Live data from Hacker News

Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

haseebq.com

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#43
post #37

I was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering problems are they solving? From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more knowledge she…

They are solving a lot of the infrastructure problems that come with microservices. They also do that with a stack that has much less JVM in it than Twitter and Netflix, which makes working there much more appealing for some people.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#44
post #17

I hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an employer. Conflating base salary and RSU packages, especially pre-IPO RSUs, is a mistake. In my 20 years in Silicon Valley I've learned you simply can't put too much faith in stock. Stock is great, but it goes up and down. The only thing that is real is base salary, ev…

> "I hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an employer." I hope it doesn't get him in trouble, too. It would be both illegal and a gross ethical violation on Airbnb's part. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gives all employees the right organize and "engage in concerted activities", including the right t…

The trouble is probably a social one, not legal. Every engineer there is comparing themselves to a guy with a year of experience and thinking that they shouldn't be paid less. All at once.

Either AirBnB ends up making 230k the minimum salary for everyone or people will take this guy's advice and start negotiating, getting counter offer from other places and possibly just leave. Management ended up paying a lot more than 230k for this guy so they are probably not happy.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#45
post #44
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an employer." I hope it doesn't get him in trouble, too. It would be both illegal and a gross ethical violation on Airbnb's part. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gives all employees the right organize and "engage in concerted activities", including the right t…

The trouble is probably a social one, not legal. Every engineer there is comparing themselves to a guy with a year of experience and thinking that they shouldn't be paid less. All at once. Either AirBnB ends up making 230k the minimum salary for everyone or people will take this guy's advice and start negotiating, getting counter offer from other places and possibly just leave. Management ended up paying a lot more t…

I see your point, but I think it would useful for every engineer to learn the whole life story of that guy, before comparison.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#46
post #44
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an employer." I hope it doesn't get him in trouble, too. It would be both illegal and a gross ethical violation on Airbnb's part. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gives all employees the right organize and "engage in concerted activities", including the right t…

The trouble is probably a social one, not legal. Every engineer there is comparing themselves to a guy with a year of experience and thinking that they shouldn't be paid less. All at once. Either AirBnB ends up making 230k the minimum salary for everyone or people will take this guy's advice and start negotiating, getting counter offer from other places and possibly just leave. Management ended up paying a lot more t…

Social backlash is understandable. Employers aren't allowed to punish people for revealing their salaries though.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#47
post #20

I may be misreading. With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm? As a hiring manager, I would be concerned that a candidate with such short exposure to the field and no real projects under their belt would just be too green to carry their weight.

Sounds like he knows how to invert binary trees [1]. So the rest will come later...

[1] - https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#48
post #18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are salaries trade secrets on US? Here usually we talk openly about them.

"Here" is not very specific, so I'm not sure how to interpret that. :) I wouldn't say it's a trade secret, but for whatever reason, talking openly about salaries in the US does carry a stigma of unprofessionalism. I don't attribute that to any single cause- I think the attitude comes from a combination of good and bad influences. I don't know if it's a net positive or negative- I suspect it's a wash. People also don'…

Here in Europe, usually the people that don't talk about salaries do so, because they are constrained to reveal the values or don't want to constrain others in the room.

But usually among friends, people are generally comfortable mentioning them.

Re: Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2

#50
post #35

Seeing those salaries as a dev in Tokyo is mind boggling. Time to start looking at remote work options even I think..

Never look at salaries in a vacuum; remember what he says about what a 105k salary would "translate to" 57k in Texas. I don't know if remote working will change the game, eventually, but since companies today outsource jobs to "cheaper" cities to pay lower salaries, I find it hard to imagine that they'd be willing offer the same strong salaries to remote workers, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to cut costs.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN