4 ms·

I'm currently on a team at a big well known tech company. I would argue we actually don't have the right talent to solve the problem at hand. A very complex tec

I'm currently on a team at a big well known tech company. I would argue we actually don't have the right talent to solve the problem at hand. A very complex technical vision, and a team of 10 all making > 300k. And yet, the execution and technical architecture is mediocre. Companies are hemorrhaging money on developers that can execute, but struggle to create innovative flexible ground breaking software.

kajaktum 4y ago
300k? Jesus that's actually incomprehensible to me. What kind of industry is this? I am going to be honest, I love programming only as an intellectual endeavor and I would rather work on my dad's farm since it's more fulfilling. I am looking to get in and get out. Right now my interest is spread thin and I don't mind doing any of them but I would rather do something that pays.
- Gortal278 4y ago
  "big tech" pays those comps, the bigger tech can hit 300k for SDE2's.
- NSMutableSet 4y ago
  In California, a good chunk of that $300k is taxed at nearly 50%. Anyone who did not sell vested RSUs between 2020 and today likely has a negative delta, and paid taxes at peak prices. It's still a lot of money, but it's not as much as you think it is, since it's not just pure salary. Even if it was, odds are it would still be taxed significantly, because most high-paying SWE jobs are in California or New York. California has 7x SWEs as Washington, which I would consider a better state in terms of how much overall compensation you can keep after taxes. It's better, but there's just less jobs in comparison.
  - borroka 4y ago
    I work in California, make more than 300k not at a FAANG doing work that people with half of my competence would be able to do (but they would not be hired for the job), and I am not taxed at nearly 50%.
    - NSMutableSet 4y ago
      Right, but what %s are your RSUs and bonuses taxed at?
      - borroka 4y ago
        I get no RSUs and bonuses are taxed as W2 income. I don't quite get why there is this misconception that, at the end of the year, bonuses are taxed differently from regular income. Withholding by the company is what may change, but when I receive my W2 there is no special "bonus" section, the bonus is combined with other earned income and listed in box 1 of my and other people's W-2.
rdtsc 4y ago
Why do you think that happens? At a big company, I would guess, it would be the effect leetcode-based hiring. It's easy to build a solid team making $300k-$400k in total compensation where each know how to easily move knights on infinite chess boards and find substrings with largest variance but won't necessarily deliver good software or know how to work together well.
- brundolf 4y ago
  Two cents: it's incredibly hard to identify an engineer's real ability levels in an interview process. And it's even harder to assemble a team that's going to be cohesive and effective as a group, even if all of them are individually competent
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    That’s why these interviews are mostly useless imho. I do 15-30 minutes interviews in person myself when hiring to see if they understand anything and are creative and then just hire them for a trial month. Works a lot better, great results with that so far (30 years). But we are not Google (nor do we want to be), so we are not going through 1000s of applications.
    - redanddead 4y ago
      It's crazy because a lot of small companies implement Google's methods when they should be implementing yours. I don't know how to fix that, but it sounds like an opportunity.
  - borroka 4y ago
    "it's incredibly hard to identify an engineer's real ability levels in an interview process". It is more or less true (I would not use "incredibly hard", just "hard") with the qualifier "using a standardized, working-at-scale interview process". If you had to choose one engineer among 100 candidates using whatever approach you want but within a time limit of 10 hours per candidate, I am pretty confident you would accurately gauge the "quality" of candidates.

kajaktum 4y ago

300k? Jesus that's actually incomprehensible to me. What kind of industry is this? I am going to be honest, I love programming only as an intellectual endeavor and I would rather work on my dad's farm since it's more fulfilling. I am looking to get in and get out. Right now my interest is spread thin and I don't mind doing any of them but I would rather do something that pays.

Gortal278 4y ago
"big tech" pays those comps, the bigger tech can hit 300k for SDE2's.
NSMutableSet 4y ago
In California, a good chunk of that $300k is taxed at nearly 50%. Anyone who did not sell vested RSUs between 2020 and today likely has a negative delta, and paid taxes at peak prices. It's still a lot of money, but it's not as much as you think it is, since it's not just pure salary. Even if it was, odds are it would still be taxed significantly, because most high-paying SWE jobs are in California or New York. California has 7x SWEs as Washington, which I would consider a better state in terms of how much overall compensation you can keep after taxes. It's better, but there's just less jobs in comparison.
- borroka 4y ago
  I work in California, make more than 300k not at a FAANG doing work that people with half of my competence would be able to do (but they would not be hired for the job), and I am not taxed at nearly 50%.
  - NSMutableSet 4y ago
    Right, but what %s are your RSUs and bonuses taxed at?
    - borroka 4y ago
      I get no RSUs and bonuses are taxed as W2 income. I don't quite get why there is this misconception that, at the end of the year, bonuses are taxed differently from regular income. Withholding by the company is what may change, but when I receive my W2 there is no special "bonus" section, the bonus is combined with other earned income and listed in box 1 of my and other people's W-2.

rdtsc 4y ago

Why do you think that happens? At a big company, I would guess, it would be the effect leetcode-based hiring. It's easy to build a solid team making $300k-$400k in total compensation where each know how to easily move knights on infinite chess boards and find substrings with largest variance but won't necessarily deliver good software or know how to work together well.

brundolf 4y ago
Two cents: it's incredibly hard to identify an engineer's real ability levels in an interview process. And it's even harder to assemble a team that's going to be cohesive and effective as a group, even if all of them are individually competent
- tluyben2 4y ago
  That’s why these interviews are mostly useless imho. I do 15-30 minutes interviews in person myself when hiring to see if they understand anything and are creative and then just hire them for a trial month. Works a lot better, great results with that so far (30 years). But we are not Google (nor do we want to be), so we are not going through 1000s of applications.
  - redanddead 4y ago
    It's crazy because a lot of small companies implement Google's methods when they should be implementing yours. I don't know how to fix that, but it sounds like an opportunity.
- borroka 4y ago
  "it's incredibly hard to identify an engineer's real ability levels in an interview process". It is more or less true (I would not use "incredibly hard", just "hard") with the qualifier "using a standardized, working-at-scale interview process". If you had to choose one engineer among 100 candidates using whatever approach you want but within a time limit of 10 hours per candidate, I am pretty confident you would accurately gauge the "quality" of candidates.