Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you quit on the spot, right?
I filed a complaint with the appropriate authorities (about the trips to Fiji, not the iPads).
:-D
New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
281–290 of 547 posts
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
For unsteady contracted project work, this doesn't sound off the mark for high-value niche skillsets at a senior or principal level. I wouldn't expect FAANGs to pay it for steady work, though. Well, Netflix might come close. I can count two principal-level architects pulling north of 700k/y, but I doubt they work just 40 hours a week.
I just have trouble wrapping my head around how someone can be that valuable. I'll never even hit $75/hr (excluding inflation).
A solution expert usually brings a baggage of knowledge of previously working solutions in the problem space, knowledge that has been acquired over many months of hard work
Short gigs where you being in a solution, point a team/company on the right direction and then jump off compensate for the accrued knowledge transfer more than for the hour worked
Think of it like a top end athlete, they aren't paid for the few hours of play, but for the years of training that keep them competitive
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their labour can absolutely be that valuable due to how many customers you are effecting with a single hour of work - it's sort of the same principle as athletic stars - paying outrageous salaries to athletes is probably the least bad way to do things (it's certainly better than the companies just pocketing lots of cash). That said, I think this is only achievable because of how relatively young and greenfield softwa…
It’s not about skills, it’s about the value those skills provide. If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem, that’s worth $X. If your company sells that to 10 companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it’s sold to 10000, wow. Think of your work in terms of value provided to the buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock career potential
I absolutely agree and that's where the price differential is coming in, but it causes some perverse effects to the wage market. Is the work of the person solving that 5k/day problem that's then sold to ten clients worth ten times as much as the work of the person who's work is only sold to one client?
I think it's important to recognize the semi-arbitrary source of where this value is coming from and understand that while employees impacting a lot of customers are indeed creating a lot of value the work they are doing isn't significantly different from the work made by folks with more modest salaries.
Basically, at the core, I think there's a significant ethical question here and I would highlight the relative infancy of the industry. It's likely that in a few hundred years all this incredible value creation will be highly commoditized and that innovative development will be relegated to academic pursuits that companies only adopt and bring to market after a lot of investigation and research.
Uh hrm - as another parallel you might compare this to speed running. Right now we can do relatively simple things to dramatically create value (time saved off the run) but as time goes on and the run gets more "perfected" then the ability to shave time off the run (or create value for the business) will require a lot more investment of effort. I'm not certain if this will happen since everything in how development works points to this being a really hard state of the industry to accomplish - but looking at economic trends it feels inevitable that eventually it will be more profitable to, for instance, produce a cheaper better whatsapp then being the first market entrent into the coveted Deciduous Tree Vlog Platform market.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember, if you pay median, 1/2 the engineers are making more at other companies.
This is a great point so many companies don't seem to get. The company I worked for previously thought their pay was "competitive" because they kept people at median of market. Company before that, same deal, I was paid a "fair" median salary. Turnover at both companies was very high as you'd expect.
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Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their labour can absolutely be that valuable due to how many customers you are effecting with a single hour of work - it's sort of the same principle as athletic stars - paying outrageous salaries to athletes is probably the least bad way to do things (it's certainly better than the companies just pocketing lots of cash). That said, I think this is only achievable because of how relatively young and greenfield softwa…
It’s not about skills, it’s about the value those skills provide. If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem, that’s worth $X. If your company sells that to 10 companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it’s sold to 10000, wow. Think of your work in terms of value provided to the buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock career potential
It is a little bit more complicated than that.
If the webapp can solve $5000/day problem but there is literally millions of people that can do this, you are certainly not getting a share of that. Somebody else is maybe going to be rewarded for spotting an opportunity but the most you get is a "market rate".
The only way you can get paid proportionally is if you are literally the only one that can solve the problem and you know it and they know you know it.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.
Some people don't care so much about the money. I'm barely over the six figure mark in the bay area. I could probably make a lot more money somewhere else, but I wouldn't get to do anything nearly as interesting as my current work.
What if I told you that, more often than not, you could do your current work and get much more money? People, especially tech people, are quite awful at extracting their full value.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recall hearing from friends that Intel paid more for higher levels of education; having a PhD was more conducive to a high salary than years of experience. Do you know if that was true?
It is likely your friend was paid better because they were assigned higher grade. Just for being PhD I think you are automatically bumped to something like senior engineer or higher. Intel has grading system which you can try to google. You are paid according to your grade (+ benefits based on performance, etc.) Also, you are evaluated against your grade and you can gain or loose a grade based on performance (but mor…
Probably you were hired at grade 9 or 10?
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am 100% in the same boat. Had a recruiter reach out to me who wanted me to leave my more than comfortable six figure SV job to do cutting edge contract work in machine learning as a lead engineer for about $50/hour. I was so amused I actually spent the time listening to their pitch and eventually told them that anything less than $200/hour wouldn't even cover my current pay + benefits. Let me know if you can do bet…
I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.
I think talented people will not take it unless they're between a rock and a hard place. Sadly what this does is it attracts only the most junior or unqualified hires who (are great if you got time/budget but if not) will need to be trained by the few seniors left holding the place together.
I'm not surprised Intel does this and the telecommunications side I have seen from them in Europe was rotten to the core. I have several anecdotes here just one: A friend got poached from Intel in a cushy job with great pay in a key role a lot of niche knowledge, they had to know how valuable he was, after the first week on the new job with Intel he got told that the department decided to reduce the headcount due to a restructuring and so he was the first to go.
If it sounds like "business as usual" let me add nobody else was fired, he had a 3 month long negotiation, 6 months notice period on the old job, 3 kids, and in his late 40ies in a specific market. What he was promised would have justified taking the risk. Later I heard they do this all the time from a guy who recruits for Intel. Also this was not in the enterprise market with lot of talent but telecommunications O&M (operations and maintenance plane). He eventually went to go beg to get his job back. He'll never have the same standing in the company tho.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, $45/hr is just laughtable. I know many freelance web developers from ex-USSR countries who charge more and their effective tax rate is below 10%. Or did you mean this is $45/hr post-tax rate?
Ugh, I make less.
Ditto. This whole thread makes me feel out of touch.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is likely your friend was paid better because they were assigned higher grade. Just for being PhD I think you are automatically bumped to something like senior engineer or higher. Intel has grading system which you can try to google. You are paid according to your grade (+ benefits based on performance, etc.) Also, you are evaluated against your grade and you can gain or loose a grade based on performance (but mor…
I've known people from towns with one or even two big industries, grew up in several, and the town always gets weird after a while. One in particular I'm thinking of that was almost healthy had a state and an art university pulling in money, and people who lived in the school districts but commuted to heavy industry in an exurb of the next big town. Someone tried building a factory on the edge of town to poach those…
Intel's Hillsboro campus is located "in the middle of nowhere in Oregon" in almost exactly the same sense that Microsoft's Redmond campus sits "in the middle of nowhere in Washington"; each one is located at the edge of a suburb of the largest city in the state, right next to a highway which leads straight downtown, less than fifteen miles away.