22 ms·

If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech?

70 points by taubek 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago
>If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech First off, because I don't live in a region where these kind of incomes are remotely possible for an employee. I make more money than many FAANG employees in my country as FAANGS here does not offer the same salaries. They ask for the same amount of work from employees as their SV counterparts but salaries are 10x lower. And no, my wish isn't to move to SV as there are other things that are at least as important as money for me. Second, I started to dislike FAANGS.
- wil421 4y ago
  Same here in my region of the US. My house is on a half acre and is about 2,500 sqft (~230m2) and it costs less than a studio in SF. I had an opportunity that would’ve given me some funny money that has gone down by 40%. I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries. I’ve never understood the “I pay the same for a MacBook as you” mentality from SF/SV. I can assure you the housing, food, and gas costs are way higher than mine.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    >I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries. And FAANG salaries might start to not be as great as for some the revenue started to decline.
- tjpnz 4y ago
  I've observed similar in Tokyo. FAANGs exist here but compensation is middling compared to what they offer elsewhere, it's even worse when exchange rates are taken into account. If you want to be paid at the top of the market you're better off working for a bank.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    But working for a bank as a SE means you are part of the cost center, not the profit center
- jwestbury 4y ago
  I'm in finance in the UK now, because my US-based SV tech employer wanted to cut my pay by about 30%, and cut my base salary by about 50% if I moved to the UK and stayed employed with them. In finance, I'm making about what I did in the US.
andreyk 4y ago
FYI, the "you" here refers to the author, not the reader. Here's the gist: "Why aren't I working in BigTech? Why isn't everyone, if the money's so good and the coasting so sweet? Rest and vest is a real thing that happens. The short answer – I don't think I'd like it."
lordnacho 4y ago
There's the corp job being unpleasant, but there's also the issue of getting a job through several rounds of interviews that seem to have little to do with the job. Even if you can do 90% of questions, you've got an under 60% chance of running a 5-question gauntlet. It's like a job in itself preparing for the leetcode.
sidlls 4y ago
The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you believe. It's not easy to be at the $600K total compensation level at FAANG. It's not necessarily uncommon, but it's not like the majority of engineers there are at that level. Just look at https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi and search for a FAANG company. For example, Google's L6 total compensation average is ~$450K. L6 (the rough equivalent of principal or senior principal engineer at many, perhaps most, other companies, including the one I work for) isn't easy to achieve at Google and the vast, vast majority of SEs at Google are not making L6 compensation. In fact, I'd wager (not assert, as I haven't actually run the numbers from levels.fyi or industry salary data), that the vast majority of Silicon Valley software engineers plateau around the $300k mark on the high end.
- zamnos 4y ago
  If the vast majority of Google engineers aren't earning anywhere actually near $600k, then I'd argue it's pretty freaking uncommon!
  - zoover2020 4y ago
    Not sure why Google has been used as top paying company as it has been known for a couple of years now that they tend to low-ball. Not saying it's paying peanuts either - just be aware that anetflix for instance pays quite a lot better even.
    - sidlls 4y ago
      The salient point is that a $600k/year salary is uncommon or even rare even at FAANG. There are a lot of engineers who could work at a FAANG or FAANG-like company, but most of them will never see $600k/year in compensation. Also, sure, there's a distribution of ranges at a given level across FAANG (and all tech companies, really--though I think it's bimodal in that there is "FAANG" (and FAANG-like or near-FAANG) and "everything else"). Also, Netflix has a rather unique (for the tech world) approach to employment, in that they will absolutely let someone go if their performance is even slightly off or there is a pivot in strategy (rather than, say, relocate an engineer to another team). Employment there is a riskier proposition than at other FAANG companies. They have to bake that premium into the price they pay for labor.
estevaoam 4y ago
As if one's market value is always coherent with their skills. There are so many variables that plays a role on how much one earns: where you live, negotiation skills, marketing skills, getting competent people to evaluate you properly, micro and macro economics, willingness to deal with bullshit corporate stuff, etc.
rwmj 4y ago
> Tech compensation is funny. Yes there's engineers at Netflix and friends making 600k in "total comp", but that doesn't mean 600k hits their bank account. I thought the common definition of "total comp" is that 600k (well, less tax) does actually hit your bank account? Is there another definition? [For the record I've never earned anything like that or heard of any regular software engineers earning that, but I guess it may happen in SV.]
