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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#111

Post by sklivvz1971 »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

A couple of things that stood out. 1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire? 2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses? 3) Why are years of ex…

Stack employee here:

1) yes we have stock options, and no, they are not documented.

2) we have no bonus

3) years of experience are factored in because they bring value which is not expressed elsewhere and because they reflect market value.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#112

Post by jaegerpicker »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

A couple of things that stood out. 1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire? 2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses? 3) Why are years of ex…

I'd argue that experience should be a prime factor in salary. Ability is also a key component but not a substitute for hard won experience. Of course not all experience is equal but four things to be gained with experience that ability can not sub for:

1. Pattern matching on ways and processes to solve problems, otherwise known as the "been there, done that" effect. Seeing something that is the same or very similar to something that you have already done allows you numerous ways to improve upon it.

2. Greater depth of tools in the toolbag. May not be true of all experience but for a lot of people, the longer you have worked in the industry the more likely it is that you have stored process and approaches that you know work. This always more time to focus on the truly new and novel parts of the problem at hand.

3. Higher levels of respect from other team members. Again depends on the person in question but it's easier to speak authoritively on a subject when you have experience in that subject.

4. Record of dedication. If you have been the industry for 18 years it's pretty clear that this is your passion and you are likely in it for the long haul.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#113

Post by gtrubetskoy »

ZeroFries wrote: post #61
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #52

There is something not right with both having a salary system like this and having it available to the public. I know I personally would not like to work at SO just because of this. It seems demoralizing, because it reduces your relationship with the company down to rules, shifting responsibility away from people. It may seem attractive on the surface, but in the long run I don't think it will serve the employees or…

The 1-5 rating system is where personal judgement/responsibility come into play. If I were a very good developer but poor at negotiations, I would find this system to be the opposite of demoralizing.

Consider the other possibility, where you are the best, period (which is how you should really think of yourself IMHO).

You get two offers, one from a company like SO, based on a system of rules, and another one based on personal judgement (it might still be based on a system of rules, but that aspect will not be advertised to you, which is key). And if the two offers are about the same, you will likely choose the latter, simply for the slight difference between "our system values you at $$$" vs "we value you at $$$".

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#114

Post by dimino »

brianwawok wrote: post #98
dimino wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course). Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give? I don't really care if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...

Hey I know who is coming in Saturday to fix the prod bug, the guy that picked 500k salary ;) Although maybe for some people they would want the extra work for extra money and it could be a win win.

Uh, hell yes I'd come in on Saturday to fix that bug if you pay me 500k.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#115

Post by jc4p »

easymovet wrote: post #47
chrisferry wrote: post #20

These salaries seem SUPER low. Engineering manager with 15 years experience < 150k? Try 200+k here in NYC.

They wouldn't dare list actual salaries because then they would have to pay everyone higher, just see what happened with lawyers: http://www.wsj.com/articles/law-firm-cravath-raising-startin...

I'm a developer at Stack Overflow, my salary is $2,000 a year more than what the calculator spits out with Developer / 5 years experience / 3 skill (I was a 2.7 last compensation review, I believe)

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#116

Post by dpark »

overcast wrote: post #35
chollida1 wrote: post #4

A couple of things that stood out. 1) I'd imagine stock options are part of the job, but I don't see that anywhere. Do new employee's get stock options? I'm guessing they keep this hidden as it allows them a bit more flexibility on offering signing bonuses to entice employee's they want to hire? 2) I don't see any section for bonus on the calculator. Do stackoverflow employee's not get bonuses? 3) Why are years of ex…

You should never calculate stock options, or bonuses into your base salary, ever. I don't care what anyone says. Bonuses, and stocks are exactly that. Bonuses and stocks. They are great when they are way up, and shitty when they are way down. For the first time in fifteen years, I didn't get a bonus, and the stock price is way down. Never, ever, let someone hiring you convince you otherwise. They tried this when I go…

I would agree about stock options. They're so risky as to generally be almost worthless.

I don't agree about bonuses. Bonuses aren't guaranteed, but at well-established companies with healthy rewards cultures, there will be a target amount you can expect if you do your job. You should still discount bonus somewhat when comparing offers, but I would not discount it to zero.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#117

Post by Scarbutt »

tristor wrote: post #33

At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering $11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous languages and environments, I find this un…

and that's one problem with this "salary transparency" stuff, "my work is just as important or even more important than his, why I'm getting paid less?"

I could argue against you too, for example, you say "competent developer in numerous languages and environments", that's really just a small fraction of what computer science is really about.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#118

Post by tristor »

mseebach wrote: post #70
tristor wrote: post #33

At my self-assessed skill level and years of experience, they're offering $11k/yr more for a "Developer" than a "Site Reliability Engineer". I find it interesting that they value someone in a "Developer" position higher than someone in a "Site Reliability Engineer" position. Having been an Ops person for my entire career and at the same time a competent developer in numerous languages and environments, I find this un…

And a Product Designer is $5k less still. It's not a question of "valuing" employees, it's about what salary you need to offer to be able to hire and retain people at the required skill level. And good SREs are apparently willing to (or plentiful enough to need to) accept slightly less money than equally good developers. That said, the phenomenon extends well beyond our industry. It's common in all industries that th…

> Be careful to compare like for like. A highly qualified ops person compares to a highly qualified developer, not merely a "skilled" one. For all the difficulty of objectively measuring skill, I would assume that a highly qualified ops person would make substantially more than a merely skilled developer.

I think that I failed to communicate my meaning clearly in that statement, so I will attempt to clarify. What I mean is, that in my experience a highly qualified Ops person will /also/ be a skilled developer, but a highly qualified Developer will /not/ be a skilled Ops person. E.g. based on skill-set alone, highly qualified Ops people bring more skill to the table in union than a highly qualified Developer. Whether that's the skills you value or prioritize as an organization or not is another question entirely.

For the purposes of my salary comparison above I used the same years of experience and skill rating in the calculator for the Site Reliability Engineer and Developer roles. As you say, I would expect a highly qualified Ops person to make more than a "merely skilled" developer. I wasn't really trying to state anything opposite of this.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#119

Post by kmontrose »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #107

Yeah so this seems great, except that's not what should be setting the price of developers. Supply and demand (for the most part) sets the price (and should, IMO) of developers, and that's what I want, not some rubric. Outside of transparency, this strikes me as no different from the "grade" systems at various big companies like HP, IBM, etc. If you want to pay me fairly, pay me what the market says I'm worth. Things…

There's a pretty strong connection between the numbers the tool has and market rates - it's not like the numbers are pushed top down, they come from actually participating in the hiring market.

The calculator normally gets a few revisions a year, one of the things that prompts that is market rates changing (others are things like hiring for new skills, or new roles being created).

What's nice about the calculator is, if the market rates change, everyone gets a raise (and knows they should). It's not just the new hire (who's mostly recently on the market), it's everybody in the same skill track.

The calculator also keeps us honesty about what matters for compensation. When the yearly salary review comes around, you can point at things you've done in the last year _and_ at where it says they should matter. It means fewer surprises, less frustration, and less fear that you're being too aggressive or too passive in salary discussions.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#120

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #32

Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job func…

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