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The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

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Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#161

Post by bitfilped »

danbruc wrote: post #91
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are reasons for higher salaries. You just disagree that they justify those salaries.

Yes, there are reasons for differing salaries and they have important functions. But at some point those justifications stop to make sense and it is really just about exploiting your position to grab as much as you can for yourself.

How is demanding your fair market value exploitation? Do we really need to take pity on companies grossing massive incomes while simultaneously not paying their fair share of taxes?

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#162

Post by asadotzler »

JAlexoid wrote: post #135
FredPret wrote: post #27

What a tone-deaf article. - Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs. The difference between a fun hobby and a great job is that you get paid a lot to do the latter. - Here he's saying that companies should create a buzz around jobs; but having good feelings about your low-paid job doesn't help you nearly as much as just having lots of extra new wealth. - Saying that because high-end employees are fa…

> Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs. For people with poor reasoning - yes. Most people think of ROI, especially after COVID. A finish carpenter runs at $150 per hour, but your career is limited by your physical abilities. Going to a company like Bridgewater, where 50 hr workweeks onsite are expected, at $250k may be less valuable than going to Microsoft at $180k. > I can't believe this charact…

No, they didn't spend any time. That doesn't happen much here on HN any more. They took the headlines, perhaps a few other comments here, and ran with whatever their gut was telling them, often contrarian and usually wrong.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#163

Post by lex-lightning »

danbruc wrote: post #155
lex-lightning wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have paid double my taxes over my career if the US would spend it on elevating the poor. But asking me to not retire, to give away my savings to very few people? What, that’s not ethical. What if I made a lot, but spend very little? Shouldn’t that weigh in, if your issue is consumption level? What if in my early retirement, I go around lifting people up in non-monetary ways? What if my job earned me a lot of…

My point is very simple and we do not have to discuss all the edge cases. Working x hours and consuming stuff that took y hours to produce where y is much larger than x is unjust. All the rest are details.

You are morally and intellectually superior.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#164

Post by 1-more »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

Name the other axes, Seth. What are they? What else is there but money? With sufficient money you can fill your positions instantly with top talent. Anyone pretending there are other answers is probably guilty of lowballing, wanting to lowball or the English translation of my name: a grape fox.

A big one as a developer is internal investment. Who works on internal tooling and infrastructure? How robust is the CI/CD pipeline? How much of an event is it when a deploy happens?

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#165

Post by asadotzler »

FredPret wrote: post #128
ghaff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs. Eh. It's a key factor. Once you get beyond a certain point, many people take lots of factors into account for jobs that are not otherwise basically interchangeable.

A CEO picking between a $10m / yr gig and a $50m / yr one would have to have rather a lot of soft factors working in favor of the lower paid one to justify it.

I'm not sure. I spent a quarter century in tech, and probably brought in about 20% maybe 255 of what I could have in that same time if I'd have sacrificed my ethics and gone to work for one of the big players rather than a non-profit. I chose not to because I value how I feel about myself more than I value the extra money. I've got a paid for house in the bay area under 3 acres of redwoods, 12 miles from the Googleplex. Sure all that money would be nice, but not at the expense of my conscience.

So, my experience as a non-CEO is that yes, people are willing to take the job that pays 1/5th the salary when it meets their needs and matches their ethics. If I had it to do all over again, I'd make the same choice. I simply couldn't function knowing I spent the most valuable years of my life striving to make rich people richer by tricking poor people into clicking more links.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#166

Post by danenania »

karolist wrote: post #79
toast0 wrote: post #18

> After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life. They can't eat more meals in a day or wear more shoes. What matters to the manager is the relative amount. Sure, nobody needs more than a million dollars in annual compensation (in 2024 dollars), but relative amount gets you to your never need to work again number faster or slower. You might still wo…

This, I can't believe all these "money doesn't bring you happiness after a certain level" tropes keep ignoring saving and investing angle, just lazy. Or accumulating wealth for your kids.

