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Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

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Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#151

Post by adrianN »

jaredklewis wrote: post #69
kibwen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Channeling that old quote: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."

Channeling a reaction I once heard to that old quote: "Well better than what the best minds of the last generation did: devise more powerful ways to kill communists."

At least we got nuclear power, a space program, cryptography, the internet... out of that project. I just hope that today's project will be similarly useful. All the machine learning for ad targetting looks promising.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#152

Post by adrianN »

j7ake wrote: post #91
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever need a better paying job afterwards?

Your assumption is that the position is tenured for life, which is not.

After you make seven figures for two years you don't really have to work anymore. You can just live off your savings.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#153

Post by talmand »

fergie wrote: post #87
sitepodmatt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people value having other people around and in their sight, even freelancers leave their home office and head to coworking spaces and claim productivity gains. Personally I think the office per person idea is overrated, however I've worked in many places where the draw backs of open office hit sometimes. I think the best combo is open office, with hot private offices, and with the extra space, sleep…

I second this. I worked at a university for a few years, and lots of people were jealous of my private office in a distant building, but I just found it socially isolating. That said, I did get a lot done.

But at least you had the option to temporarily relocate yourself to a more social area. Then you could move back when you needed focus.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#154

Post by sulam »

alkonaut wrote: post #146
MagnumOpus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

My understanding is that all Chinese tech jobs are crazy hours. ~No one works 9-5.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#155

Post by BurningFrog »

driverdan wrote: post #148
kc10 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just use some judgement when asking.

If getting the answer in one minute saves you one hour, it is obviously good for the company to "waste" the other person's time.

You should definitely be careful not to waste the time of your coworkers. Just don't waste your own time either!

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#156

Post by BurningFrog »

aedron wrote: post #119
kc10 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think people need to state what kind of work they do when offering their preferences in these discussion. Some complicated development tasks require 100% uninterrupted concentration for several minutes at a time. You're sitting there trying to build and maintain an extremely complicated model in your head, involving many complex parts, and their interactions along a time line, introducing permutations of that model…

I used to think that way.

But then I started working with people who write simple and readable code. Now my programming isn't like that at all anymore.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#157

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

BurningFrog wrote: post #155
driverdan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Just use some judgement when asking. If getting the answer in one minute saves you one hour, it is obviously good for the company to "waste" the other person's time. You should definitely be careful not to waste the time of your coworkers. Just don't waste your own time either!

If everyone used their judgment this way, in a team of six, there are five others trying to save their own time and punishing the person who's worked to build up some knowledge.

This has to be fixed by ensuring that the bus factor improves and the knowledge is spread around more. I disagree that the solution is to let everyone interrupt the one who is trying to get stuff done.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#159

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

usrusr wrote: post #142
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.

It is possible to demotivate people by not paying enough but it is unlikely that such strong motivation is achieved purely from greater pay. A frustrating work environment will eventually cause th motivation to fizzle. One might continue working to keep the paycheque coming but it is a tall ask to keep the motivation levels high.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#160

Post by dmoy »

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…

I heard (in Seattle area) that MS office are on the way out, depending on the team you're on :/

Maybe someone can confirm...

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