Salary transparency at Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#251

Post by eldavido » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #88

grobaru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think SF is a bubble and very unhealthy to the whole IT industry. It basically raises the costs for everyone. It makes no sense to hire a person in SF for much more (and he will not really benefit from it) just because you compete with multi billions dollar businesses that can cut costs somewhere else. At some point people do not want to change the world with next Instagram. They just want to live nicely.

The counter point is that companies are profitable despite high salaries. That suggests an engineers contributions exceed even the bloated salary and therefore they are undercompensated.

I know a few guys making $300K+ at Apple.

I think a lot of people paid that much are reaping the benefits of strategic and tactical decisions made over decades -- they just happen to be there when it's all paying off and things are going well.

Not sure what to make of this other than that if, as a developer, you want to be paid well, go to a company that's "winning" and has mountains of cash. Shocker, I know.

(Though, as someone who's worked at a few places early, it does irritate me more than a little that these people take so little risk and yet are so highly compensated, relative to the guys who were there at the beginning getting things set up from scratch. Being an early employee at a startup is really such a shit deal - you take most of the risk, get a fraction of the equity of a founder, work hard, and don't get paid nearly as much as the people who come in 10-20 years after the strong groundwork has been laid)

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#252

Post by Evgeny » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #169

ryandrake wrote: post #32

Before everyone inevitably piles on about how such-and-such a salary "seems low compared to That One Guy At Google I Know That Makes $300k", keep in mind average Bay Area salaries for software people in the Bay Area are not as large as you think. T.O.G.A.G.I.K. makes several standard deviations above the self reported mean of $100K-$105K [1][2] and BLS reported median [3][4] (around ~$125K or so depending on job func…

Seems low? Seems ridiculously high and I'm in Denmark, a country with extremely high salaries. I make almost half of what Stack Overflow would pay, that seems wrong. It wouldn't make sense that Stack Overflow could move the developers to a more expensive country and pay less.

I make almost half of what Stack Overflow would pay, that seems wrong.

It probably is wrong (1). This website in my experience gives a good estimation of how much you should earn:

https://www.jobindex.dk/tjek-din-loen

Just do not put "Software developer", use "Softwareudvikler" :). I am personally quite happy with my compensation, it is a bit higher than what Stack Overflow could offer.

(1) Depending on your education, experience ...

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#253

Post by hellofunk » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 8:24 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #234

hellofunk wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income tax for a California resident is quite a bit higher than Dutch income tax for most income brackets. Dutch income tax more closely resembles the tax bracket in midwest America. My income tax percent in Holland is slightly lower than it was in the U.S. and my pay is a bit higher than it was in the U.S.

Are we looking at the same Netherlands? A quick search tells me California's highest bracket is 13%. In NL you're lucky to get ~25% effective rate as a knowledge migrant, going steeply up to 52%.

13% for the state tax is huge, now add that to the U.S. Federal income tax as well, and see what your actual tax percentage is.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#254

Post by jamwt » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:09 AM UTC

rhc2104 wrote: post #75

megadethz wrote: post #8

The salaries generated by the calculator while transparent are not validated by the market and are laughably low. Given the elasticity of supply and demand the salary mush be constantly evaluated against the market. This seems like just another trick to suppress wages for a qualified engineer. In today's market, a person with multiple offers would command at least twice the listed compensation at any of the software…

To be fair, Stack Exchange hires remotely. The "software majors" do not. (That said, if I wanted to work in Oklahoma and get a remote software engineering job, this lets me know I could probably get more at a place like GitHub)

> The "software majors" do not.

Not really true. Most or all of them do for the right candidate. They're not super vocal about it, though.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#255

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 11:35 AM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #249

tristor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a problem. I think it's a valuable and fair discussion that is in some way the entire point of salary transparency. Those who bring the most value to the company in theory should be the ones who are compensated the highest. It's always a difficult question on how you determine who brings what value though, which is why compensation is such a contentious subject to discuss. I should clarify I'm not…

"Who brings the most value to the company" is the most utterly loaded question ever. Companies are complex systems with many moving parts and team dynamics. If a new feature gets released, do you attribute incremental revenue to the dev who coded it, the product manager who specified it, the sales team who sold it, the marketers who described it, the executives who hired the people who did any of the things above, et…

If you asked each of those constituents how much value they/their group added and summed those values, I suspect you'd end up with a significant multiple of the total value actually created.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#256

Post by Gmo » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 11:35 AM UTC

r2dnb wrote: post #200

Gmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago. Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask…

>We always ask a new recruit which salary he/she wants publicly (by that I mean in front of a not insignificant part of the company, we are 50) and show them salaries of other people in case it does not really fit This smells the subtle management trick. As far as I can see you create a peer pressure. These people shouldn't come into play in the salary discussion, the salary discussion should be solely based on : wha…

You can smell whatever you want, but that's not at all what is happening.

Is there politics within the company ? Yes, of course, like in any assembly of human beings.

This is not a management trick at all. Not everybody does have the same salary, some are better than others at negociating. But if there is a too big difference of people with the same level, then that is what creates problem.

