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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)

#241

Post by tristor »

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.

That's a fair point. I make less as a PM than I did when I was an Engineer, but I had 13 years of engineering experience before I transitioned. All of the new PMs I've worked with have a minimum of 5 years of experience in some other related role and most have a related degree.

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

#242

Post by slsii »

someguydave wrote: post #194
riazrizvi wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proje…

That doesn't contradict Pournelle's observation. The balance of power tends towards those who work for the organization in most firms. The bigger question in my mind: why firms at all? If individual PMs are so great, why bother with employees? Wouldn't you rather just contract all the elements of a technical project to other folks for a fixed fee? I do wonder what portion of good ol' boys and good ol' fashion nepotis…

There's a ~long history of people attempting to answer that question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

From the article, "Firms exist as an alternative system to the market-price mechanism when it is more efficient to produce in a non-market environment."

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

#243

Post by instaheat »

lozaning wrote: post #66
instaheat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? I have been doing inside sales for 3 years. Looking to move.

Enterprise hardware sales is incredibly lucrative, and even more cutthroat. The closer you are to the actual customer the more money you'll make. The sales guy at the VAR who actually knows the customer makes the most, followed by the sales guy at the manufacturer, then any SE's, then maybe inside guys.

I'm very close to the customer, but am slanging Mortgages. Obviously I am on Hacker News so I'm really a tech guy, know my way around a Linux box. Got into this field for the money, want out desperately. I get so tired of haggling over interest rates.

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

#244

Post by kidsnow »

twblalock wrote: post #195
chillacy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are probably TC (total compensation) which includes stocks and sometimes bonuses. If you go on Blind you can see people are receiving offers in that ballpark from Facebook and Google, who seem to be in a bidding war of sorts for talent.

All of the valley is in a bidding war for talent right now. I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a software engineer. There was a while when startups were more attractive for compensation than FAANGs, but the big companies really stepped up their game. Nowadays you can work at a startup and hope to make a few million dollars in the unlikely event that it IPOs and you got in early enough to have a lot…

^^^^^ This x1000000000

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

#245

Post by dmitriy_ko »

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…

"Talent" is now used in the context of recruitment for almost any job that requires some level of skill. E.g. I heard it being used for police officers ("law enforcement talent").

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

#246

Post by duderific »

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.

Maybe in the short term. In the long term, a company can collapse under the weight of its own technical debt, when it can no longer innovate effectively compared to the competition.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

jahaja wrote: post #240
samontar wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!”

I disagree. To be clear, there's more to techs current flight towards the sun than just this. But for this kind of wording to be possible there need to be certain conditions present. In techs case; partly just a general boom/bubble. If you'd post searches for "talent" without these conditions present you'd likely be laughed out of the building, or at the very least come of as dorky, bordering unreliable.

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by paulie_a »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #173
g9yuayon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my (limited) experience; a lot of our best PMs were once engineers, and they usually transitioned to PM roles because it let them actually execute on their visions, in addition to potentially more career growth potential.

Project managers having an engineering background is definitely beneficial, but should also be in their past. They should not be actively coding on the project. It's not a split role of managing and developing.

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

#249

Post by akiselev »

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…

I think it's about visibility of failure. When a carpenter or office worker make a mistake, it often doesn't take an expert to figure it out (and if it does, it's always a "clerical" error, not an honest mistake in a complex environment). Thus, whenever people look at these jobs, they're not seeing skilled laborers but someone whose time is simply less valuable than theirs. If only they had the time, they could have done it better - whereas programming is mysterious so they need "talent."

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

#250

Post by arountheworld »

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 can get used to any salary in few months. You could be earning 2x as you currently are and feel exactly the same after a couple of months.
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