- tazjin 4y ago
  Total comp means regular salary, plus bonuses and stock, but pre-tax.
- Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
  Total comp sometimes includes stuff like Options (which might never cash out), bonuses (based on things you cannot control like quarterly sales) or include benefits. So for example if your company pays a dental insurance that costs 2,000 a year it might say your salary is 50k but your total comp is 52k. So an example could be. Your salary is 50k, your benefits are calcualted to be 10k, your options ammount to 20k and your bonus is 20k. Your total comp is 100k, but because options vest slowly you only make 1/4 of that and the bonus did not work out, so your take home salary was 55k + benefits. This can change depending on the company, role, country, contract etc. Its not really like total comp is a legal definition.
  - gnaman 4y ago
    I've never heard anyone include the value of benefits in TC. TC is usually referred to as the cold cash you take home pre-tax. It can be stock, bonuses or salary. 100% liquid
    - Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
      In my HR portal benefits show up as part of the TC calculation, includes things like pension matching so it is not unwarranted entirely as cash calculation. But it also includes BS like will writting so yeah, I have seen some funky TC calcs out there
amelius 4y ago
Because most people here are oriented towards entrepreneurship, and don't like working for a boss.
- keyle 4y ago
  Yes and yes, and yet I think you'll find most people here _are_ working for a boss. Hands up if you've got a website selling printing cards for school, or an old cd business. These are the only ones I know here that printed a ton of money. The rest are just working long hours with golden handcuffs and a carrot in front of their nose.
  - hamburglar 4y ago
    Are you and sibling responder speaking in code? I’m fascinated and baffled by these responses. :D
  - nske 4y ago
    hehe I'll repeat a cliche, that everyone's either working for one boss or working for multiple bosses. From my experience, working for a good boss can generally give more perceived freedom than working to satisfy investors or customers. When I was freelancing I felt like I was working to satisfy multiple bosses, having to do things that I didn't enjoy (i.e. customer communications, accounting) plus that I was forced to become the boss of myself, which wasn't fun. Whereas as an employee I've always been lucky to have bosses that act essentially like secretaries with executive power, shielding their staff from everyday nonsense, filtering what's relevant, helping prioritize and getting you what you need. Things can feel totally different if you have a bad boss, but at the very least, my take is that good bosses are out there and are worth trying to find.
- zamnos 4y ago
  There are also tons of under-intellectually stimulated BigTechCo engineers here who will upvote you if you can make an oblique reference to an internal system, but one where you have plausible deniability so the social media team at BigTechCo can't get you in trouble for talking about it. Look for weird non sequiturs in a BigTechCo thread that sit high on the comment chain.
newaccount2023 4y ago
Big tech is going to lay off its 600k devs and rehire back the equivalent talent at 180k They'll do it because they can I mean, what do you think is being said in the boardroom these days when they are planning layoffs? "Why am I paying someone 450k + 150k RSUs for six hours of React maintenance coding a week?" Most people who lucked into one of the 600k jobs will likely never see this comp again in their lives It was a blip folks Downvote if you like...welcome to Zuck's thought process....Elon's thought process...soon to be the thought process of most tech CEOs...
- pictur 4y ago
  I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment. yes, they will choose the one that is beneficial for them, but the example you gave is not a situation that can provide any benefit in the long run. in other words, companies that prefer this will probably turn away from this decision in a short time.
  - postexitus 4y ago
    Why? Isn't it us who defend remote working to death and say it is the same or even better output as opposed to our in office counterparts? At some point during that argument, somebody is going to realize that you can get exactly the same quality of output for 10th of the price elsewhere in the world and it will not be a shallow/short termist move.
    - newaccount2023 4y ago
      even if it is "shallow/short" termist...thats okay, most tenures in tech now are two-three years...we turned ourselves into short term cogs working commodity tech its not just overseas competition, devs in Iowa think 170k is a dandy salary
  - newaccount2023 4y ago
    > I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment. If 2023 has shown us ANYTHING, is that tech execs have done a complete 180 on "valuing" employees HN is stuck in 2019, but don't worry it is curable put yourself in the other chair - if you are hiring right now, why do you need to offer a premium salary? you don't no different than after the .com bubble burst, candidates were grateful just to have offers, no one was offering premium comp
michaelteter 4y ago
