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$900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

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Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#231

Post by ilyt »

borroka wrote: post #62
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right you are correct. But true talent on any random team is easily worth 3x the average salary on that team. Im speaking about programmers here

The "real talent" is worth nx of the average salary when the work of the real talent makes the company better. If one (“talent") is a stellar runner, but when the team goes on a run the "talent" has to wait for their teammates to get to the finish line, most of whom go running once every two months, and the "talent" gets dress shoes instead of spikes etc., the "real talent" is worth, to the team or company, as much a…

Sure org problems can stifle good performers but they are not hiring 900k engineers to work with 90k engineers.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#232

Post by ilyt »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #119
TechBro8615 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG employees sure are full of themselves considering they've worked at companies that have failed to innovate for two decades. What was the last successful product that Google launched with all their highly paid engineers?

Engineers at Google aren't supposed to be designing new products, they ostensibly have separate people for that.

They are doing shit job with keeping existing ones competitive too

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#233

Post by throwaway22032 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #189
dheera wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be realistic ... 300K in the bay is barely livable if you're targeting a middle class life with kids and targeting retiring at 65. First, ~46% of it is gone in taxes including federal tax (~25%), state tax (~8%), FICA (~4%), and sales tax on everything you eventually use the money for (~9%). So that's 162K left. Not a lot to pay sky-high rents, car payments, insane medical bills despite insurance, lawyers to fight…

To be realistic, even in the Bay, 300k is more than livable if you're targeting a middle class lifestyle with kids and retiring at 65. If you can't retire at 65 on 300k a year, you're not living a middle class lifestyle. Not even close. Rent: 4k/month = 48k. Car payments 750/month = $9k. Using your post-tax numbers (which are wrong) that leaves over $100k per year for all the other random stuff you've listed, which i…

Rent?

Car payments?

This is a weird form of retirement to me.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#234

Post by [deleted] »

rr808 wrote: post #42
antisthenes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it interesting? I am that person for myself, for my first year in the workforce. I am also that person for myself when I was studying in college. I think it is only interesting in the case when you are performing the exact same job, and yet the compensation varies by an order of magnitude or more.

I think the point is people earning $8/hr 40 hrs/wk 40 years = $665k total for a lifetime's work. Of course most people in the world earn much less than this.

[deleted]

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#235

Post by WinLychee »

quadcore wrote: post #196
WinLychee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, you will probably attract the best talent by having the hardest problems, fostering a culture of bottom-up innovation, and giving your engineers a lot of freedom rather than micro-managing them. The pay is closely related, but you also get a lot of people trying to game the system and optimize for max pay, without necessarily the skill or creativity you're looking for. Said another way: top pay attracts peop…

How do you quantify best? The bests have cool stories to tell.

Right, but you have to be in a position where you get to do the work in the first place, which requires passing some reputational and skill bar. Or, you could do something which is cool to you personally and someone might not share that feeling and be unimpressed.

As a concrete example, I've gotten more accolades for silly personal projects that sound impressive, like training a convolutional network to pilot a simulated car on the GPU, than for impactful work at my actual job, which was a lot less challenging.

I guess hiring is just incredibly noisy, and I think companies could really get far hiring less than the best people, and just squeezing good quality work out of them (I believe Amazon is known for this).

Obviously OpenAI should not hire subpar people lol, they should keep doing what works for them, just grumbling loudly here.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#236

Post by phendrenad2 »

Unpopular opinion: Paying more does not get you better code, or faster code, or cleaner code. It does get you valuable things, but they're unrelated to code. I'll get to that.

Some of the best all-around programmers I've met, and also the best programmers at some specific metric (rapid development, good at unraveling complex problems, good at big-picture stuff, good at architecture, good at maths/algorithms, etc.) make market rate or below market rate. Probably because they either (A) don't know their value (B) didn't go to a top CS school (C) value things other than raw income (D) aren't good at playing the political game at work (E) aren't good at self-promotion.

What paying high salaries does get you is... the widely-publicized knowledge that you pay high salaries. Sites like levels.fyi and HN will viralize this knowledge. Like your neighbor who has a shiny new BMW M3 in their driveway, you assume that they must be doing well, and must be a good investment.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#237

Post by bushbaba »

moralestapia wrote: post #213
QIYGT wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That person could probably be making 500k+ at a FANG with less variance in the stock component.

I read this here and there and don't doubt it, but then again I've never seen/met anyone IRL (outside of C-level) making this much money as an employee. Are they just extremely rare cases or am I just not aware of the valley and their customs?

See levels.fyi 500-900k comp For an IC isn’t that unheard of at FANG.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#238

Post by turtleyacht »

zoltar wrote: post #214
QIYGT wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you define "good life" as having a big house with a big yard.

Last time I ate in SF, I walked past a guy smoking crack on the sidewalk. But, yeah... big house with a big yard is nice.

What.. what does crack smoke smell like?

Cigarettes I know. Marijuana is a bit funky, but it's easy because--by process of elimination--it's not a cancer stick. But now I have to squirrel away a third possibility.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#239

Post by deanmoriarty »

Solvency wrote: post #228
gamblor956 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be realistic, even in the Bay, 300k is more than livable if you're targeting a middle class lifestyle with kids and retiring at 65. If you can't retire at 65 on 300k a year, you're not living a middle class lifestyle. Not even close. Rent: 4k/month = 48k. Car payments 750/month = $9k. Using your post-tax numbers (which are wrong) that leaves over $100k per year for all the other random stuff you've listed, which i…

What SF family with children are paying 4K a month on "rent" and what exactly do you envision this rented abode to be that is even remotely liveable with children? Are you living in anything close to reality?

I'm really not understanding this comment.

Go on Zillow and find all the 3-bedroom rentals available under $4k/mo in the Bay Area that are within 45-min commute distance from downtown SF via Bart/Caltrain/Muni. I count at least 1,000.

I live in a modern 1-bedroom apartment within biking distance to work (major FAANG campus) and pay $2,500/mo. My apartment complex offers 3-bedroom units, with private patios, for $3,500/mo. This is a nice community, professionally managed, with pool, gym, BBQ areas and park for kids to roam around.

Isn't that enough to raise children? Most people in major European cities raise perfectly functional and happy families on much less sqft and amenities.

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