181–190 of 455 posts
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Tangentialy I have heard that Amazon has a vesting schedule for stock where everything skews towards the last two years.
This is true. I think it discourages ship jumpers after 12-24 months which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.
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Another possible explanation is that business just don't see much difference between junior work performance and senior work performance. I have 15 years of experience (both huge companies and own startups), but I keep wondering what if it's really the case: that there's simply no difference for company success? When I hire people myself, I only see value up until mid-seniority. From there what matters is just discip…
> that there's simply no difference for company success I've found that organizational structure and politics become a limiting factor past a certain level of skill and experience. That is, for one engineer to be obviously worth the price of three or four others, they'll need more responsibility and resources somehow. In finance, the responsibility is easy to delegate: it's the size (actual money) of decisions they'l…
Does anyone know an easy way to derive a Cost/$ of profit for various tech companies based upon reasonable estimates of how many engineers of whatever salary they've got? Obviously it would be a rough estimate, but it would be interesting to see, if only within an order of magnitude, just how terribly the cost center of software engineering is destroying their earnings.
Netflix employs about 3500 people, with a revenue of ~$11b. That ratio would put the average salary at 630k - 940k.
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> that there's simply no difference for company success I've found that organizational structure and politics become a limiting factor past a certain level of skill and experience. That is, for one engineer to be obviously worth the price of three or four others, they'll need more responsibility and resources somehow. In finance, the responsibility is easy to delegate: it's the size (actual money) of decisions they'l…
You give them important projects to lead, and give them bigger budgets to manage those projects.
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"Don't settle for common stock" Unless you're a C-level employee, you're not going to have the choice. And even then you're probably still not going to have a choice except in very rare cases (e.g. Uber's new CEO might have some decent protections). If you're "just" an employee, you're going to get laughed at if you demand anything besides common stock.
Honestly, I'd be surprised if any employees, C-level or not, get preferred stock. Unless you're putting skin in the game, you're probably stuck with common stock.
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> Quality food is more expensive The United States (as a whole) spends less of a % of income on food than any other country
quality was the keyword here. Yes people spend less on average, but the quality of what they buy is awful. I lived 20 years in various countries of the EU and 10 in the US. Based on my XP it is more expensive in the US to get the same quality that's it. I don't have data or fancy metrics to back it up, it's just my empirical observation :)
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Definitely true for Apple/Facebook/Linkedin/Google (I worked for 2 of these).
That is the "top subset". It is untrue for a lot of other established companies
This should probably be titled Silicon Valley startup salaries by experience level.
Yea at startups you often have way more flexibility to grant larger options blocks or a bit more equity to rockstars to bring them in while the salary is closely eyed by the investors to keep burn rate low. So startup salaries are by definition lower and “just enough” to get people come there. If they added something like “assumed value of options or equity when I first joined” that would be useful to understand. The…
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You're more likely than not going to get an equally untalented developer in Silicon Valley, for the same reason. The talented ones are likely already gainfully employed. I would go out on a limb and say that there are more smooth talkers with silver tongues in Silicon Valley, who will talk their way through an interview and only provide the perception of talent. Still think it's wise to start a company there? It has…
I've actually had the opposite experience: I've found way more silver-tounged developers outside of the Bay. It's hard to bullshit in SV because most worthwhile companies have at least a few people who have been around the block a few times. The smaller the market the easier it is to hype yourself up. I've even noticed it in NYC -- a lot of developers who are able to talk a big game because many of the finance/ad-tec…
The how did people like Robert Scoble thrive for so long in Silicon Valley?
I agree that New York in particular (and also London) is also full of silver tongued charlatans, and that has a lot to do with the culture and cocaine of finance/ad-tech firms.
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Could you expand on "hours candidate can really-work"?
Sure. By "really-work" I mean thinking of work and doing it, not just being at work. I, personally, rarely can do really-work more than 4 hours a day -- only if task is very interesting and challenging. Then I can do it for 12 hours a day straight, but I stop myself if I work more than 6 hours, because I know I would burn out, happened a few times. 4 hours a day of really-work sounds not a lot, but my performance is…
But I can produce just as much as some other developers, so I really see no incentive to do more work unless it's clear I will get more recognition for it, rather than just more work to do.