8 ms·
Reminder that there is no skills shortage. There's a shortage of suckers.
by shinythrowaway 3y ago
Reminder that there is no skills shortage. There's a shortage of suckers.
- anotherhue 3y agoSome of these are just laughable: https://web.archive.org/web/20230719150950/https://boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/jobs/4252949006 https://web.archive.org/web/20230719150950/https://boards.gr... Principal Engineer, DevOps The expected salary range for this position is $130,000 to $155,000.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- CoastalCoder 3y agoI wonder if read that the same as others. It sounds like they want someone 35+ years old, with top-tier skills, who doesn't prioritize a good night's sleep?
- MuffinFlavored 3y agomost principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD
- bushbaba 3y agoEven that seems low. New college grad going to a large tech firm can make 200k these days.
- nicechianti 3y ago[dead]
- bagacrap 3y agoI think that's only true if you pretend the equity grant all vests in year one. In reality it takes some time, so you won't get that amount until after several years at the company.
- dmoy 3y agoI think it depends on if it's like Facebook or Amazon. FB probably is paying $200k or close to it for first year vesting only. Amazon, probably not.
- scarface_74 3y agoAmazon has a back heavy vesting schedule and the first two years you get a large prorated signing bonus to get market rates.
- whimsicalism 3y agoyou’re wrong about that
- explaininjs 3y agoMSFT starting TC is ~250k.
- zeusk 3y agoIt quickly decays to around 150-180k; the refreshers and bonus are lousy <L63 at MSFT.
- explaininjs 3y ago"quickly" being 4-5 years?
- zeusk 3y agoQuickly being, 1 year and can go lower after 3 years if you don't get a SSA.
- explaininjs 3y agoDon't know what an SSA is. But I've seen flat/gently-increasing payout curves over 4 years, ~250k each.
- zeusk 3y agoI worked at MS for 3 years after undergrad, My first year was 221k, 180k, 191k and would've been ~185k for Y4 then 160k after cliff. SSA is Special Stock Award given arbitrarily (M2s are not sure or have any say in who/how much to be given) but believed to be used for retention by HR. Annual stock refreshers for <L63 at Microsoft are in the range of 0-20k vesting over 5 years. I chose to move to Amazon then recently Apple.
- whimsicalism 3y agofalse e: really for HN i would think people had a better sense of the market, i am seeing wrong statements all over the place L59 at MS is absolutely not paid $250k
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd that’s not representative of most of the 2.7 million developers working in the US. Check out comp for most “enterprise” jobs at banks, insurance companies, SaaS companies or even many YC companies.
- whimsicalism 3y agonot in the bay lol
- throwaway5959 3y agoYup, I’m right in that band.
- depereo 3y ago'Principal' in a lot of NZ companies just replaced the term 'Team Lead' and generally just means the most 'senior' person in the team. Sometimes it's used as a way to justify a raise. The scale of difference and difference of scale between New Zealand and the USA cannot be overstated. There really are not enough people in New Zealand to make the level of differentiation between a Senior, a Principal and a Staff engineer meaningful in the vast, vast majority of our industry. The titles are basically pointless and just word salad. They're also used very differently company to company, although I don't think that's unique to this geography.
- bogota 3y agoThat is staff band at a company without inflated titles and if we are only talking about the cash part of the offer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alexjplant 3y agoAs I've so fond of pointing out on HN "Principal" means two different things depending on the culture of the company. In SV/BigTech "Principal" is a step above Staff. In many other companies, however, it just means "non-junior employee"; these are the same companies that also have titles like "Lead Architect" and "Systems Administrator". Without context "Principal" is meaningless.
- aledalgrande 3y agoI've found Staff having very different qualities depending on the company.
- lijok 3y agoMy god, sysadmin has become a meme title?
- wwtdtgotiatl 3y agoReally starting to feel old here because to me that's one the most legitimate and accurate titles in the industry.
- lijok 3y agoThere will be riots in nursing homes when they find out
- smolder 3y agoI want to know where all the Webmaster roles have gone, personally.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sarchertech 3y agoPrincipal means above staff or at the very least above senior in every company I’ve ever encountered it. Senior may have diluted to just mean “non-junior employee”, but I’ve never heard someone using principal for that.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago130,000 NZD is about 77,860 USD Which is actually more than I was earning as a lead at a recent job in Canada
- doctor_eval 3y agoThis is taken way out of context. 1. It’s ProPublica - “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” Such a job is likely to appeal to someone who, despite the salary, is looking to make a wide social impact. 2. the job also states: > This is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps. 3. It is not in NZ: > This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is headquartered in New York, but we have offices across the country and will consider remote applicants.
