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

#411

Post by rl3 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:12 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #399

rl3 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where equity comes in. However, equity is only worth something in any practical sense if it's fair and the employee truly believes in what they're doing. Most startups offer joke equity that's subject to dilution games with salaries below market , while claiming they hire only the best.

Post dot-com though, options (now mostly RSUs) are hardly funny money any longer. So bets that my company will go up a whole lot more than Google to the degree that it covers $100K/year comp difference are still bets. It's fairly clear to me (who doesn't (and haven't applied to) work at a West Coast tech giant) that if you can get a job at such, you will make more money. That's just the way things are. Of course, the…

Yeah, I completely agree equity is no replacement for proper salary.

Just saying it's a really effective tool when combined with ideological motivation to fend off the unlimited pockets of FAANG-scale companies.

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

#412

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #396

mrep wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about 180k for beginner level, 260k for the level above that, and 370k for seniors at G/FB [0]. And if you consider Chicago flyover, then you can get close to those numbers even in flyover as I'm in Chicago and pulling about 5% less than those numbers. Although it definitely is easier to find those jobs in NYC/Seattle/Bay area. [0]: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

You're saying that senior devs in Chicago are $350k? Because that doesn't jive with literally any piece of data I've seen. Even on the high side I can see somewhat reputable sources saying seniors are in the $180-200k range.

Every time compensation comes up on HN, people come out of the woodwork quoting some super high outlier salary that someone they know makes, and then they extrapolate that to "all FAANG software engineers must make $500K". Sometimes they quote that "anecdote aggregation" website whose name I won't even mention as evidence that these super high outlier salaries are the norm.

As far as I am aware, the data powering these sites (and HN's comments) are voluntary and self-reported, and there is no correction for this self-selection bias. Few people making average or below average compensation really want to admit it or post about it in public, so you're only going to see evidence of above-average salaries, biasing the resulting average figures.

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

#413

Post by catwind7 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #233

catwind7 wrote: post #207

> Everything gets a lot easier if you select the right software and framework, primarily if you use Ruby on Rails. Rails itself is a full-stack framework that has a best practice for every piece of a web application. If you are committed to doing things “the Rails way,” you cut the total cost of ownership by A LOT. Rails has an incredibly large community but I think this statement would be equally true for any tool y…

Having worked w/ rails/laravel, I'd say you could say the same thing and it may even be 'more' true about laravel (see: built in queues, authentication, etc), with rails you need devise, and 3rd party packages for a lot of the normal boilerplate. However, lately I'm thinking more about performance so would love to work more with rust or golang, though I find rust harder to grok mentally. Golang is nice though, and ea…

I've been meaning to checkout rust/golang for some time now - might pick up a book on it. I've worked primarily with rails the past few years and at times it feels like some of our biggest maintainability issues are the direct result of certain third party packages we reached for to solve boilerplate.

Not to knock on using libraries or anything like that, but we've definitely felt the pain of putting tools / convenience ahead of architecture.

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

#414

Post by infinite8s » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #396

mrep wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about 180k for beginner level, 260k for the level above that, and 370k for seniors at G/FB [0]. And if you consider Chicago flyover, then you can get close to those numbers even in flyover as I'm in Chicago and pulling about 5% less than those numbers. Although it definitely is easier to find those jobs in NYC/Seattle/Bay area. [0]: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

You're saying that senior devs in Chicago are $350k? Because that doesn't jive with literally any piece of data I've seen. Even on the high side I can see somewhat reputable sources saying seniors are in the $180-200k range.

Outside of finance, right?

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

#415

Post by metric10 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

Leherenn wrote: post #338

metric10 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limitle…

Google is not operating at a loss, however. They are not paying people exorbitant salaries to keep them from working at smaller companies. They are paying them six figure salaries and making _billions_ doing it. Google seems to very much care about making money. Six figures seems small to me, if anything.

Did I miss something?

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

#416

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

naveen99 wrote: post #405

stale2002 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 exp…

hedging is not arbitrage. There is no free lunch.

In this case it is free arbitrage.

This is because if the stock goes way down, and you are 1 year into your 4 year vest, then you can leave the company, and get a high compensation package somewhere else.

Do you understand how this makes it so you have free downside protection, from those other 3 years, because you can leave and get the high salary somewhere else, if the stock crashes?

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

#417

Post by piva00 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 6:00 AM UTC

cellularmitosis wrote: post #108

thelean12 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor. And FAANGs pay a ton. Maybe this can be true if you're going from like $250k to $270k from FAANG to FAANG. But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG. It would take a huge amount of perks or otherwise to make that gap worth it. (Of course this isn't true for everyo…

> I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor I can only offer the anecdote of myself, but I've floated the idea several times of taking a pay _cut_ to obtain more autonomy. No manager has ever taken me up on it.

I've floated around skipping a promotion cycle to work 4 days/week for same pay. No manager has ever taken me up on it either.

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

#418

Post by MagnumOpus » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #368

naveen99 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't count the equity appreciation as compensation. you already own the capital, its your own capital gain, not income from employer at that point.

You actually do not own the capital until it vests, and the amount that vests (which could have greatly appreciated) is all taxed as income.

That's just accounting treatment. Doesn't change the financial fact that it can be replicated with a cash bonus the same size as the original grant.

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

#419

Post by vkou » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #416

naveen99 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hedging is not arbitrage. There is no free lunch.

In this case it is free arbitrage. This is because if the stock goes way down, and you are 1 year into your 4 year vest, then you can leave the company, and get a high compensation package somewhere else. Do you understand how this makes it so you have free downside protection, from those other 3 years, because you can leave and get the high salary somewhere else, if the stock crashes?

Since RSUs vest over time, the penny-for-penny equivalent financial transaction for receiving $100K worth of RSUs over 4 years, would be for me to receive $100K of cash compensation over 4 years, and using it to buy stock (That I can't sell for X months).

There's no advantage to RSUs. Cash is better in every way, because, at worst, you can invest it in the exact same allocation that your RSUs are invested in. Any gain from them rising in price could have been realized by investing cash. Any loss from them falling in price is a real, not a paper loss. [1]

I'll take $100 of cash over $100 of RSUs any day. I probably wouldn't take $80 of cash over $100 of RSUs, though.

[1] Unless for some weird reason, you are accounting your personal finances, where a 4-year stock grant is realized in year 1. If you are doing this, you should stop, because it is not an accurate way to do accounting.

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

#420

Post by oblio » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 9:25 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #340

khalilravanna wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's always stock grants. Only crappy companies give their employees option grants these days. FAANG doesn't do it, as well as the second tier of tech companies (Oracle, Adobe, etc.).

And they will make you rich. Someone who works for these companies at a non-junior level for more than 5-10 years and is reasonable about expenses can quite easily become a millionaire if they work in their offices in developed countries. 5 years for senior positions, 10 years for regular positions.