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I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

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Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#201

Post by TeMPOraL »

jomamaxx wrote: post #191
riskable wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put Luck and Nepotism at the top of the list followed by D. But maybe that's just because I work in finance.

To be fair, nepotism in tech tends to be of the academic type, and most kids who get into Ivy League have worked pretty hard to get there. So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism. Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)

> Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)

It's harder to convince your own family to work for you for free with constant overtime and vague promises of great profits in the future. :).

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

nilkn wrote: post #160
flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

I think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them. For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range o…

They may leave at 3:20, but that doesn't mean they are done working. Teachers do lots of work -- lesson planning, grading, etc. -- out of the classroom and outside of "working" hours. Not to mention the money they spend on basic supplies for their job that aren't provided by their employer -- or the time they sirens trying to solicit other people to find that.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#203

Post by kspaans »

etatoby wrote: post #104
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really wrong. You can very well assume that it's worthless. If you do, chances are you will not do your research on things like early exercise and 83(b) filing (whether, for example, you work at a company that even allows things like that). Then, in the very small chance that your equity is actually worth something, you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been pay…

> you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been paying LTCG... AMT... illiquid stock... IRS... CA FTB... ACME... Road Runner... Look, I won't be kicking myself neither hard not soft, because I made a conscious decision to study and become proficient in another field. You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying conce…

Understanding how much you owe the IRS in taxes is personal finance, which isn't the same thing as business finance.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#204

Post by ryandrake »

signa11 wrote: post #84
20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you can pay $1 for a lottery ticket with long odds of a $100M return, here you are paying $70k for a $1M lottery ticket with equally long odds of return.

> ... here you are paying $70k for a $1M lottery ticket ... care to elaborate a bit on how you got that ? thanks !

If the difference between what you can make in total compensation at BigCompany and your salary at Startup is $70K, then you're essentially buying a lottery ticket for $70K... PER YEAR.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#205

Post by hifumi »

gaius wrote: post #164
etatoby wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been paying LTCG... AMT... illiquid stock... IRS... CA FTB... ACME... Road Runner... Look, I won't be kicking myself neither hard not soft, because I made a conscious decision to study and become proficient in another field. You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying conce…

You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying concepts of your field Those aren't finance terms, they are taxpayer terms! Long term capital gains, alternative minimum tax, everyone knows who the IRS are...

But those acronyms are vague and I had no idea what they were until you spelled them out.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#206

Post by sokoloff »

fencepost wrote: post #200
LanceH wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, no teacher I've ever known as received only 10 day vacation and 10 holidays. They have over 20 days of holidays built in during the school year and a legitimate two months off between years.

No, they have 2 months between school years in which they are not at the front of a classroom. For a lot of teachers that's time used for continuing education, for prep for the upcoming school year, etc. - or for a summer job.

Both my parents were teachers. While there was some summer work, in no way was it nearly as intense as the school year.

The mere fact that many do take summer jobs is proof of that, IMO.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#207

Post by logfromblammo »

colanderman wrote: post #168
nilkn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them. For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range o…

To be fair, no teacher I have ever known has stopped working at 3:20 PM. Grading and planning often go far into the evening.

Many are faculty sponsors of extracurricular activities. Band directors, for instance, have to stay late for marching/pep band practices and for football/basketball games. Science and math teachers stay late for the academic competition teams. Team sports have coaches.

Where I went to school, teachers with less than five years of tenure essentially had to sponsor at least one extracurricular activity, just to earn enough extra pay to live on.

And then they still have to do grading and planning when the kids aren't there. That can be done away from the school building, but it still counts as work.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#208

Post by lettergram »

flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

One thing I want to mention is related to your last line:

> Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.

Most employers don't get it, but Google, Facebook, and others do; programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize.

When I was 10 I could make an HTML page, when I was 14 I started incorporating JavaScript and building websites... A decade later (24), I am still improving and building bigger/better programs (full stack, but mostly data science). I went to school, worked all the way through tutoring for C, C++, and Go, and built websites as well.

Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago. Those people who just started cannot build a website in a week (or even a few), it takes them months. Even then, thats with help, and it will have loads of bugs.

I know because part of my job is training them. I have to explain how they just tried to access an array outside the bounds. Seriously, the other week I was interviewing a "master software engineer" for an internal role on my team and they failed a basic string flipping question... He's making at least double what I am.

To put this into greater perspective, let's walk through a mental exercise. Say programmer one introduces 1 bug every 10 lines. The second programmer introduces 1 bug every 25 lines. After 10000 lines what do we have?

Programmer #1: 1000

Programmer #2: 400

At an average of 30 minutes a lot of hours of bug fixes:

Programmer #1: 500 hours

Programmer #2: 200 hours

My point, 200 hours is 5 weeks, 500 hours is 12.5 weeks of bug fixes. I'll grant you, this is napkin math, but trust me - this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. Now compare that to the master software engineer I mentioned, whos already making double what I am... Based on that assessment, I'd likely be underpaid.

All that being said, I generally agree, but coming from a pretty standard office, I can see why people feel underpaid. It's probably because people around them are being over paid.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#209

Post by blahi »

exelius wrote: post #157

In a capitalist system, you actually have an obligation to get as much of the pie as you can. Fuck being seen as greedy; greed is the entire basis of capitalism. This doesn't mean resorting to illegal / unethical measures; but it does mean always negotiating to get a better deal. This goes from the top of the economy all the way down to the bottom. I'll admit it can be hard when you don't have leverage; but you also…

Self interest is the entire basis of capitalism, not greed. You are not greedy for defending your interest, i.e. getting paid as much as you can.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#210

Post by kspaans »

mosselman wrote: post #41

Misleading title and premise: The author makes it seem as if something will be explained for people who are not 'financially-savvy', but nothing is explained. In fact it is made more complex. Which is fine, but still it was kind of misleading. Solid advice to get financial advice nonetheless. Can someone explain this part to my/some-of-us like I am five?: "Which muppets advised them to spend hard-earned cash to exerc…

There is a nice glossary of terms here: https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation
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