And in Europe, middle managers will earn 80-90k while senior engineers will earn 70-80k (excepting a few BigTech or Fintech companies. As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home. If the European companies don't wake up to this, they will gradually see a brain drain (especially if the US reverses its anti-immigration attitude). As for TFA topic, to me most jobs are roughly the same. Only when I work for myself or directly with a small client (where I have total control over the technical decisions) is it close to "fun". Otherwise, it's usually 50% useful energy expenditure, and 50% wasted energy trying to improve systems where middle management is too content with status quo regardless of the potential profit gains from improved operations (and fewer engineers working smarter). So honestly, unless you have your own company and (near)total control, you might as well be working for the highest bidder - excepting in industries you may have moral or ethical disagreements with.
- microtonal 4y ago
  As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home. My impression is that with remote work this is changing. There are a lot of opportunities for working remotely with better salaries than in The Netherlands. Of course, it's not for everyone. That said, I'd always take a cut for working in a nicer, friendly company where I can make a difference. I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate. Bonus points if I can work on FLOSS software.
  - admissionsguy 4y ago
    > I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate. I don't think this point of view holds up, really. When the pay difference is 10x, it's hard to conceive that working 10 years at a nice job has better utility than working 1 year at a not-so-nice job and spending the other 9 years at one's leisure.
pictur 4y ago
Working individually can keep a person at a better level in terms of ego. If you have a mind that constantly compares yourself to others, working in a company can make you sad. Of course it varies by company. maybe you can be happier.
Southland 4y ago
Strange to phrase the entire post off "I never have worked in BigTech, but here's anecdotal thoughts of why I've heard it would suck"
DrBazza 4y ago
Are those numbers on levels.fyi realistic? And those stock/share grants, presumably vest at one quarter of the amount every year after the award, or something like that? So if you're there for only two years, you might only collect your basic salary, and that's it.
mlazos 4y ago
I work in a FAANG and I e always loved my job (switched teams and companies a few times) if you don’t love it anymore, find a project you do love, that’s the glory of a big company tbh. This was a pretty surface level article. There isn’t any industry on earth where you can be an IC making 600k except tech. At a FAANG 600k is reaching your bank account(stock is real comp)
jstx1 4y ago
> Better in some vague notion of engineering goodness? Eh probably not. On average we're all about average. This doesn't make sense. You're picking people from the top end of the income distribution, assuming they are average and using this as evidence that people from the top end of the income distribution are average. It might even be true but the reasoning doesn't follow. It's more likely that it isn't true and there is a difference in skill but that difference isn't proportional to compensation e.g those people are 15% better than average but get paid 100% more.
crmrc114 4y ago
100% why I left the Amazon meat grinder and RSU weighted compensation packages. I am one million times happier working for a midsize business that actually treats me like a creative, not an assembly line worker.
jstx1 4y ago
I'd love to work in big tech or finance but it's hard because even if I can make up for skills (on the job skills and interviewing skills), it's hard to fake the necessary background to get an interview (having good education or previous experience in a similar company).
papito 4y ago
This is exactly the reason why Big Tech is in trouble. The candidates cram Leetcode for months to get the jobs, and since their practical skills are irrelevant in that process, we all wonder what the hell this army of engineers is actually doing. They are building unnecessarily complicated systems that you will need to hire even more engineers to maintain, that's what they are doing. But you pay them well, so there is that.
hirako2000 4y ago
Because i intend to remain good and believe being surrounded by exceptional enginners is actually more easy, or influenced by my side in smaller orgs. Getting to code regularly is rather important. + Tax brackets makes it far less a difference between to earn some high end median salary vs top salaries. So even on the compensation side of benefits along with costs of living, the gap then becomes rather slim/irrelevant
ramijames 4y ago
