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How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

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Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#341

Post by scarface74 »

_57jb wrote: post #338
scarface74 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very serious. It has never been my desire to start my own business. I go home and sleep well at night not worrying about customers, investors, funding. It went well for several years...the party ended after leadership changed and they had new opinions on what R&D meant. It was my dream and theirs for a period of time...then it was no longer my dream, just theirs. And when that happens, I email recruiters and get…

Yeah, I actually was going a slightly different route. I got into generating passive income. I am now in a position where I can maintain a lifestyle I enjoy and homeschool my small children. I could pay for the best schools and keep track but I love education...I love passing that on. If I built a company it would be around that. I would not like the money struggles that you talk about so I would probably aim for som…

If I had made $better_life_decisions when I was younger and/or graduated in the era of $BigTech instead of the mid 90s, I could definitely have lived frugally, made $BigTech money, saved and invested in stocks, moved to a low cost of living area and done contracts every now and then just to refill the coffers.

As it is now, why wouldn’t I enjoy my job? I get to work remotely in a relatively low cost of living area making $BigTech money.

Will I be where I am for the rest of my life? Statistically, probably not. I can’t see that far ahead for a change. But 3 of the 5 biggest technology companies offer similar roles and if the local economy ever recovers there will be local companies.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#342

Post by bradlys »

perl4ever wrote: post #334
bradlys wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious to know where that person got such cheap housing. $300k/yr translates to $15k/month take home. Houses are like $10k/month if you’re looking to own. Even if you rent, it’s still close to $5-6k/month if you want a decent neighborhood. I’m not even talking about nice houses btw. Maybe they rent an apartment and share the rent. That’s the only way I see them coming up with those numbers. $300k/year isn’t e…

I don't have firsthand experience, but craigslist seems to have what look like normal apartments to me in the bay area for around $2800/month. Something like 600 apartments below that if I filter by off street parking and washer/dryer in the apt, which is my idea of a nice place. Looking for ads that double that brings up furnished apartments and luxury high rises with "24 hour concierges". My reference point would b…

Depending on the landlord, you wouldn't get the apartment. Some landlords require you to make 40x the monthly rent per year. I don't see many people renting $2800 apartments here at $80k/yr. If people are at 80k/yr, they're almost always renting a room.

Btw, I wouldn't necessarily use the entire bay area as your reference - as we weren't talking about the entire bay area either. Specifically only nicer neighborhoods. The price varies wildly by region. Apartments in south San Jose are much less expensive than in Palo Alto - but both are part of the bay area. There are many places in the bay area where my coworkers wouldn't even want to walk on the street - let alone live there... but there are cheaper housing options there.

You should be using ratios - not absolutes. If someone had $100,000/month rent then by your logic, they'd be just fine if they only had $2,000/month left over. That's very little buffer.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#343

Post by perl4ever »

bradlys wrote: post #342
perl4ever wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have firsthand experience, but craigslist seems to have what look like normal apartments to me in the bay area for around $2800/month. Something like 600 apartments below that if I filter by off street parking and washer/dryer in the apt, which is my idea of a nice place. Looking for ads that double that brings up furnished apartments and luxury high rises with "24 hour concierges". My reference point would b…

Depending on the landlord, you wouldn't get the apartment. Some landlords require you to make 40x the monthly rent per year. I don't see many people renting $2800 apartments here at $80k/yr. If people are at 80k/yr, they're almost always renting a room. Btw, I wouldn't necessarily use the entire bay area as your reference - as we weren't talking about the entire bay area either. Specifically only nicer neighborhoods.…

>If someone had $100,000/month rent then by your logic, they'd be just fine if they only had $2,000/month left over. That's very little buffer.

If you scale things up to that extent, then $2K becomes small compared to the possible variance in income or rent. But it's also small compared to the credit you'd have access to.

Without visiting I can't tell for sure, but I can compare apartments to what I'm used to by amenities, square footage, and such. If I had an offer and needed to move there, I'd judge the neighborhood by the housing, not vice versa.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#344

Post by m463 »

vbtemp wrote: post #62

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have love…

Many friends of mine have run into this with salary, but done VERY well from stock, though grants and/or stock purchase plans.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#345

Post by greedo »

Aeolun wrote: post #312
greedo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Our team is only allowed to have one person with "Exceeds standards." One. A bastard form of stack ranking. So the mgr picks based on his gut feelings, and then justifies it with a vague review. The lucky team member gets a 5% raise, everyone else is usually ranked as "Meets standards" which merits a 2.5% raise. A few people who need time in the penalty box get a 1% raise. So what happens is your actual performa…

Even 5% is nothing to write home about. Still far under the amount you would get if you switched jobs. But then you’d have to run the interview gauntlet again, and frankly that’s just so distasteful that I don’t want to.

I'd take 5% in a heart beat. But I'm not willing to run the interview gauntlet, especially as I get older. There's age discrimination, and everyone wants/expects you to be an expert on ephemeral technologies.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#346

Post by dlp211 »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #314
dlp211 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Engineers do NOT make $500k total comp per year at FAANG companies, most engineers don't make $300k TC/yr at these companies, and those aren't the engineers I'm talking about anyways. These companies are made up mostly of engineers who make between $100k-$250k. That's still not a small amount of money; and I never claimed that these people are poor; just that these salaries don't satisfy their needs and desires…

Not true. The amazon sde2 external hire offer I saw given to people with >=1 year of experience is around 250K in Seattle and higher in California. Amazon is known as one of the lower paying FAANG companies.

The average SDE 2 total compensation is around $215k according to levels.fyi which I have found to fairly accurate. I'm not saying you didn't see that offer, just that it isn't normal.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#347

Post by john366366 »

goatinaboat wrote: post #272
oarabbus_ wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means that even at a 1% raise per year, some people will stick around for decades. One of the best developers at one of the companies I worked for was exactly that kind of person. As someone in their 30s who has spent in-person time at about a dozen companies (a stint in consulting will do that) ranging from start-ups to large enterprise, this is exceedingly rare from what I've seen. Hardly anyone makes it to a…

Hardly anyone makes it to a single decade, much less multiple. Maybe at a law firm, but not in a development role. I’m guessing you’re a webdev and this is normal for that industry but in more “traditional” fields programmers behave much more like other white-collar workers. I’ve met plenty with 20-30 year stunts at the same company.

I don't know how to put it less bluntly here it goes, in my experience at non-faang orgs the software developers who stay over 5 years are not competent and likely won't pass the interview.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#348

Post by dang »

We've banned this site for using sockpuppet accounts, voting rings, and astroturfed comments. Such abuses are extremely not ok, and this was an egregious and repeated case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#349

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

dlp211 wrote: post #346
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. The amazon sde2 external hire offer I saw given to people with >=1 year of experience is around 250K in Seattle and higher in California. Amazon is known as one of the lower paying FAANG companies.

The average SDE 2 total compensation is around $215k according to levels.fyi which I have found to fairly accurate. I'm not saying you didn't see that offer, just that it isn't normal.

$215K in Seattle is still quite high. External hire gets a lot more than internal promo and that site lags behind the current offer compensation which is some part of the diff.
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