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$900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

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Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#321

Post by fragmede »

xwdv wrote: post #296
paulryanrogers wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have different thresholds and capabilities. IME even if they could grind through the learning curves most don't have the desire or logical reasoning skills to be even mediocre programmers. Keep in mind too that it's still culturally uncool, despite a few bubbles of nerd hype.

Those are myths that developers use to gatekeep the software industry. You don’t need a special mind to be a programmer, you just need to have a willingness to do this work. Which many people don’t.

There is an intellectual horsepower that is needed that not everyone has. The position that I'm stating is that not everyone is smart enough to learn to do, say, Calculus. It's not a matter of motivation and discipline, some people simply are smarter than others. There are other kinds of smarts than logic and spacial reasoning though, and people that are good in one area aren't always good in all the others.

But you're absolutely right - don't gatekeep writing software. It's not that hard and everyone should have access to that realm, even if they don't use it.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#322

Post by scarface_74 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #318
scarface_74 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But I had a big house in the “good school system” in the Atlanta burbs built in 2016 for $335K. Even today that would cost around $550K. It would take more than $300K to duplicate our lifestyle in the Bay Area. I’ll take my former $150K in the burbs of Atlanta over $300k in the burbs any day. And before the usual responses implying I’m disdaining what I can’t have, I current work for BigTech remotely.

You spend on a lot of things beyond housing, and most things outside of housing are about the same price between regions, so even if your housing costs is half as cheap, you are still falling behind on half as much salary. This is especially true for retirement savings, since you don’t have retire in a HCOL where you earned that money, and that expensive house can be sold, perhaps with some kind of profit to offset t…

Gas, property insurance, car insurance for your home (especially since insurance companies are starting to refuse to sell in the state) and even food is more expensive.

To put some real numbers on it.

My 30 year fixed 3.5% mortgage all in from 2016 - 2021 was $2185 and that included the FHA PMI since I only put 3.5% down. I refinanced in 2021 to a 15 year mortgage and bought points and got rid of the PMI. My house is now worth close to twice that.

My mortgage? 1.97% fixed 15 year - $2550 and $1575 of that goes toward principal. My total household expenses as of March 2020 when I was making “only” $150K with my wife working part time making $25K was around $6000. We were bringing home after taxes and before retirement savings about $10500 after maxing out my retirement savings it was about $9300 a month.

And if you haven’t noticed, people are moving away from the west coast and office occupancy is down - that doesn’t bode well for home prices long term.

Our lifestyle is a little different now (see below). But out of my base income which is still only $160K - and my wife no longer works -with the rest coming from RSUs, we still manage to pay all of our expenses and I’m able to max out my 401K.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966).

I don’t think people who have been in the tech bubble understand how easy it is for a two income earning family to accumulate wealth where one is making your standard enterprise dev tech salaries in a major non west coast city.

Most couples I know our ages where one is a mid career developer also has a spouse working making at least $70K (the average salary of a college grad). You can do quite well in most cities with a household income of $220K.

If you’re younger and single making $135 to $170K - typical for a developer with 5 years of experience outside of the west coast - you can find an apartment or buy a condo in the city for $2500/month.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#323

Post by fragmede »

yieldcrv wrote: post #89
biztos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to this argument, because I know both low-quality and high-quality engineers at most FAANGs, but in principle isn't offering a lot of money a good way to attract talent? In the case of OpenAI you also have interesting tech and a brand that will massively accelerate your career if you want to stay in that field. So while yeah, you have to hire the best people; and OpenAI like everyone else will be payi…

> but in principle isn't offering a lot of money a good way to attract talent? offering a lot of money attracts everyone including in-demand talent. offering less turns away in-demand talent.

not everyone. There are motivations other than money, and if someone has a dislike of Sam Altman for whatever reason, they could be the best person in the world for a job and still not want to work there. If some has moral or ethical reasons against something, they won't be swayed by money.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#324

Post by fragmede »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #55
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate reality is that those elite circles usually do have the best among them. And having worked in FAANGs, there is some aspect of meritocracy, the code doesnt lie

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?

it's not a product, but that transformers paper that came out of there is proving to be pretty, er, transformative

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#325

Post by sylware »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #127
sylware wrote: post #106

This is excessive. It is high-school level (in the worst case scenario 1 or 2 college/uni years). Yeah, a bit higher than the minimum wage. It seems to be inflated wages not based on skills but on technical fashion trends. Mafia?

I am very confused by your comment. Are you claiming that $900k median compensation is only a bit higher than minimum wage? Or are you claiming that some of the smartest AI researchers in the world are only slightly more qualified than the average high-schooler? Either claim is roughly equally absurd.

There is little maths to show off "AI skills", then there are many scammers.

If there is so much money, which is where the "absurd" is, better target people with validated maths PHDs. Moreover, those researchers will need access to super computers in order to test at scale their work (because it all about stability at scale), and that's a limiting parameter.

