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Compare career levels across companies

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Re: Compare career levels across companies

#411

Post by richardknop »

Tade0 wrote: post #355
iztyhi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> churn out apps with a Java back-end and an Angular/React/Vue/whatever front-end That's basically what all of us product engineers at FB do, it's just that there's so much competition for engineers here that they have to pay us well.

I have to ask: how is all that not outsourced for half the price already?

I think some companies tried to outsource stuff like this (Oracle, IBM) but they are slowly finding that there are real costs associated with outsourcing tech and it might be actually cheaper for the company to hire expensive developers in San Francisco but have them sitting in the same building as top management so the communication can happen in real time and engineers can fully understand business requirements rather than try to manage remote outsourced teams on the other side of the globe who have no idea what's happening at the HQ.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#412

Post by richardknop »

Nursie wrote: post #108
slivym wrote: post #7

Here's a slightly related open question: Are Engineers in the US just much richer than in the UK? For perspective, I started my career with an MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering as a Hardware Design Engineer at £35k (I out-earned most of my fellow graduates). It seems like these salaries are just comically disjointed from my entire experience of life. Can anyone here speak to the differences? Everything I'…

UK software salaries are a joke. I get a lot of feelers from agents looking for 5-10 years experienced, capable software guys and looking to pay in the range of your grad salary for them. The embedded world seems particularly bad for this but it's rife throughout. The US, Canada and Australia all pay far better, often multiples of what's on offer at home. The only way I've found to come close to the pay I could get o…

Agree with everything you have said (have worked in London as both perm and later as a contractor for above stated reasons).

But to be completely fair, UK (or London, to be specific) is still the best place in whole Europe for software engineers. Nowhere in Europe you can make close to what a skilled and capable contractor in London can make.

It's not comparable to Bay Area but it's not that bad actually compared to rest of Europe. You can at least make a decent salary, although it's all cash and no stocks/RSUs... But you can invest the cash you make as a contractor into equities of companies you believe in.

Plus the flexibility of contracting is very nice. I doubt Bay Area engineers can just decide to take 2 month break and go to Bali to relax. As a contractor in London, you can easily finish your contract, take couple months off, then come back and start a new contract. That sort of flexibility is pretty nice.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#413

Post by thedufer »

askafriend wrote: post #358
kajecounterhack wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You forget that many of these compensation numbers include a large portion of equity that many people hold for 1yr to get long term capital gains tax of just 15%. Actually for RSUs you are taxed at vest, so it's your pay tax rate (probably in the realm of 35%+). What's taxed at 15% after a year is any additional gain from vest time. So if you get 4 google stock at $1000 a piece, they sell 2 to cover your tax liabil…

You’re right, thanks for jumping in and clarifying my hastily written comment! Stock gain does account for a significant portion of comp the past couple of years though so it’s not a small thing. Options (vs RSUs) also have slightly different mechanics.

But the stock gain that accounts for a significant portion of comp is between grant and vest, and thus is still taxed at normal income tax rates.

Gains after vest can't really be counted as comp, since anyone else could have bought those same shares and made those same gains. That's just investment income; attributing it to your employer/employee relationship is silly.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#414

Post by lucb1e »

domlebo70 wrote: post #396
lucb1e wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought about whether I'd work for a company like Google or Facebook, where the pay and culture and everything is great, but at the same time you're part of an organisation which makes some ethically questionable products. How do you feel about that now that the decision is somewhat imminent?

It's tough, I agree. Is it naive to think you can have a positive impact from within though?

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it like that. Maybe you can indeed steer it for the better, but as long as the profit model is ethically questionable, I'm not sure about the good vs. bad impact of one's contribution.

Tough decision indeed.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#415

Post by Zaheer »

Zaheer wrote: post #27
xeromal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking around on the page adds to the tab's history. I had to click back 10x to go back to this thread. Seems kind of pointless to record state in this usecase?

Re Browser history hijack: this was bug introduced with a recent change. We're on it - apologies for the inconvenience!

Update: Fixed!

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#416

Post by Zaheer »

Zaheer wrote: post #23
NKosmatos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi and thanks for the info. A couple of things if I may. Please don’t hijack the browser history, played around with some companies and levels and when I tried coming back to HN the history was full ;-) Also it would be good if you could include some extra details about each level (e.g. education, years of experience). I think I’ll give Triplebyte a try, reminds me of HackerRank.

Good feedback. The browser history was a bug introduced from recent change in last few days. We're on it. Regarding additional details on each level, although there is some correlation between years of experience and level, it actually isn't very strong. A better indication is typically responsibilities / scope of impact which we are working on defining more clearly. Thanks for the feedback!

Update: fixed!

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#417

Post by hagope »

Jach wrote: post #231
hagope wrote: post #223

Is this an accurate representation of comp? For the equity portion, for example if the value is calculated at 2018 peak stock market levels (RSU are granted in # of shares, not value of shares) then shouldn't all the equity values be discounted by the 10-20% drop in FANG stock values?

I'm also somewhat curious about the "stock $ per year" measurement. If I get 650 RSUs that vest 100% over 5 years (front-loaded), and on year 3 I get another 250 RSUs with the same schedule, how exactly should I calculate that in dollars? One way would be to just take the figure on my tax returns that accounts for proceeds from selling them, which is what I would do. I also wonder if other people are including procee…

Exactly, are people reporting the original value at grant date or current value of the grant, I wonder.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#419

Post by maerF0x0 »

hagope wrote: post #417
Jach wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also somewhat curious about the "stock $ per year" measurement. If I get 650 RSUs that vest 100% over 5 years (front-loaded), and on year 3 I get another 250 RSUs with the same schedule, how exactly should I calculate that in dollars? One way would be to just take the figure on my tax returns that accounts for proceeds from selling them, which is what I would do. I also wonder if other people are including procee…

Exactly, are people reporting the original value at grant date or current value of the grant, I wonder.

IMO people should be reporting "At grant" and it would be fair to gross public companies up by an estimated average market growth (~7%) .. ie 1/4th at 100% , 1/4th at 107%...

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#420

Post by josh2600 »

Cyph0n wrote: post #406
deanmoriarty wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, if you think that implementing from scratch a DMA solution is not hard, then you are an extraordinary talented engineer, far above the level you find at FAANG, so your opinion on this matter is not terribly relevant. It would be as if Jeff Dean came and said writing MapReduce is not a hard task. Nice, but not relevant for the 99.9999% of the talent pool. I got a couple offers over the years for L5-L…

Perhaps we’ve understood the original comment differently. I took it to mean writing a driver that uses an existing DMA API to talk to a controller. But yes, I agree: implementing such a DMA interface from scratch — even with an existing controller — is not a trivial problem. Testing and verifying said implementation would also be difficult. Well, I hope that one day I can make 1M/yr! For now, 3 months into my first…

I am talking about doing a DMA interface from scratch.
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