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Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

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Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#291

Post by Silhouette »

ghaff wrote: post #250
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should people get paid more for better negotiating skills if those don’t help them do a better job? It’s good that we eliminate that factor as much as possible. I’d rather go for meritocracy.

Negotiating skills help most people do a better job. Every allocation of resources or prioritization of projects is very much a negotiation. Note that this doesn't have to be a zero-sum process. One of the important aspects of negotiation is that not everyone's priorities are the same. I might be willing to tradeoff something that isn't a big deal to me but is very important to you.

What is management for if not to establish priorities according to the needs of the business and then determine an allocation of resources accordingly?

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#292

Post by md_ »

deanCommie wrote: post #284
md_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a little surprised at that. FAANGs tend to have fairly prescribed comp systems. There’s flexibility around equity and signing bonuses, but if you told me that you were making (base+bonus) say $250k and someone at your level was making $350k, I’d be pretty surprised. This reveals one of the challenges in these comparisons, by the way: total comp can vary dramatically due not only to initial signing bonuses (which…

You shouldn't be surprised at all. The higher up you go the wider the range is. The range for a senior SDE at my company in my city is 250-400 (according to blind). So you absolutely can have some people making $250k and others $350k for the same position at the same company. Having said that.......by and large.....it's deserved. It is INTENDED to be merit-based. But how fair is that merit-based system? Are people be…

Well, again, if that’s total annual comp, sure, for the reason I gave (vesting of previous grants biasing toward longer tenure at level, signing cliffs). But as a one-time manager at a FAANG, in my experience, the ranges for comp in terms of base+bonus are rarely that wide.

Anyway, I’m sure there are counter examples, but my point was that if you are at a FAANG making $250k and you find out someone at the same level is making $350k, it’s unlikely to be merely that you didn’t negotiate well enough.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#293

Post by blackrock »

motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

> salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills

I call BS.

You, as an employee seeking employment, don’t have much negotiating power. If you really did, then you won’t be seeking a job, that pays money, from someone else.

Your best and really only way to negotiate, is to stand firm with your salary demand. And be ready to walk if they try to game you. This is really, your only advantage.

It also helps if you’re skilled in what you do. And that you beat out your competition.

It helps even more if you’re in a niche field, that is in demand. Like some software development jobs, for critical functions in business. But still, you are salary capped, regardless of how good you are. The company may just opt for someone mediocre to do the job, for less pay.

But if you’re seeking a non-critical job, or if you’re in an entry-level role, then good luck, you are at a severe disadvantage. The employer will feel that you should be so lucky to take their offer.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#294

Post by rcxdude »

CalRobert wrote: post #221
loriverkutya wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why you think this, tech salaries are not low compared to the London average.

But the London average is what's low.

No, it's the US tech average which is ridiculously high. (Seriously, London has some of the highest salaries outside the US).

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#295

Post by motohagiography »

jedberg wrote: post #228
motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

> for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. You're confusing the skill of adversarial negotiation with cooperative negotiation. Cooperative negotiation is a critical business skill within the company. You are all on the same team and should have the same goals. Competitive negotiation is a good skill to have for some external negotiations. If anything, being good…

Negotiation is price discovery. It is literally the empirical process of discovering the clearing price of an agreement based on deductive reason instead of the blind-man's-bluff bullying of a haggle. People on the privileged end of a power imbalance always think they're being co-operative, because they necessarily know they have the power and choose whether or not to co-operate. Negotiation is the art of managing power imbalances - particularly when someone is using leverage to get you to "co-operate," while essentially yelling "stop resisting!"

To clarify, there was no confusion.

When someone says, "take it or leave it," it's bullying. When someone says, "we're paying you this because this is what everyone else gets and that's fair because I'm telling you it is," that's also bullying.

A negotiated price is a function of the true price at which parties arrive at a deal. How do you deal with liars? Find options that yield information about their intent. This is the real art. It's finding information oracles about their position independent of what they present. Some people are simple, most aren't.