By the way, it happened more than one time that we told a candidate he should up his salary, because it was too low compared to what we are paying similar employees. So, it goes both ways. And that's exactly about "what someone deserved to earn based on what he brings".

People are not "put into the room". Simply, the final step of a recruitment is an oral presentation on the topic of the choice of the candidate. Anybody can join. And whoever is in the room has a right to say something while the candidate is here, and once he's gone and we decide if he's hired or not.

This is a ritual of the company, everybody had to go through this (except trainees who were later hired).

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#257

Post by Gmo » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 11:46 AM UTC

dimino wrote: post #76

Gmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has transparent salaries since the beginning 14 years ago. Funnily, in the words of one of the co-founders, it's more a mere accident than a clear will from the beginning : "we did not really plan it that way, but back then, it was easier to let the document listing the salaries open for everyone than restricting its access to a few persons" and they decided to keep it that way ever since :) We always ask…

> We are also experimenting with allowing people to choose their salary after 3 years in the company (there's a process and some caveats of course). Why wouldn't everyone ask for the maximum amount your company is willing to give? I don't really care if Mark from billing is getting paid 1/3rd of what I'm asking for, what I care about is if you'll give it to me...

Well, I can't answer this question for 2 reasons : 1. This is the first year this has been done (well, apparently, it was like that also in the past when there were only 6/7 people but that's a different dynamic I guess). 2. I will myself be part of this process only from next January on, so I was not in the room so to say.

Everyone is free to ask what they want. They are assessed by the others though. The process is the following (again, I'm not part of it yet, so it's only what I remember being told) : - You give your number in front of everybody else (here it means people in the "choose your salary category"). - People can make remarks directly or later if they choose to do so - 1 week later, people meet again, and give a possibly updated number based on the feedback they got. They can also justify this number (be it because it's too "low" or it's too "high". For instance, you have the right to say "I had a hard year last year, I prefer to take it a bit more easy this year, therefore I put a lower number").

If there is a very big mismatch, then it can be decided there is no agreement and we should probably stop working together. Anyway, with a "normal" system, an employee would not have had the salary he/she asked for and would probably have looked elsewhere for a new job. Here at least it's pretty clear. It can also be decided that the salary is granted but he/she has a year to prove he/she's worth it.

The goal is to have transparency, so all those decisions are clear from the beginning and throughout the process. Otherwise, it's useless.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#258

Post by dpark » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #247

dpark wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I unfortunately have to stay quiet about my true feelings about this kind of thing, even though it matters to me a lot. "That's not a perk that I value because I prefer to make my own food." You don't have to go into detail, explain that you think it's an ethical problem, tell them you are a vegan, or anything else. Just tell them you don't value it and won't use it.

Even just what you suggest is going to raise a red flag for anyone in HR, without a doubt. A "team player" would eat the company-provided food (... or would just shut up about it ... really is how HR and managers tend to think). They might be fine if you merely said you'll probably bring your own food due to a special diet. But any inkling that you don't personally love the fact that they provide food means you're no…

I think you're assuming far too much. No one cares if you don't want to eat company-provided food. Not HR, not managers. On the off chance that you're interviewing somewhere that actually thinks poorly of you for not wanting the company food, you're probably better off not working for such a terribly dysfunctional place.

But really, I think you're far too concerned about what other people think of your eating habits. Pretty much no one cares what you (or anyone else) eats. They might find your food choices weird. Depending on your relationship, they might even tease you about it occasionally. But by and large people really do not care about other peoples' food choices.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#259

Post by dpark » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #245

dpark wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, like for like (new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods), Boston housing is just as expensive as SF No it's not. It's not even close. The median home in Boston is less than $500k. That's a gut/teardown in SF, where the median is $1.1MM. If you pick brand new construction in the most desirable neighborhoods in Boston, I'm sure you could easily spend north of a million. If you pick comparabl…

Every time SF housing prices come up, someone comes out of the woodwork to say how (Boston | Seattle | Austin) is just as expensive or even worse. They then compare some 1500 sq ft penthouse in the nicest, newest tower in their city to some slightly less expensive 19th century shithole of the same price in SF and say, "LOOK! Look! It's more expensive in my city! And MILK is 50% more here too, so it's way more expensi…

I did enjoy the fact that "like for like" somehow explicitly means the best of the best in Boston.

Re: Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

#260

Post by RodericDay » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

fecak wrote: post #100

RodericDay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of confidence and willingness to speak out are usually used by the employer to get more out of their employees, even if it's slightly worse for the employer it seems like straightforwardly positive for society. As for people being unable to judge and compare the price value of their contribution, because of the lack of public salary data, they've had no practice at the exercise. After a short adjustment period I…

I agree there are lots of positives. But with increased transparency, what we won't likely see is someone saying "Joe is a better employee than me and I unfairly make more than him. Please reduce my salary." The adjustment requests are only going to go in one direction, and be requested by those who feel (wrongly or not) that they are contributing more than others. I wasn't referring to the inability to compare price…

This is all a red-herring. The real value people need to be able to compare is not co-worker vs. co-worker, but worker vs. manager.

And then, requests for reducing salary will be weighed against the sacrifices the superiors are making, not about whether the kid brought in to fix the issue is getting paid more or less.