Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 218 posts

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#141

Post by npsimons »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #133

There's a lot of talk about work-life balance on HN, and I usually lean way towards the "life" end of the spectrum. For the last few years I've only been doing a couple of hours of paid work per day. But yeah, I'd be happy to work 70 hour weeks for $3M per year.

> But yeah, I'd be happy to work 70 hour weeks for $3M per year.

I think I might compromise to work 70 hour weeks for $3m for one year. The trick is, you don't get to pick when that year happens, and there's actually a lot of build up to get to where you're worth $3m a year. There's a couple of Paul Graham essays with this as one of their themes:

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

http://paulgraham.com/start.html

I love the idea, but I don't think I'm good enough to pull it off, and I don't like the odds.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#142

Post by usrusr »

ryankupyn wrote: post #64

The thing that surprises me is that, after paying these engineers seven figures, they're still sticking them in open plan offices (as far as I can tell from the photos). Though I do know some people who can work effectively in that environment, it would be interesting to compare ever-so-slightly-cheaper engineers + a less-distracted work environment.

Playing devil's advocate a bit here: maybe the negative impact of open plan offices is much lower than typical if every single employee is feeling exceptionally motivated through far beyond market rate compensation? Of course there would be more boxes to check than just that, e.g. how often are people on the phone.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#143

Post by classybull »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #133

There's a lot of talk about work-life balance on HN, and I usually lean way towards the "life" end of the spectrum. For the last few years I've only been doing a couple of hours of paid work per day. But yeah, I'd be happy to work 70 hour weeks for $3M per year.

Well, for at least a single year. I mean.. Work twice as hard for one year, and get paid close to what I can reasonably expect to make in 20.. yea, seems like a no brainer.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#144

Post by benji-york »

walshemj wrote: post #110
jnordwick wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested in knowing if better developers are more improved by having their own office above average developers or if they can handle the distraction more.

IBM did some tests and they found about a 15% improvement and this was across the board so no change between average and high performers

I'd love to read that study if you can find a reference.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#145

Post by MagnumOpus »

alkonaut wrote: post #121

I'm not sure I'd want that kind of money... I mean I would but I wonder what kind of expectations you could put on someone who makes $1M at a "normal" desk job? Would it be expected that I had a wife that didn't work so I wouldn't have to take care of sick kids all the time? Would it be ok to work 9-5? I'd be happy to take the money but it feels a bit like there are hidden assumptions about what you are actually comp…

> Would it be expected that I had a wife that didn't work so I wouldn't have to take care of sick kids all the time?

In China, having a nanny is normal and pretty much expected even at six-digit salaries, let alone seven. (And it won't cost much more than $10k a year either, so it is a no-brainer and might be even a perk paid by the company here - just like the company car with chauffeur or free meals.)

> Would it be ok to work 9-5?

Also no (unless you are just THAT good and have THAT much leverage to negotiate, which is unlikely). Even a normal skilled job will have the expectation of 50-70 hours of facetime, let alone this sort of high-profile position.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#146

Post by alkonaut »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #145
alkonaut wrote: post #121

I'm not sure I'd want that kind of money... I mean I would but I wonder what kind of expectations you could put on someone who makes $1M at a "normal" desk job? Would it be expected that I had a wife that didn't work so I wouldn't have to take care of sick kids all the time? Would it be ok to work 9-5? I'd be happy to take the money but it feels a bit like there are hidden assumptions about what you are actually comp…

> Would it be expected that I had a wife that didn't work so I wouldn't have to take care of sick kids all the time? In China, having a nanny is normal and pretty much expected even at six-digit salaries, let alone seven. (And it won't cost much more than $10k a year either, so it is a no-brainer and might be even a perk paid by the company here - just like the company car with chauffeur or free meals.) > Would it be…

> In China, having a nanny is normal and pretty much expected even at six-digit salaries, let alone seven. (And it won't cost much more than $10k a year either, so it is a no-brainer and might be even a perk paid by the company here - just like the company car with chauffeur or free meals.)

