4 ms·

> It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense.

> It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense. It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer. Yet many over here are getting paid double that. Salaries are rarely based on value created. They are based on what others pay.

wkat4242 1y ago
I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. I was offered a job at a big tech but I'd have had to move to the US to their campus because they hate remote work. And they offered only 120k (they probably figured that sounded like a ton of money to a European). But I started looking at the cost of living there and it was insane. I'd have had to share a flat and it would have to be far away, not a few km from the office like I'm used to. No way. Of course then Trump started happening and I was so glad I didn't move there. I'm kinda LGBTQ too so I'd be royally screwed if I'd been there now
- dmoy 1y ago
  > I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. Depends on the specific job, company (big tech vs not), and city. Seattle, NYC and a handful of others may pay on par with bay area. For a senior at random faang or equivalent, that might mean $300k-$500k / yr. More for some NYC positions in the finance industry.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Wow that's almost 10 times as much as me :) Still wouldn't live there though, especially now.
- eloisant 1y ago
  That's the other way around - life in SV is expensive because of all those high salary workers.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I would say it's both. A high market rate for labor pushes CoL up (because people have lots of money to spend), but a high CoL also pushes the market rate for labor up (because you can't get anyone to work for you if you don't pay them enough to make ends meet). Trying to decide which one is the root cause is a classic chicken-and-egg problem.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  It doesn't matter what the cost of living is in SV. Their employee in a low cost if living area is as productive.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Yeah that's why I was so surprised they were adamant the job was on-site there. It was an IT job. Easily remotable or done from an office in any place in the world.
- imtringued 1y ago
  The CEOs and managers don't understand that for every square meter of office space you need like a dozen square meters of residential space. It's very easy to have excessive amounts of office space that make you think you can hire more people, but in reality you have already exhausted your local recruiting pool.
hajile 1y ago
If salaries were based on value added, a lot of software dev salaries would be orders of magnitude higher.
- pcai 1y ago
  Hmm if this is true why is it so rare that software devs quit their jobs and make more money freelancing or starting their own companies?
  - Diti 1y ago
    We all cannot afford job instability, with mortgages to pay.
    - hughesjj 1y ago
      Also a lot of value add comes from corporations which produce things of complexity greater than the sum of their constituent parts. If you already have a platform in use by the entire world, that matter of scale makes it much easier to find value adds more than a sole proprietor could ever dream of. It's for these reasons I'm wary of talking about "value add" only being from the developers directly implementing a feature. Without support, IT, security, Product, HR, etc, I could not deliver that value add.
    - pcai 1y ago
      I 100% agree! It's almost like income stability is valuable!
  - jen20 1y ago
    It’s uncommon in the US because freelancing means having to source your own - usually both expensive and crappy - healthcare. It used to be incredibly common in the UK - half the decent devs in London were contractors making 2-3x what permanent employees made. It’s now uncommon because the government nerfed it with IR35 rules.
    - elcritch 1y ago
urda 1y ago
> It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer. I, and many good or great SWE's, wouldn't even begin to entertain such a low offer. Your numbers are a little off.
- bboygravity 1y ago
  All engineers in Europe (except maybe Switzerland) would kill for 150k a year. ESPECIALLY remote.
  - atq2119 1y ago
    From personal experience, it's definitely possible to earn more than 2x that in total compensation before taxes as an individual contributor in Europe. Maybe not all of Eastern Europe, but I can't really speak to that.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      Possible probably, but not at all common.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    A lot of engineers in the US would consider 150k a year to be a good salary too. Calling 150k "low" is indicative that the person saying that lives in a bubble and has not bothered to look outside it. Lots of software engineers are employed in the US outside of Silicon Valley or NYC.
- jrflowers 1y ago
  Thousands of software engineers have been laid off in the past few years and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I expect that there will, at some point, be quite a large number that would entertain a hundred and fifty thousand dollars versus no job.
  - Jach 1y ago
    It can be tricky to narrow down definitions but there are at least a million and probably less than 5 million software developers in the US. The last few years have seen ~100k students graduate with CS degrees each year. Thousands of layoffs over the timespan of years isn't going to impact it all that much. If you played your cards right you could get a $100k+ starting salary at a BigCo (not necessarily a FAANG) 10 years ago, I only expect that to have expanded, and anyone with a handful of years of experience is going to be above that and should consider shopping around for >$150k if they aren't there already.
palata 1y ago
> They are based on what others pay. That's the excuse given to make you accept those higher salaries. The truth is that there are not infinitely many positions for a CEO. There are certainly more people who can be competent CEOs than CEO positions. If you give an indecent salary to your CEO, you will get a CEO who looks for a crazy salary. That doesn't mean it's the most competent CEO you could get. Try offering a decent salary and you'll see that people still apply. You may not get the typical narcissistic profile, but it's probably not a loss.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  I feel the role of a CEO and CTO is to suck souls and make sure everyone is under constant surveillance. If people work less as a result they don't really care.
  - palata 1y ago
    In my experience, a CEO pretty much sets the company culture. And it feels really weird to choose someone who's here for money/title to set your culture. But of course, the CEO is not chosen by the employees, but rather by other people who are also here for the money/title :-). In a startup, the CEO also convinces VCs to invest. And again it's interesting: VCs have no clue about the technology, so you would think they try to invest for CEOs who set a good company culture. But instead they get convinced by the CEOs who bullshit them the best. Which makes sense: not only VCs don't have a clue about the technology, but somehow they think they actually do understand. I have heard a few discussions between CEO and VCs in startups (talking about the technology I was actually working on), and it was hilarious. > If people work less as a result they don't really care. They just don't know. Even if they genuinely try to ask feedback from the employees, it's biased. Employees generally don't give honest feedback because it's a risk for them (especially if the company culture is bad, which is where the feedbacks would matter the most).