Because a long time ago I understood that the value of my salary has to come from somewhere. If that somewhere is ads, tracking, or other types of surveillance capitalism, then I'm not interested. All of the biggest companies in the world are complicit. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They should all be burnt to the ground. If you work at one of these companies and enjoy a fat paycheck, you should take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are ok with the price that society as a whole pays for you to be able to make bank.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Are you kidding me? People should feel guilty about getting paid? What a marvelous perspective, long live the oligarchy? Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf? And then you wonder why corporations control democracies so easily. For everyone else reading: if your work is honest and legal and you don't have to violate your conscious to perform the duties assigned to you the make as much as you can. Fulfill your responsibility to your family and community firsr and the worry about the world. Use your own money to influence politics instead of using employment activism, investor activism, social media cancelling,etc... to lobby for causes. Talk to and convince your peers. This is how you fight for democracy and democracy is dying because people are allowing proxies like their employers to speak for them. Companies have no place at all in democratic discourse. It is "we the people" not "we the corporations". This is why shit like your healthcare being tied to your employer is a thing!
  - ramijames 4y ago
    Not kidding, no. "Take care of me and mine" is a fine way to burn the world down to cinders. Can you honestly tell me that how surveillance capitalism has unfolded over the past twenty years has been a net positive for democracy or for world stability? I say no, and those well paid cogs in those machines are complicit. They don't need to feel shame. They need to accept the scope of what they are doing and be mindful of its impact. Honest and legal doesn't necessarily mean "right". Those that work in the fossil fuel industry are for the most part doing what is honest and right. They are also (as are we all) complicit in catastrophic climate change.
mkl95 4y ago
Just want to back the most upvoted comment by highlighting how rare 6 figure jobs are in most areas of Europe. For example, $65k / year puts you in top 5% highest paid workers (P95) in France. Capital flows like water in a river in the richest areas of the US, whereas the EU is more like a swamp. You can save thousands / month while many of your coworkers struggle to make ends meet.
margorczynski 4y ago
BigTech paying those absurd figures is I think only a thing in the US. In Europe they pay well but no way that much compared to the national (or continental) average. And if you think the work you're doing there in SF is boring then you need to be aware that most of the boring stuff goes to "low cost regions" usually. For the US that also means Europe, for BigTech especially.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  It's only a thing in the US, in specific cities where big tech companies are present and poaching people from each other. These jobs with big rates have a few things in common: - Salaries aren't the only thing that have inflated price tags in the places where you might hope to get those. Rents, mortages, and cost of living are expensive there too. You kind of need 2x-3x what you'd need somewhere else. More for some places. Basically, you pay more for less for most things that matter. - Those big rates are fairly hard to get for any random person. You have to be able to sit up be a good little code minion, do your code exercises perfectly, climb corporate ladders, kiss the right asses, etc. And you have to keep that up for many years. Not everyone can do that. Or even pretend to enjoy doing that. - There's no such thing as a free lunch. These companies want value for money. The big salary is the carrot that they dangle in front of you. But they don't give it to everyone. They give it to some so they can give far less to the rest of the crowd. The median is nowhere near the top of the range. - It's a pretty exclusive club that gets these wages. The exclusivity is what buys compliance from those outside that club. Max salaries are insane. Median ones, not so much. In SFO, median salary is still high but not high enough to live there comfortably. - It's a corporate rat race. With all the negative effects as well. Like toxic work culture. Political games and a lot of tech bros (let's face it, equality is a problematic topic) slapping each other on the back and over using words like "awesome". This kind of behavior is common fiercely competitive places. It isn't necessarily very nice to deal with or be around such people. And it attracts people that are good at that kind of thing. I.e. sociopaths.
nunez 4y ago
$NFLX pays all cash, IIRC. But that's not the point. The point is in most cases, you need to move to a Tier 1 city with homes in the $800s and above or rents in the $3500/mo+ range to get offered that much cash/equity/bonus mix. (That's the low end. Stuff isn't great in that range unless you move far.) The total package is less to much less elsewhere. You also need to factor the risk of being called back into the office (or losing your job if you can't do that). Also, it depends on what you value. Some people really really value that big vest. Same problem as those who go into law, medicine or management (out of an MBA), generally.
antibasilisk 4y ago
considering those sorts of salaries usually exist to override people's morals, i'd say having morals. People don't talk about this fact enough.
squalo 4y ago
There was a time I didn't believe anyone but execs were making over 500k a year in IT. Last year an acquaintance bragged that his daughter was making 500k at Netflix as a security person. Her job is to keep their content from being pirated. My first thought was "heck of a job Brownie" (not that most of you would get the reference).

