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

291–300 of 365 posts

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

#291

Post by zhte415 »

anon_0bviously wrote: post #233
g9yuayon wrote: post #103

This hardly comes as a surprise. How many companies, especially startups, really need to tackle tough technical challenges? On the other hand, how many companies desperately need product talents to figure out what is valuable to produce? In addition, engineers have commoditized many technical solutions that used to be challenging in the past 15 years. Scaling used to be a tough challenge, not any more for many compan…

Totally disagree. In my experience across three tech firms, Product Managers spend a lot of time selling themselves. They are talking to customers (read: networking for their next job), going to conferences (read: shmoozing with their next potential boss), researching competitors (read: figuring out where to apply) researching products (read: learning on the job) Is it any surprise they tend to make more than people…

talking to customers -> Listening to what the customer's pain points are, what the customer needs, what to address

going to conferences -> Because face-to-face contact is far faster and richer than sending emails

researching competitors -> What aren't we doing that others are doing better / what are we doing that's winning / what to change?

researching products -> well, yes, constantly learning

Is it any surprise they tend to make more than people stuck in the office coding?

Listening to customer needs, staying ahead, constantly learning. Sounds like good general career advice.

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

#292

Post by gretch »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #199
codingdave wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most product managers would confirm that most companies do not need a good machine learning pipeline.

Really? Because most product managers I meet are the ones going “how can we put AI and Machine Learning into ?” I 100% agree that most companies don’t need nearly as much ML as think though.

full disclosure: I'm a PM in FANG

I think that's what the bad PMs do. Good PMs think 'what is the smallest possible thing we could do to start truly adding value against our problem space?'

A good heuristic is that good pms are problem oriented - bad pms are often focused on solutions first

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

#293

Post by gkilmain »

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…

Ha, have a newborn and have just recently considered making the move into product.

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

#294

Post by paulgrant999 »

arountheworld wrote: post #268
paulgrant999 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

make more. eventually, you hit a wall where you have to move to buy overpriced shit, that fits your new "salary". What do you think a billionaire does with his money? How much shit can you buy before you simply, run out of shit to buy?

You may assume that would happen, but unless you really have a thing to show off, you'll keep a similar lifestyle and just watch your savings account growing. I know very few people who permanently changed their behaviour after a sudden change in their earnings. This is of course just anecdotal evidence.

Clearly you have not seen lotto winners. Or wall street people:) Or the really wealthy. ;)

What your talking about, is upper-middle, lower-high.

Eventually if you make enough cash, you will hit that limit. Sort of the whole "ball-washer" bit by Lewis Black.

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

#295

Post by _qbxp »

reggieband wrote: post #73

I swear, every time I read an article on HN about salary it gives me anxiety. I'm perpetually worried that I'm not earning as much as I should be earning. I don't think it is healthy but I can't look away.

I get the same weird anxiety reading these threads. I was making 50k base as a post-doc, anxious about ex-academic friends making 80k in the "real world". Then I got a corporate job making ~$120k, and felt anxious that I wasn't making the ~$150k some of my bosses and friends were making. Switched jobs, making ~$200k in a small southern city, and I come into threads like this ("$500k comp at FAANG) feeling anxious that I'm not making enough in my mid-thirties and don't have enough saved up for retirement.

The crazy thing is, going from 50k to 200k, I can't honestly pinpoint whether I'm signficantly happier or not. So I try to not get envy about even the more ridiculous salaries. How does one get off the hamster wheel and feel content enough with salary to just live?

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

#297

Post by arbie »

riazrizvi wrote: post #222
x220 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figuring out what to do is the hardest part. Engineering is typically the least significant part of the success or failure of a company.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth", said Kennedy, and all the senators rushed the podium, slapped him on the back, and popped champagne, as they realized the hardest part was done.

Not parent, but in every successful project I have been part of, the technical challenges were always a small slice (perhaps less than a quarter) of the main effort. Getting organizational approval (which usually boils down to acquiring buy-in from management) and picking the path to progress (with occasional course-correction) are the main contributors to success.

This isn't to discount the hard work involved in completing the technical tasks, but commiting _to_ begin something along a certain development vector is, indeed, the hard part.

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

#298

Post by sgustard »

err0ne wrote: post #6

Wait until you see how much the sales people rake in.

Exactly. The highest paid tech workers are certainly in sales, from an outlier perspective, when you include commissions on those million-dollar deals. The fact that the text "sale" does not even appear in the article makes the whole analysis suspect.

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

#300

Post by gnulinux »

aliston wrote: post #256
gnulinux wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm underestimating the extent to which money is fetishized in your culture I worked in the Bay Area and currently in Boston. I live in the startup culture. > Also, being able to save 2/3 of your net salary is... a ludicrously privileged position, underpaid or not. Yes! We software engineers are lucky. Even when we're underpaid (I'm paid $90k and my friends with similar experience, same education, same intere…

How is it possible to save 2/3rds of a 90k salary in Boston? After tax, that's probably about 64k, which means you manage to live on 21k a year? The average studio in Boston rents for more than that a year...

I'm very young (21) so no need for a studio. My current rent is $900 including everything. I'm extremely conscious of what I eat to a paranoia level so I never eat out (except when I go out on a date with a girl or a close friends) so I cook home (I have a Trader Joe's literally next to my house) and my monthly food expense is $200. With various other stuff (gym, phone, entertainment, Uber etc...) I spend less than $1500 a month. I bike, so no transportation expense. My take home is ~$6000 a month. That lets me save around $4000/$4500 a month and $3000 on "bad" months (need to buy stuff, furniture etc...). I live comfortable enough that I don't know what I would do if I spent more than $1500 a month. I spend 90% of my free time in gym anyway :-)
Post reply on HN