Honestly, I'm more surprised that other folks are surprised. How much do ya'll think top SWEs make?
Facebook Median Pay now $240k
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably means cleaning staff, cooks and other auxiliary functions.
Cleaning staff, cooks, etc, scale with the size of buildings. Customer support staff, content flag reviewers, etc, scale with the number of users. Since Facebook has so many users, I would expect the second category to be much larger.
Facebook runs a low-support model. At the same time, they offer a lot of perks to their developers. I haven't been to their HQ but from my experience with other companies I would guess that a significant part of the people working there (20-30%+) are working in maintenance, security, hospitality, cleaning, restaurants, etc.
Keeping large offices running smoothly and in nice conditions takes an enormous amount of manual work, a lot of which other employees never see (much of cleaning/maintenance is done over weekends and at night).
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#23That is only possible because of outsourcing. If you only employ the highest paid earners and use contractors for all support staff, you artificially inflate your median salary. I'd bet that FB has much lower salaries if you count anyone working full time for Facebook.
What percentage of Facebook workers are contractors?
I don't know and they don't disclose it. It's the vast majority of what they pay for physical security, building maintenance, cleaning, hospitality, etc. This happened across all industries. A few decades ago, janitors and cleaners worked for the company, now they're outsourced to keep them out of scope for unions and to be more "flexible" (i.e. hire and fire at will without negative press).
The NYT has a great article on that, not related to Facebook but it shows the general trend: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#24I've definitely felt the challenge of hiring in a startup as a result of these kinds of numbers. I'm curious what others think will come of this seeming bubble in compensation.
It's not a bubble by any stretch of the imagination. Facebook pays a lot because they have to pay a lot to get quality people to want to work at Facebook.
Compare this against companies like SpaceX where the median compensation is quite awful for the industry made even worse by the area (compensation is well below $90k in most cases). This poor compensation is made even more peculiar at a glance by the incredibly high standard of employee they have. But they have these incredibly well qualified people lining up outside the door wanting to work for them.
Of course refuting my argument is companies like Netflix. I don't entirely understand why they pay so much. But at least just taking examples like Facebook and SpaceX, compensation is mostly just based on supply and demand - rather than massive ongoing bubble of inflating salaries.
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#25I've been thinking a lot about the merits of the (highest income / median income) ratio in creating a society that is a little more resistant to eventual inequality. Rather than setting absolute tax brackets, what if we define tax brackets by this ratio? That way, it will be in the interest of the highest income earners to raise the median income.
Probably closest you can come to this in real world is Switzerland (maybe some nordic countries too). Very strong middle class (although there is no minimum wage codified in law), salaries disparities ie in IT vs normal people is much much smaller (meaning even a guy filling shelves in supermarket gets decent wage, if you get 3x his wage you are probably in top 1% earners). There is even a law enacted recently that highest earner in company (ie CEO) can't have salary more than 20x the lowest one (at least that's how I remember it).
It has far-reaching consequences where whole population has high standards of living which transpills into high overall happiness, low criminality, and there is no predatory mentality to screw other people over just for one's own benefit (that I can see massively in eastern europe where I come from, and many other developing countries all around the world).
Really, Suisse could be model in many things for rest of the world, if only their mentality would be more 'transferable'.
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#26Not so much in H1B data: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Facebook/189973_Salar...
At least for the base salary I guess.
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#27I've definitely felt the challenge of hiring in a startup as a result of these kinds of numbers. I'm curious what others think will come of this seeming bubble in compensation.
It's not a bubble by any stretch of the imagination. Facebook pays a lot because they have to pay a lot to get quality people to want to work at Facebook. Compare this against companies like SpaceX where the median compensation is quite awful for the industry made even worse by the area (compensation is well below $90k in most cases). This poor compensation is made even more peculiar at a glance by the incredibly hig…
Exactly. Same goes for game industry.
As for Netflix - you get to paid premium for taking a non-reliable job - they brag about their high turnover rate in their "culture" deck.
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#28Includes RSUs, for those who don’t feel like reading the article.
IIRC this article includes stock options for engineers but not the CEO. Meanwhile, not counted, are the legions of Facebook contractors (e.g. food service, janitorial, and some? a plurality? engineers).
> Zuckerberg took a $1 salary last year and got no new stock grants (on top of the $70 billion in Facebook stock he already owns). His $8.8 million in compensation last year was mainly for his personal security detail and private aircraft use.
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#29That is only possible because of outsourcing. If you only employ the highest paid earners and use contractors for all support staff, you artificially inflate your median salary. I'd bet that FB has much lower salaries if you count anyone working full time for Facebook.
All the "Facebook" content screeners in Berlin, Germany, are actually employees of a contractor (Arvato-Bertelsmann) who is mostly hiring them through job agencies.
They're in charge of deciding what has to be banned according to Facebook Community Guidelines. They get to see gore, suicide videos, racial slurs etc. all the time, with no proper psychological training. They earn minimum wage (around 10$ per hour) and they're completely disposable.
Nonetheless, when Facebook had to face a small content-related crisis in Germany in 2016, that didn't stop Zuckerberg from saying the the company hires teams of hundreds in Germany to stop the spreading of hate content. They don't.
Source: Inside Facebook - Im Netz des Bösen, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2016. (sorry, paywall). http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/inside-facebook-im-netz-d...
Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that was exactly the argument banks used before 2008. Not that salaries in Finance are low now but a lot of the excesses have been cut back following the crisis. Banks also made a ton of money pre-2008 but that didn't come out of nowhere. So far, there has been no industry that just continued making high margins over decades without any cut backs. I doubt tech will be the first one.
But the industry as a whole doesn't have these margins or salaries; only the top dogs do.
Pre-2008 not all banks were hugely profitable. Some investment banks were and some smaller companies. The tech sector isn't that dissimilar. Salaries in SV show that not only Google and Facebook are willing to pay $200k+ for engineers, most of the industry will (and usually can).
As tech can't print money, these salaries must come from somewhere. And at some point those sources won't be able or willing to provide it. Maybe that's a soft landing, maybe harder. I don't know but as I said previously, I'd be surprised if tech's the first industry in centuries that channels wealth into the hands of few (including SV landlords) without any consequences.