Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 218 posts

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#201

Post by SwellJoe »

mayank wrote: post #163
SwellJoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a contractor for a while at a company that was pretty much entirely great developers, but they had one guy who had more experience than nearly everybody else put together (he was in his 50s, and had worked on all sorts of cool things in his career), who was also more productive than anyone else. The founders of the company knew he was their top producer, and so they gave him whatever he wanted (within the…

I think you've got Facebook and Google reversed. Facebook is famously all open-plan. Google has a mix of open plan areas and mini 4-person offices with doors, along with other configurations.

I don't consider a 4-person office to be an "office"; that's "open", to me. Google does have lots of meeting rooms and the like, so as I understand it, most developers can find a private workspace most of the times when they might need it. So, it's probably not awful to work at Google.

If facebook is even more "open" than Google, I'm amazed anybody ever gets any work done, but obviously they do, so I may just be more reclusive than most tech people when I work.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#202

Post by SwellJoe »

npsimons wrote: post #134
SwellJoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a contractor for a while at a company that was pretty much entirely great developers, but they had one guy who had more experience than nearly everybody else put together (he was in his 50s, and had worked on all sorts of cool things in his career), who was also more productive than anyone else. The founders of the company knew he was their top producer, and so they gave him whatever he wanted (within the…

> It's also worth nothing that he didn't put in long hours. When it was crunch time in the office, he wouldn't be one of the people there on the weekend. Paradoxically, I think that's another contributing factor to his high productivity. I don't see how this is paradoxical. It makes just as much sense that better focused time, not "crunches", will increase productivity as the fact that offices will increase productiv…

It is paradoxical in the sense that "more time working" should equal "more output", but most of us know that past a certain point the result of "more time working" is worse code that has to be fixed, leading to overall less productivity.

I'm not saying "more time working" equals more output. I'm saying there is a belief that it does, even among some people who should know better. The office I was working in did have occasional crunch times, and they'd put in extra hours; sometimes maybe it was necessary. But, old-timer I was talking about didn't really participate. His part of the job would have already been done earlier in the week.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#203

Post by omphalos »

astura wrote: post #135
omphalos wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't the only motivation someone can have. People write lots of open source code for free, for example.

A lot of open source work is professional paid work.

Yes, and a lot of it isn't, which is what I'm saying :)

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#204

Post by fiblye »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #147
fiblye wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first problem there is monetizing it. If nobody can pay for it, nobody is going to get together to make it.

Maybe we should get rid of capitalism, then. It's obviously not doing the job of allocating resources to beneficial goods or raising productivity.

Even the USSR had money and wealth. Desire to accumulate wealth in some form is a primitive instinct.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#205

Post by unityByFreedom »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #189
unityByFreedom wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually feel it is zero sum. There is a lot of learning that happens through debate at all levels. One might argue it is the foundation of our society.

I wasn't thinking about the debates. I was thinking about all the money spent on campaign advertisements - on posters, phone calls, radio ads, TV ads, Internet ads, and so on, and so on. All that does is cancel out similar efforts from other candidates.

All that stuff leads the rest of us to debate too. The system depends upon having informed voters. As silly as that may sound today, I do feel that puts us in a better position to make progress than the other forms of government that exist.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#206

Post by throwme211345 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #200
throwme211345 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an almost 50 year old who has worked on many cool things I'll weigh in. I get very tired of seeing the same mistakes in different guise. I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception. I recognize patterns rather than specifics. I look at big picture and am careful about introducing paradigm shifts. I care about ef…

I'm older now myself (closer to 40 than 50, but well past "young"), and I don't think I meant what you think I meant. "I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception." "PC oriented culture" just seems like expecting people to treat everyone with respect, and I think that's an improvement. Our industry hasn't always be…

These were my comments alone as a 50 year old in addition to your narrative; not in correlation but in comparison.

PC in this context meaning behaviors for the sake of change willy-nilly (think about the injection of feminine instead of masculine pronoun that was|is fashionable). I see the mercurial aspect of PC culture as reactive and dismissive and dislike it intensely.

Everyone these days seem to have some form of progressive agenda and most change is packaged in some media that makes it seem innocuous and correct in an engaging and entertaining way that would have been nearly impossible when I was a young man. In fact(as McLuhan might say) the media is the message. Chomsky is quite insightful in my opinion as to how the medium and vocabulary restrict available concepts.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#207

Post by hasenj »

pc86 wrote: post #170
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's more valuable than building a top notch system for delivering news (and everything that tends to go with that) to a billion people? Making it remotely accurate? Wiping out infectious diseases? Providing a billion people access to a healthy, nutritious diet? Saving the planet from ecological devastation? I can think of a lot of very hard problems that have far more value than delivering advertisements packed…

Software developers are not wiping out infectious disease.

There's room for software to help alot in these efforts.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#208

Post by SwellJoe »

throwme211345 wrote: post #206
SwellJoe wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm older now myself (closer to 40 than 50, but well past "young"), and I don't think I meant what you think I meant. "I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception." "PC oriented culture" just seems like expecting people to treat everyone with respect, and I think that's an improvement. Our industry hasn't always be…

These were my comments alone as a 50 year old in addition to your narrative; not in correlation but in comparison. PC in this context meaning behaviors for the sake of change willy-nilly (think about the injection of feminine instead of masculine pronoun that was|is fashionable). I see the mercurial aspect of PC culture as reactive and dismissive and dislike it intensely. Everyone these days seem to have some form of…

"think about the injection of feminine instead of masculine pronoun that was|is fashionable"

This seems to have settled, after a few years of mild confusion, on everyone agreeing to just use non-gendered "they/them" when the gender of the subject is unknown. Pretty easy, it has historical precedent, and it can't possibly exclude anyone from the conversation. Seems like progress, to me. Where's the harm in making your docs about everybody rather than just men?

I guess I just don't get the hostility toward inclusiveness as a value in our communities/companies/etc. It costs me literally nothing and might make someone else feel more welcome to participate in the things I'm working on. It just seems like a win with no down side.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#209

Post by nickrio »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #88
nickrio wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TouTiao is a literal translation of Headline. （头）Tou = Head; （条）Tiao = Line

条 is a measure word for things that are long (rivers / snakes / pants), but it's not the word for line. The character most closely related to the concept is 线 xian, and 线 is indeed the word for "line" in many senses. In other senses, you find words of more than one syllable.

Yes, it's not very accurate in term of word-by-word translation. Maybe it's for suiting the context and habits.

A strip (条) of news is works better than A line (线) of news in Chinese.

Re: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market

#210

Post by kc10 »

elgenie wrote: post #109
kc10 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally love working close with my team in an open-setting. That's the reason I go to office every day even though my employer offers WFH. I just prefer turning around and asking a question or have a quick discussion. If everyone is working from home or in their personal offices, I hate having to get on a call or schedule a meeting to gather everyone to a meeting room for a quick discussion. Sure, at times it ca…

Of course it's an enjoyable setting for you. Your team "won't disturb unless necessary", but you have no problem disturbing them whenever you want to have "a quick discussion".

Not all tasks require uninterrupted attention all the time. Sure, if everyone is working on complex stuff everyone can put on their headsets; no one will disturb others unless required.
Post reply on HN