Live data from Hacker News

Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

toolbox.com

591–600 of 609 posts

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#591

It's subtle, but the headline feels a bit like low-key class warfare clickbait. No one feels underpaid because their salary is six figures, it's because of what they're paid relative to their peers and workload. The article actually covers this decently well, but the headlines makes it sound like techies are a bunch of entitled brats.

This is important. I feel it's especially true of folks outside of the Bay area, who hear of 400-600K compensation packages and wonder why they're being paid "so poorly" A personal anecdote: A (very much) junior colleague decided to move jobs and when I asked them they told me their new salary - $15k more than I was making (and I had 15 years of experience on them). This person is totally competent and I was delighte…

Annoyed with who?

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#592
post #450
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with code review/debug/refactor interviews is that they rely on the candidate being familiar with the "this". The original intention of LC interviews was to remove domain specificity from the "this". Prior to LC interviews, candidates would get asked about their familiarity with things like ISO standards, random libraries, or other weird behaviors best learned through memorization. This can be mitigated…

Domain specificity can be mitigated by matching the interview problem(s) with the tech stack that's being hired for. Doing a refactoring of some basic Java code that's not going crazy with annotation processing would be quite reasonable for a job ad seeking to hire someone to do Java development; the same problem can be replicated in Python, JavaScript, etc. to accommodate different skill sets. I wouldn't expect this…

> Doing a refactoring of some basic Java code that's not going crazy with annotation processing would be quite reasonable for a job ad seeking to hire someone to do Java development

This goes back to the days where job ads would request N years of X experience. The big takeaway from the last ~10 years is that this type of requirement is unnecessary. As an engineer who knows the fundamentals, it's relatively straightforward to pick up a new tech stack.

I wouldn't want to pass on someone who spent the last 5 years working in C because we have a java stack.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#593
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Apple and others have already been caught colluding to stop engineers from making higher salaries.

And the courts put a stop to it. There were several cases against various companies over the years, but there don’t seem to be any since 2014. Did engineers salaries suddenly jump as a result 6 years ago? Is there any evidence of significant collusion since? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

You aren't really naive enough to think that just because a court ordered a corporation to stop doing something that they always stop doing that thing? Not only that but the order was only against some companies in SV which these days aren't even the highest paying or most desirable to work for.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't spare a thought for them when my own existence is endangered. I'm thinking about them a lot now, and donate when I can, but that would have to end. The problem here is being forced to work less at a time when I'm able to work more. It's not fair to make me earn less just because I wasn't able to spread out my work across the calendar because of my mental health issues.

I don't see where your ability to spread out work is affected at all. Taxes are usually done annually, so how spread or concentrated work is over a year wouldn't affect the level of taxation. And it's already the case that this can't (easily - I suspect there are ways) be spread over multiple years. That wouldn't be a change. I would also point out that those with lower salaries also suffer from mental health issues.…

Yes indeed, taxes are annual - and I told you clearly that I have years (usually less than one) when I can work well followed by years (usually multiple) when I can't work at all. E.g. in 2017 I was able to work 7 months and then nothing 2 years, then 3 months and nothing for a year, etc. I'd have passed your threshold in 2017 (if we adjusted by purchasing power) but thankfully there was none and so I was just barely able to make enough money to stay off the street during the two following years (but I wasn't that lucky the next period).

I shouldn't take any precedence whatsoever, but others shouldn't have any precedence over me. It's bad enough that I'm unable to get any assistance because "I'm rich enough" - actually I'm in serious debt.

The most draconian collector I had was the tax agency, which assigned me interest larger than the worst loan shark you could find anywhere in the world; they don't care that a court locked me up in a hospital and disabled my bank accounts, I got 0.3%/day (yes, per day) "to motivate payment ASAP". I guess I should've just unstrapped myself from the bed, get a gun, rob the bank of my own money, and pay? Other creditors like banks were just OK to chill a little until I'm back, even the gangster drug dealer guy I had to borrow from when banks wouldn't see me treated me with much more respect than the state.

That's what you want more of? GTFO with that, you will just fuck up poor people's lives even more - the stories in the hospital were very similar to mine, and those other people don't have the big annual wage I can get as a programmer. If you think the state will try to help poor people, tell me why is it not helping at least a little now? I'm from a poor family, where was the state when I wasn't a programmer yet? Let me tell you, it was working hard to fuck us up even more. And now after my hard work overcoming my own problems, in spite of everything the state has thrown at me, you're saying it should get even more of my work?

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses questions like this in interviews, the entire point of these kinds of questions is to see where the candidate takes you. If you want to spend 20 minutes talking about DNS, I'm going to ask a lot of follow-up questions throughout the process, not fail you for not meeting a rubric or magic list of buzzwords. My goal will be to see how deep your knowledge on a particular piece of technology is, espec…

If I was given this question my first inclination would be to ask what your current understanding of the process is and you want to know. If that didn't help, I'd start with the absolute highest level "the google.com website loads in the area below the address bar" and then I'd be back to "what else do you want to know?". Hopefully that would be enough for you to start narrowing in (what does "load" mean and how does…

I would ask probing questions like "how does the area below the address bar know which website to load?"

Like, my goal isn't to see how much of a spiel you've rehearsed for a finite set of possible interview questions.

That sort of exercise constitutes a useless hazing ritual that selects for people with low anxiety at the moment, not aptitude with the relevant technologies for the job.

