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Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

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Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#141

Post by KyleBrandt »

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…

We use various resources (public data, information from VCs) to figure out the base market rate for each position. Even though the base salary is less because our information says the market rate is less, we don't think developers are more important than SREs. The same benefits, equipment, remote work, autonomy, opportunities to speak and contribute to open source, etc are the same.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#142

Post by overcast »

akgerber wrote: post #81
overcast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. Outside of the big two hotbed areas, developers are definitely NOT being paid in the hundreds of thousands. When you factor in the NYC/California cost of living tax, you're not actually coming out that far ahead. The experience gained is obviously the big benefit however.

Depends— if you're a single adult in NYC, a decent bedroom in a share can be had for $1000 with heat and gas included (and that's also a normal way of living for successful adults), and one doesn't need a car, so bills needn't be that high. Transport is either an unlimited Metrocard paid pre-tax or provided free by your employer, or a bicycle— so that's around $70/month, plus whatever you want to pay for cabs (but ra…

Sure, but who wants to live in that $1000 apartment, shared with other four other people? When you start making those big six figures, no one wants to deal with that crap. You want more luxury. That's the point of moving up right?

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#143

Post by jc4p »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #136
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow employee here, here's some answers (or at least, my take). Regarding point 1, remember that there are no salary negotiations at Stack Overflow. No one gets a raise because they ask. People get raises because they demonstrate skills, increase experience, etc... A candidate will have an initial skill evaluation they might not like, but they are pretty much guaranteed to have a much better one after one y…

> Secondly, I sincerely doubt we'd make an offer to a candidate that assumes their skills are all at the top of the range. "Fives" are extraordinarily rare, most employees have no fives, and the ones that do have one five. I don't understand the rationality behind this. Why have (nearly) impossible to reach ratings? I mean, by this logic, the most talented people will only ever be a 4, yes? So make 4 the limit. You j…

I also work at Stack Overflow.

I don't think anyone can be _the_ very best and I think that's not a reasonable or attainable goal.

We value T shaped developers, and our salary matrix values both spreading breadth (e.g. as a mobile dev if I up my skills in sysadmin or data science) or depth (which is a bit harder to do if you're already experienced) which fits into that nicely.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#144

Post by dpark »

edwhitesell wrote: post #104
brwnll wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what employers you interact with that believe a prospective employee should take a sub-market pay in exchange for the privilege to work at their company, but it's terrible. There have been many good articles on HN about salary negotiation, setting freelance rate, and seeing through the "one day you'll be a billionaire because of these options if you work for almost-free" and the kind of nonsense your tou…

I didn't say anything about options. I also didn't say anything about taking sub-market pay in exchange for a privilege. I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job. In other words, employees who actually want to be there are far more valuable than those just looking for a high paycheck.

> I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.

Sure, and most employees would love to have an employer who isn't trying to pay them the minimum possible. The idea that it's a bad sign for employees to try to maximize their salaries while it's okay for employers to try to minimize them is an absurd double-standard.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#145

Post by parennoob »

KyleBrandt wrote: post #141
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…

We use various resources (public data, information from VCs) to figure out the base market rate for each position. Even though the base salary is less because our information says the market rate is less, we don't think developers are more important than SREs. The same benefits, equipment, remote work, autonomy, opportunities to speak and contribute to open source, etc are the same.

> We use various resources (public data, information from VCs) to figure out the base market rate for each position.

So you're basically paying what everyone else is paying (on aggregate) rather than figuring out yourself if SREs and developers are worth to you as a company. This seems like a lazy-ish approach to me and negates most of the positivity that salary transparency has.

I realize though that you're never going to find an approach that satisfies everyone, so maybe this one works well for you (StackOverflow is an awesome site!).

> The same benefits, equipment, remote work, autonomy, opportunities to speak and contribute to open source, etc are the same.

That is tautological, "the same benefits are the same". $11k buys a lot of extra "benefits" in the world.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#146

Post by vmarsy »

NKCSS wrote: post #18
dmackerman wrote: post #5

Very cool. Salaries seem on the low-end of the industry standards from what I've seen. $120k for 5 years of experience in the Bay-Area is pretty insulting.

Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).

Unfortunately comparing European and US salaries is comparing apples to oranges.

Not only there's vacation as other people mention, but most importantly and often ignored : tax rates and retirement.

In those 55k, you also probably have a bigger tax bill, so it would be more fair to compare money that ends up in your pocket.

Retirement: you probably have a national system, with a formula that tells: if you worked X years at salary Y, your retirement income will be Z. You might also have extra retirement plans if you want to save more. In the US, retirement pensions is not a thing (except maybe public servants etc?), So you're responsible of saving by yourself. The employer will sometime help (like for every dollar you put in your retirement plan, they'd match 50 cents, up to ~20k per year), and that money you put in the retirement plan is tax free, but the point is that it's money you theoritically should not access until retirement.

With those 2 factors, the money you actually get to use is different, and then the cost of life is different: raising kids in the US until college, would be a different price than a kid in the Netherlands until the end of university.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#147

Post by clebio »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #106
maxxxxx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny (and condescending) that employees are supposed to make money just a secondary factor where at the same time companies preach that it's all about the bottom line and nothing else counts. On a practical note: I definitely perform better if I know that I am paid well. Money is the ultimate indicator of respect.

If you work for a company that preaches it's all about the bottom line and nothing else counts then I'd suggest you work for a shitty company. I would and have left companies with that attitude. For several reasons but a big one is that it's simply short sighted and ineffective. It leads to thinking like let's out source all our devs because it will save us short term money and the proves the fact that companies don'…

There's more shitty companies than unicorn companies out there, by a landslide.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#148

Post by dorfsmay »

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…

Typical scenario over the last few years at different companies:

I'm ask to help find DevOps SREs.

Find people and interview them

Recommend the few good ones.

They turn the offers down because not enough money is offered.

I'm asked what could be done differently to hire good DevOps/SREs, because it's impossible to get anybody!

Later, once I've moved on, I found out that devs were offered and paid significantly more.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#149

Post by p4wnc6 »

With 4 years of experience, even if I rate myself as a 5 on self-assessed skill (I'm certainly not), the salary offered for New York is far, far below anything I'd consider, and significantly below even what other start-ups offer (not including equity) in New York.

I do not understand how they are able to hire experienced workers who agree to face the cost of living of New York at these salary levels. It is simply too low to be worthwhile.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#150

Post by caminante »

yen223 wrote: post #90
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…

This is the profit centre vs cost centre problem. Companies are incentivized to spend more on developers, since developers build features, and features drive sales, and sales drive profit. SysOps folks keep the site up, but once you start hitting >99% reliability, throwing more money at sysops isn't going to increase revenue.

From a "job security" lens, the sysops crew needed to keep the site up will be the last to go during downsizing.
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