- whimsicalism 3y agoGood points. This estimate also looks like it is just base salary
- chank 3y agoThey're still looking for a sucker. That's what they expect to pay someone coming into that role. They likely had the last sucker at that salary and hope to find another. It's possible you can expect to take a hit when going "social impact" roles, but who's willing to take $100k reduction just for that. Either that or they're inflating the title a lot and really just want a Sr. Dev. who again would be taking a salary hit at todays rates.
- doctor_eval 3y agoSo is $250K the salary for every location in the US or just for SV/NYC? Honest question; my lair is a remote beach paradise.
- seneca 3y ago$250k is about right for a Principal "DevOps Enginner" for a company in a major city. Principal engineers are well paid, and SREs (what people often mean when they say DevOps eng) are often the highest paid engineers at a company. You wouldn't get this in small or midsized towns in the US.
- scarface_74 3y agoOutside of the tech bubble, this is the average range of salaries for most tech workers in most major cities in the IS outside of the west coast. It might be off on the high end by $20K
- yawgmoth 3y agoYeah, in Michigan I really can't find anything over 165. Remote has me above that, but not too much. There is wage fomo or insecurity that I am a sucker, but I do not dwell on that thought too much. Have to live with the cards in your hand at some point.
- scarface_74 3y agoI’ve been on both sides of the compensation divide since 2020 - enterprise dev vs BigTech. In the beginning of 2020 I was making $150K and entertaining offers making $165K as an experienced developer with cloud experience. Then I fell into a role working at AWS ProServe making - a lot more working remotely. I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be a long term thing and that Amazon was going to Amazon. I made my money, paid off debt, built savings, decreased my fixed expenses, built my network, learned a lot of soft skills and now I’m looking at very senior/team lead roles on the enterprise architect side making $170K - $185K. I’m actively interviewing and I am sure I will have something in two weeks (found opportunities based on my network at smaller companies). On one hand, emotionally I have the same FOMO. But logically I know our expenses are $1000 less per month than they were 3 years ago and I moved and I’m also paying $700 less in taxes than I was then. I’m also having a lot of fun working remotely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
- eli_gottlieb 3y agoLaughably low or laughably high?
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y agoI wouldn't compare that to a position with a similar title at a tech company. It's not uncommon for tech roles on non-tech/IT teams to have some title inflation so they can match compensation better based on the pay-scale of their business unit.
- nz_king 3y agoAs someone who graduated as a SWE from an NZ university; around 50% of my cohort moved over to Australia and around 20-30% somewhere else; I can count the number of friends I have left in the country on one hand (four year degree). NZ salaries are actually laughable compared to overseas where you're earning at least 25% more for the same work and a probably lower cost of living
- slt2021 3y agois it because NZ has immigration program inviting IT professionals? do you know if there is big influx of IT immigrants in NZ?
- rodgerd 3y agoThe majority, perhaps even super-majority of the people I work with are immigrants. It's not a problem. The problem is that New Zealand employers are absolutely allergic to paying their staff; they are cruising on the idea that "New Zealand is a great place to live, it doesn't matter if you're paid less, the lifestyle benefits make up for it".
- klipt 3y agoI assume manny immigrants work just long enough to get a NZ passport then use the freedom of movement granted to work in Australia? Then once they get an Australian passport, they can use it to work in the US on an E-3 visa :-)
- 0xADEADBEE 3y agoYou don’t even need to do that. Once you have Residency (distinct from Permanent Residency and Citizenship - the one with the passport) you are allowed to start your own company which you can use to contract yourself out to Australian companies for annual amounts double those of a lot of NZ roles. (My last role paid 240-250K NZD depending on exchange rate; the local role prior to that: 120K NZD) Didn’t know about E3 visa route. Very interesting, thank you
- yodelshady 3y agoThere's an excess of frauds. Large amounts of money will obviously attract them. JFC, if you have "an idea for an app, bro", but you can't build the product, and you can't raise the honest VC necessary to build or acquire the team that builds the product, YOU DON'T HAVE A PRODUCT. I don't know how these people get to go around without being challenged on the obvious fact that, for there to be seniors, there has to be someone training juniors. The level of hypocrisy and greed are beyond words, and the fact that every two-bit podcaster and reporter doesn't call these people out loudly and repeatedly is worse.