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Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

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Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#151

Post by jarek »

Selvik wrote: post #132
veyron wrote: post #48

I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund. My programmer friends at hedge funds (all between 22 and 26) are averaging 500K salary with 100K bonuses (note: as a programmer, base is much higher but bonus is lower). So if google isn't paying those types of numbers to people, then money cannot be the only factor at play.

What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)

If you have a finance MBA and want to make money in finance, you'd be insane to try programming.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#153

Post by veyron »

tptacek wrote: post #137
ericd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cartelicious: -Constituents must be words "cartelicious" is a combination of "cartel" and "delicious" -Blending sounds from the words the beginning sounds like "cartel" and the end sounds like "delicious" -Combining meanings of the words It's delicious cartel action, for repugnant values of delicious. I don't think this one is a strict requirement, in any case. This is getting a bit too pedantic.

This is a thread with all the charm of a Wikipedia Talk: page argument. Maybe we can just let it die.

Last remark on the issue:

Let's all agree that, before saying something like "a portmanteau, if you want to get technical", you are 100% sure that it is correct. Maybe that should be in the HN guidelines ...

I only brought up this issue because technically it's not a portmanteau (at least according to how OED and a bunch of other dictionaries define the word), and probably wouldn't have made a remark if the phrase "if you want to get technical" wasn't used ...

I lay down my guns ... now

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#154

Post by xiaoma »

tptacek wrote: post #149
xiaoma wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between giving someone extra work, likely "shit work" and treating someone like shit. More than one employee at excellent companies has been assigned more work due to having a higher salary than colleagues at the same grade. This is an easy, even somewhat logical rationalization for a manager to make. The "worst case" you put forward is still far from convincing. In work, black swans are generall…

I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot: If your employer treats you more poorly because you negotiate a better comp package, you shouldn't be working for them; they are a bad employer. If negotiation costs you a "once in a lifetime" opportunity, the opportunity is "once in a lifetime" in the "boiler room pump and dump" sense, or the "late night infomercial" sense. A year of your…

>I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot:

Your previous comment was only four sentences, one of which was an exhortation to read the previous sentence twice! I'm sure your implication wasn't intentional, but I find the suggestion that you aren't speaking simply enough for me to understand your reasoning offensive.

It's not that your explanation was too complex. I just don't agree with it.

It's rational to demand more from someone who you pay more. If one employee of a certain job-title asks more money than his/her colleagues who have equivalent skills, then expecting that person to handle more work or less desirable work that comes to the team is rational. It may not be optimal in every case, but it certainly doesn't make the manager's entire company "a bad employer".

There are many good opportunities in life that can come from not being maximally greedy. Some are once in a life time, some are more commonplace. One need only read biographies to find examples.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#155

Post by [deleted] »

cletus wrote: post #28

Let me add some perspective to this as both an engineer and a Google employee. The first thing I'll say is this: people lie about their incomes. They even do this anonymously (Glassdoor, etc). Not that I'm calling (or even suggesting) this a lie but be very careful believing anyone's salary claims unless they show you an original offer letter, employment contract or a W-2. I'm not even sure if they're simply bad at m…

[deleted]

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#156

Post by Eliezer »

cletus wrote: post #50
patio11 wrote: post #47

HN has a curious relationship to money some of the time. a) Many of us watched our classmates go into management consulting, investment banking, finance, medicine, law, etc. These are all fields where $250k is not exactly outlandish for a 29 year old. b) We have a lot of friendly, accessible fellow posters who write computer code and are financially very successful. c) We talk about $X million valuations and $YY mill…

Spot on. (d) in particular is worth stressing. There is no difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. There is simply an unwillingness to pay them what they're worth and give them an environment in which they'd want to work. Supply and demand. It's pretty simple. Yet so many (typically business types) want to treat engineers as an interchangeable cost center. "5 years ago an engineer cost $100k so I refuse to pay…

Hi! This is the Market Economics Fairy! I help supply and demand equilibrate everywhere! If nobody can find good programmers to hire, it means that programmer salaries are too low! Raise programmer salaries until...

...erm, actually, students are remarkably goddamn insensitive to their future salaries when it comes to picking a major. And the other way S&D could equilibrate here is by fewer companies even trying to hire programmers because they know they can't afford them. What's really needed - considering the Camel Has Two Humps effect where some people have the magic programming gear and some people don't - is a mass effort to take students in journalism studies or, heck, smart unemployed adults, and administer some simple tests to see if they have large amounts of hidden programming talent, screw the college degree. But that effort would benefit lots of companies equally, and that means it's a commons problem. Not sure the Market Economics Fairy can easily solve this one.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#157

Post by hunterp »

lunaru wrote: post #141
stef25 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without wanting to sound stupid, when you talk about salaries do you always mention the amount before or after tax? Here in Europe it's almost always after tax.

In the states all salary numbers are before tax unless stated otherwise.

Yeah. Because we're the U.S, we believe the government would go bankrupt if taxes were calculated before hand in stores, in conversations. Also, tips for service like waiters....it would crash our economy if we included tips in the price of the meal to avoid awkward moments of young waiters staring at your wallet and making last minute-conversation that might even be dishonest.

Oh yeah, and we have cocky 29 year old kids that post bullshit stories to HN (yes I'm 29, but the only way I believe you can make 250k is to go into a successful business for yourself).

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#158

Post by ericd »

tptacek wrote: post #137
ericd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cartelicious: -Constituents must be words "cartelicious" is a combination of "cartel" and "delicious" -Blending sounds from the words the beginning sounds like "cartel" and the end sounds like "delicious" -Combining meanings of the words It's delicious cartel action, for repugnant values of delicious. I don't think this one is a strict requirement, in any case. This is getting a bit too pedantic.

This is a thread with all the charm of a Wikipedia Talk: page argument. Maybe we can just let it die.

Haha yeah, I wasn't planning on adding any more to it. I just thought it was ridiculous that it had gotten as far as it had, so I was hoping to kill it with that.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#159

Post by asmosoinio »

stef25 wrote: post #130
raldi wrote: post #37

Speaking as a Google engineer: There are three components to compensation here. Base salary, annual cash bonus, and stock grants. When he says he "takes home" $250k, he probably means the sum of all three. When the author says he thought the average Google salary was $130k, he might be referring just to the base. Most of the comments in this thread are similarly ambiguous. If you post a comment, please be clear about…

Without wanting to sound stupid, when you talk about salaries do you always mention the amount before or after tax? Here in Europe it's almost always after tax.

Really? In Finland we always discuss salaries as in before personal tax. This amount is a bit less than the company pays though, because they pay a part as social security compensations etc.

Re: Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)

#160

Post by whatusername »

_delirium wrote: post #32
daimyoyo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will preface this by saying I have never worked at google and have not seen their employment contract so perhaps they've found a way around it but from what I understand, California has well established laws in place protecting moonlighting. As long as you aren't coding up a search engine or something that directly competes with the company, you should be ok.

a search engine or something that directly competes with the company That's a lot of things for Google these days, though. Not just search engines, but also: local search, video streaming, webmail, contextual advertising, maps, route planning, social networking, flight search, RSS aggregation, collaborative document editing, machine translation, VOIP, web browsers, mobile operating systems, app stores, programming la…

Newspapers did a lot of things too. But it was Classified Ads that let them do it. Once they lost that revenue stream -- every other part of the business suffers.
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