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How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

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Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#391

Post by walshemj »

vacri wrote: post #114
msoad wrote: post #26

Engineers should make more money than what they are making now. The largest number I heard lately is $240k for a data scientist from Apple. That's too low! That person can make Siri better and make millions for Apple. Why aren't we getting paid like lawyers? If they win $20M they will get paid at least $2M. But if we make a product that generates $20M profit, at best we get $20K bonus. This has to change!

Why aren't you getting paid like lawyers? Because tech companies don't operate like legal partnerships. As a techie, you are an employee, not a partner. Don't forget either that lawyers don't just 'make money', they 'prevent loss'. That $20M suit that ends in your favour also comes with a nice injunction preventing your opponent from doing -foo- again. Techies can't do that.

Even non partner lawyers get paid much more than software engineers - the number of lawyers that make partner is tiny.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#392

Post by pille »

larholm wrote: post #89
pille wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in Germany I'd be hard-pressed to find you a non-management tech job that makes north of 90k USD/year. It would be great if someone could prove me wrong.

90k USD ist just shy of 66k Euro, which is by no means unheard of for an experienced developer. I know personal anecdotes doesn't count for much, but I turned down several 80k offers in Berlin. I would expect salaries in Munich to be 10-15% higher due to cost of living.

From what I've heard from colleagues, and seen while working on projects there, Munich sucks precisely because it's so expensive and the pay does not track the cost of living. Working in Frankfurt pays better, and living there is just slightly cheaper. Berlin's cost of living is catching up fast.

You're right that 90k USD (~65-70k EUR) for a dev is not unheard of, but it appears to be the final stop on the salary train for that profession, unfortunately.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#393

Post by gress »

mrgriscom wrote: post #143
gress wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed my point. The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project. The value of the employee becomes the value of disrupting the project to the competitor. Matching the offer would be an option, but it would cause massive distortion within th…

That is the nature of at-will employment.

What point are you making?

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#395

Post by gress »

bps4484 wrote: post #347
gress wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed my point. The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project. The value of the employee becomes the value of disrupting the project to the competitor. Matching the offer would be an option, but it would cause massive distortion within th…

"The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project." I think what you're trying to say here is that if a competitive company can time it right they can derail a project by scooping away talent at the right time (say, right before a product launch)…

Thanks for clarifying - I would like to believe that you are right - but I still have concerns about things like project base bonuses, because there is still a giant distortion around employees who happen to end up on key projects being overvalued compared to other employees without whose contributions the key projects couldn't exist, arguably mirroring the inequalities we see in the larger society and leading to disintegration rather than increased cooperation.

With regard to better products, I hadn't understood that you were referring to the compensation package as the product. That makes sense as an analogy.

Your position makes sense, but I'm not at all sure that the market mechanism really optimizes in the way you hope.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#396

Post by krakensden »

unohoo wrote: post #259
argonaut wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you from SV? There are plenty of affordable places to live in SV. Just because everyone is talking about how SF is sooo expensive, does not mean you can't live in Berkeley/Oakland/East Palo Alto/other areas.

east palo alto ? are. you. serious ?

It's not 1995 anymore.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#397

Post by eric_h »

wavefunction wrote: post #350
johnmaddox wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all this why does Steve Wozniak stay with him.

Because he's the Woz, he's immutable and immovable like the Bhudda Funny how Jobs was the 'Bhuddist.'

buddha, buddhist

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#398

Post by grinich »

boobsbr wrote: post #337
patio11 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Facebook started aggressively poaching Google employees and Google responded publicly by giving every engineer a substantial raise and privately in ways substantially more expensive than that? And Facebook pretty much just laughed and matched offers? And every engineer in the Valley figured out simultaneously that $100k was a floor not a ceiling? That strikes me as persuasive anecdotal evidence of what…

I'm in Brazil and can only dream of BRL 100k/y, which is about USD 41k/y.

If you're skilled, you should work remotely.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#399

Post by krakensden »

acgourley wrote: post #290
rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hire a bar-admitted lawyer for $20/hour, yet some firms bill first year associates at almost $400/hour. The corporate service professions (law, finance, accounting, and consulting) have a self-regulating labor supply. A professional without hands on experience is not valuable to corporate clients, and hands on experience can only be acquired in the context of real litigation/deals/audits/etc. If demand grows,…

Why don't we see more firms created?

We were- right now they're all shrinking and collapsing.

Also, the mode compensation for a lawyer is only like 55,000. The low population, insane compensation segment drags the mean way up.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#400

Post by sbilstein »

nerfhammer wrote: post #210
debt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. It's probably the best place in the world right now to be a software developer. This wage-theft stuff is for very experienced echelons of engineers.

> If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first

If you write code or do something meaningful in tech, the money and housing will come in SV. If you are reading hacker news, you probably are planning on doing something of the sort.
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