70 points by taubek 4y ago

>If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech First off, because I don't live in a region where these kind of incomes are remotely possible for an employee. I make more money than many FAANG employees in my country as FAANGS here does not offer the same salaries. They ask for the same amount of work from employees as their SV counterparts but salaries are 10x lower. And no, my wish isn't to move to SV as there are other things that are at least as important as money for me. Second, I started to dislike FAANGS.

wil421 4y ago
Same here in my region of the US. My house is on a half acre and is about 2,500 sqft (~230m2) and it costs less than a studio in SF. I had an opportunity that would’ve given me some funny money that has gone down by 40%. I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries. I’ve never understood the “I pay the same for a MacBook as you” mentality from SF/SV. I can assure you the housing, food, and gas costs are way higher than mine.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries. And FAANG salaries might start to not be as great as for some the revenue started to decline.
tjpnz 4y ago
I've observed similar in Tokyo. FAANGs exist here but compensation is middling compared to what they offer elsewhere, it's even worse when exchange rates are taken into account. If you want to be paid at the top of the market you're better off working for a bank.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  But working for a bank as a SE means you are part of the cost center, not the profit center
jwestbury 4y ago
I'm in finance in the UK now, because my US-based SV tech employer wanted to cut my pay by about 30%, and cut my base salary by about 50% if I moved to the UK and stayed employed with them. In finance, I'm making about what I did in the US.

andreyk 4y ago

FYI, the "you" here refers to the author, not the reader. Here's the gist: "Why aren't I working in BigTech? Why isn't everyone, if the money's so good and the coasting so sweet? Rest and vest is a real thing that happens. The short answer – I don't think I'd like it."

lordnacho 4y ago

There's the corp job being unpleasant, but there's also the issue of getting a job through several rounds of interviews that seem to have little to do with the job. Even if you can do 90% of questions, you've got an under 60% chance of running a 5-question gauntlet. It's like a job in itself preparing for the leetcode.

sidlls 4y ago

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you believe. It's not easy to be at the $600K total compensation level at FAANG. It's not necessarily uncommon, but it's not like the majority of engineers there are at that level. Just look at https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi and search for a FAANG company. For example, Google's L6 total compensation average is ~$450K. L6 (the rough equivalent of principal or senior principal engineer at many, perhaps most, other companies, including the one I work for) isn't easy to achieve at Google and the vast, vast majority of SEs at Google are not making L6 compensation. In fact, I'd wager (not assert, as I haven't actually run the numbers from levels.fyi or industry salary data), that the vast majority of Silicon Valley software engineers plateau around the $300k mark on the high end.

zamnos 4y ago
If the vast majority of Google engineers aren't earning anywhere actually near $600k, then I'd argue it's pretty freaking uncommon!
- zoover2020 4y ago
  Not sure why Google has been used as top paying company as it has been known for a couple of years now that they tend to low-ball. Not saying it's paying peanuts either - just be aware that anetflix for instance pays quite a lot better even.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    The salient point is that a $600k/year salary is uncommon or even rare even at FAANG. There are a lot of engineers who could work at a FAANG or FAANG-like company, but most of them will never see $600k/year in compensation. Also, sure, there's a distribution of ranges at a given level across FAANG (and all tech companies, really--though I think it's bimodal in that there is "FAANG" (and FAANG-like or near-FAANG) and "everything else"). Also, Netflix has a rather unique (for the tech world) approach to employment, in that they will absolutely let someone go if their performance is even slightly off or there is a pivot in strategy (rather than, say, relocate an engineer to another team). Employment there is a riskier proposition than at other FAANG companies. They have to bake that premium into the price they pay for labor.

estevaoam 4y ago

As if one's market value is always coherent with their skills. There are so many variables that plays a role on how much one earns: where you live, negotiation skills, marketing skills, getting competent people to evaluate you properly, micro and macro economics, willingness to deal with bullshit corporate stuff, etc.

rwmj 4y ago

> Tech compensation is funny. Yes there's engineers at Netflix and friends making 600k in "total comp", but that doesn't mean 600k hits their bank account. I thought the common definition of "total comp" is that 600k (well, less tax) does actually hit your bank account? Is there another definition? [For the record I've never earned anything like that or heard of any regular software engineers earning that, but I guess it may happen in SV.]

