5 ms·

> The entitlement was and probably still is crazy. Google pays SWEs around $300k average total comp and gets $1.5 MILLION per employee (SWE or not) per year in

> The entitlement was and probably still is crazy. Google pays SWEs around $300k average total comp and gets $1.5 MILLION per employee (SWE or not) per year in revenue. With a profit margin of over 20%. A single project can increase revenue by $100m/year so not sure if "I made the company $500m over the last five years" is entitlement. Tech companies should be paying more and not less.

bmitc 2y ago
I would suggest rethinking that. Google makes that money because they steal data from their "customers". It isn't due to the "brilliance" of their engineers.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  >Google makes that money because they steal data from their "customers". Google is like a reverse Robin Hood. It steals data from the users. The customers are the ones buying that data.
card_zero 2y ago
Their special skill is being in the place where all the ad money goes.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  Their special skill is ensuring they are the place where all ad money goes by being better at getting eyeballs for that money and being better at targeting ads to those eyeballs. Many many many companies have tried to usurp one or both sides of that without success. You may not like their business model but they are objectively very good at what they do.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Usurping a popular thing is difficult, because you don't have its one important quality that attracts everybody: popularity.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
      The above comment also completely sidesteps the monopolist and regulatory capture factors in difficulty to usurp Google, and thus incorrectly implies that a level playing field exists.
  - luckylion 2y ago
    Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do? Google has great research going on, but their products seem to be mostly coasting along. There's still some growth, but is that more than inertia and network effect? Where the large innovation in their product that keeps them ahead?
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting." > Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do? So your bar for success is having a perceptual monopoly on the whole world? Or just the digital world? You're jumping to mental gymnastic to not acknowledge that Google has consistently grown while being highly profitable. It's a massive success as a company.
      - luckylion 2y ago
        > Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting." Again: inertia and network-effect. > It's a massive success as a company. Undoubtedly. And they appear to be great at not failing. Like any bureaucracy, that works until it doesn't. What new markets have they created or taken over in the past 10 years?
  - pllbnk 2y ago
    The problem is nobody knows if they are really better at targeting ads. They say so, of course, but who could prove it? Google is the main player in the ad industry and when they say that they are the best, everybody hears them. If a small player tried to say so, nobody would be aware of that, even if they were right.
giantg2 2y ago
Or maybe not exploiting society/privacy/attention to make that much.
- salawat 2y ago
  It is hard to get a man to understand that which his salary depends on him not understanding. -Upton Sinclair
lolinder 2y ago
This kind of math betrays a total lack of understanding of the way businesses earn money. With vanishingly few exceptions, no one developer makes the company $500m, and this is trivially testable with a quick thought exercise: Would Google's bottom line drop by ($500m - $devSalary) if that developer were to quit this year? Of course not! In most cases Google's bottom line wouldn't even notice if Google failed to replace them, but if their job was really important and they did have to replace them, they still wouldn't notice that it was someone else and not that one dev. This suggests that the dev isn't actually what's making Google $500m/employee, it's the systems that make up Google that are making Google $500m/employee. Any one employee doesn't actually contribute nearly that much to the functioning of the system, otherwise every company would make $500m per developer. So the only sense in which Google "should" pay more isn't a practical one (clearly they pay enough to fill their roles) or a justice one (they're not stealing $500m in value from each employee if their bottom wouldn't much notice any single employee's absence)—it's some sort of argument about an ethereal sense of fairness that says that by merely participating in a system you're entitled to the average per-person output of that system. Which is definitely an ethic, but it's not one I can get behind.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  I'd answer but it seems you didn't read the first part of what I wrote or even the second part (I never said 500m/year). So not much point.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Okay, you're right, I grabbed the wrong number. Sub in $1.5m/year or $500m/5 years and replace "bottom line this year" with "bottom line over the next 5 years". The exact numbers don't matter, the point is the same: with only a few exceptions, no employee contributes the average per-employee output to the company. If they did, you could pick up your laptop and go to any other company and start earning them $N/year for whatever value of N you prefer.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
andsoitis 2y ago
> But when you act in ways that don’t further your company’s interests, you risk being seen as ineffective or unreliable Your compensation is dominated by the function of supply of and demand for labor, not how much the company makes from your labor.
- djrockstar1 2y ago
  Isn't demand a function of how much the company makes from your labour?
  - 9rx 2y ago
    Labour doesn't make money until the labour is already provided, so how much money labour can produce is an unknown until hindsight is available. An established company with a stable business can make some pretty reasonable forecasts, but when it comes to startups and other new business ventures one is ultimately straight up guessing. Demand being a function of how much investment money is available is going to be closer to reality, although that is not the whole story either.
skybrian 2y ago
Google’s economic model has been like that for decades and it’s paying for my early retirement. Being “exploited” in this way is nice work if you can get it. The companies with narrow profit margins don’t pay nearly so well.
JustExAWS 2y ago
So if they have a 2% profit margin on 1.5 million that’s $300K in profit…
- marcinzm 2y ago
  Your point being? The profit margin is after employee compensation.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Would you invest in something with a 2% profit margin?

bmitc 2y ago

I would suggest rethinking that. Google makes that money because they steal data from their "customers". It isn't due to the "brilliance" of their engineers.

