Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market • Hacker News Board

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#161

Post by PretzelPirate » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #160

SwellJoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, our buildings at MS are transitioning to open space. We now have a large room for each team. Everyone has a height-adjustable desk that can be moved around within the room and a pair of good quality headphones.

Each room has its own small meeting room for devs to have long design discussions, and a larger conference room that is shared with the room next door. For making phone calls, there are really nice phone booths in the hallways.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#162

Post by alien_at_work » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

PretzelPirate wrote: post #161

dmoy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, our buildings at MS are transitioning to open space. We now have a large room for each team. Everyone has a height-adjustable desk that can be moved around within the room and a pair of good quality headphones. Each room has its own small meeting room for devs to have long design discussions, and a larger conference room that is shared with the room next door. For making phone calls, there are really nice phone…

That's discouraging. MS did a study to determine offices improved productivity, so what happened?

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#163

Post by mayank » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

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 think you've got Facebook and Google reversed. Facebook is famously all open-plan. Google has a mix of open plan areas and mini 4-person offices with doors, along with other configurations.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#164

Post by fergie » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #153

fergie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually didn't, there was no team.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#165

Post by a-priori » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

computerphage wrote: post #80

unityByFreedom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't give advertising that much credit. An equal amount of money is spent on lost elections too.

> An equal amount of money is spent on lost elections too. That's false. There's a pretty strong correlation between outspending and winning elections. The losing side usually spent less. In aggregate, much more money is spent winning elections than losing them. eg: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th...

The amount of money spent on American elections is incredible.

In the 2012 US Presidential election (seems the data is not yet available for 2016), an estimated $7B was spent in total by all candidates and private groups. This is about $21.54 per person.

For comparison, in the last Canadian federal election, the top 5 parties combined received $127M in funding (public + private contributions). This amounts to about $3.60 per person, about one sixth as much on a per capita basis.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#166

Post by sologoub » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:13 PM UTC

geocar wrote: post #81

sologoub wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is that popular four-letter sports site in US or China? Typically, ad CPMs follow income levels/disposable incomes in the country/area the user is from. The quality of data the advertiser has about the specific user is also important. For example, since a lot of the tracking is illegal in Germany, even though incomes are similar to US, the CPMs are lower because US has more highly cookied/tracked users with highe…

So I did some googling and here's their price sheet: http://toutiao.toproi.cn/kanli/kanli.html They charge 4-6RMB for the "precision auction" and 0.15-0.3RMB per click, which are only a little lower. These ads are small and only at the tops of certain sections. This suggests a price about half of western prices. They have "guaranteed delivery" at 160RMB CPM (about $18 CPM). Oh, and btw: I know more than one person wh…

Thanks!

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#167

Post by js8 » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

nf05papsjfVbc wrote: post #159

usrusr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In other words, the only thing paycheck motivates people to do is to stay in the environment of low motivation for too long.

If any company thinks that it can fix the motivation with paycheck, they are very wrong and it will actually be more costly in the end.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#168

Post by leroy_masochist » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

This article strikes me as a submarine with a buried lede, namely,

> Top performers can make $1 million in salary and bonus a year, plus options, according to people familiar with its hiring. Total compensation can exceed $3 million. Zhang declined to comment on specific figures, saying most employees prefer stock over cash.

So basically, these engineers are getting paid $1mm, which is not a crazy multiple off of top end dev cash compensation in Bay Area, plus equity in a Chinese software company.

This does not seem like news, per se. Compliments to Mr. Zhang's PR agency for getting an article published in Bloomberg that makes the client look sexy, mysterious, and elite.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#169

Post by pc86 » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #147

fiblye wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was unaware allocation of resources toward "beneficial goods" (to whom?) was every a touted positive effect of capitalism.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#170

Post by pc86 » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #149

adventured wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Software developers are not wiping out infectious disease.