On accumulating wealth for your kids: while there are definitely huge benefits to be had there for stability, freedom to pursue passions, and so on, I sort of doubt it actually leads to positive outcomes on average beyond a certain point. Giving them a financial safety net seems inarguably good, but giving them so much that they have no need to work could easily do more harm than good.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#167

Post by asadotzler »

mcguire wrote: post #29
throwitaway222 wrote: post #15

After aging I'm starting to have new views on large salaries: 1. The money is just going to be saved. Net gain to the person is they're probably going to live for the rest of their life off dividends. Net gain to society, is any money taken out of circulation fights inflation. 2. If you pay someone a lot of money they will, essentially, spend it on other people. Either through salary or just buying shit. The richest…

The neat part about it is that if my friend's buddy, Bubba (Yeah. He's an electrician.) goes to see a congressman, governor, or the president and says he wants something done, he'll get a big shit-eating grin and a "Sure, buddy, we'll work on that!" with a hearty handshake. If I go to them, I'll get offered a cup of coffee and possibly a few minutes to make my case. If the guy making $50,000,000 per year does it, the…

So we should mint a few more billionaires to improve our democracy? That cannot be what you're saying, right?

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#168

Post by lex-lightning »

danbruc wrote: post #134
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so capitalism isn't your thing. Fair enough. I wonder where the limits are though. What if I save up and take a month off? Is that immoral? What about 6 months? A year? Or do I have to have some justification for it that you find acceptable (like having kids or mental health, etc?) Or is it just immoral to not be constantly working while other people are working?

To a first approximation, you work for one hour, you get to consume stuff that requires one hour of work to produce. I don't care if you work your ass off for some time and then retire early or if you work very little or very much as long as your consume at most a proportional amount.

What about different working conditions? Is one hour in a coal mine the same as one hour as an actor?

What if a person has a debilitating illness that prevents them from working but is also expensive to take care of?

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#169

Post by lumost »

bko wrote: post #127
lumost wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this over-estimates the amount required to live a luxurious life in perpetuity. Consider the case of someone wishing to live a luxury lifestyle in the trendy lower east side neighborhood of manhattan. We'll use a 1300 sqft 3 bedroom condo as a baseline. https://www.redfin.com/NY/New-York/455-FDR-Dr-10002/unit-B30... This condo will cost 8k/month with a 20% downpayment at todays interest rates, leaving our hyp…

A 1300 sqft apt isn't exactly lux with a family of 4. Plus public schools aren't great in most of the city and private will cost you 50k per kid, post tax. Then you have to ask what you're doing during the summer. Camp will cost you easily another 20-50k per kid. And your naive math of tax leaves out a lot city and state tax. There are a lot of expenses. The fire stuff you read about people retiring after a few milli…

In Manhattan, it's pretty lux :) If you expand your radius to Brooklyn and the other burrows you can get a modern renovated brownstone with 4k sqft for similar pricing and a 20 minute commute to wherever you need to go in Manhattan. Adding in 100k per year doesn't change the math too much Our hypothetical individual would retire in 13 years. However it's worth highlighting that the costs for this hypothetical individual will fall by ~30% following the kids graduation from college.

Now, in theory - there is nothing which stops one from scaling housing costs arbitrarily high. If Musk desired, he could buy the New Yorker hotel and turn it into his house.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#170

Post by dgfitz »

danbruc wrote: post #134
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so capitalism isn't your thing. Fair enough. I wonder where the limits are though. What if I save up and take a month off? Is that immoral? What about 6 months? A year? Or do I have to have some justification for it that you find acceptable (like having kids or mental health, etc?) Or is it just immoral to not be constantly working while other people are working?

To a first approximation, you work for one hour, you get to consume stuff that requires one hour of work to produce. I don't care if you work your ass off for some time and then retire early or if you work very little or very much as long as your consume at most a proportional amount.

So, nobody is "allowed" to watch movies or play videogames then.
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