6 ms·

> almost no individual at Google has the fire or drive in them to play to win Yes, that's why you go to large megacorps. I wouldn't go to Oracle, IBM, Google,

> almost no individual at Google has the fire or drive in them to play to win Yes, that's why you go to large megacorps. I wouldn't go to Oracle, IBM, Google, Facebook, MS, etc. etc. if I had a "huge fire or a drive to win". Honestly, I go there because I wanna work 5 hours a day (less if possible) and have a stable career. If I want to work 9-12h a day, give me an upside. None of these huge megacorps will reward that. If I'm the lead of a Goog project that becomes a hit, do I get $10M bonus? Of course not. I get a pat on the back and something to put in my packet for the next promotion interview. So you're absolutely right, but the problem is not in people. It's in the way the system's designed.

fooker 2y ago
> do I get $10M bonus? Seems like you might want to consider the finance industry. If you make something important 5% faster, you bet you are getting a few years worth of salary as bonus.
- roncesvalles 2y ago
  The incentives in finance are remarkably well-tuned to rewarding employee effort. Make the company 300k? You get 30k. Make the company 300 million? You get 30 million.
  - c0mbonat0r 2y ago
    how do swe get into finance?
    - nmfisher 2y ago
      I see quite a few SWE jobs here in Singapore in finance, mostly realtime C++ order management. If the advertised salaries are real, they're very well-paid (300-700k USD, plus bonus).
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      First step, understand what Finance means in the scope of technology work.
      - c0mbonat0r 2y ago
        i dont have a clue
    - fooker 2y ago
      The path of least resistance is to become a well known C++ or systems guru. This can be done by contributing substantially to the language standard, a compiler, etc etc. Or you could learn COBOL!
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    That seems so easy to game. Do some small change that brings short term gain, bag the profit and let the rebound be the failure of another team.
    - arethuza 2y ago
      Doesn't that pretty much describe the 2007-2008 financial crisis?
      - 1over137 2y ago
        And every such crisis before it, and the next one too.
      - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
        The crisis was 07/08, but the buildup was almost a decade in the making, does that count as short term?
    - sbarre 2y ago
      Maybe the profit share is earned out over time? Otherwise I would agree with you..
    - blibble 2y ago
      the law in the UK is that material risk takers bonus pay over a certain amount (couple of hundred thousand) is deferred over 3-5 years and can be clawed back
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      If you think it's easy to game 30M in short term revenue, please try to do that in a large firm. The risk/compliance teams would be interested in your strategy.
      - meiraleal 2y ago
        I'm a socialist/anarchist, they would never give me that opportunity :)
- RyanHamilton 2y ago
  I think you would have to target the scope even smalller to particular areas of finance probably quant or trading within a hedge fund. The majority of jobs at a large bank are mostly fixed salary with limited bonus. There are many jobs that are essential but don't capture a percentage of the value they generate. For example processing transactions is essential for a bank but typically doesn't pay large bonuses in that area.
  - skyyler 2y ago
    >There are many jobs that are essential but don't capture a percentage of the value they generate. Isn't that strange?
    - RyanHamilton 2y ago
      Unfortunately not. Nurses, doctors, bin men, car mechanics, plumbers can all be essential at times but rarely pay large bonuses.
      - fooker 2y ago
        It's the scale. One important blue collar worker can help a limited number of people at a time, usually one. One line of code can affect what billions of people are doing.
  - fooker 2y ago
    Large banks can pay very well for the right software role, but there's so much more nepotism than big tech that it's pretty much impossible to land these unless you have a godfather in the industry AND you are a recognized prodigy.
kamaal 2y ago
>>but the problem is not in people. It's in the way the system's designed. System was designed by the people, more specifically people with ability to make decisions a.k.a management There might not have been one person making all the wrong decisions. But more like lots of small wrong decisions, but it doesn't reduce the fact that it is management that is always responsible for the state of affairs.
bradlys 2y ago
> Yes, that's why you go to large megacorps. I wouldn't go to Oracle, IBM, Google, Facebook, MS, etc. etc. if I had a "huge fire or a drive to win". Honestly, I go there because I wanna work 5 hours a day (less if possible) and have a stable career. I agree that many want the stable and low hours career but how many people at these big companies are getting that? I mostly see it as a FOB farm and trying to overwork the overwhelming majority of workers at these companies. For all the stories of people working five hours a day and making $400k/yr - I hear many more working 60 hour weeks. > If I want to work 9-12h a day, give me an upside. None of these huge megacorps will reward that. I don’t really see startups rewarding that much either. Maybe it’s more rewarding if you’re a founder. I’m speaking as someone who has been an early engineer at startups and gone public with them. I still don’t see them as that rewarding unless you’re a founder. Also, incentives aren’t the same. You might make a great thing but unless you’re near the top - you’re probably not going to get properly rewarded regardless of how good your ideas and whatnot are. People at the top will steal credit because that’s what they do. (“Look at how good I am at hiring/managing/inspiring/etc.”)
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > For all the stories of people working five hours a day and making $400k/yr - I hear many more working 60 hour weeks. This is absolutely right. For every senior person in a glamorous role at a FAANG making $400k/yr, there are probably five less senior, less glamorous people making $150k/yr, grinding away trying to justify a promotion to the next level. The people posting to HN that their brother's girlfriend's nephew's roommate makes $400k think that's every FAANG developer.
  - bradlys 2y ago
    To be more balanced on this, I don't think that many are making <=$150k/yr if they're in NYC/Seattle/SF and are in engineering. I think many are making $300-400k/yr but have a high workload. Levels gives a clear direction that if you work at big tech as an engineer, you'll usually make decent to good income. Whether it's worth the WLB/PIPing/misery is what you have to figure out. There's a reason a ton of the people at FAANG are all on H1B. It's not a lack of domestic talent - it's a lack of Americans willing to be worked that hard and go through insane hoops to get said jobs. (justifiably so btw) I think a large reason why most of the crowd at FAANG is way more autistic than average is because autists can put up with such insane working conditions/hoops. Either cause they enjoy it or because they just have something about them that allows them to ignore it. I'm not even going to get in on how so many people in SV are also on various stimulants.
runeblaze 2y ago
This is oversimplifying too much IMO. Obviously the potential reward working at startups is much higher than megacorps, and you can very safely say that people working at startups have a higher risk appetite. However, plenty of people work 9h-12h a day (say, at Meta) in wish to get promoted at rocket-speed and play to "win" the higher TC at megacorps, and it happens often enough that very-driven people do join megacorps.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
They are two sides of the same coin, aka culture. System incentives,management,and staff hiring all form a feedback loop which sets culture and performance.
tgma 2y ago
If you're lumping together all the big corporations you're missing my point. Sure size is a parameter but not precisely what I meant to communicate, which is more true about Google than Tesla for example.
whatshisface 2y ago
A lot of people at a megacorp play to win, they've just realized that the company's value is so much higher than the value they could add to it, that for them, winning means capturing part of the company's value for themselves. In a sense the company becomes the market and their friends become the company.

