A flat in a nice part of Barcelona can be had for €300k.
      - suction 4y ago

bergenty 4y ago

How does Europe make it work? Lower salaries, higher cost of living. Is it just that so many essentials are handled by the government? Or are they still coasting on the colonial wealth (this doesn’t seem likely)

Strom 4y ago
Cost of living is way lower in Europe, especially if you also account for health care and higher education.
rasz 4y ago
Europeans use weird tricks like charging two digit margin on medication, socialized education, and taxing fuel to pay for road maintenance.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  They also use weird tricks like underpaying health staff (doctors and nurses make 40% of what they do in the US, look at NHS salary tables), relying on US defense subsidies, and taxing everyone making over 100k at insane rates. We already have "socialized education" in public schools in most blue states if you make under 120k. The financial aid is generous enough that you aren't paying any tuition. The 70k sticker price is only paid by wealthy students, as a means of price discrimination.
  - m000 4y ago
    > doctors and nurses make 40% of what they do in the US Oh, those US nurses living the high life. > relying on US defense subsidies It's more like "keeping the US defense industry afloat by buying expensive gadgets we don't need".
    - ceeplusplus 4y ago
      > Oh, those US nurses living the high life. More like oh, those UK nurses in the poorhouse. They deserve to make what their US counterparts are making. > It's more like "keeping the US defense industry afloat by buying expensive gadgets we don't need" Yes, because that's what's defending Europe against Russian invasion, right? Expensive gadgets you don't need? Or is Germany's broken down, dysfunctional army [1] going to do that? [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-biggest-enemy-threadbare-army-bundeswehr/amp/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-biggest-enemy-thread...

woevdbz 4y ago

Having worked in both US and Europe I think this is very much less about average engineer and much more about engineering management and product management. There are many excellent software engineers in Europe already, and they are generally OK being paid much less than in the US. But the strategy, ambition, and execution discipline imparted by management are not there, so folks end up being underutilized there. The average engineer - even at a FAANG - often gets lionized but really isn't that amazing IMO.

nemo44x 4y ago
Yes, in the industry Euro engineers are considered to be generally high quality and underpaid. A good value. The danger being there are awful ones too that are hard to fire. In my experience Euro devs are really good though if you interview well. Individual contributors from Europe are generally a great value. Euro managers however are generally thought to be of extremely low quality and unreliable as well as 20-30 years dated in terms of running an org. Except at the top, never rely on senior or middle management in Euro to be much more than followers. Never let them run an org unless you really know them as their management techniques do not apply to modern software companies. Managers from Europe are generally of poor quality.
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  Sad to hear. What differences did you notice?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    You see it everywhere but in general I see a lot of superficiality in Euro managers. They love to have direct reports, but because they need them but because it makes them feel more official. This is more frequent in Euro in my experience. You don't see outside the box thinking as much. Very vanilla approaches to things that are generally dated approaches. A culture that lacks innovation. You see a bit of gaming the system to meet KPI goals. Things that are probably not useful to the company but help them hit a defined goal. Just not very aggressive in their approach to the business. A very conservative business culture that doesn't really understand scale and is obsessed with throwing lots of bodies at a problem rather than finding novel and innovative approaches. Insistence that "this won't work here" when that's just not generally true. It's that they don't understand why the approach works and are stuck in older approaches to things that are not relevant to todays business world. Secretive and inward looking.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

It's not just the pay, it's the attitude of both middle and upper management that is woefully inadequate as well.

jfim 4y ago

Do they have the margins that allows them to pay equivalent salaries? From what I recall, Meta and Google have gross revenues on the order of one million in revenue per employee, while SAP AG has revenue per employee around 200k.

grog454 4y ago
What is their profit per employee ignoring employee compensation? That tells you more about how much they can pay employees.
assttoasstmgr 4y ago
This. The OP wrote: > They tried to lowball him badly. Like 1/2 the rate he asked for (contract) and probably 1/3rd or 1/4 what we made at Google FAANG arrogance never ceases to amaze me. It's like these guys live in a different universe blissfully unaware of the world around them. Did it ever occur to him maybe Ford is paying normal average human salaries and not grossly inflated Google wages? Remember Ford (and this analogy extends to most companies in traditional industries) still has to be able to sell cars to the average blue collar Joe at a price point he can afford, and still turn a profit. Outside SV most people don't drive $80k Teslas. Somebody's still gotta write software for the $16k econoboxes. I'm sorry but nobody deserves to get paid more than e.g. a specialist doctor to hack JavaScript code I don't care how smart you think you are, when there's a guy in India probably just or nearly as good at it who'll do the job for $40k/year. FAANG is swimming in money and can afford to piss away $$ in talent wars, artificially driving up salaries and the prices of everything else, which is why no average person can afford a house in SF anymore. Those that won the FAANG lottery and managed to cash in? God bless them. But don't let the reality distortion field make you think that's how the rest of the world works.
- WatchDog 4y ago
  I agree mostly with your points, other than when you get into how much the cars cost. The unit price of the cars isn't really relevant to the cost of developing it's software. A low cost model that moves sells a lot of units, can likely afford to spend more on software compared to a high cost model that moves only a few units.