In this sense, negotiation is the pursuit of truth.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#296

Post by ghaff »

Silhouette wrote: post #291
ghaff wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negotiating skills help most people do a better job. Every allocation of resources or prioritization of projects is very much a negotiation. Note that this doesn't have to be a zero-sum process. One of the important aspects of negotiation is that not everyone's priorities are the same. I might be willing to tradeoff something that isn't a big deal to me but is very important to you.

What is management for if not to establish priorities according to the needs of the business and then determine an allocation of resources accordingly?

Companies are not exclusively top-down command economies. Or they shouldn't be.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#297

Post by senordevnyc »

throwaway84762 wrote: post #229
wolco wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout my career I have only seen a desire for more women. Perhaps looking at those candidates a little more openly and giving then a chance. I haven't seen a racial aspect where whites only hire whites either. I have worked in places that only hired white/black/asian and in others that only hired white/black/indian. I have never seen a true mix of asian and indian aside from government work. I've always wondered…

Throwaway because post-Damore, as a white male, this isn't a discussion I can be publicly involved in if I want to keep having a career in tech. I've collected some of the more egregious things I've heard around women and minorities in tech. At a well-known company, while it was small, regarding hiring an office manager, the female head of HR said "I don't want to say it, but I'm leaning towards [the female candidate…

This kind of behavior is appalling! Imagine if someone had ever said or behaved these ways to give men a leg up that they didn’t deserve! I certainly hope someone would keep the careful tally of a handful of anecdotes that you have.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#298

Post by senordevnyc »

theredlion wrote: post #248
throwaway84762 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because post-Damore, as a white male, this isn't a discussion I can be publicly involved in if I want to keep having a career in tech. I've collected some of the more egregious things I've heard around women and minorities in tech. At a well-known company, while it was small, regarding hiring an office manager, the female head of HR said "I don't want to say it, but I'm leaning towards [the female candidate…

To tack onto this: I know of mid level managers who are eagerly pushing their female direct-reports to higher positions in far less time and under far less qualification requirements than male counterparts in similar roles. The exact reasoning is because they are women. Some of those women have expressed annoyance at this because they feel that they are being touted as poster-children for the managers. The women also…

If only we could go back to the good old days when things were a meritocracy and no one was getting promoted unfairly because of their race, gender, or relationships.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#299

Post by mk89 »

karatestomp wrote: post #199
mk89 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately in Europe we tend to be brainwashed about the health insurance, as if this was taking half your salary. Thanks a lot for clarifying this, I hope that people start to understand that the salaries for highly skilled people in Europe are just ridiculous.

Health insurance may not be so bad for a $300K+ SV software engineer, but it's terrible for just about everyone else. My wife's a teacher and for a while we had to use her health insurance, which meant getting the "family plan" option through her school district. The cost of that? Half her take-home pay. And it's not even a very good plan (i.e. we were still exposed to a lot of risk, we had a couple medical things co…

Thanks for sharing. I didn't know and I still don't know how much typically a (good) health insurance costs. In most countries in Europe, however, it doesn't justify the lower salaries in the SW industry.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#300

Post by lhopki01 »

Silhouette wrote: post #252
lhopki01 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. I was on 143k usd before I left London and now work remotely for about 188k usd for a UK company. This was was with stock options as well. I'm still contacted by recruiters for salaries around that so the jobs exists. All anecdotal but it does mean it's possible.

I was on 143k usd before I left London and now work remotely for about 188k usd for a UK company. This was was with stock options as well. As a salaried employee, that would be exceptionally high in almost any field. Obviously some such jobs exist, but unless you're a very senior figure in a relatively well-paid industry, you're an outlier at that compensation level.

I was a tech lead for a team in a startup but not particularly high.

I know other people that were on similar salaries and I had friends who did the same thing as contractors that had much higher day rates.

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