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Well, if you have a Google L5 making ~365k [1] then it would need to make them ~2.2% more productive overall to be worth it when just considering direct pay. If

by Veserv 1y ago

Well, if you have a Google L5 making ~365k [1] then it would need to make them ~2.2% more productive overall to be worth it when just considering direct pay. If we consider a Google L3 at ~187k then it would need to make them ~4.2% more productive overall. This, of course, ignores employee benefits and overhead which usually amount to ~100% extra costs over direct pay. So that is now ~1.1% and ~2.1%, respectively. And that ignores the fact that you need to pay people less than they produce to be profitable which probably drops us down to ~0.5% and ~1.0%, respectively. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-engineer?country=254 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... edit: Incorrectly linked to product designer instead of software engineer levels.

dima55 1y ago
OK... Most of us don't know what a "google l5" is, so I guess we can safely ignore this. Heh.
esafak 1y ago
No-one is going to spend $8K out of pocket to A/B test this on themselves. Of all the things you could be doing to improve your productivity, this is some high hanging fruit.
- Veserv 1y ago
  If you have a US employer who is unwilling to spend 8 k$ on software engineering productivity then they are pennywise, pound foolish. It literally costs 10x that for a single junior engineer. And, as I pointed out, the net productivity improvement you need to see to justify that expense is miniscule. If your employer really is skeptical, then they can run a A/B test over a small group of engineers to prove out changes in productivity. But not even being willing to run that test when it is so cheap is just management incompetence. Engineers are ridiculously expensive. In electrical engineering, where the engineers are generally less well-paid than in software, employers routinely spend multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars per engineer per year in tooling. Not being willing to spend 8 k$ on a test of well known technology and attempting to identify mere single digit percentage improvements is just stupid.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ranger_danger 1y ago
    Not everyone is Google. Some people work for themselves, or have very small teams, or live in a developing country, and don't have lots of spare cash laying around. Please try to understand that the world is not as simple and black and white as you'd like.
    - more-nitor 1y ago
      this if someone's bringing "google payscale" for comparison... well that's not some average joe... why not just bring Bill Gates and say "everything -- including private jet -- is dirt cheap" ? $8k per year simply doesn't make sense for 95% of the programmers. For a lot of developing countries, that's more than a well-paying programmer's annual salary...
      - Veserv 1y ago
        I presented a conditional calculation using numbers contextually-relevant to a forum run by a company that funds US tech startups. IF you are such a company, THEN you only need very minor productivity improvements to justify such a price difference. IF you are such a company, THEN such costs are well within the cost of doing business. IF you are NOT then you are free to apply your own numbers to your situation. However, the overwhelming majority of companies that fall into the applicable category outright refuse to even consider the possibility of a 8 k$ capital expense on software development tooling out of the absolutely foolish belief that such expenditure CAN NOT be justified as such a cost could not possibly be recouped in benefits or out of the absolutely foolish belief that a product that costs 100$ must be 100x better than a product that costs 1$ to be justified, and thus a product that costs money must be infinitely better than a product that is free to be justified. It is absolutely management incompetence for US employers to just shut down upon hearing about a 8 k$ capital expenditure instead of doing a proper cost-benefit analysis to determine if such expenditures would be justified.
eviks 1y ago
The major fail of such "just a 1% / cup of coffee" is that there is an infinite number of things you could pay for with the same potential productivity promise without any hard data on whether those are true, so just the fact the you can use a calculator and divide to get to a low % doesn't help you much if at all

by Veserv 1y ago

dima55 1y ago

OK... Most of us don't know what a "google l5" is, so I guess we can safely ignore this. Heh.

esafak 1y ago

No-one is going to spend $8K out of pocket to A/B test this on themselves. Of all the things you could be doing to improve your productivity, this is some high hanging fruit.

Veserv 1y ago
If you have a US employer who is unwilling to spend 8 k$ on software engineering productivity then they are pennywise, pound foolish. It literally costs 10x that for a single junior engineer. And, as I pointed out, the net productivity improvement you need to see to justify that expense is miniscule. If your employer really is skeptical, then they can run a A/B test over a small group of engineers to prove out changes in productivity. But not even being willing to run that test when it is so cheap is just management incompetence. Engineers are ridiculously expensive. In electrical engineering, where the engineers are generally less well-paid than in software, employers routinely spend multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars per engineer per year in tooling. Not being willing to spend 8 k$ on a test of well known technology and attempting to identify mere single digit percentage improvements is just stupid.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ranger_danger 1y ago
  Not everyone is Google. Some people work for themselves, or have very small teams, or live in a developing country, and don't have lots of spare cash laying around. Please try to understand that the world is not as simple and black and white as you'd like.
  - more-nitor 1y ago
    this if someone's bringing "google payscale" for comparison... well that's not some average joe... why not just bring Bill Gates and say "everything -- including private jet -- is dirt cheap" ? $8k per year simply doesn't make sense for 95% of the programmers. For a lot of developing countries, that's more than a well-paying programmer's annual salary...
    - Veserv 1y ago
      I presented a conditional calculation using numbers contextually-relevant to a forum run by a company that funds US tech startups. IF you are such a company, THEN you only need very minor productivity improvements to justify such a price difference. IF you are such a company, THEN such costs are well within the cost of doing business. IF you are NOT then you are free to apply your own numbers to your situation. However, the overwhelming majority of companies that fall into the applicable category outright refuse to even consider the possibility of a 8 k$ capital expense on software development tooling out of the absolutely foolish belief that such expenditure CAN NOT be justified as such a cost could not possibly be recouped in benefits or out of the absolutely foolish belief that a product that costs 100$ must be 100x better than a product that costs 1$ to be justified, and thus a product that costs money must be infinitely better than a product that is free to be justified. It is absolutely management incompetence for US employers to just shut down upon hearing about a 8 k$ capital expenditure instead of doing a proper cost-benefit analysis to determine if such expenditures would be justified.

eviks 1y ago

The major fail of such "just a 1% / cup of coffee" is that there is an infinite number of things you could pay for with the same potential productivity promise without any hard data on whether those are true, so just the fact the you can use a calculator and divide to get to a low % doesn't help you much if at all