fooker 2y ago

> do I get $10M bonus? Seems like you might want to consider the finance industry. If you make something important 5% faster, you bet you are getting a few years worth of salary as bonus.

roncesvalles 2y ago
The incentives in finance are remarkably well-tuned to rewarding employee effort. Make the company 300k? You get 30k. Make the company 300 million? You get 30 million.
- c0mbonat0r 2y ago
  how do swe get into finance?
  - nmfisher 2y ago
    I see quite a few SWE jobs here in Singapore in finance, mostly realtime C++ order management. If the advertised salaries are real, they're very well-paid (300-700k USD, plus bonus).
  - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    First step, understand what Finance means in the scope of technology work.
    - c0mbonat0r 2y ago
      i dont have a clue
  - fooker 2y ago
    The path of least resistance is to become a well known C++ or systems guru. This can be done by contributing substantially to the language standard, a compiler, etc etc. Or you could learn COBOL!
- meiraleal 2y ago
  That seems so easy to game. Do some small change that brings short term gain, bag the profit and let the rebound be the failure of another team.
  - arethuza 2y ago
    Doesn't that pretty much describe the 2007-2008 financial crisis?
    - 1over137 2y ago
      And every such crisis before it, and the next one too.
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      The crisis was 07/08, but the buildup was almost a decade in the making, does that count as short term?
  - sbarre 2y ago
    Maybe the profit share is earned out over time? Otherwise I would agree with you..
  - blibble 2y ago
    the law in the UK is that material risk takers bonus pay over a certain amount (couple of hundred thousand) is deferred over 3-5 years and can be clawed back
  - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    If you think it's easy to game 30M in short term revenue, please try to do that in a large firm. The risk/compliance teams would be interested in your strategy.
    - meiraleal 2y ago
      I'm a socialist/anarchist, they would never give me that opportunity :)
RyanHamilton 2y ago
I think you would have to target the scope even smalller to particular areas of finance probably quant or trading within a hedge fund. The majority of jobs at a large bank are mostly fixed salary with limited bonus. There are many jobs that are essential but don't capture a percentage of the value they generate. For example processing transactions is essential for a bank but typically doesn't pay large bonuses in that area.
- skyyler 2y ago
  >There are many jobs that are essential but don't capture a percentage of the value they generate. Isn't that strange?
  - RyanHamilton 2y ago
    Unfortunately not. Nurses, doctors, bin men, car mechanics, plumbers can all be essential at times but rarely pay large bonuses.
    - fooker 2y ago
      It's the scale. One important blue collar worker can help a limited number of people at a time, usually one. One line of code can affect what billions of people are doing.
- fooker 2y ago
  Large banks can pay very well for the right software role, but there's so much more nepotism than big tech that it's pretty much impossible to land these unless you have a godfather in the industry AND you are a recognized prodigy.

