Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#11

Post by nostrademons »

parano wrote: post #8
chime wrote: post #5

Is Facebook rated higher because it is the new cool kid in the neighborhood or because it is doing something different? After all, Google was considered the best place to work less than 5 years ago.

Why would being "the new cool kid" affect job satisfaction ratings by employees? Unless you're suggesting they are more satisfied due to the coolness of the idea of working there.

There're a whole bunch of benefits that you get from working at the "cool new kid":

1.) Everything you do automatically has an audience. People care about the software you write and use it in their daily lives.

2.) You get social cachet from working there. Say "I work for Google", and a bunch of people will say, "Oh, that must be nice. I wish I was smart enough to get in there." Outside of a few nerds who are too cool for FaceBook, saying "I work for FaceBook" gets the same reaction.

3.) Being in a younger, game-changing company gives you the chance to work on cooler, game-changing technologies. Many tech workers are attracted by hard problems; young, fast-growing companies tend to have lots of hard problems.

4.) When companies are younger, they've accumulated less legacy code and fewer bureaucratic procedures. If you ask a bunch of Googlers what they hate most about working for Google, I bet a large portion will say "legacy code". This is a maintenance tax that isn't fun at all, yet has to be dealt with whenever you build something on top of it. Being younger and smaller, FaceBook has less of this.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#12

Post by alokm »

credo wrote: post #10

Facebook seems to offer the most salary/compensation. More interestingly, Facebook is one of only two companies (among 10) where the company rating is higher than the compensation rating. Google gets 3.9 for company rating and also 3.9 for compensation rating (both are good). Facebook gets 4.3 for compensation rating. It gets an even higher score 4.6 for company rating (and that makes it the only company where Glassd…

May be it has to do with the fact that number of employees in google are many times more than that of Facebook, bringing down the compensation avg as well as the avg job satisfaction.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#13

Post by nspiegelberg »

chime wrote: post #5

Is Facebook rated higher because it is the new cool kid in the neighborhood or because it is doing something different? After all, Google was considered the best place to work less than 5 years ago.

Facebook is rated higher for a number of reasons:

1) High impact. Most team sizes are 5 people or less. Those 5 people are handling big systems like photos or memcache. You know you're doing important things.

2) Move fast. Example: Facebook Groups went from concept to release in 3 months. In other companies, it would take 3 months just to get through release engineering.

3) Hackathon! People here love to code, and the environment encourages you. A lot of managers have switched back to SWEs, reinforcing that it's not demeaning to stay technical.

4) Still growing. It's true, new hotness normally trumps old & established. However, where Google started doubling every 6-9 months; Facebook tries to maintain top quality at the occasional expense of slower growth. This is helping the company retain most of its original culture.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#14

Post by passerby33 »

chime wrote: post #5

Is Facebook rated higher because it is the new cool kid in the neighborhood or because it is doing something different? After all, Google was considered the best place to work less than 5 years ago.

Facebook is pre-IPO, so people who go there are likely to make extra money when the IPO happens.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#15

Post by parano »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
parano wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would being "the new cool kid" affect job satisfaction ratings by employees? Unless you're suggesting they are more satisfied due to the coolness of the idea of working there.

There're a whole bunch of benefits that you get from working at the "cool new kid": 1.) Everything you do automatically has an audience. People care about the software you write and use it in their daily lives. 2.) You get social cachet from working there. Say "I work for Google", and a bunch of people will say, "Oh, that must be nice. I wish I was smart enough to get in there." Outside of a few nerds who are too coo…

#2 is a fair point, but I think you have it reversed on #1 and #3. You are a cool company _because_ you're young, game changing and have an audience, not the other way around.

#4 is a property of most young companies regardless of their popularity.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#16

Post by maxawaytoolong »

chime wrote: post #5

Is Facebook rated higher because it is the new cool kid in the neighborhood or because it is doing something different? After all, Google was considered the best place to work less than 5 years ago.

Google went crazy with hiring in 2006 and relaxed its standards, letting in a bunch of duds. There's a higher chance at Google that your manager is going to be a creep and your coworkers are going to be mouth breathers. Facebook is younger and smaller so does not face these issues (yet). If you do encounter a poser at Facebook, at least they are a cool, young , good looking poser, not a yucky beardo comp sci Phd poser...

Also, every bullshit funded startup in NYC pays what Facebook is paying, or better. (just a pro tip in case anyone else here is too old for facebook but needs to make some dough after spending too much time in the 80-90k zone, like I did)

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#17

Post by rorrr »

Is it just me or these numbers are not that impressive?

Many of my friends make $100+/hr, it's not out of the ordinary.

I'm sure there are really highly paid developers there as well, but it just feels good to know that you don't need to work for one of the huge companies to make good money.

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#18

Post by tectonic »

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #16
chime wrote: post #5

Is Facebook rated higher because it is the new cool kid in the neighborhood or because it is doing something different? After all, Google was considered the best place to work less than 5 years ago.

Google went crazy with hiring in 2006 and relaxed its standards, letting in a bunch of duds. There's a higher chance at Google that your manager is going to be a creep and your coworkers are going to be mouth breathers. Facebook is younger and smaller so does not face these issues (yet). If you do encounter a poser at Facebook, at least they are a cool, young , good looking poser, not a yucky beardo comp sci Phd pose…

Why the level of negativity about Google? Do you have prior experience there?

Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More

#19

Post by ryanfitz »

rorrr wrote: post #17

Is it just me or these numbers are not that impressive? Many of my friends make $100+/hr, it's not out of the ordinary. I'm sure there are really highly paid developers there as well, but it just feels good to know that you don't need to work for one of the huge companies to make good money.

I agree, in my experience most funded startups (in nyc) are willing to pay at least 120K a year and you can make much more consulting. I would have thought these two companies, which are seen as the top of technology, would be paying much more.
Post reply on HN