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Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

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Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#51

Post by benreesman »

heurisko wrote: post #48
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

> tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom. Why do you leave out class analysis? This has far more relevance than arguably either height or race. White working class boys, at least in the UK, are the demographic least likely to go to university. The story is likely to be the same in other countries. If you're working class, you're not going to be the intake for an MBA.

I agree, I was using talk white guy as a shorthand for rich kid with several other attributes.

Being a tall white guy myself I thought it would get me less crucified.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#52

Post by mbg721 »

parkingrift wrote: post #18

Strong disagree with basing salary on years of experience. I see almost no correlation between output, skill, and years of experience. I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.

For "individual contributors" that breaks in a way that seems obvious, but managers deal in unmeasurable fuzziness almost by definition (since humans are complicated and they're in the business of humans), and there's significant pressure to become a manager after a few years.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#53

Post by benreesman »

aphexairlines wrote: post #47
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

If you truly believe this, then please reconsider. The tech industry doesn't reward people for technically challenging work. Consider how many large companies were/are built on what you'd consider to be terrible technology choices. Don't expect an "ultimately necessary transition" because it'll likely go in the opposite direction.

Please reconsider because I’ll do myself a disservice? Or please reconsider because I won’t take 1% of the marginal revenue I generate and we can’t have that kind of thinking going around?

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#54

Post by draugadrotten »

rr808 wrote: post #44
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

> If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring. Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.

Try building FB or Google without technology, and then you come back and say that the business strategy is all you need.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#55

Post by humanrebar »

rr808 wrote: post #44
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

> If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring. Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.

On the other hand, increasing performance by 0.5% at their scale is big savings. Certain kinds of optimizations can save over 10% in runtime performance, easily. That means less compute, less engineering time spent optimizing with other approaches, snappier performance compared to the competition, and so on.

Yeah, pay the "business" person better who decided, wisely, to fund these kinds of projects. But in my experience, it's a lot easier to find a strategic thinker who can understand my previous paragraph than it is to find an engineer who can accomplish it. It's especially hard to find engineers who can see that opportunity, explain it well enough to get funded, and bootstrap the project until it shows enough promise to justify itself.

You're not wrong, though, that network effects and so on are a much bigger determinant in competitive advantage at a large scale. But "business strategies" can and do include ideas like "don't buy extra data centers".

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#56

Post by cindarin »

benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

You may be right about many things you said, but this comes off as though you've got a complex about something.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#57

Post by benreesman »

draugadrotten wrote: post #54
rr808 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring. Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.

Try building FB or Google without technology, and then you come back and say that the business strategy is all you need.

To the GP, not the parent (who is dead on), can I watch?

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#58

Post by mepiethree »

I’ve worked with plenty of people with “bad experience”. People who don’t learn from their mistakes, and consistently repeat the same errors, even things as basic as not testing their code before creating PRs.

I guess this model works if you identify and fire those people early, but in general, this seems like a great way to retain proven career underperformers.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#59

Post by sockpuppet69 »

benreesman wrote: post #51
heurisko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom. Why do you leave out class analysis? This has far more relevance than arguably either height or race. White working class boys, at least in the UK, are the demographic least likely to go to university. The story is likely to be the same in other countries. If you're working class, you're not going to be the intake for an MBA.

I agree, I was using talk white guy as a shorthand for rich kid with several other attributes. Being a tall white guy myself I thought it would get me less crucified.

That’s incredibly racist.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#60

Post by cindarin »

sokoloff wrote: post #26
parkingrift wrote: post #18

Strong disagree with basing salary on years of experience. I see almost no correlation between output, skill, and years of experience. I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.

I think there’s a large correlation in the 0-3 years window. I agree there’s almost none in the 12-15 years window.

Amusingly to me, I think the opposite.
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