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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)

#221

Post by luckydata »

ryandrake wrote: post #112
luckydata wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm exactly in the same boat. I love the job when I actually get to do what the ideal product manager job should be. It's very stressful, not very rewarding and it's very unstable work because EVERY fuckup down the chain will just be absorbed by the PM. We're always the first in line to be fired if someone else decided not to do their job (can be Eng, marketing, sales... doesn't matter).

Yea one of the major up/downsides of being the PM is the buck usually stops at you. Priduct couldn’t deliver on its promises? PM is accountable. Product couldn’t sell? PM. Product getting bad press? PM. Product succeeds wildly? PM.

I would add "engineering lying to my face about the status of a highly visible product and then telling me we have 3 months worth of work left one week before launch". It really happened.

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

#222

Post by riazrizvi »

x220 wrote: post #197
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".

Figuring out what to do is the hardest part. Engineering is typically the least significant part of the success or failure of a company.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth", said Kennedy, and all the senators rushed the podium, slapped him on the back, and popped champagne, as they realized the hardest part was done.

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

#223

Post by samontar »

jahaja wrote: post #188
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…

What's up with this usage of the word "talent"? Tech is in such acute need of humble pie I don't even know where to begin. I'm becoming disillusioned. Why is a programmer etc. a "talent", but a carpenter just an employee, hire or whatever? But maybe it's actually an appropriate term, now when our interview processes so clearly have ceased to be job interviews, and have become auditions - because nothing less satisfie…

It’s just terminology from acting. Wouldn’t read too much into it. Getting annoyed by that is like being upset you have a team in your org called HR. “Human Resources? Am I just a unit of raw material to be put through the factory?!”

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

#224

Post by dependsontheq »

riazrizvi wrote: post #222
x220 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figuring out what to do is the hardest part. Engineering is typically the least significant part of the success or failure of a company.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth", said Kennedy, and all the senators rushed the podium, slapped him on the back, and popped champagne, as they realized the hardest part was done.

But it was the hardest part wasn’t it? Nobody since then managed to get that commitment for a space program.

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

#225

Post by killerdhmo »

sokoloff wrote: post #76
joker3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "The salary advantage for product managers has only grown, says Hired’s data scientist Jessica Kirkpatrick. 'We see that software engineers have always been paid less than product managers, but that the pay gap has widened over the past year,' she wrote by email. The trend holds after accounting for experience. Software engineers, on average, are paid about 10% less than product managers in their fi…

What is the typical overall experience of a product manager in their first year vs the overall experience of a software engineer in their first year? No one is getting a product manager title at 21 right out of college. Lots of people are getting SWE titles at 21 right out of college.

I was a PM straight out of college and know many PMs straight out college. Both at the big companies like Google and smaller companies.

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

#226

Post by repolfx »

maxxxxx wrote: post #122
tombert wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. A couple years ago I was promised a promotion that I didn't get because of "budgetary reasons". I find it funny that despite that, literally every PM that I met managed to get promoted.

My theory is that engineers are too honest, take new initiatives too literally or simply not politically savvy. Everybody complains about title inflation but the engineering department is the only department that actually does something about it. We have the same with travel expenses. My department does often not even do necessary travel while everybody else goes to "offsite" meetings and "kickoffs" and a ton of othe…

Engineering is a discipline that requires and rewards rigour. It isn't just travel budgets. Just compare how you do hiring vs those other departments, or how work is reviewed, or assigned, or performance measured. I bet you anything the engineering teams will be vastly more systematic, frugal and rigorous than marketing, HR, PM, account managers etc.

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

#227

Post by dtech »

gnulinux wrote: post #88
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.

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…

You are of course free to do this, but you bring up 3 points, let's inspect them. I'm assuming you're being underpaid by $6k or more a year.

1: Fair, but should you worry about getting fired? Even if you are in danger, if save 2/3 of your paycheck for every month of work you can afford a month of unemployment with no adjustment in lifestyle, that's already large, but you could increase this padding by having a market-conforming salary.

2: Is this worth $500+ a month to you? If so, I'd suggest you seek a therapist, because that is a much healthier long-term way to solve this problem.

3: Well yes... You can also try to not worry about it while earning more.

A nice company, normal hours and a good and interesting job is certainly worth an enormous intangible amount!

However, all things being equal I would not recommend you keep being intentionally underpaid.

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

#228

Post by aetherson »

autokad wrote: post #77
aetherson wrote: post #2

This is a stupid use of averages. PMs come in a little senior to rank and file programmers. That doesn't mean that a PM of ten years experience makes more than a programmer of ten years.

it doesn't mean it, but there is evidence to it being true. According to sallaries on glass door, in sanfrancisco with 10-14 years exp: Product Manager: 145k$ Web Developer: 110k$ Software Engineer: 135k$

Glass door is slippery. Job titles can be really specific. But obviously it is not the case that a software engineer with 10+ years of experience, in San Francisco, makes $135k.

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

#229

Post by truebosko »

x220 wrote: post #206
truebosko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle management -- this hits home hard. Switched to People Manager / Product Manager / Many Other Hats role around the birth of my child. I find it quite rewarding, but yes, endless hours and high stress. It's also an adjustment from programmer life when you had very short feedback loops, but now as a manager no one ever tells you "Hey, you're doing a good/bad job here!" and instead, you have to just read every sit…

I'm honestly confused why you work that much. Are you getting a lot of company stock? Whatever your % increase in salary was cannot be realistically worth the extra time and mental effort you are spending.

My single comment doesn't pain a whole picture. I work a lot but not to the point of burnout.

I don't know. I love the product we've built and I find challenge through iterating on the big ideas. Sometimes I like to go back in the code and improve non critical things. Maybe I'm just a workaholic?

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

#230

Post by truebosko »

lallysingh wrote: post #183
truebosko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle management -- this hits home hard. Switched to People Manager / Product Manager / Many Other Hats role around the birth of my child. I find it quite rewarding, but yes, endless hours and high stress. It's also an adjustment from programmer life when you had very short feedback loops, but now as a manager no one ever tells you "Hey, you're doing a good/bad job here!" and instead, you have to just read every sit…

I'm just impressed you got your son in bed by 8pm...

Haha! He's still a toddler so maybe that's why ;) We've been lucky with his routine since early on.
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