wkat4242 1y ago

I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. I was offered a job at a big tech but I'd have had to move to the US to their campus because they hate remote work. And they offered only 120k (they probably figured that sounded like a ton of money to a European). But I started looking at the cost of living there and it was insane. I'd have had to share a flat and it would have to be far away, not a few km from the office like I'm used to. No way. Of course then Trump started happening and I was so glad I didn't move there. I'm kinda LGBTQ too so I'd be royally screwed if I'd been there now

dmoy 1y ago
> I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. Depends on the specific job, company (big tech vs not), and city. Seattle, NYC and a handful of others may pay on par with bay area. For a senior at random faang or equivalent, that might mean $300k-$500k / yr. More for some NYC positions in the finance industry.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Wow that's almost 10 times as much as me :) Still wouldn't live there though, especially now.
eloisant 1y ago
That's the other way around - life in SV is expensive because of all those high salary workers.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I would say it's both. A high market rate for labor pushes CoL up (because people have lots of money to spend), but a high CoL also pushes the market rate for labor up (because you can't get anyone to work for you if you don't pay them enough to make ends meet). Trying to decide which one is the root cause is a classic chicken-and-egg problem.
BeetleB 1y ago
It doesn't matter what the cost of living is in SV. Their employee in a low cost if living area is as productive.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Yeah that's why I was so surprised they were adamant the job was on-site there. It was an IT job. Easily remotable or done from an office in any place in the world.
imtringued 1y ago
The CEOs and managers don't understand that for every square meter of office space you need like a dozen square meters of residential space. It's very easy to have excessive amounts of office space that make you think you can hire more people, but in reality you have already exhausted your local recruiting pool.

hajile 1y ago

If salaries were based on value added, a lot of software dev salaries would be orders of magnitude higher.

pcai 1y ago
Hmm if this is true why is it so rare that software devs quit their jobs and make more money freelancing or starting their own companies?
- Diti 1y ago
  We all cannot afford job instability, with mortgages to pay.
  - hughesjj 1y ago
    Also a lot of value add comes from corporations which produce things of complexity greater than the sum of their constituent parts. If you already have a platform in use by the entire world, that matter of scale makes it much easier to find value adds more than a sole proprietor could ever dream of. It's for these reasons I'm wary of talking about "value add" only being from the developers directly implementing a feature. Without support, IT, security, Product, HR, etc, I could not deliver that value add.
  - pcai 1y ago
    I 100% agree! It's almost like income stability is valuable!
- jen20 1y ago
  It’s uncommon in the US because freelancing means having to source your own - usually both expensive and crappy - healthcare. It used to be incredibly common in the UK - half the decent devs in London were contractors making 2-3x what permanent employees made. It’s now uncommon because the government nerfed it with IR35 rules.
  - elcritch 1y ago

urda 1y ago

> It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer. I, and many good or great SWE's, wouldn't even begin to entertain such a low offer. Your numbers are a little off.

bboygravity 1y ago
All engineers in Europe (except maybe Switzerland) would kill for 150k a year. ESPECIALLY remote.
- atq2119 1y ago
  From personal experience, it's definitely possible to earn more than 2x that in total compensation before taxes as an individual contributor in Europe. Maybe not all of Eastern Europe, but I can't really speak to that.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Possible probably, but not at all common.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  A lot of engineers in the US would consider 150k a year to be a good salary too. Calling 150k "low" is indicative that the person saying that lives in a bubble and has not bothered to look outside it. Lots of software engineers are employed in the US outside of Silicon Valley or NYC.
jrflowers 1y ago
Thousands of software engineers have been laid off in the past few years and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I expect that there will, at some point, be quite a large number that would entertain a hundred and fifty thousand dollars versus no job.
- Jach 1y ago
  It can be tricky to narrow down definitions but there are at least a million and probably less than 5 million software developers in the US. The last few years have seen ~100k students graduate with CS degrees each year. Thousands of layoffs over the timespan of years isn't going to impact it all that much. If you played your cards right you could get a $100k+ starting salary at a BigCo (not necessarily a FAANG) 10 years ago, I only expect that to have expanded, and anyone with a handful of years of experience is going to be above that and should consider shopping around for >$150k if they aren't there already.

palata 1y ago

> They are based on what others pay. That's the excuse given to make you accept those higher salaries. The truth is that there are not infinitely many positions for a CEO. There are certainly more people who can be competent CEOs than CEO positions. If you give an indecent salary to your CEO, you will get a CEO who looks for a crazy salary. That doesn't mean it's the most competent CEO you could get. Try offering a decent salary and you'll see that people still apply. You may not get the typical narcissistic profile, but it's probably not a loss.

LtWorf 1y ago
I feel the role of a CEO and CTO is to suck souls and make sure everyone is under constant surveillance. If people work less as a result they don't really care.
- palata 1y ago
  In my experience, a CEO pretty much sets the company culture. And it feels really weird to choose someone who's here for money/title to set your culture. But of course, the CEO is not chosen by the employees, but rather by other people who are also here for the money/title :-). In a startup, the CEO also convinces VCs to invest. And again it's interesting: VCs have no clue about the technology, so you would think they try to invest for CEOs who set a good company culture. But instead they get convinced by the CEOs who bullshit them the best. Which makes sense: not only VCs don't have a clue about the technology, but somehow they think they actually do understand. I have heard a few discussions between CEO and VCs in startups (talking about the technology I was actually working on), and it was hilarious. > If people work less as a result they don't really care. They just don't know. Even if they genuinely try to ask feedback from the employees, it's biased. Employees generally don't give honest feedback because it's a risk for them (especially if the company culture is bad, which is where the feedbacks would matter the most).