tazjin 4y ago
Total comp means regular salary, plus bonuses and stock, but pre-tax.
Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
Total comp sometimes includes stuff like Options (which might never cash out), bonuses (based on things you cannot control like quarterly sales) or include benefits. So for example if your company pays a dental insurance that costs 2,000 a year it might say your salary is 50k but your total comp is 52k. So an example could be. Your salary is 50k, your benefits are calcualted to be 10k, your options ammount to 20k and your bonus is 20k. Your total comp is 100k, but because options vest slowly you only make 1/4 of that and the bonus did not work out, so your take home salary was 55k + benefits. This can change depending on the company, role, country, contract etc. Its not really like total comp is a legal definition.
- gnaman 4y ago
  I've never heard anyone include the value of benefits in TC. TC is usually referred to as the cold cash you take home pre-tax. It can be stock, bonuses or salary. 100% liquid
  - Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
    In my HR portal benefits show up as part of the TC calculation, includes things like pension matching so it is not unwarranted entirely as cash calculation. But it also includes BS like will writting so yeah, I have seen some funky TC calcs out there

amelius 4y ago

Because most people here are oriented towards entrepreneurship, and don't like working for a boss.

keyle 4y ago
Yes and yes, and yet I think you'll find most people here _are_ working for a boss. Hands up if you've got a website selling printing cards for school, or an old cd business. These are the only ones I know here that printed a ton of money. The rest are just working long hours with golden handcuffs and a carrot in front of their nose.
- hamburglar 4y ago
  Are you and sibling responder speaking in code? I’m fascinated and baffled by these responses. :D
- nske 4y ago
  hehe I'll repeat a cliche, that everyone's either working for one boss or working for multiple bosses. From my experience, working for a good boss can generally give more perceived freedom than working to satisfy investors or customers. When I was freelancing I felt like I was working to satisfy multiple bosses, having to do things that I didn't enjoy (i.e. customer communications, accounting) plus that I was forced to become the boss of myself, which wasn't fun. Whereas as an employee I've always been lucky to have bosses that act essentially like secretaries with executive power, shielding their staff from everyday nonsense, filtering what's relevant, helping prioritize and getting you what you need. Things can feel totally different if you have a bad boss, but at the very least, my take is that good bosses are out there and are worth trying to find.
zamnos 4y ago
There are also tons of under-intellectually stimulated BigTechCo engineers here who will upvote you if you can make an oblique reference to an internal system, but one where you have plausible deniability so the social media team at BigTechCo can't get you in trouble for talking about it. Look for weird non sequiturs in a BigTechCo thread that sit high on the comment chain.

newaccount2023 4y ago

Big tech is going to lay off its 600k devs and rehire back the equivalent talent at 180k They'll do it because they can I mean, what do you think is being said in the boardroom these days when they are planning layoffs? "Why am I paying someone 450k + 150k RSUs for six hours of React maintenance coding a week?" Most people who lucked into one of the 600k jobs will likely never see this comp again in their lives It was a blip folks Downvote if you like...welcome to Zuck's thought process....Elon's thought process...soon to be the thought process of most tech CEOs...

pictur 4y ago
I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment. yes, they will choose the one that is beneficial for them, but the example you gave is not a situation that can provide any benefit in the long run. in other words, companies that prefer this will probably turn away from this decision in a short time.
- postexitus 4y ago
  Why? Isn't it us who defend remote working to death and say it is the same or even better output as opposed to our in office counterparts? At some point during that argument, somebody is going to realize that you can get exactly the same quality of output for 10th of the price elsewhere in the world and it will not be a shallow/short termist move.
  - newaccount2023 4y ago
    even if it is "shallow/short" termist...thats okay, most tenures in tech now are two-three years...we turned ourselves into short term cogs working commodity tech its not just overseas competition, devs in Iowa think 170k is a dandy salary
- newaccount2023 4y ago
  > I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment. If 2023 has shown us ANYTHING, is that tech execs have done a complete 180 on "valuing" employees HN is stuck in 2019, but don't worry it is curable put yourself in the other chair - if you are hiring right now, why do you need to offer a premium salary? you don't no different than after the .com bubble burst, candidates were grateful just to have offers, no one was offering premium comp

