121–130 of 206 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My boss doesn't know how much I'm paid. I like it that way. He communicates how he feels I'm doing to the people that need to know and it's working out ok.
This sounds like an unusual arrangement. Who actually determines your pay?
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.
If you increase pay regularly on a semi-fixed schedule, you at least solve this problem and improve your employee retention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've yet to see anything better than years-of-experience (or years-in-company). I've worked in both FAANG and startups plenty, and personally I've seen worse outcomes from "impact-driven" OKRs, nepotism, team-surfing, than from coasting. Coasting can be fixed by firing or layoffs (which I consider a healthy lifecycle for any company). "Coasters" at least know that what they do today they might have to support for N y…
> Coasting can be fixed by firing or layoffs Based on what? You've just invalidated all the tools one would use to evaluate performance.
I worked for a very old fashioned company in Germany that used a similar system to pay employees. After about a year I became the lead of my team. But since some of my colleagues had been in the company about 10 years, they were getting paid more than me. Frustrated, I left for a better (and better paying) job. I believe these systems produce a "dead sea effect". High performer will leave, being able to get better de…
If you felt you were underpaid, leaving is fair. I don't really understand the requirement that all bosses are paid more than those they supervise, though. I mean, emotionally I can understand feeling that way. But I don't think it's a rule of nature or something. For instance, coaches often make less than their star players. Directors and producers often make less than star actors. Hospital directors seem to make le…
Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> COVID/WFH only turbocharges this: tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom. Being tall probably matters less, sure. I do find that ability to communicate in writing with English-speaking audiences is much more important than it used to be. Technical communication and persuasion that used to happen in hallways and on whiteboards is now happening in discussion threads, written code reviews, design papers, etc. In…
Yeah, I’m personally a bit conflicted that English, especially written English is such a key skill. I once spoke a little French, and enjoyed it immensely, but there’s no money in it so it atrophied almost out of existence. Mandarin seems to be a pretty credible candidate for a “must know” business language, but even there that’s climbing up hill at least a little.
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.
Compilers are why we can write in C++ instead of assembly. The related fields of interpreters and language runtimes are why we can write in Python. The optimising part makes languages that are faster to develop in run fast enough that they can actually be used to build useful things. Bugs introduced in that stack are horrendous to run down, easy to introduce and broad in fallout. Rather a lot of our modern tech world…
I worked for a very old fashioned company in Germany that used a similar system to pay employees. After about a year I became the lead of my team. But since some of my colleagues had been in the company about 10 years, they were getting paid more than me. Frustrated, I left for a better (and better paying) job. I believe these systems produce a "dead sea effect". High performer will leave, being able to get better de…
"Evaporative cooling" is another term for the effect. Hot talent leaves, cold talent stays, diminishing your total talent-temperature.
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.
Compilers are why we can write in C++ instead of assembly. The related fields of interpreters and language runtimes are why we can write in Python. The optimising part makes languages that are faster to develop in run fast enough that they can actually be used to build useful things. Bugs introduced in that stack are horrendous to run down, easy to introduce and broad in fallout. Rather a lot of our modern tech world…
Of course google, facebook, and other large companies should be paying for optimization as it will pay off, but the vast majority of systems don't run at that scale. For most optimization is about ensuring response time is acceptable, and that is generally more about optimizing your code not your compiler.
I worked for a very old fashioned company in Germany that used a similar system to pay employees. After about a year I became the lead of my team. But since some of my colleagues had been in the company about 10 years, they were getting paid more than me. Frustrated, I left for a better (and better paying) job. I believe these systems produce a "dead sea effect". High performer will leave, being able to get better de…