I wonder if they have regrets about their 300 million dollar diversity push.
New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
361–370 of 547 posts
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just have trouble wrapping my head around how someone can be that valuable. I'll never even hit $75/hr (excluding inflation).
It's not unheard of to give people who were party to the creation of some critical thing the company does pay that simply can't be matched elsewhere in order to make them stick around. Usually you pair it with a fancy title like "global architect" or some other mumbo jumbo like that. Pretty much any time you hear about someone making 500k+ without being personally responsible for the success or failure of a heck of a…
That's not true at all. Tons of people in Bay Area/NYC/Seattle are making $500k+ just for being relatively good at their jobs at a company that values software engineers. That's a typical Staff+ comp at a FAANG or similar company. You don't have to be some mythical engineering genius or be in the right place at the right time (to make it to $1MM+ probably does though).
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Question then becomes: can YOU sell that work to 10,000? and how many can make what is sold? I worked at a startup, became amazed at the sales crew’s ability to find buyers. I could make the app (and Co. could find few willing & capable to), but in no way could find anyone to fork over that much for it.
Yes. Point is the company with a good sales force gets more value out of your work and can pay you more. Not 1000 times more, but 5x sounds possible.
Google for example makes about 7-figures per employee. That’s a loooot of room to negotiate.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel employs 5,900 people in Santa Clara county and that is their corporate headquarters so obviously they think they gain something from a large Bay Area footprint. The idea that Bay Area hiring is primarily "little startups that need to go out to bars" is also very odd.
Intel's footprint in Santa Clara is comparatively small. They have 21K in the Portland metro area, and 12K in the Phoenix region. They have about 15K in California, split between Folsom and Santa Clara.
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Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow the salaries for PhDs in electrical engineering capable of making chips from scratch became normalized with software developers churning out CRUD apps.
That's because CRUD people can do work that is far more leveraged than a hardware engineer, from the business' perspective. So the CRUD people produce more economic value. One dev can spend 2 weeks automating some process or building a prototype web app that goes on to generate tens of millions for the company with no overhead. Your hypothetical EE can spend 2 years designing a chip. The chip will then require 100s o…
But its a question not of how much value the employee generates, but how rare is that employees work that they deserve to be compensated highly. i.e, could you get someone of the same ability for less.
Consider the reality shows The Voice, America's Got Talent, game shows etc., that generate millions of dollars of revenue for the studios. But the people who are performing the acts, aren't compensated highly (unless they "win").
Frankly I think that many of these highly paid SWEs are really not worth what they are paid, and that many people could be doing their jobs.
I think this is part of the reason of my struggles in the job market since being laid off in June. There has become an obsession that if you're not in the "top 1% of SDEs", you are in essence, worthless and shouldn't be hired.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Underpaid people aren’t talented? That’s harsh.
People get paid what they ask for. No one is underpaid or overpaid. Simply ask for more in salary and benefits. When they ask why, state all the reasons why the increase is warranted. If they deny the request, look for another job that pays the higher amount.
This I can get behind (note this has nothing to do with talent).
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's incredible to me how often recruiters will shoot themselves in the foot when discussing WLB. When I was an undergrad, I had a lot of management consultancies reach out for technical/engineering roles. I thought - hey, there's a reason why people want to work at Bain, BCG, and McKinsey, right? So I spoke to a recruiter and opened with: so what's the work life balance look like for technical ICs at your company? T…
> It's incredible to me how often recruiters will shoot themselves in the foot when discussing WLB. Would you prefer them to lie to you? At least the recruiter was honest, even if the company's WLB was poor.
Honesty is appreciated. But the reactionary laughter signals a deeper cultural issue than just WLB, IMO. It struck me as off-putting.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unashamed MBA checking in here! MBAs are the classic punching bags for HN. It seems we’re willing to bend the “civility” rules a bit here in order to have a nice hearty MBA-bash. I’ve seen all sorts of awful generalizations posted here about MBAs that would get you flagkilled if made about other professions or degrees. Some of us actually have tech/coding backgrounds and aren’t the stereotypical pointy-headed-bosses,…
Fully agree. I was referring to a specific case where the payscale for people with MBA degrees was lower than the payscale for people with undergraduate engineering degrees. In my experience, there are many great leaders with MBA degrees. However, you never hear about their MBA degree because they have so many other accomplishments to lead with. They are managers who happen to have completed an MBA program in the pas…
The problem is less people that start out in engineering then switch to MBA/busness track. Its the psych majors / marketdrone people who think that running a tech company is equivalent like running a clothing line or sports drink company.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unashamed MBA checking in here! MBAs are the classic punching bags for HN. It seems we’re willing to bend the “civility” rules a bit here in order to have a nice hearty MBA-bash. I’ve seen all sorts of awful generalizations posted here about MBAs that would get you flagkilled if made about other professions or degrees. Some of us actually have tech/coding backgrounds and aren’t the stereotypical pointy-headed-bosses,…
If it helps, all those MBA-bashing cool tech startups busy giving away a percentage of their revenue to Amazon, don't realise that AWS was the brain-child of a Harvard MBA.
Cloud is basically managed hosting allowing a pay-as-you go model for resource utilization (compute, storage, etc.). Which was also not really anything new as that model existed on timeshared systems prior to that.
Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects
#370This is an encouraging move. My secondhand understanding was that Intel was losing top talent due to pressure to pay closer to median industry compensation. Top engineers recognized they were underpaid and left the company. I've been part of a similar downhill slide at a smaller company in the billion dollar revenue range. To be blunt, once the [mediocre] MBAs start realizing that the engineers are getting paid more…
> My secondhand understanding was that Intel was losing top talent due to pressure to pay closer to median industry compensation. Top engineers recognized they were underpaid and left the company. This is what happens when you're run by bean counters who don't understand your core business or industry.
Companies will pay whatever they think they can get away with. Some companies with high social cachet like Tesla pay quite poorly [1], and yet people want to work there.
[1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Tesla,Google,Facebook,Micros...