michaelteter 4y ago

And in Europe, middle managers will earn 80-90k while senior engineers will earn 70-80k (excepting a few BigTech or Fintech companies. As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home. If the European companies don't wake up to this, they will gradually see a brain drain (especially if the US reverses its anti-immigration attitude). As for TFA topic, to me most jobs are roughly the same. Only when I work for myself or directly with a small client (where I have total control over the technical decisions) is it close to "fun". Otherwise, it's usually 50% useful energy expenditure, and 50% wasted energy trying to improve systems where middle management is too content with status quo regardless of the potential profit gains from improved operations (and fewer engineers working smarter). So honestly, unless you have your own company and (near)total control, you might as well be working for the highest bidder - excepting in industries you may have moral or ethical disagreements with.

microtonal 4y ago
As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home. My impression is that with remote work this is changing. There are a lot of opportunities for working remotely with better salaries than in The Netherlands. Of course, it's not for everyone. That said, I'd always take a cut for working in a nicer, friendly company where I can make a difference. I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate. Bonus points if I can work on FLOSS software.
- admissionsguy 4y ago
  > I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate. I don't think this point of view holds up, really. When the pay difference is 10x, it's hard to conceive that working 10 years at a nice job has better utility than working 1 year at a not-so-nice job and spending the other 9 years at one's leisure.

pictur 4y ago

Working individually can keep a person at a better level in terms of ego. If you have a mind that constantly compares yourself to others, working in a company can make you sad. Of course it varies by company. maybe you can be happier.

Southland 4y ago

Strange to phrase the entire post off "I never have worked in BigTech, but here's anecdotal thoughts of why I've heard it would suck"

DrBazza 4y ago

Are those numbers on levels.fyi realistic? And those stock/share grants, presumably vest at one quarter of the amount every year after the award, or something like that? So if you're there for only two years, you might only collect your basic salary, and that's it.

mlazos 4y ago

I work in a FAANG and I e always loved my job (switched teams and companies a few times) if you don’t love it anymore, find a project you do love, that’s the glory of a big company tbh. This was a pretty surface level article. There isn’t any industry on earth where you can be an IC making 600k except tech. At a FAANG 600k is reaching your bank account(stock is real comp)

jstx1 4y ago

> Better in some vague notion of engineering goodness? Eh probably not. On average we're all about average. This doesn't make sense. You're picking people from the top end of the income distribution, assuming they are average and using this as evidence that people from the top end of the income distribution are average. It might even be true but the reasoning doesn't follow. It's more likely that it isn't true and there is a difference in skill but that difference isn't proportional to compensation e.g those people are 15% better than average but get paid 100% more.

crmrc114 4y ago

100% why I left the Amazon meat grinder and RSU weighted compensation packages. I am one million times happier working for a midsize business that actually treats me like a creative, not an assembly line worker.

jstx1 4y ago

I'd love to work in big tech or finance but it's hard because even if I can make up for skills (on the job skills and interviewing skills), it's hard to fake the necessary background to get an interview (having good education or previous experience in a similar company).

papito 4y ago

This is exactly the reason why Big Tech is in trouble. The candidates cram Leetcode for months to get the jobs, and since their practical skills are irrelevant in that process, we all wonder what the hell this army of engineers is actually doing. They are building unnecessarily complicated systems that you will need to hire even more engineers to maintain, that's what they are doing. But you pay them well, so there is that.

hirako2000 4y ago

Because i intend to remain good and believe being surrounded by exceptional enginners is actually more easy, or influenced by my side in smaller orgs. Getting to code regularly is rather important. + Tax brackets makes it far less a difference between to earn some high end median salary vs top salaries. So even on the compensation side of benefits along with costs of living, the gap then becomes rather slim/irrelevant

ramijames 4y ago

Because a long time ago I understood that the value of my salary has to come from somewhere. If that somewhere is ads, tracking, or other types of surveillance capitalism, then I'm not interested. All of the biggest companies in the world are complicit. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They should all be burnt to the ground. If you work at one of these companies and enjoy a fat paycheck, you should take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are ok with the price that society as a whole pays for you to be able to make bank.

