Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

blog.step.com

61–70 of 229 posts

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#61
post #53

Holy crap, I didn't realize that starting salary at Google was $175K. That seems a bit high for new college hires, but I suppose I'm comparing that to my salary as a freshie sdet.

Google is an "elite" company, almost every engineer there would be one of the best hires any other company could ever make. Generous compensation is one aspect to accomplish that hiring goal (amongst other things)

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#62
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to take into account things like quality of life in the city vs a long commute if living in the suburb.

Right. But a country as a whole is what I am interested in. I mean iphone costs about the same anywhere in the world ( okay it's sometimes more usually not less (Brazil?)) so there's that...

I don't think electronic gadgets are a good item for this comparison.

You might want to take a look at the Big Mac Index, which tries to give some measurement of how much your money is worth in another currency or country.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#65
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep cut the compensation by about 50% and increase the taxation by 50% :)

Yeah but healthcare education and pensions ;) That tax is buying us stuff.

You could buy it yourself for a lot cheaper than you pay for it in taxes. The taxes you pay are buying healthcare for people who cannot afford it.

(EDIT: I'm certainly not saying this is a bad thing.)

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#66

Amazon keeps asking me to interview and everyone tells me it's a terrible place to work. After seeing this compensation via equity I'm thinking it might be worth it. Anyone work at Amazon and loves it or think it's really worth it?

One of the tables has this important piece of information at the bottom: "Amazon's vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, and 40% over the 4 years" This is a significant deviation from the industry standard, which is to have a one year cliff, and have stock vest month-to-month afterwards. What happens if you leave in the middle of year 3?

Short answer: you are screwed. Longer answer: most people can hold half a year more.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#67
post #61
post #53

Holy crap, I didn't realize that starting salary at Google was $175K. That seems a bit high for new college hires, but I suppose I'm comparing that to my salary as a freshie sdet.

Google is an "elite" company, almost every engineer there would be one of the best hires any other company could ever make. Generous compensation is one aspect to accomplish that hiring goal (amongst other things)

> almost every engineer there would be one of the best hires any other company could ever make.

I'm going to say that's a huge stretch.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#68

Amazon keeps asking me to interview and everyone tells me it's a terrible place to work. After seeing this compensation via equity I'm thinking it might be worth it. Anyone work at Amazon and loves it or think it's really worth it?

I quite like it there. I work on DynamoDB where I'm surrounded by pretty amazing engineers. I have written code that had a major impact on the service. I've solved important problems and that has helped make new things possible. Just yesterday, I was in a room with 20 or so top engineers from across AWS; that was pretty rewarding.

When I started, I expected that I'd be there a couple years then move on to Google, but I'm not even excited about talking to Google, Facebook, Uber, or the others at this point.

P.S. We're hiring on DynamoDB. We need for software developers and SRE-type folks. My e-mail is in my profile if you're interested in finding out more.

Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone-like items are a very small part of anyone's annual budget. What matters are housing costs, transport costs, healthcare costs and quality of life. All of which are highly variable depending on location.

The iPhone itself may be a small part (depending on your budget) but wireless plan costs also vary widely. I know that UK/EU plans are substantially cheaper than the US where many pay $150+ per month for a couple lines.

Wireless prices in the USA are higher than any other country I've been to, developed or not. Nevermind the absurd contracts.

In Taiwan, for example, I got a 3G phone plan for $40 month-to-month, unlimited data, and consistently ~20mbps download speeds.

In developing countries like Thailand or Central America, I can get a 3G card for 60 days and 1-2GB for less than $10. Speeds obviously aren't as good as Taiwan, but the basic access to Internet is way cheaper.

Post reply on HN