Additionally, "AI" is just a set of empirical algorithms attempting to mimic human cognition. The trick is to find mathematical stability (production, training, etc) for large scale simulated connectomes: I am still surprised there is still not a "sleep" regime for those articial connectomes, which we know is critical for brain stability, maybe it is a part of the new "training" regimes.

I am still waiting for the educational material which will let people picture a connectome based on the latest "transformers". Because, in the end, nobody understands anything about this, it is beyond us. It will be hard to tell apart the scammers looking to steal fundings from the others.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#326

Post by sacnoradhq »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #6

Other companies nickel and diming engineers think they are somehow getting something for free. All the highest performing companies in the world pay insane amounts to their programmers

Meta cut back on everything: microkitchens, wellness cash, assigned->shared desks, WfH->RTO, and looking for excuses to lay people off. I wouldn't take a job at Google, Amazon, Apple, or Meta. Netflix and Microsoft seem doable. Target and Costco are also decent non-tech companies.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#327

Post by swores »

gotaran wrote: post #283
tayo42 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently? That's wild. Work 4 or 5 years and retire lol

I made that much for 4 years and have a total of 10 years work experience. I’m nowhere near retired. And I’ve been single the entire time. $500k is more like $275k after taxes. Assuming $60k/yr in living expenses, which is pretty frugal in the Bay Area, that’s barely over $1M in savings in 5 years. Let’s say $1.3M after return on investments over 5 years. Nowhere close to retirement money anywhere in the US.

3% is a pretty reasonable amount to take each year out of a lump sum you're trying to use to live the rest of your life off, which for $1.3M would be $39k/yr.

$39k/yr may not give you a life of luxury anywhere in the US, but there's certainly people surviving on less - and surely if you were OK on $60k/yr cost of living in the Bay Area it wouldn't be hard to find parts of the US where $39k/yr stretches further than $60k does there?

Of course there's many people who wouldn't want to move to a cheaper area, and especially anyone who is able to earn $500k/yr is likely to choose to work longer before retiring to not have to be as frugal - but "nowhere close to retirement money anywhere in the US" seems way off. I'd even be surprised if $1.3M wasn't significantly greater than the median amount of pension + savings owned by Americans at the point of their retiring.

edit: Actual numbers back up my assumptions above, for example "According to the Fed data, the median net worth for Americans in their late 60s and early 70s is $266,400. The average (or mean) net worth for this age bracket is $1,217,700, but since averages tend to skew higher due to high net-worth households, the median is a much more representational amount." from https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-a... or similar at https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewrosen/2022/06/16/are-you-... etc.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#328

Post by throw1677718108 »

Fezzik wrote: post #244
zoltar wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can’t reply to the comment below inquiring about odor, but people smoking crack are easy to spot as you don’t roll crack in a cigarette, you smoke it out of a heated glass pipe. It looks entirely different. So it’s easy to notice when done in the open. As far as odor… I think it smells a lot like meth that, when smoked, smells like an odd laundry detergent that you have never smelled before. Sort of like a decaying a…

> people smoking crack are easy to spot as you don’t roll crack in a cigarette, you smoke it out of a heated glass pipe. It looks entirely different.

This isn't entirely accurate, as crack isn't the only drug people use "crack pipes" for. I couldn't tell you what, if anything, crack smells like because I'm not aware of having every been in the vicinity of it being consumed, but I have been around people using what look like crack pipes and I've used them myself too.

In my case: a few times I tried vaping weed with them (though for weed an electric dry herb vape is better, and if wanting to use glass pipe and a flame there are designed-for-weed vapes which are better than generic crack-type pipes), and DMT is another illegal drug that needs (when in pure form, rather than changa) to be vaped rather than smoked - so a crack pipe can be useful for that too. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other drugs that sort of pipe can be used for, too.

Personally I wouldn't use that sort of "crack" pipe in public, partly because many people think like you that it must be crack that's being used, and partly because even people who dont have that incorrect belief could still rightly (or at least, almost always rightly) deduce that something illegal is being consumed.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#329

Post by WinLychee »

quadcore wrote: post #261
WinLychee wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 simu…

convolutional network to pilot a simulated car on the GPU Seems silly enough to get you somewhere cool. Though the best pass is recommendation . Impress your colleagues so bad, they will recommend you somewhere one day. than for impactful work at my actual job Oh you have to fight hard to get one of those. You cant just do what you're told. Ive got a cool story to tell from my time at amazon but I fought heroically t…

This is honestly kind of motivational, thank you. Currently building a GPU rig to get back into deep learning, I want to hack on the open-source end of AI efforts, and we'll see what comes of it.

Re: $900k Median Package for Engineers at OpenAI

#330

Post by markus_zhang »

yuliyp wrote: post #292
markus_zhang wrote: post #67

Now the problem is how to get into this kind of companies. Is LC hard mandatory for junior-senior (below lead) IC job?

LC hard shouldn't be needed for almost any companies except ones which are delusional. LC hard are there as practice for programming contests.

Thanks. I did hear that contests can be way more difficult than LC hard. But I'm struggling with medium anyway.
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