DeathArrow 2y ago
>Google makes that money because they steal data from their "customers". Google is like a reverse Robin Hood. It steals data from the users. The customers are the ones buying that data.

card_zero 2y ago

Their special skill is being in the place where all the ad money goes.

marcinzm 2y ago
Their special skill is ensuring they are the place where all ad money goes by being better at getting eyeballs for that money and being better at targeting ads to those eyeballs. Many many many companies have tried to usurp one or both sides of that without success. You may not like their business model but they are objectively very good at what they do.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Usurping a popular thing is difficult, because you don't have its one important quality that attracts everybody: popularity.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    The above comment also completely sidesteps the monopolist and regulatory capture factors in difficulty to usurp Google, and thus incorrectly implies that a level playing field exists.
- luckylion 2y ago
  Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do? Google has great research going on, but their products seem to be mostly coasting along. There's still some growth, but is that more than inertia and network effect? Where the large innovation in their product that keeps them ahead?
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting." > Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do? So your bar for success is having a perceptual monopoly on the whole world? Or just the digital world? You're jumping to mental gymnastic to not acknowledge that Google has consistently grown while being highly profitable. It's a massive success as a company.
    - luckylion 2y ago
      > Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting." Again: inertia and network-effect. > It's a massive success as a company. Undoubtedly. And they appear to be great at not failing. Like any bureaucracy, that works until it doesn't. What new markets have they created or taken over in the past 10 years?
- pllbnk 2y ago
  The problem is nobody knows if they are really better at targeting ads. They say so, of course, but who could prove it? Google is the main player in the ad industry and when they say that they are the best, everybody hears them. If a small player tried to say so, nobody would be aware of that, even if they were right.

giantg2 2y ago

Or maybe not exploiting society/privacy/attention to make that much.

salawat 2y ago
It is hard to get a man to understand that which his salary depends on him not understanding. -Upton Sinclair

lolinder 2y ago

This kind of math betrays a total lack of understanding of the way businesses earn money. With vanishingly few exceptions, no one developer makes the company $500m, and this is trivially testable with a quick thought exercise: Would Google's bottom line drop by ($500m - $devSalary) if that developer were to quit this year? Of course not! In most cases Google's bottom line wouldn't even notice if Google failed to replace them, but if their job was really important and they did have to replace them, they still wouldn't notice that it was someone else and not that one dev. This suggests that the dev isn't actually what's making Google $500m/employee, it's the systems that make up Google that are making Google $500m/employee. Any one employee doesn't actually contribute nearly that much to the functioning of the system, otherwise every company would make $500m per developer. So the only sense in which Google "should" pay more isn't a practical one (clearly they pay enough to fill their roles) or a justice one (they're not stealing $500m in value from each employee if their bottom wouldn't much notice any single employee's absence)—it's some sort of argument about an ethereal sense of fairness that says that by merely participating in a system you're entitled to the average per-person output of that system. Which is definitely an ethic, but it's not one I can get behind.

marcinzm 2y ago
I'd answer but it seems you didn't read the first part of what I wrote or even the second part (I never said 500m/year). So not much point.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Okay, you're right, I grabbed the wrong number. Sub in $1.5m/year or $500m/5 years and replace "bottom line this year" with "bottom line over the next 5 years". The exact numbers don't matter, the point is the same: with only a few exceptions, no employee contributes the average per-employee output to the company. If they did, you could pick up your laptop and go to any other company and start earning them $N/year for whatever value of N you prefer.
  - marcinzm 2y ago

andsoitis 2y ago

> But when you act in ways that don’t further your company’s interests, you risk being seen as ineffective or unreliable Your compensation is dominated by the function of supply of and demand for labor, not how much the company makes from your labor.

djrockstar1 2y ago
Isn't demand a function of how much the company makes from your labour?
- 9rx 2y ago
  Labour doesn't make money until the labour is already provided, so how much money labour can produce is an unknown until hindsight is available. An established company with a stable business can make some pretty reasonable forecasts, but when it comes to startups and other new business ventures one is ultimately straight up guessing. Demand being a function of how much investment money is available is going to be closer to reality, although that is not the whole story either.

skybrian 2y ago

Google’s economic model has been like that for decades and it’s paying for my early retirement. Being “exploited” in this way is nice work if you can get it. The companies with narrow profit margins don’t pay nearly so well.

JustExAWS 2y ago

So if they have a 2% profit margin on 1.5 million that’s $300K in profit…

marcinzm 2y ago
Your point being? The profit margin is after employee compensation.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Would you invest in something with a 2% profit margin?