I'm going to keep pushing the conversation along until you've either hit the depth of your knowledge and say "I'm not sure", or we need to move onto other questions. If we hit your depth early but we're headed into an interesting direction, I might ask, "How would you build [protocol or feature you're not sure about]?" This potentially gives useful data in how you, as a candidate, approach abstract problems.

But I should also note: I'm an introvert. I'm shy. I get nervous easily in social situations. I'm not the best interviewer, and I don't believe the processes I learned from my employers are necessarily the right way to hire technical expertise. I would rather replace the interview with timeboxed work-sample tests. But I don't call those shots.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#596
post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve and Larry share their employees salaries with each other to avoid a bidding war over top talent. Lucy finds out and orders Steve and Larry to stop doing that. Now Steve shares salary data with Teddy and Teddy tells Steve what the market average is. Larry also shares salary data with Teddy and also learns what the market average is. No collusion! But the effect is the same. That's why they earn the big bucks.

Knowing the price of a thing is how markets work. If I want to buy tomatoes and a friend tells me a shop down the road has them on special offer, that's not collusion.We're not artificially suppressing the price of tomatoes. Anyway companies already know this by just offering a given salary and seeing if they get decent applicants. If they're not getting enough good applicant, they just raise the offer if they think…

>If I want to buy tomatoes and a friend tells me a shop down the road has them on special offer, that's not collusion.We're not artificially suppressing the price of tomatoes.

You mixed up the analogy though. Rather it should be that tomato seller 1 talks to tomato seller 2 down the road and they agree to never charge less than x$ for 1 pound of tomatoes thus removing market forces and creating an artificial floor for tomato prices

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. One thing a lot of people forget about this 20-40% number is: It's only true early in your career. It might be hard for younger folks to believe, but you will all hit a ceiling and plateau. My first job hop was for +50%! The next one was about 40%, the next one 15%, and so on. Now, with…

To be honest, I used to think developers in tech did well, then I worked with some really good sales people in tech and realized they're making WAY more on top free vacations and spiff (even more money) opportunities. It's night and day. We've heard about developers making upwards of 500K, I've seen sales people make triple on a single deal with similar deals lined up for following quarters. It is insane, and most de…

My GF works in sales. Nominally she makes $29/hr which is pretty good for someone with only a HS degree, and she is an hourly sales person so she gets time and a half. However, she manages a $1 million dollar portfolio of sales that are already completed and currently in between contract signing and fulfillment, and when the orders are fulfilled she gets .5% of the total contract amount.

Orders take about 6 weeks to be fulfilled barring catastrophe, so when it's all calculated out every 3 months she makes $29 * 62.5 (40 hours plus 15 * 1.5 = 40 + 22.5 paid hours at base rate) * 12 (weeks) + $10,000 bonus every 3 months = roughly $31,750 or $10,567 a month before taxes.

That's almost as much as I make with a BS degree in the tech field. It's crazy, but then again she does work more hours than I do.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them I mean, I’ve seen people working in retail make this same point. And I’m not saying either of you are invalid in your claim, thats j…

That's how capitalism works, specifically delivering to capitalists the difference between the product's value and the worker's wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus... It can be difficult to remember that the system wasn't always like this.

I didn’t say it wasn’t how it works? Nor was I complaining, just pointing out that the sentiment is universal.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even taking all of those things into consideration, $200k in SF is better than $100k pretty much anywhere else. > And the reality is most tech jobs don't really pay as much as you think. For the good remote jobs you'll be competing with people who are simply better than you ,so good luck. I guess it depends on what "you think" tech jobs pay, but this has not been my experience. If you're even half-decent, there are c…

> Even taking all of those things into consideration, $200k in SF is better than $100k pretty much anywhere else. I don't know if that's true. The cost of living, in say, Pittsburgh, is 50% that of San Francisco, so at best it's equivalent. And you can actually get a house and a yard there. > I guess it depends on what "you think" tech jobs pay, but this has not been my experience. If you're even half-decent, there a…

Cost of living in Pittsburgh may be 50% of San Francisco but that only matters if you’re spending every single cent you make. This is not the case on $200K. You are far better off in San Francisco. This is how “Californians” move to cheap cities and buy homes in cash over asking.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#600
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a random process. If you set the bar 2 std. div. above what you need, you are hiring qualified people with a p value of 5%. You're rejecting /most/ qualified people too. Most people underestimate how random the process is. There are a few ways in: - Be 2 std. div above the qualifications - Apply to many places and pick the one where you're lucky - Give another, less noisy source of signal than resume + interview…

> If you make this about you, you'll feel horrible. If you understand the huge random factor, you'll do much better. Thanks, this is helpful as I go through various interview processes right now.

I hated job-hunting before I did hiring and managed people. I felt rejected each time I didn't get an offer.

Once I sat on the other side of the table, and saw how a /majority/ of qualified candidates were turned down, I didn't feel so bad when I was rejected. The key thing you *really, really, really* want to avoid is a bad hire. I've seen candidates rejected for the oddest reasons. It was definitely the right choice to do so.

In the kinds of companies I've worked for, if you're at all not sure about a candidate, the decision should be a no-hire.

I don't feel rejected any more. A good mental model is:

If you're qualified, you role a die. If the die comes up a 6, you're hired. If you role 1-5, you're not hired.

(The number of sides on the day varies by industry; I think 6-sided is about right for my industry in the current job market)

Post reply on HN