kamaal 2y ago

>>but the problem is not in people. It's in the way the system's designed. System was designed by the people, more specifically people with ability to make decisions a.k.a management There might not have been one person making all the wrong decisions. But more like lots of small wrong decisions, but it doesn't reduce the fact that it is management that is always responsible for the state of affairs.

bradlys 2y ago

> Yes, that's why you go to large megacorps. I wouldn't go to Oracle, IBM, Google, Facebook, MS, etc. etc. if I had a "huge fire or a drive to win". Honestly, I go there because I wanna work 5 hours a day (less if possible) and have a stable career. I agree that many want the stable and low hours career but how many people at these big companies are getting that? I mostly see it as a FOB farm and trying to overwork the overwhelming majority of workers at these companies. For all the stories of people working five hours a day and making $400k/yr - I hear many more working 60 hour weeks. > If I want to work 9-12h a day, give me an upside. None of these huge megacorps will reward that. I don’t really see startups rewarding that much either. Maybe it’s more rewarding if you’re a founder. I’m speaking as someone who has been an early engineer at startups and gone public with them. I still don’t see them as that rewarding unless you’re a founder. Also, incentives aren’t the same. You might make a great thing but unless you’re near the top - you’re probably not going to get properly rewarded regardless of how good your ideas and whatnot are. People at the top will steal credit because that’s what they do. (“Look at how good I am at hiring/managing/inspiring/etc.”)

ryandrake 2y ago
> For all the stories of people working five hours a day and making $400k/yr - I hear many more working 60 hour weeks. This is absolutely right. For every senior person in a glamorous role at a FAANG making $400k/yr, there are probably five less senior, less glamorous people making $150k/yr, grinding away trying to justify a promotion to the next level. The people posting to HN that their brother's girlfriend's nephew's roommate makes $400k think that's every FAANG developer.
- bradlys 2y ago
  To be more balanced on this, I don't think that many are making <=$150k/yr if they're in NYC/Seattle/SF and are in engineering. I think many are making $300-400k/yr but have a high workload. Levels gives a clear direction that if you work at big tech as an engineer, you'll usually make decent to good income. Whether it's worth the WLB/PIPing/misery is what you have to figure out. There's a reason a ton of the people at FAANG are all on H1B. It's not a lack of domestic talent - it's a lack of Americans willing to be worked that hard and go through insane hoops to get said jobs. (justifiably so btw) I think a large reason why most of the crowd at FAANG is way more autistic than average is because autists can put up with such insane working conditions/hoops. Either cause they enjoy it or because they just have something about them that allows them to ignore it. I'm not even going to get in on how so many people in SV are also on various stimulants.

runeblaze 2y ago

This is oversimplifying too much IMO. Obviously the potential reward working at startups is much higher than megacorps, and you can very safely say that people working at startups have a higher risk appetite. However, plenty of people work 9h-12h a day (say, at Meta) in wish to get promoted at rocket-speed and play to "win" the higher TC at megacorps, and it happens often enough that very-driven people do join megacorps.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

They are two sides of the same coin, aka culture. System incentives,management,and staff hiring all form a feedback loop which sets culture and performance.

tgma 2y ago

If you're lumping together all the big corporations you're missing my point. Sure size is a parameter but not precisely what I meant to communicate, which is more true about Google than Tesla for example.

whatshisface 2y ago

A lot of people at a megacorp play to win, they've just realized that the company's value is so much higher than the value they could add to it, that for them, winning means capturing part of the company's value for themselves. In a sense the company becomes the market and their friends become the company.