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

The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 365 posts

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#211

Post by Stryder »

dawhizkid wrote: post #46

As others have mentioned, this is because unlike developers few companies hire PMs straight out of college. As a current PM, I'm actually fairly bearish about the sustainability of this role as far as a long-term career outlook goes. It's an extremely nebulous role, hard to prove your value, wildly differs from company to company, and most of your time will probably not look anything like what is considered textbook…

The "wildly differs from company to company" hits home hard. It's like organizational schizophrenia and existential crisis had a child that got named "Product Management".

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#212

Post by acjohnson55 »

gowld wrote: post #60
madrox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which they acknowledged

They are more than "slightly" different. A product manger is a creative professional. A project manager is an administrative professional.

I don't think I've ever worked someplace where the product manager role is fundamentally creative. It's their job to j understand stakeholder concerns and coordinate the team around solutions. But designers are typically doing the creative UX work.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#213

Post by aethros »

payne92 wrote: post #203
jahaja wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with this usage of the word "talent"? Tech is in such acute need of humble pie I don't even know where to begin. I'm becoming disillusioned. Why is a programmer etc. a "talent", but a carpenter just an employee, hire or whatever? But maybe it's actually an appropriate term, now when our interview processes so clearly have ceased to be job interviews, and have become auditions - because nothing less satisfie…

...because the skill gap between “ok”, “good”, and “great” is so much bigger for some jobs (software development) than it is for other jobs (carpentry).

Just because you cant distinguish the fine differences between a good and great carpenter doesn't mean they don't exist. Someone making detailed engravings for a casket is far more skilled than someone who hammers a wooden crate.

Any profession to which someone can devote their life to (incl. carpentry or software development) is going to have gaps in skills between "ok", "good", and "great". Pejorative attitudes which measure something like software development as "harder" than carpentry are not beneficial and simply dilute the discourse.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#214

Post by evasote »

payne92 wrote: post #203
jahaja wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with this usage of the word "talent"? Tech is in such acute need of humble pie I don't even know where to begin. I'm becoming disillusioned. Why is a programmer etc. a "talent", but a carpenter just an employee, hire or whatever? But maybe it's actually an appropriate term, now when our interview processes so clearly have ceased to be job interviews, and have become auditions - because nothing less satisfie…

...because the skill gap between “ok”, “good”, and “great” is so much bigger for some jobs (software development) than it is for other jobs (carpentry).

Whoa buddy. There's a huge difference in skills there.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#215

Post by capkutay »

robviren wrote: post #92
analog31 wrote: post #14

In my view, they can have it. I was a project manager (granted, a slightly different title and role) for a couple years. I went back to the bench. Fortunately I took a pay hike in both directions. Those middle management jobs seem to be super high stress, long hours, and low reward. Literally everybody I've known who went into one of those jobs did so upon the birth of their first kid, when they felt the financial pr…

It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly. You are pretty much rigged to disappoint everyone. Gotta spread that around though. Marketing, sales, and the business end all have expectation of perfect execution, on-time delivery, bug free, and the development, testing, support teams all just want realistic requirements and timelines. Somewhere in the middle is the island of slight disappointmen…

Its also basically impossible to avoid office politics as a PM. Suddenly you're in a role where you have to make decisions that come down to opinions. And you know what they say about opinions. You can justify and be as transparent about the process as you possibly can be, but you'll still have people in other parts of the business that have their own assumptions and disagree...and suddenly there's stress and friction in the job.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#216

Post by acjohnson55 »

As an engineer, I've worked with far more gifted engineers than product managers. The for the good ones is intense. Let's be honest, most companies don't actually need unicorn engineers. They can't afford them, so they get by with solid contributors. Second-tier engineering will eventually bite you in the ass, but without excellent product management, you won't live long enough to experience that pain.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#217

Post by allthecybers »

justaguyhere wrote: post #121
gnulinux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem. I'm actually intentionally underpaid because this way (1) I have less anxiety about getting fired (2) I have less problems with imposter syndrome (3) I worry less about being underpaid since I know I'm underpaid. I know most people will think this is extremely irrational, but I'm paid about 3 times more than I can spend (I live very cheap and am happy this way) so I already save 2/3 of my tak…

I know I am getting underpaid, but I am okay with it. For me, it is the ratio of money and stress that matters. Lets say I get 20% hike but it comes with 50% more stress. I'd say no thanks and be happy with what I got. Better work is welcome, but more stress isn't.

I made a similar calculation a while ago when I moved from working at small companies to enterprise level tech and cybersecurity positions.

My goal is to maximize the amount of money that can be made without the stress, pressure and demand of the job overtaking the enjoyment of the compensation.

Admittedly, I could be making more money and being more aggressive in my career but ultimately I am satisfied with the balance I have found.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#218

Post by diminoten »

enjo wrote: post #210
payne92 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...because the skill gap between “ok”, “good”, and “great” is so much bigger for some jobs (software development) than it is for other jobs (carpentry).

It's not tho. It's really not. Most of the software you use every day was developed by very average software developers. The vast majority of the work software developers do isn't terribly novel or particularly difficult. And you know what? They do just fine. Things work well. Systems stay on line. Companies make money. I've seen too many "bad" teams produce perfectly functional software over the years to think that…

It really is night and day between a good dev and a bad dev.

The key factor that you're probably not thinking about is time. A good dev doesn't think faster or have blazing fingers that fly across the keyboard, a good dev is constantly setting him/herself up to shave time off of future tasks, and those investments are constantly paying dividends.

Those "bad" teams can definitely produce software that runs, but they do it 10x slower than a "good" team could.

What takes a bad team of four six months to make takes a good team of two only 5 or 6 weeks.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#219

Post by xkcd-sucks »

dominotw wrote: post #99
fipple wrote: post #91

They say data scientist salaries are the highest but I’ve also found the most noise in data science applicants. I have found a lot of candidates who can do something absolutely amazing with Tensorflow. I have found zero, and thus hired none, who can answer my real question: “I collect every conceivable bit of data on my customers and their actions. I lose 6% every month, using this data tell me why and what might fix…

What's the answer

"I asked 100 users and 65 of them quit because of all the telemetry"

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#220

Post by eibrahim »

These salaries seem way too low. We need to demand higher salaries as developers. Supply and demand. We are needed. We save money. We make companies lots of money. We should be compensated much higher. At least if we are good at it and not just average.
Post reply on HN