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The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

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Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#201

Post by bitwize »

lemonlime wrote: post #198
gsibble wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was paid $165k a year by a neobank startup to.....build their bank. It's now responsible for over $200mm a year in revenue. I was the sole engineer on the project. Good engineers are worth their weight in gold.

Yeah when I read takes like the guy you're responding to, I have to wonder: where should the money go if not to the people that built the product? Management? Shareholders? You can say that but those people are doing less work for more money already, so I don't buy it. Engineers like many people that build useful things, provide orders of magnitude more value than what they get for their labor.

You know who else asked themselves that same question? Karl Marx.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#202

Post by what_ever »

UncleMeat wrote: post #192
arcticbull wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so I'm speaking from personal experience and network. The point is that 3-4 years tenure is enough for significant appreciation in equity, especially in the earlier grants. Let's work an example, for someone who started 3 years ago. - May 2019. - Base: $225K. Equity: $880K grant = 785sh @ 1120/share = 220K. Bonus: $60K. Total: $500K. - May 2020. - Base: $236K. Equity: 196sh @ 1428/share = 280K. Equity: $220K grant…

Okay if the stock price more than doubles in two years then yeah you can end up making a lot of money. This is why it is foolish to use vest price rather than grant price when discussing compensation. It isn't actionable information. And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019. You can't use todays numbers for past cases. And then you are choosing a peak pay before it drops dramatically after…

I don't have data to prove you otherwise, but I don't think 880k would be not possible as the initial stock grant for L6. FB gives that to E5 now so I am not sure why you think L6 can't get that even in 2019. The initial stock grant bands haven't changed that much. I even got 400k as the initial grant in 2017.

Disc: Googler.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#203

Post by bitwize »

gitfan86 wrote: post #32
bearjaws wrote: post #22

I think this is just the correction that was inevitable as hiring had become a cargo cult. Everyone was hiring so everyone felt compelled to hire, creating a feedback loop of insane wages and offers. Now its time to pay the bills and many organizations realize the engineers they hired cannot possibly provide the value necessary to keep their job. I know one individual who got hired as a Sales Engineer for a platform…

I has a phone screen at Coinbase and they just threw out 380k as the salary without me saying anything as far as expectations. This reminds me of the dot com bubble. In 2000 people who had no software background and were making 50k would get offers for 80k, just for showing up at an interview and saying they know Java or HTML

The difference is today, they are subjected to a battery of interviews, tests, and rudimentary psychological evaluations to make sure they know Java or HTML, and are a "culture fit", meaning they have the personality of a smiling Alegria person from the company's advertisements and not that of a living human being.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#205

Post by more_corn »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #142
robbomacrae wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"cannot possibly provide the value necessary to keep their job." It's actually very much possibly for software engineers, at least, to justify high valuations. As an example when I joined Reddit my first task was to remake a data engineering server in scala that cut down the needed AWS machines by 70%. That cost saving already covered more than my salary in perpetuity and I was only 3 months in.

The vast majority of startups aren't doing anything remotely complex enough to be able to save money on electricity by paying for developers to write more efficient software. Or if they can - the instances are few and far between. The vast majority of startups are also heavily cash-flow negative - so anything you do likely won't pay for itself. It's almost always a bet on a rosy future.

Not true. The vast majority of startups hemorrhage money with inefficiencies. I routinely cut tens of thousands of dollars a month off a startup’s AWS bill. It takes me 30-45min. Why didn’t someone else do it? Too busy, didn’t know about it, didn’t know how.

I keep expecting to find a place that doesn’t need some sort of efficiency cost-saving. I’ve yet to find it.

The fact is there’s a crap-ton of beneficial work to be done anywhere you look. It’s not hard to justify a good salary in the software world.

For example: what if your company could double the speed of your CI/CD system and halve the price? If you move your runners to spot instances in an auto-scaling group you can do that. What’s the return on increasing the productivity of your eng team? Maybe eng salaries times percentage productivity improvement? That number is probably… large.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#206

Post by [deleted] »

nemo44x wrote: post #87
BoxOfRain wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advice would you give to people who've not been in the tech industry during a recession yet?

Save money and have enough to live on for awhile. If you don't have savings then immediately cut your cost of living down. If you do lose your job then don't just accept anything (remember, you have savings + unemployment + severance to live on for awhile) and use this time to sharpen skills and learn new things. Make yourself more valuable. I can't see the future but I don't think it's going to be a bloodbath like t…

[deleted]

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#207

Post by matwood »

mdoms wrote: post #174
matwood wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps because the company lost half a billion dollars last quarter So what? Last year COIN made $3.62B earnings. They may need to shift at some point, but I think it's incorrect to act like 1-2 bad quarters means a company should completely shift their plan. If anything, it's more important than ever to hire top people - which requires a decent salary.

What do you mean, so what? Have you not read the article under discussion?

Sure, an article where COIN wasn't mentioned. Given that COIN made a profit in 2020 and a very large profit in 2021 it's hard to place it as a VC cash burning company.

COIN had a bad quarter and expects to have another. Are we seeing a shift away from crypto and tech or repricing which things will continue again? I think it's too soon to tell, hence my so what. COIN needs tighten up and plan for what's next. It doesn't mean they need to assume crypto is going to zero and the company is over - yet.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#208

Post by arcticbull »

UncleMeat wrote: post #192
arcticbull wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so I'm speaking from personal experience and network. The point is that 3-4 years tenure is enough for significant appreciation in equity, especially in the earlier grants. Let's work an example, for someone who started 3 years ago. - May 2019. - Base: $225K. Equity: $880K grant = 785sh @ 1120/share = 220K. Bonus: $60K. Total: $500K. - May 2020. - Base: $236K. Equity: 196sh @ 1428/share = 280K. Equity: $220K grant…

Okay if the stock price more than doubles in two years then yeah you can end up making a lot of money. This is why it is foolish to use vest price rather than grant price when discussing compensation. It isn't actionable information. And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019. You can't use todays numbers for past cases. And then you are choosing a peak pay before it drops dramatically after…

> And Google wasn't giving $880k sign-on equity grants for L6 in 2019.

Note that Facebook certainly was.

Re: The tech sector teardown is more catharsis than crisis

#210

Post by more_corn »

neill wrote: post #67
htormey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This is well paid but not out of the ordinary for someone working at a top tier tech company in NYC/SF Bay Area. Think Facebook, Apple, etc. see https://www.levels.fyi/ for levels and comparison. Some of those companies are doing hiring freezes right now but many are not. Salary bands are adjusted within the USA by zones where NYC/SF/Seattle are zone 1, zone 2 is 90% of base, zone 3 is 85%. With equity component…

This is extremely out of the ordinary- Levels.fyi lists a salary of $224,000 for a Staff level SWE at Google

That’s low. I don’t think they’re using “staff” right.

Also, Total comp in 224k is more like $400k. 15% bonus target is normal with a possible 2x performance multiplier. 100k/yr gsu stock. 50% 401k match. To say nothing of the perks. On-site gyms, fantastic food, free shuttles.

Not that I’m advocating for working for goog, just saying.

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