5 ms·
I generally like the article but the author seems to have a really inflated view of what jobs are paying. At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech comp
by lovich 2y ago
I generally like the article but the author seems to have a really inflated view of what jobs are paying. At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k.
Even assuming that’s including taxes so divide by two, and constraining to just software employees for that claim. There is no way the average pay is nearly a million a year. The average software engineer in the US is making around 135-150k a year and that average is including all the faang engineers with the top end salary
- mlhpdx 2y agoI noticed the same hyperbole. I've never made extremely high or low wages; been within one standard deviation from the role mean for decades.
- xivzgrev 2y agoYah I had no idea where that came from. Assume 250 working day in a year that’s…$1.25 - $2.5 million per year. At a tractor manufacturer. It was probably a typo, with extra zero. they probably meant $500-$1000 per day. That would be $125k-$250k which seems much more reasonable
- bradford 2y agoIt's not a typo. The author alludes to these inflated salaries several times. Examples: "while other people who just picked a better company to work at 20 years ago and never left have been growing their wealth by a couple million dollars per year every year for almost their entire career" "What is it like to join a company where all the co-workers your same age have made $10+ million over the past 4 years while you are joining with nothing?" You'd have to be very high in the org chart at a FAANG style company to make that kind of income.
- madamelic 2y agoI can't tell if the author is being funny / hyperbolic or has never looked at levels.fyi. Google pays basically the same salary as a series A startup would (ie: $150 - $180k / yr). Yes, you'll get your salary again in stock but you aren't necessarily getting left behind by choosing to punch lottery tickets because you enjoy it. People need to, and I need to say this to myself too, smell the roses occasionally. You are paid an absurdly comfortable salary to basically solve puzzles all day. The meetings and people can suck occasionally but I can't imagine a much better life if I have to work for a living.
- rescripting 2y agoThe only thing I can think of is the author is calculating these numbers as if employees never sell the stock they are granted until retirement. If you work for 10-15 years at a tech giant, bank your $150k in RSUs per year and then sell them all at retirement then maybe the numbers add up, if you're extraordinarily lucky.
- forrestthewoods 2y ago> Google pays basically the same salary as a series A startup would (ie: $150 - $180k / yr) Entry level. But with ~5 years experience and two promos you’ll be pushing $400k. If you joined Google 5 years ago then you had at least one annual stock grant double in value. If you work at FANG for 10 years you should be able to hit retirement money. If nothing else you’ll have invested 600k into your 401k which should be enough for CoastFire. IE it’s all the money you’ll need at retirement age.
- madamelic 2y agoI've always heard the L5 ($210k on levels.fyi) is generally the highest the vast majority of people will ever get. Is that incorrect? I know I've just heard that promo boards are really difficult to get to Senior and anything above that basically requires a miracle / someone far above gunning you. EDIT: See above. I already addressed the fact TC is much higher. I am only talking about cash comp. > Yes, you'll get your salary again in stock but you aren't necessarily getting left behind by choosing to punch lottery tickets because you enjoy it.
- benterix 2y agoThat's the main point that make the article harder to read. Some of it is obvious hyperbole but some is just too much.
- chinchilla2020 2y agoTop reps at Caterpillar, Komatsu, and John Deere actually do make that much. I used to work in that industry. Most people here are in tech and have no idea how heavily incentivized industrial sales is. Selling a fleet of D10 dozers to an excavation operation and selling a maintenance agreement is going to net caterpillar $1.7mm a dozer multiplied by number of dozers. They aren't paying someone 60k a year and free kombucha for managing those sorts of accounts. These are the TOP folks though. I don't think most entry level college grads are going to making that any time size.
- newrotik 2y agoI believed the author of the blog was referring to tech roles specifically (not sales or similar). I can say from personal experience that, at least in Australia, tech workers for mining companies that work in city offices are paid fairly similarly to other non-FAANG tech workers (e.g. banks etc). I also just checked levels.fyi for a few big mining companies and verified that this is the case. Engineers (mining, geo, tech, whatever) that work out in the field do make quite a bit more. MAYBE around what FAANG would pay, but FAANG still pays more after a few years of refreshers and/if one manages to climb the ladder. I think the author is quite off with their estimates of what people make in "heavy industries". At least as far as my experience goes for AU. FAANG/HFT still beats everything, and by a vast margin.
- beachtaxidriver 2y agoI was also surprised. I think he's off almost exactly a factor of 10.
- morgante 2y agoIt's absurd. He has no concept of market rates (and frankly I'm unsurprised that he's not getting hired if his expectations are this out of whack). His resume even confirms this[0], because he seemingly thinks the appropriate level at FAANG would be L10 which is extremely rare. There is a 0% chance that his experience would level him that high. The entire article can be chocked up to a massively inflated sense of entitlement. [0] https://matt.sh/files/a-resume/resume.html https://matt.sh/files/a-resume/resume.html
- Arthur_ODC 2y agoHe took 2012-2013, and 2016-2021 off work to travel? That large of a gap doesn't look great on a resume. He basically worked half or less of the 2010s? Ridiculous.