Having a nanny helps, but it only helps with the chore (e.g. dropping off a kid), you can't substitute your own face time with the kids.

> Even a normal skilled job will have the expectation of 50-70 hours of facetime, let alone this sort of high-profile position.

How can companies assume that paying $1M will get them the best talent, while at the same time assuming that requesting 50-70h work weeks doesn't rob them of a lot more talent?

I mean if given a choice between $1M comp and 50-70h workweek, and .5M comp and a sane 40h work week - there has to be tons of people who choose (or had to) take the lower comp?

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#147

Post by eli_gottlieb »

fiblye wrote: post #61
moneytalks wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and that's what's so depressing about it. As engineers, wouldn't it be cool if the most valuable thing we could do was building tools that are inherently valuable instead of valuable because of the tool's ability to connect users with someone who wants to buy their attention? You know, build some software that doesn't make you feel like a pimp.

Your first problem there is monetizing it. If nobody can pay for it, nobody is going to get together to make it.

Maybe we should get rid of capitalism, then. It's obviously not doing the job of allocating resources to beneficial goods or raising productivity.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#148

Post by driverdan »

kc10 wrote: post #92
ryankupyn wrote: post #64

The thing that surprises me is that, after paying these engineers seven figures, they're still sticking them in open plan offices (as far as I can tell from the photos). Though I do know some people who can work effectively in that environment, it would be interesting to compare ever-so-slightly-cheaper engineers + a less-distracted work environment.

I personally love working close with my team in an open-setting. That's the reason I go to office every day even though my employer offers WFH. I just prefer turning around and asking a question or have a quick discussion. If everyone is working from home or in their personal offices, I hate having to get on a call or schedule a meeting to gather everyone to a meeting room for a quick discussion. Sure, at times it ca…

> I just prefer turning around and asking a question or have a quick discussion.

I read that as "I love disrupting the productivity of everyone else by interrupting them constantly." I personally hate that. When I'm in the middle of something I don't want other people asking me questions or having "quick discussions." Save that for when I'm between work.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#149

Post by eli_gottlieb »

adventured wrote: post #37
hasenj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the sigh is about top talent being used for ads instead of something more fundamental to the advancement of technology, such as AI for things more significant like vision and language translation, etc.

What's more valuable than building a top notch system for delivering news (and everything that tends to go with that) to a billion people? A very large number of engineers were dedicated to building out the radio and television technology platforms over decades. Was it all just to deliver ads? Trivial then right? Well that's what paid for a lot of it. It delivered community, it delivered news, it delivered entertainm…

> What's more valuable than building a top notch system for delivering news (and everything that tends to go with that) to a billion people?

Making it remotely accurate? Wiping out infectious diseases? Providing a billion people access to a healthy, nutritious diet? Saving the planet from ecological devastation?

I can think of a lot of very hard problems that have far more value than delivering advertisements packed into clickbait and fake news.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#150

Post by throwme211345 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #83
ryankupyn wrote: post #64

The thing that surprises me is that, after paying these engineers seven figures, they're still sticking them in open plan offices (as far as I can tell from the photos). Though I do know some people who can work effectively in that environment, it would be interesting to compare ever-so-slightly-cheaper engineers + a less-distracted work environment.

I worked as a contractor for a while at a company that was pretty much entirely great developers, but they had one guy who had more experience than nearly everybody else put together (he was in his 50s, and had worked on all sorts of cool things in his career), who was also more productive than anyone else. The founders of the company knew he was their top producer, and so they gave him whatever he wanted (within the…

As an almost 50 year old who has worked on many cool things I'll weigh in.

I get very tired of seeing the same mistakes in different guise. I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception. I recognize patterns rather than specifics. I look at big picture and am careful about introducing paradigm shifts. I care about efficiency and ease of use, scalability and other ideas at inception of a project. If I am not respected for my approach and ideas I leave.

Post reply on HN