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Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

neomindlabs.com

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Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#221

Post by mensetmanusman »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

What are your thoughts on the language to use when a nation-state backed ‘company’ hires away a critical mass of people at many multiples of the market rate as a means to gain market dominance.

(e.g. China recently hired away a few thousand engineers from TSMC this way)

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#222

Post by three_seagrass »

giantg2 wrote: post #117
Schiendelman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may offer advice: Never tell yourself no. Go give it a shot, even if you don't prepare at all. You lose nothing.

Well... your current employer might let you go or freeze your upward mobility if they find out you are looking at other jobs. I've even seen this internally. If I want to go to another team, why would my manager use their budget or political influence to promote me when they can use it on someone who is staying on their team.

This is why you do not tell your manager until it's decided, or it's so far along that they're needed as a reference.

In a perfect world, your manager should not care and your company should not treat you any differently for looking, but this is rarely the case.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#223

Post by gremlinsinc »

pavlov wrote: post #17

The author makes it sound like Rails is the recommended way to build software that is maintained by a revolving door of junior developers whom you don't have to motivate or compensate, because you can just hire another cog-in-the-machine when the old ones inevitably wise up to your game. Not sure if that was the intended message.

yeah, kind of read it that way, or as an ad for their rails churn 'shop'. More than anything seems like an ad for rails developers, nothing else.

as a fullstack guy who's worked w/ rails, laravel, etc... and who's done my share of frontend stuff, I'd say focusing on the frontend might be a bigger sell, cause that shit is VERY opinionated lately.

Vue vs React vs Vanilla vs Alpinejs. Do you use bootstrap or tailwinds? Backend code is rudimentary but nailing the ui stuff and also cross platform if needing mobile or w/e is much harder personally.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#224

Post by mypalmike »

LordKano wrote: post #62
paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

Approximately 10 years ago, I was really unhappy with my work situation and was checking job postings. I found one that sounded right up my alley and I reached out to the agency that posted it. They told me that because I was working for another one of their clients, they wouldn't submit me for the job because they felt it was unethical. I responded that I wasn't owned by my employer and just as they were free to let…

Reason #239 to avoid recruiting agencies.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#225

Post by jefftk »

Cederfjard wrote: post #217
JoshTriplett wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equating the two creates a perception that employees shouldn't be paid as much as they're worth. An employee being paid $500k/year is probably producing even more value to their employer than that, and if anything, the goal should be to close the gap between value and compensation, not widen it.

I think the point is that very wealthy companies can temporarily pay employees more than the value they provide, and willingly eat that cost until the competition has been stifled, at which point they can lower compensation again.

On the other hand, offering extremely high salaries makes a lot of people consider becoming programmers who wouldn't otherwise think of it. You can't buy your way out of having your competitors having access to skilled labor, outside of perhaps the very short-term.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#226

Post by mhaberl »

whatshisface wrote: post #178
benrbray wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google is willing to pay 200k above market rate to hire an employee from a competitor, chances are part of the "value" of that employee is that they will no longer be working for someone else. Yes, literally speaking, it's "worth it" to Google, or they wouldn't do it. Being so large, Google can throw advertising money on their self-driving car division, no problem. They can take a loss for 5-10 years, no problem.…

If Google is willing to pay $200k over your current employer for you, your employer is paying you $200k under your market rate.

You can view this issue from another standpoint.

Imagine some market where 10 companies sell bread and it costs $5. And lets assume that the costs are $4 and $1 is profit.

Then comes a company that makes its money on selling water and it is doing very well. It comes to a bread market and starts selling bread for $3.

The competition is quickly destroyed and the bread prices rise.

Edit: as a sibling comment mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#227

Post by metric10 »

nhumrich wrote: post #163
sjburt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really fail to see the distinction. If someone is willing to pay 600k for something, then the value of that thing on the market is 600k. That is what a market is.

The correlary is that McDonalds could offer free burgers for a year, they have enough money to handle the cost. They could do it just so that other business cant stay affloat. This doesn't mean that the market price of a McDonalds burger is $0

I don't think Google is operating at a total loss when they pay a developers these salaries? Software is making Google (and many other tech companies) hundreds of billions per year in profit and people are complaining about a 6 figure salary being too high.

If all I can afford to pay a developer is minimum wage, is he or she now obligated to work for me at my "market rate?" At what point does it go from not having enough money to afford a highly qualified developer to becoming "poaching?"

ed: Toned it down a little. I think tech is making an absurd amount of money and it's exasperating to see people complain about paying their workers too much.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#228

Post by setr »

sjburt wrote: post #129
thomascgalvin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. In the vast majority of cases, I agree. If someone is working at CompuTech for $100K per year, and gets an offer from TechuComp for $110K per year, that's market forces working in favor of the developer. This is a good thing. But there is the possibility for entities the…

I really fail to see the distinction. If someone is willing to pay 600k for something, then the value of that thing on the market is 600k. That is what a market is.

Im not sure thats a useful model -- google would be in this case bringing in money from one market (eg ad revenue) to overprice in another market (self driving r&d)

If walmart takes its surplus capital and decides to sell toilet paper at a loss, to run everyone else out of business (till they're the last man standing), I'm not sure its correct to say that the market value of TP has reduced during that time period. Walmart has undercut the market value (the point where buyer and sellers generally meet) -- it hasn't actually changed the market value, except temporarily, in whats effectively a hack. The permanent shift in this case would occur when the dust has settled, and all competition has been eliminated

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#229

Post by three_seagrass »

laurentdc wrote: post #46
roland35 wrote: post #11

FAANG companies can certainly offer more money, but there are lots of things other companies can offer too (besides Ruby on Rails apparently). - ownership of the product and process - less red tape and politics - good work life balance - location other than Silicon Valley - boss who pays attention to engineer needs and wants Money is a huge factor but it isn't the only one!

Anecdotal, but when I hear of people working impossible hours and with a clueless boss it's almost always a startup or some small shop.

It's also a good signal that there's something wrong with the management at the startup and/or the startup is not doing well enough to hire the resources they need.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#230

Post by xenihn »

zten wrote: post #102
JPKab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that hits me is the "$500k+/year in the valley". Is this really a thing? Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Even factoring in my stock grants, I'm nowhere close to that number.

> Is this really a thing? There's outrageous equity offered by like 5 companies. Everybody else is getting stock option grants worth 5-10% of what Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are offering (the situation is a little different for Netflix). > Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Probably not, Colorado is great.

There are a few other companies that consistently give offers with TC approaching $500k to senior engineers, where the non-salary portion of the comp consists of RSUs that are immediately sellable upon vesting (like FAANG), as opposed to stock options. I'm sure I'm missing some, but these are the ones that I could think of off the top of my head (verified with levels.fyi):

- Snap

- Pinterest

- Lyft (though their stock is hurting right now, they still have top-band comp)

And then there's HFT, where $500k is probably considered average, but I guess that may as well be a completely different industry.

If we want to drop down to approaching $400k, you can add:

- Dropbox

- Square

Also I don't think Microsoft should be on your list unless you're specifically referring to LinkedIn's SF and Sunnyvale offices.

Note that getting $500k+ TC offers as a senior is still exceptional even in the Bay Area (look at levels.fyi). Netflix is supposed to be the most consistent when it comes to giving offers in that range (and all-cash too). Whereas if four senior engineers got four offers each from other companies on the list, they would likely range between $300k and $500k before negotiation.

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