- trogdor 2y agoOh. My. God. His resume starts with a quote of himself stating that he has “seen things you people wouldn't believe.” It goes on to highlight that he purchased a domain name in 1997. He claims to have developed “the highest performing in-memory database in the world” but complains that “nobody really wants to buy it when free worse performing choies [sic] exist.” The part about nobody wanting to buy his product is in his resume. His current status is “Waiting for AI apocalypse.” This is either mega-cringe, or the best satire I’ve read in a while. Unfortunately, I think it’s the former.
- codr7 2y agoAny reasonably observant individual could claim the same at this point. The rest sounds like high flying BS to my ears, isolating yourself has consequences.
- saganus 2y agoI don't think it's satire. The "Experience" section looks like a big complain about the world not recognizing his genius. I really don't think a lot people would call him for an interview just by looking at this resume.
- 2y ago
- angry_moose 2y agoI think they're using some kind of "daily equivalent average pay, factoring in exponential growth of the stock divided by actual days worked over a career" - > Under the modern tech landscape, stable “hyperscale ultra-growth” companies are paying experienced employees the equivalent of $10,000 to $50,000 per day if we include the value of their exponentially growing yearly stock grants. Assuming a $250k salary, that's only about $1000/day. But if you're able to bank $50,000,000 in stock grants over a 40 years career (invest early and often in a high-growth company), that averages out to $5,000 per day. Kinda dodgy math, should been better clarified, and that's still somewhat ambitious; but I think that's the idea behind it based on a couple allusions throughout the article.
- morgante 2y agoNot even that makes sense because a "tractor company or heavy manufacturing company just churning out results for years" (that supposedly pays $10k/day) doesn't have exponential stock growth. The entire article is just the whimsical fantasies of someone with no understanding of market reality.
- randomdata 2y agoAt least on the surface, John Deere's stock growth looks every bit as much, if not more, exponential as FAANG.
- LordDragonfang 2y ago>At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k For anyone that came to the comments before the article, it claims that number is per day
- cellis 2y agoHe claims further down that some make 50k per day. I've met a lot of cashed out founders. I've even met someone who could be called a billionaire. None of them were pure software engineers that made "50k per day" at any point in their career. If you amortize what becomes a 50m grant over 4 years it's about 35k per day, but how many software engineers have done that?
- rkozik1989 2y agoAverage salary? Salaries are determined by the size of the company, how much value software engineers add, supply of software engineers, and the location of the office.
- titanomachy 2y agoI was thrown by this too, but I think the author is in his 40s and making comparisons to the VP-level comp that some of his peers are making after spending 20 years climbing the ranks at a single company. He talks about making millions per year, so it’s not a typo.
- vitaflo 2y agoYeah I had to stop reading when I got to that part. I get making a mistake and adding a zero accidentally but all of the daily compensation values were so far off from anything approaching reality I wasn't going to bother reading whatever other analysis he had for fear it would also be wildly inflated.
- vidanay 2y agoI honestly picked up a calculator and converted my annual salary to daily (based on 45 weeks per year) just to verify the absurdity of what I just read.
- debbiedowner 2y agoOn the author's resume is a link to a L10 salary at google under "available for employment" and a distinguished engineer at Amazon. So author is in the top 0.01% (or even higher really) of salary expectations for the SWE ladder as I understand.
- SamvitJ 2y agoI'm not sure where you're seeing that in his resume: https://matt.sh/files/a-resume/resume.html https://matt.sh/files/a-resume/resume.html
- debbiedowner 2y agoClick on "available" and "employment" in "Waiting for AI Apocalypse / Available for Employment"
- infecto 2y agoThe whole post is hyperbole with not much to add beyond interest rates go up and VC money goes down. Even including benefits, those numbers are wildly overinflated, certainly there are some individuals that make that number but I was always told that it was the unicorn OG engineers at google that were making $1mm+ total annual comp.
- johnnyanmac 2y agowell if you're a technical person in the current economy it It's decent enough resource that packs all the issues (except S178) into one convinient package to point to next time someone asks "why does the market suck". You can argue the hyperbole takes away, but it adds some engagement (the nightmare stories are probably not even that far from the truth, given my experiences). If nothing else I was intrigued (but maybe am not 100% onboard) with the "hire the safe middle" process for modern interviewing. "Overqualified" is mostly a weasel term, but I can see it coming up from interviewers who truly do not understand top talent (note: I am very much not top talent).
- nvarsj 2y agoI think he was just using hyperbole for effect. Also to annoy people probably.
- tarruda 2y ago> Also to annoy people probably. Given how many comments this thread has, I suspect he achieved his goal
- randomdata 2y ago> At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k. Seems a bit strange to call the tractor manufacturers non-tech companies. The modern tractor you can see is essentially just a case around what is a rather advanced computer. Hell, the Right to Repair topic that has garnered attention in semi-recent times centres specifically around tractors having become computers. What is tech if not that? Sure, the typical worker – even when constraining to software engineers – isn't making anywhere near that much (nor are they at any company, not even FAANG), but it is likely that certain key players are.