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Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

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Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#631

Post by tuxcall »

Kapura wrote: post #626
tuxcall wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not gameplay. Actually playing the game will look completely different. You might as well just be making an animated film.

??? What are you talking about. That's people reacting to the announcement trailer for the game. The point being that nothing I could ever produce at Facebook or Amazon would ever produce that sort of genuine reaction from people.

You said FAANG. Either way, I think you greatly overestimate the importance of a video game trailer and greatly underestimates the joy Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, etc. bring to people. Not to mention that for many, they also provide an income and livelihood. BTW: Youtube is filled with reaction videos like that for all kinds of products and stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#632

Post by Zucburger »

pantaloony wrote: post #456
Kapura wrote: post #306

>If the market value of such incompetence if FAANG salary, how can I do good work and get paid preportionally? You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. Sometimes you can do good work, sometimes you can do bad work, but how much you're paid is going to depend greatly on a number of surrounding factors. So, acce…

> You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. This has been one of the most disorienting and most important realizations of my career. Hard work, or even effectiveness, are only loosely correlated with comp. Often it’s even inverted, and that sense you get that your higher-paid betters aren’t very good and are ba…

@pantaloony

Isnt it interesting:

Economic theory is so incomplete that it is wrong

Currently taking note of economic inconsistencies and compiling them on the side so that we can create a more complete economic theory in a few years' time.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#633

Post by grzm »

Zucburger wrote: post #632
pantaloony wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. This has been one of the most disorienting and most important realizations of my career. Hard work, or even effectiveness, are only loosely correlated with comp. Often it’s even inverted, and that sense you get that your higher-paid betters aren’t very good and are ba…

@pantaloony Isnt it interesting: Economic theory is so incomplete that it is wrong Currently taking note of economic inconsistencies and compiling them on the side so that we can create a more complete economic theory in a few years' time.

You don't need to @ the person you're replying to. It's clear from the comment threading and only adds unnecessary noise.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#634

Post by libso »

SubuSS wrote: post #393
jasonpeacock wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. There's no bonuses at Amazon (at PE/SDE levels at least), and there are compensation bands for each level. A top-ranked SDE3 that delivered DynamoDB should have similar compensation as a top-ranked SDE3 working on internal tools.

I prefer not to discuss compensation - so will answer this indirectly. Few SDE3s definitely make principal salaries, Principals make millions and so on. I remember there was an ex amazon guy putting up the top end numbers on twitter which seemed more along these lines. It sadly comes down to your managers and VP decisions. FWIW it is kind of a future investment IMO. You come out with a ton of knowledge and contacts t…

Principal is L7. No way they make millions unless they are exceptional Principals and get discretionary pay.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#635

Post by krthkv »

ransom1538 wrote: post #75

I remember talking to a senior person at FB (wears a suit on friday). I asked "how is hiring?". Their response: terrible. People like this OP game systems, know how to test, understands what the boss wants, know ahead of time the questions they will be asked, etc. They have gamed the entire system. So! They tend to get through the interview with ease. The problem is... now what. What is the next thing they need to ga…

I have a different take: Nothing really wrong with gaming the system. If someone has successfully "gamed" the interview but not effective at their role, then the interview isn't testing the candidate for the role and sounds like a broken interview loop.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#637

Post by hemdawgz »

ryandrake wrote: post #543
logicslave wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isnt true. Top performers on top products always have larger compensation. Its not discussed openly, but guaranteed they are receiving bonuses in the seven figures. If you think this isnt happening, you are naive or havent been on an inner circle at a large corporation. Whoever told you theres no bonuses at Amazon is not a top employee

Is there any actual evidence of this, though? Whenever software engineer salary comes up on HN, there are always one or two people who come out of the woodwork to share this oh-so-secret information. "Despite the pay bands that all big companies have and some even publish, there are secret squirrel individual contributor software engineers who make $600K and get million dollar bonuses! Trust us, it happens, guarantee…

People who see it happen don't even have enough hard details to confirm it to themselves aside from the fact that they're witnessing it firsthand. The best I can do, for example, is to say that at FB I worked with someone who was very well known as a very highly ranked IC, and that the comp in the band he was known to be in is astronomical (1m+ annually). Another factor is that we don't want to dox ourselves by giving out biographical details that would otherwise have built a case. This particular engineer had built foundations of particular unprecedented things within industry with enormous current relevance, even to laymen, before acquiring their current rank. I can't get more specific than that, but $1m is absolute peanuts compared to the size of the market sectors these engineers have a hand in shaping.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#638

Post by hemdawgz »

VRay wrote: post #552
mdoms wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're concerned about your downvotes perhaps you can give us your theory of how it works.

Compensation is decided by a hierarchy of managers, with each manager giving his subordinates a budget to compensate his subordinate managers, trickling down layer-by-layer to the peons. If your manager's manager's manager is awesome at self-promotion, you'll make more money. The End

unfortunately, self-promotion matters a lot, sometimes. Shitty or competitive places will require it.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#639

Post by pc86 »

noknownsender wrote: post #584
SubuSS wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I have old school compunctions against discussing it, probably comes from generations of folks not talking about it and considering it impolite. I also have seen how people react when they realize there might be a huge pay variation for same titles - it's not good for anyone. I avoid conflict as much as possible nowadays, so it makes me more reticent. I pretty much redirect direct questions even from family b…

I'm generally of the opinion that the tradition of never discussing salary is entirely pushed by management to prevent underpaid workers from asking for more. If nobody knows how much they could be making, they can never really be sure of what they are worth. At a company that size, it probably saves Corporate billions, while serving the average employee not at all.

If it was "entirely pushed by management" then most employees would ignore it, especially those making several hundred thousand or millions a year. On the contrary, a lot of employees at all salary levels discuss their salary.

Management absolutely has an incentive to hide salary writ large so that is definitely part of it. But employees who earn more than their comparably-titled peers also have an incentive not to disclose their salary. If position X gets paid, at the median, $200k a year with a $20k SD, and you get paid $275k a year in position X, the only things that will happen by you publicly discussing your salary are: 1) you'll be called a liar; 2) your peers will get jealous; 3) the best peers who may have been content prior, will either negotiate a higher salary and leave less in next year's budget for you, or leave for other positions making more money, resulting in a brain drain from your team.

Salary discussion overall only benefits low and mediocre performers. High performing ICs have very little incentive to discuss it.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#640

Post by pc86 »

consz wrote: post #579
vanusa wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever told you there's no bonuses at Amazon is not a top employee. So that's how Amazon works - people can't even get a straight answer from management as to the existence of a bonus structure (let alone how it works)? They need to whisper it to each other offer coffee, or... go on Hacker News to find out what the actual deal is?

Sometimes not even management has the whole picture knows. I know someone who was a former employee (top performer) at FB. He would have his end of year (or half year? Not sure what the cycles were) with his boss, receive his bonus and salary increase. Then his boss's boss would pull him aside and give him another bonus, that his own boss was completely unaware of.

Imagine working at a place this toxic. Holy shit.
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