Not thinking doesn't imply not beingness. One might also say - they're not smart enough to realize that they are smarter. [But this is another PoV].
Engineers don't have any intrinsic smartness advantage over non-engineers. We're (much) better at some things and (much) worse at others.
Tbh I would expect higher intelligence among engineers vs the general public if only due to selection effects. Smart kids tend to be more pushed towards professions under that label and are better able to meet the challenges associated with getting a job there such as earning a degree or learning enough to be useful.
My base salary is $220k; this year my bonus plus equity will be around $200k, so my total compensation will be over $400k. I've been out for a number of years, and the bonus plus stock is performance based, and of course the value of the stock compensation may change depending on the future direction of Google stock --- it's climbed very nicely since the beginning of the year! The main point is that ignoring the stoc…
For those wondering, that's pretty typical for a staff engineer at Google (ie, about four promotions or 6+ years from fresh grad).
Um, promotions every 18 months is not unheard of, but it's not what I would call typical. There are lots of people way smarter than me at Google, so I'm sure some folks have managed to reach Staff Engineer in six years, but IMHO it's a bit unreasonable to assume that as a normal pace.
pg, please disable polls. They seem to give no useful info whatsoever, while taking up valuable front page real estate.
Without being a company owner or manager with a list of what everyone is being paid how we can't really do much better than unscientific poles. Wouldn't glassdoor and similar essentially have the same issues?
I am not an expert on polling or collecting data like this so I cannot tell you. But that is irrelevant. My thesis is that these polls follow a 100% identical path: a badly conceived poll is posted, the top half of the comments debates how you cannot trust this poll or any online poll, the next quarter discusses the flaws with the actual poll setup, but circles back to how this is an online poll, and the last quarter is an assortment of comments about the actual topic. Nobody seems to learn anything useful in the process.
I would also add a 4th point that the lifestyle in the bay area is very different. I find it far higher in cities like London than in the Silicon Valley -- this is of course very subjective, but it closely mirrors the opinions of those who graduated with me. The closest city to London here is SF (which pales in comparison IMHO), and living there may require a very lengthy commute unless your company is actually in th…
> Of course, if you love nature, the bay area has its perks :) but be ready to spend a lot of time in a car I going to have to contest this point. I live and work in San Francisco, and I do not even own a car. I bike to and from the startup I work for every day. Many people in SF do this. Not counting buses, taxis, or lyft, I haven't even been in a car for about 5 months.
You're right, SF is very nice for this. I was mainly thinking of the South Bay definition of Silicon Valley. Finding a nice job in SF will give you a very different lifestyle / quality of life than one down in the physical valley.
As always, voluntary response data are worthless. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5538059 Good luck to all of you looking for higher salaries. I hope you gain the salary you desire, and more knowledge of statistics along the way.
> As always, voluntary response data are worthless.
Much less than over-generalizations and stereotypes.)
The validity of data to which statistical methods could be applied is a very big distinct subject.)
The problem with that is, the unsexy non-customer facing projects that allow for saving/making millions are not recognized, or at least a monetary value cannot be established for them, and become understaffed, which leads to inefficiencies. To get to the big bucks, you really have to look out for #1 and join the sexy groups. Which is partly why you see things like reader die: reader does not a bonus/promotion make. Y…
Actually, in some ways it's easier for those of us who work in the infrastructure groups to demonstrate monetary value. Google has a very large number of machines, and an even larger number of hard drives. Hard drives have fundamentally not changed seek times in over a decade, even as capacity has doubled (up until relatively recently) every 18 months. So more often than not, for many work loads (not just at Google,…
That is great if your project impact can be measured, but sometimes metrics aren't available for accurate assessment. If sales uses your tool, bringing in millions, that's not so easy to measure, and those projects will languish unless some value can be placed for the project. Good luck with that, or at least coming up with a system that can measure it and having it be accepted. That's a big gap and you don't want to be in that group.
voluntary response data is flawed I agree, but I hesitate to call this worthless. I'd plaster warning signs all over the place alarming people to think through their reasoning and consider all the biases that would have taken place in the poll. (come to think of it, if the poll data incites that kind of skeptical thinking in some of its readers, that in itself might make the endeavor worthwhile)
Flawed data is sometimes worse than no data at all. Data with sampling bias, too small a sample size, lack of double-blind rigor, etc. Strictly speaking, "surveys" are only really used by the softer sciences, like sociology and psychology, and both fields agree it's the least rigorous (albeit easiest) method of accumulating data. Corollary to this, a little bit of flawed data can sometimes give a good idea in the gen…
Boy, talk about "the perfect is the enemy of the good"!
Is salary negotiation a branch of particle physics now?
Yes, this survey is much less valid than if we could magically collect all salary data for all developers in the area. But I don't have that magic wand, and this survey is far more useful to me than its closest competitor, which is "a buddy moved to the Bay area a few years ago and told me what he'd been offered".
