Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by sumtechguy » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #186

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 stopping forward progress to entrench their moat, they need to be broken up by the DOJ. There's plenty of antitrust fodder already with their stranglehold over the web and the behavior they've taken to protect their search/ad business. But if they're hiring people away in cutting edge areas of research simply to destroy startups, that's abhorrent. That means they're pouring their obscene wealth from adve…

This is true but long term Google can not sustain that. MS did the same in the 90s. Google is failing to execute on many 'big ideas'. Not because of a shortage of talent. But because of a shortage of follow through and nothing moves the needle anymore. That means any new product that has a shot of being interesting (say 1%) has to produce 1.6 billion pretty quickly. There are very few new businesses that start at that position. MS should have owned the cell market. Not for a lack of trying or talent. But they kept changing positions and tech stacks every few months. They lacked the will to do it. Google is in a similar position now with most of its projects outside of its 'core' ideas. What happens, fairly quickly, is the talent figures out that the company does not really value their ideas. They move out of the company and do something else.

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

#332

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #196

rahimnathwani wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The optimal solution is for management to not let high-productivity talent from leaving - increase their comp to whatever offers they might get in the open market." That might result in the engineer being paid more than the value of their contribution at their current employer. Many things could cause this, e.g. - the new employer is much more productive, can make better use of the engineer, and so can afford to pay…

While this is possible, it's relatively unlikely. Top performers can generate enormous amounts of value for a company. As a hiring manager, I absolutely believe in the existence of 10x engineers. The reason the term has been so mired in controversy is because folks think the 10x part refers to raw coding ability, but it doesn't. It refers to soft skills, communication, leadership, domain knowledge, business acumen, c…

The issue is we're not able to quantify the costs of technical debt and lack of domain knowledge.

We rewrote something in React and adding a feature to it took 2-3 hours but doing the same to the legacy Java code took 3 weeks. This cost was easy to quantify and strengthened proposals to remove the legacy Java code.

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

#333

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #316

game_the0ry wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it's much more difficult to quantify the impact of a software engineer compared to investment bankers and consultants. The latter two are directly making money for the firm. Yes, it is difficult, but possible. Here's quick and dirty analysis - consider Sears, Walmart, and Amazon: - Amazon pays its engineers near top of market - $1.5T market cap. - Walmart has a pretty good engineering culture. They acquired a…

I deduce that investment in software engineers == higher stock price. Easy to do when you cherry-pick three companies. Run your analysis on 10,000 companies large and small and you might have something.

I wonder if we looked at stock price / developers.

Would it prove or disprove this statemenet?

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

#334

Post by stale2002 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #147

blawson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. When your RSUs are granted at 100k and then vest a few years later at 300k, from yours and the IRS' perspective you made whatever + 300k.

Yes, but you should value them at 100k, because it is the functional equivalent of getting a 100k cash bonus, that you (instead of diversifying) foolishly spent on buying a single company's stock. You don't actually need to work at Facebook to sink 100k into buying Facebook stock (That you then forbid yourself from selling for 4 years).

> that you (instead of diversifying) foolishly spent on buying a single company's stock

So, it is actually a bit more complicated, and better than that, and long term stock grants act as a psuedo stock hedge.

This is a simplification, but imagine that there is stock worth X, that hs a 50% chance of the stock doubling in value, and a 50% chance of it crashing to 0$. You might think that this would be equivalent in expected value to X, but that is not true.

It is not true, because if the stock goes way down, you don't have to "accept" those losses. Instead, you can jump to another company, mid way through, and get back your previously high salary.

In that way you can capture the upside potential, while also being protected against the downside losses, in that if the stock goes down, you just jump ship, and get a high salary somewhere else.

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

#335

Post by pb7 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

esrauch wrote: post #318

pb7 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is ~$350K, Facebook is ~$375K, Amazon is ~$315K (and not known to pay well outside of equity appreciation), Apple is ~$320K for ICT4 which doesn't map well to Senior at the others, probably a bit low. Netflix is severely north of $300K but hard to say because there's just one title -- average at $450K.

Right: the grandparent was about north of $500k though which apparently seniors don't make, only higher levels. I'm surprised I was downvoted there?

I guess "senior engineers" can be up to interpretation. Colloquially, I take it as someone with mid-career experience. For most of the FAANGs, "senior" can be reached in as little as 3 years out of college, with a median somewhere around 4-5. For a 30+ year career, one can safely assume your compensation will continue going up from your "senior" title 5 years in.

To summarize: yeah, I suppose $500K 4-5 years out of school isn't achievable, but within 10 it is.

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

#336

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #312

rahimnathwani wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The optimal solution is for management to not let high-productivity talent from leaving - increase their comp to whatever offers they might get in the open market." That might result in the engineer being paid more than the value of their contribution at their current employer. Many things could cause this, e.g. - the new employer is much more productive, can make better use of the engineer, and so can afford to pay…

I was literally asked "Do you think you are worth $x?" in an exit interview. Obviously I do, since that was the offer. What a strange question.

> Do you think you are worth $x?

Yes, actually $x * 20%.

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

#337

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #197

jdmichal wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea sorry that's bullshit. I certainly don't need the stress of a job in my life if I have other options. I don't care how much I like my job, it's still a job and the only reason I'm doing it is to make money. Otherwise I'd be spending time with my family and doing hobbies, of which one would likely still be writing software. And I wouldn't expect anyone in that position to give me two weeks. Two weeks is about not…

>And I wouldn't expect anyone in that position to give me two weeks... If I never need to cross that bridge again, what do I care if it burns? IMO that makes them an asshole. But, to your point, sure. If I have FU money then depending on a lot of things including what arrangements I could make with an employer, I might well choose not to work for someone else.

Agreed. A rich, independently-wealthy asshole. But there's also a difference between my moral judgements and my preparations. I can hope someone won't be an asshole, but I will prepare for it.

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

#338

Post by Leherenn » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

metric10 wrote: post #227

nhumrich wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

I don't think people are complaining workers are paid too much, but that some markets are distorted by external forces.

Let's say you're a company in a field, competing against other companies in that same field. Everyone is basing wages on how much money they expect to make and so on. Not everyone has the same estimations, but in the end they're all grounded in that market.

Now comes a company with virtually limitless from some other market, who doesn't care about making money but about achieving dominance. All of the sudden, they're throwing wages around you can't compete with because they're not trying to be profitable.

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

#339

Post by pc86 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #143

bluedino wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The optimal solution is for management to not let high-productivity talent from leaving - increase their comp to whatever offers they might get in the open market. >> Investment bank and management consulting figured this out a long time ago. That only works if your business makes piles of money, like investment banks. Or FAANG. The rest of us have a % of money to spend on talent.

The rest of you waste more money hiring 5-10x more mediocre engineers to try to mitigate the bus factor or whatever. And it's still not as good a product as it will be built by a handful of good, over paid and over worked engineers who really know what they're doing.

Most "over paid" engineers are smart enough not to get in a position where they can become over worked :)

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

#340

Post by hinkley » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

khalilravanna wrote: post #214

hinkley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a guy who passed on Apple because they weren't offering anywhere near that. Are a lot of people really seeing this kind of money?

Yes: https://www.levels.fyi/

See, I always have trouble with 'stock'. I need more details. Is it a stock grant, or an option grant? Because with a publicly traded company, they'll let anyone buy options. The difference is that I don't have to wait 2 years, but I also don't get to wait three years if things aren't great at 2.