_8j50 4y ago
Are you kidding me? People should feel guilty about getting paid? What a marvelous perspective, long live the oligarchy? Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf? And then you wonder why corporations control democracies so easily. For everyone else reading: if your work is honest and legal and you don't have to violate your conscious to perform the duties assigned to you the make as much as you can. Fulfill your responsibility to your family and community firsr and the worry about the world. Use your own money to influence politics instead of using employment activism, investor activism, social media cancelling,etc... to lobby for causes. Talk to and convince your peers. This is how you fight for democracy and democracy is dying because people are allowing proxies like their employers to speak for them. Companies have no place at all in democratic discourse. It is "we the people" not "we the corporations". This is why shit like your healthcare being tied to your employer is a thing!
- ramijames 4y ago
  Not kidding, no. "Take care of me and mine" is a fine way to burn the world down to cinders. Can you honestly tell me that how surveillance capitalism has unfolded over the past twenty years has been a net positive for democracy or for world stability? I say no, and those well paid cogs in those machines are complicit. They don't need to feel shame. They need to accept the scope of what they are doing and be mindful of its impact. Honest and legal doesn't necessarily mean "right". Those that work in the fossil fuel industry are for the most part doing what is honest and right. They are also (as are we all) complicit in catastrophic climate change.

mkl95 4y ago

Just want to back the most upvoted comment by highlighting how rare 6 figure jobs are in most areas of Europe. For example, $65k / year puts you in top 5% highest paid workers (P95) in France. Capital flows like water in a river in the richest areas of the US, whereas the EU is more like a swamp. You can save thousands / month while many of your coworkers struggle to make ends meet.

margorczynski 4y ago

BigTech paying those absurd figures is I think only a thing in the US. In Europe they pay well but no way that much compared to the national (or continental) average. And if you think the work you're doing there in SF is boring then you need to be aware that most of the boring stuff goes to "low cost regions" usually. For the US that also means Europe, for BigTech especially.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
It's only a thing in the US, in specific cities where big tech companies are present and poaching people from each other. These jobs with big rates have a few things in common: - Salaries aren't the only thing that have inflated price tags in the places where you might hope to get those. Rents, mortages, and cost of living are expensive there too. You kind of need 2x-3x what you'd need somewhere else. More for some places. Basically, you pay more for less for most things that matter. - Those big rates are fairly hard to get for any random person. You have to be able to sit up be a good little code minion, do your code exercises perfectly, climb corporate ladders, kiss the right asses, etc. And you have to keep that up for many years. Not everyone can do that. Or even pretend to enjoy doing that. - There's no such thing as a free lunch. These companies want value for money. The big salary is the carrot that they dangle in front of you. But they don't give it to everyone. They give it to some so they can give far less to the rest of the crowd. The median is nowhere near the top of the range. - It's a pretty exclusive club that gets these wages. The exclusivity is what buys compliance from those outside that club. Max salaries are insane. Median ones, not so much. In SFO, median salary is still high but not high enough to live there comfortably. - It's a corporate rat race. With all the negative effects as well. Like toxic work culture. Political games and a lot of tech bros (let's face it, equality is a problematic topic) slapping each other on the back and over using words like "awesome". This kind of behavior is common fiercely competitive places. It isn't necessarily very nice to deal with or be around such people. And it attracts people that are good at that kind of thing. I.e. sociopaths.

nunez 4y ago

$NFLX pays all cash, IIRC. But that's not the point. The point is in most cases, you need to move to a Tier 1 city with homes in the $800s and above or rents in the $3500/mo+ range to get offered that much cash/equity/bonus mix. (That's the low end. Stuff isn't great in that range unless you move far.) The total package is less to much less elsewhere. You also need to factor the risk of being called back into the office (or losing your job if you can't do that). Also, it depends on what you value. Some people really really value that big vest. Same problem as those who go into law, medicine or management (out of an MBA), generally.

antibasilisk 4y ago

considering those sorts of salaries usually exist to override people's morals, i'd say having morals. People don't talk about this fact enough.

squalo 4y ago

There was a time I didn't believe anyone but execs were making over 500k a year in IT. Last year an acquaintance bragged that his daughter was making 500k at Netflix as a security person. Her job is to keep their content from being pirated. My first thought was "heck of a job Brownie" (not that most of you would get the reference).