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The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

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Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#161

Post by airstrike »

justaguyhere wrote: post #121
gnulinux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem. I'm actually intentionally underpaid because this way (1) I have less anxiety about getting fired (2) I have less problems with imposter syndrome (3) I worry less about being underpaid since I know I'm underpaid. I know most people will think this is extremely irrational, but I'm paid about 3 times more than I can spend (I live very cheap and am happy this way) so I already save 2/3 of my tak…

I know I am getting underpaid, but I am okay with it. For me, it is the ratio of money and stress that matters. Lets say I get 20% hike but it comes with 50% more stress. I'd say no thanks and be happy with what I got. Better work is welcome, but more stress isn't.

What if it's a 2,000% hike with 100% more stress?

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#162

Post by blevin »

reggieband wrote: post #73

I swear, every time I read an article on HN about salary it gives me anxiety. I'm perpetually worried that I'm not earning as much as I should be earning. I don't think it is healthy but I can't look away.

"Humans are designed not to be happy, but to pursue happiness -- including wealth and status. Unfortunately, such a pursuit partly promotes unhappiness. Discomfort with our current lot gives us the drive for absolute & relative success -- an evolutionarily useful trait." from a footnote in Anti Ilmanen, _Expected Returns_

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#163

Post by aaaaaaaaaab »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #132
ryandrake wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t sweat these. Every HN salary thread, people come out of the woodwork to note that their sister’s roommate’s brother works at Facebook and makes $300k, therefore all tech workers everywhere in Silicon Valley make that much on average. For some reason, people here love to take outlier employees at outlier companies and hold them up as averages.

Yeah, this is something I always wonder. Every time salaries come up here the anecdotal numbers batted around as "standard" in Silicon Valley get higher, and every time I neurotically search around the net for corroborating information and find little to none. I don't doubt these high salary figures are real, but I have doubts they represent the median.

It’s almost like trolling.

“The average penis is 8 inch”

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#165

Post by gonehome »

Xcelerate wrote: post #143
onion2k wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is be to be ludicrous. Ask for far more than you think you're worth. As most people undervalue themselves you'll often find companies saying yes, or at least negotiating down to more than you'd have asked for if you capped your wage raise to 20%. If they hire you you'll then be faced with the feeling that you're out of your depth, overpaid, and incapable of doing the job you took, but that's a different set…

> My advice is be to be ludicrous. For recruiters who contact me from companies that aren’t my usual area of career interest, I do this to see what the upper bound is. It once backfired on me. Shortly after finishing grad school, a recruiter contacted me about a quantitative finance position and asked what range I was looking for. I replied “about $350k”. He responded, “We can work with that.” I think I had to scrape…

I think quants can get 350k - 700k, extremely high compensation is the main draw of finance and what the positions seem to lead with.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#166

Post by [deleted] »

g9yuayon wrote: post #140
someguydave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, precisely, limits the supply of people who have "product talents to figure out what is valuable to produce"? Why are are people with such skills apparently more rare than people with technical skills?

That beats me. If I have to guess, I'd venture to say dealing with ambiguity is truly hard. As a production manager, you need to have unique insights on the market you're interested; you need to capture future trend; you need to understand human psyche, you need to convince your company to take risks and invest into something that does not necessarily have a future, you need to build trust with both the engineering t…

[deleted]

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#167

Post by rm999 »

g9yuayon wrote: post #103

This hardly comes as a surprise. How many companies, especially startups, really need to tackle tough technical challenges? On the other hand, how many companies desperately need product talents to figure out what is valuable to produce? In addition, engineers have commoditized many technical solutions that used to be challenging in the past 15 years. Scaling used to be a tough challenge, not any more for many compan…

Yep exactly. Especially for smaller, faster growing companies: what you choose to not work on is usually more important than what you choose to work on (once you remove the core work to support the company's current state). Without someone with product experience - usually either a PM or an experienced software leader - adding additional engineers often paradoxically hurts total productivity.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#168

Post by shostack »

ryandrake wrote: post #104
pmiller2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this has some merit. I’ve seen ratios from 3:1 to 10:1 engineers to PMs at companies I’ve been at. I could imagine the ratio going even higher. Edit: this does raise the question, though: where do product managers come from? What does the career path of a PM look like, including what happens before they become PMs?

( was a product manager, now a project manager but could move back to my old role pretty easily) I came over to the dark side from software development. Was tired of implementing other people’s bad ideas and convinced product leadership at my company that I could be an idea guy myself (along with all the other footwork and juggling you need to do as a PM). So it was an internal transfer. I think the good PMs have str…

What made you then decide to switch to project management?

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#169

Post by riazrizvi »

someguydave wrote: post #156
riazrizvi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waves hand, "We can always throw some more engineers at that part of the problem, what's really hard is figuring out what to do", said the project manager, and the product manager, and the QA manager, and the manager-manager. Meanwhile, talking heads in also ran companies in Silicon Valley continued to sell off stock in the mantra, "Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people": First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective…

Personally, I wouldn't go that far, I've found a decent number of managers to be value-adding. I think it is more about the sloppy mindset that tends to underplay the contribution of other producers on a team, to instead heavily over-value their own contributions. Engineers can go too far in this way too, of course. Managers can produce strategy, operational efficiency, organizational support for ill-understood projects, elevate performers, eliminate underperformers etc.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#170

Post by gnulinux »

Sharlin wrote: post #108
gnulinux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem. I'm actually intentionally underpaid because this way (1) I have less anxiety about getting fired (2) I have less problems with imposter syndrome (3) I worry less about being underpaid since I know I'm underpaid. I know most people will think this is extremely irrational, but I'm paid about 3 times more than I can spend (I live very cheap and am happy this way) so I already save 2/3 of my tak…

> I know most people will think this is extremely irrational I think that's perfectly reasonable. I find it hard to believe it would be "extremely irrational" to most people. Maybe I'm underestimating the extent to which money is fetishized in your culture (I presume the US). Also, being able to save 2/3 of your net salary is... a ludicrously privileged position, underpaid or not.

> Maybe I'm underestimating the extent to which money is fetishized in your culture

I worked in the Bay Area and currently in Boston. I live in the startup culture.

> Also, being able to save 2/3 of your net salary is... a ludicrously privileged position, underpaid or not.

Yes! We software engineers are lucky. Even when we're underpaid (I'm paid $90k and my friends with similar experience, same education, same interest/skills are paid $150k--$250k) we can afford to have a comfortable life. It seems like I won't be able to afford to buy a house any time soon compared to say a Google engineer making $300k a year, but that's the only disadvantage I can think of now. (I hate mortgage and what not)

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