I see 2 base salaries of $420420. Ha ha.
Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
201–210 of 229 posts
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
A free market is denoted by the absence of intervention by government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority. Under what circumstances are these $500 aspirin being purchased? I have a strong suspicion that some sort of cartel is involved. If not, I'd be happy to supply the market for far less.
Cartel, like in a corrupt system, right? Maybe just what I've said? If you can get in the healthcare industry in the US you'll be a genius. Or probably a criminal, there's no legal way to get out of the current status quo without government intervention. I like the free market, but you're oversimplifying reality.
There's another explanation (among many) for $n aspirin, that is to cover shortfalls from public health program reimbursements. It's a similar story with life flights. Not exactly a problem borne out of the private market, unless you're arguing that government intervention is corrupt?
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Not true - they just lived through the interview process. I remember working with a former Google engineer at a startup who flat out told me that I was a better engineer than him. It's harder to see who will be amongst the best engineers early on in someone's career. Each person develops their abilities at different speeds & times in their lives.
maybe you should go apply to google.
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a former Amazonian. Since you asked my opinion, I'll give it. It's a truly horrible place to work and I would never ask my worst enemy to go work there. Engenders the worst in humanity (people review, anyone?), terrible technical architecture, many systems based solely on tribal knowledge that leaves the door every day, comp structure that is nearly outright lying... I could go on. Some people say that it was jus…
You wrote the following in a previous comment: > I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10413966 Just to clarify, did you work at Amazon for 1 year or 3.5 years? It seems like these messages are contradictory, but perhaps I've misunderstood. In the message I'm replyin…
I admit, I lied in the previous comment.
In the previous comment, I was worried that people would know who I was if I had said where I worked (what groups and how long). The truth is I had worked in the group I moved to for exactly a year, but I had been at Amazon for 3.5 years.
The level of retribution at that company is substantial, and I was quiet worried they would hurt my ability to get a new job.
I have a nice new job now (I was still searching when I posted that), and am less worried. It's really not hard to figure out who people are on HN.
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leadership principles (LPs) are not contradictory so much as they are in tension with one another. That's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Navigating the tension is what helps discover good outcomes. For example, if a customer calls up wanting a refund, then granting the refund supports Customer Obsession but contradicts Frugality. When deciding between options, there is always a tradeoff, and the LPs provide a le…
You get it.
We'll agree to disagree. Tension is good, when that's all it's used for. When it is specifically used to tear people down (either with a purpose, or just for vindictiveness), I think the original benefit is lost.
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#206It's unfortunate that this practice of giving almost the entire base salary amount as additional stock (RSU) has not spread outside the bay area. In other regions (such as LA, NY, Seattle, etc.) engineers only get base salary and sometimes a very small bonus. These base salaries are often competitive with the bay area, but the lack of the enormous RSU makes the total comp often 2x or more worse. EDIT: After writing t…
And another bad thing is that I don't really find RSUs for most startups that attractive. I'd rather have RSUs from some public company like Amazon or Google than some non-public startup. At least I can easily sell Amazon stock.
Nitpick: Non-public companies don't give RSUs. They either give stock options or "restricted stock", which is actually a completely different thing from RSUs. Either way, the basic intent is to ensure that, for tax purposes, the grant has zero value, because if they gave you a non-zero-valued grant then you'd have to pay taxes on it and if you can't sell the stock to cover taxes that is going to suck. Once public, the company can give RSUs because they are able to actually take tax withholding out of them (by selling a bunch).
I would argue that RSUs are rarely something the employee wants, compared to equivalent cash. At a big public company, you aren't likely to be able to affect the stock price with your personal performance, so it's not an incentive. You also likely can't predict whether the stock is likely to go up or down -- if you can, you're in the wrong job.
I would speculate that the appeal of RSUs to Google is as a hedge -- if Google's stock price goes way down, at least they'll get a break in employee compensation. Otherwise I honestly don't know what the point is. Just give people cash.
Startup equity is a completely different beast. You're getting a grant that is (in theory) worth $0, but you may actually be in a position to predict whether that startup is going to succeed, and even to influence the outcome. Maybe. That said, if the company doesn't tell you what percentage of the company you're getting, then it's a scam and you should treat it as $0.
(I'm a former Google employee and current startup founder.)
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not quite there yet with the data we have :). Anecdotally though, it seems like companies in Europe pay less and take out more taxes.
Maybe, but on the flip side, I finished Uni with about £20k debt, in the most benign from that debt can take, and working in software I immediately earned more than that per year. I also never had to care about medical bills (still don't) because of the NHS. Just want to point out that there is a good reason for the higher taxes.
I'm from the UK and now live in California. Income tax rates aren't very different.
As a proportion of GDP, Government spending in the US is only a couple of percentage points lower than the UK. The US actually spends slightly more on public healthcare than the UK, 7.9% vs 7.3%.
Of course healthcare here is so horrifically inefficient that another 8.5% of GDP is spent privately...
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#208I won't go on about the work quality at Amazon, there are plenty of other places to read about that. It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year. Therefore, these comparisons should really take that into account. Amazon MAY look higher than Microsoft (for example) but because you only see 20% of your total vest the f…
Where are these 10s of thousands of former Amazonians working now?
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counterpoint to this post, I have free private insurance with work and never bother using it because the NHS works so well for day to day things.
NHS is good when you are bleeding and need to go to the emergency room. Preventative medicine and specialist care is horrible under NHS at least in inner London, why would I want to wait 6 weeks to see an orthopedist?
Why does loction matter? Are you prohibited from seeing a doctor outiside of inner London?
Re: Open Source Project – View 689 Salaries Posted on Hacker News, Share Yours
#210I won't go on about the work quality at Amazon, there are plenty of other places to read about that. It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year. Therefore, these comparisons should really take that into account. Amazon MAY look higher than Microsoft (for example) but because you only see 20% of your total vest the f…
> It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year.
Your comment on "retention" is factually incorrect. I'll presume your comments are in relation to "tech roles" such as SDE SDM TPM etc.
First the number of Amazon hires in "tech roles" increases by ~50% per year. i.e., in year 1 there are 1,000 SDEs hired, year 2 is 1,500, year 3 is 2,250, year 4 is 3,375 and so on.
"Attrition" represents the number of individuals who leave for any reason. This may be because the employee terminates employment or the company terminates employment. Attrition levels are comparable to the rest of the tech industry, ~15% of the current population per year.
"Tenure" is the length of employment. Because hiring greatly exceeds attrition you should expect a relatively low average and median retention. As I recall Amazon is approximately 12 months median tenure. This is comparable to Google at ~13 months, for example.
Lastly the employees current tenure does not have a substantial impact on the probability of their attrition. Indeed the average tenure at exit is somewhere around 3 years. Which, again, is roughly in line industry standards.
In short, the average tenure at Amazon is low because they hire a lot. And while retention is not "good" it is a far cry from what you've represented.
Edit: The gross growth rate is actually above 50%. I've attempted to simplify the values where it does not make a material difference to the refutation.