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Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

wsj.com

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Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#71

Post by samfisher83 »

FuNe wrote: post #70
samfisher83 wrote: post #53

The WSJ article doesn't seem right. Here are a list of the top paying companies by median income: Chimera Investment TESARO Exelixis Splunk Equity Commonwealth Agios Pharmaceuticals Incyte Corp Neurocrine Biosciences Inc The highest paying software company appears to be Splunk with 256k. There seems to be a lot of biotech companies that pay a lot.

These are start-ups, right? The article is talking about Fortune 500 companies, not start-ups. Having said that the top 2 ones are pharmaceuticals. I wonder whether the fat salaries trickle down to their bioinformatics divisions.

No they are all publicly listed companies. I am not sure if private companies are required to disclose median pay.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#72

Post by mywittyname »

jasonkester wrote: post #66
mywittyname wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own your own business? It's definitely possible to earn that much when you run a successful website or app. But I have a really hard time believing developer salaries are $300k+ at companies outside of CA/WA/NY. The national median is right around $100k. Developers that earn significantly more than that have significant ownership stakes in the company, highly desirable skill-sets, or notoriety in the field.

At the moment, yes. In the context of my above reply, no. Personally, I prefer to listen to the person who has tried a thing and declared it possible, rather than the person who has never tried that thing and declared it impossible. Sadly, this thread (and others like it) fill up quickly with that latter group.

You are absolutely unique. The fact that you have no problem pulling down a salary that's 3 times the median yet don't appreciate that fact suggests that you work in a bubble.

You're typical mid-western Java dev is not going to get a job for $300k. Or anywhere remotely close to it. Those salaries are for very specialized roles and consultants.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#73

Post by geebee »

jasonkester wrote: post #52

I find the more interesting story to be the "Software developers really don't want to believe that their profession pays as much as it does" message that's playing out in the comments here and the similar Facebook story today. It's something I notice every time salary comes up here. Story: "Yet Another Datapoint showing that the current market rate for developers is $300,000/year and higher." Hacker News: "No It Isn'…

I don't think they're calling that guy "a liar". I think they're looking at credible available data and concluding that 300k is not the current market rate for developers.

And keep in mind, I can do both things at once. While I don't buy it that the current market rate is 300k even in San Francisco, I am absolutely all ears. I would appreciate it greatly if you wrote in more detail about how I can get to this salary level. Since this is HN, I guess I'll just add this bit: no, I'm not looking for detail to pick apart and argue about. I would absolutely like to hear about how you've achieved this and believe that it isn't a remarkably difficult thing to do.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#74

Post by mywittyname »

jellicle wrote: post #69
mywittyname wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the underlying data is normally distributed, then there's no difference between median and mean for a sufficiently large sample size. Which is why mu can be median or mean when calculating the probability density function. It's safe to say salaries at FB, Apple, and Alphabet are normally distributed. Thus, reporting average or median doesn't matter.

Uh, no, it is not safe to say that salaries are normally distributed, and they certainly aren't. The salary distribution graph for a large corporation is likely to look something like this: http://www.visier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Graph-showi... with a very, very, very long tail to the right representing the salaries of the CEO and senior executives. Depending on the corporation, there may be multiple humps (…

> It's nothing like a normal curve.

If the data comes from a sample, then it's going to normal, regardless of the underlying distribution. So the mean and median will be approximately the same.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#75

Post by nimithryn »

mywittyname wrote: post #74
jellicle wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no, it is not safe to say that salaries are normally distributed, and they certainly aren't. The salary distribution graph for a large corporation is likely to look something like this: http://www.visier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Graph-showi... with a very, very, very long tail to the right representing the salaries of the CEO and senior executives. Depending on the corporation, there may be multiple humps (…

> It's nothing like a normal curve. If the data comes from a sample, then it's going to normal, regardless of the underlying distribution. So the mean and median will be approximately the same.

You may be confusing the distribution of the means of the samples (which will be normally distributed if the Central Limit Theorem holds) with the sample itself (which will not generally be normally distributed).

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#76

Post by tropo »

One way to interpret this is to focus on the pay, and just how wonderful it is.

The other way is to ask why they must pay so much? Alphabet must be a relatively awful place to work. Something is very wrong if they pay is this high.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#77

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tropo wrote: post #76

One way to interpret this is to focus on the pay, and just how wonderful it is. The other way is to ask why they must pay so much? Alphabet must be a relatively awful place to work. Something is very wrong if they pay is this high.

It might be an awful place to work. Or it might just be, if I'm going to work at a place that has made several people billions of dollars, if I don't get paid pretty well, I'm going to resent it. They might have to pay well to keep morale up, not because it's an awful place, but because it's easy to envy others who also work there.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#78

Post by dx034 »

sanderjd wrote: post #67
dx034 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median is the only one you need a disclosure for. Mean is simply the compensation expense divided by the number of employees. But the mean salary doesn't really say anything, it'll always be higher than median and at a company the size of Alphabet you don't really get additional insights from that. Reporting median is a good step, most companies don't disclose that.

The difference between mean and median provides information. It's always safe to assume the distribution is right-skewed, but having both median and mean gives you a sense for how much.

Just the difference doesn't tell you much. It's always right-skewed. But that could be because it's bimodal with developers earning a lot and support staff little or it's because everyone makes the same except for some really well paid executives.

What would be really interesting would be to see the actual distribution. But I don't think we'll ever see that.

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#79

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jasonkester wrote: post #56
izacus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you'll never come near these kind of offers outside a few cities in the world - no matter how good you are. Most of developers in the world aren't allowed to move to SV or Seattle and get those salaries.

You're mistaken. Just for a datapoint, I've never lived in the Bay Area (and haven't worked on-site for a dozen years), and I make a lot more than that as a developer. I am in no way unique. This is in fact what good devs make if we ask for it. Nomatter where we live. Incidentally, you're right that you generally won't receive an initial offer for that kind of money. You need to negotiate for it. That is sadly anothe…

Would you be willing to give any details about what you were doing as an employee earning that much outside the Bay Area etc? What sort of skills were you using, what were you hired for, was it remote/contracting etc?

Re: Alphabet's Median Pay Nears $200k

#80

Post by sanderjd »

dx034 wrote: post #78
sanderjd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between mean and median provides information. It's always safe to assume the distribution is right-skewed, but having both median and mean gives you a sense for how much.

Just the difference doesn't tell you much. It's always right-skewed. But that could be because it's bimodal with developers earning a lot and support staff little or it's because everyone makes the same except for some really well paid executives. What would be really interesting would be to see the actual distribution. But I don't think we'll ever see that.

I think at this point we're quibbling over the definition of "how much" it can tell you. I think "median of $70k, mean of $150k" vs. "median of $70k, mean of $1.5M" carries a lot more information than just mean or just median, even if it doesn't approach a full summary of the distribution's shape.
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