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Facebook Median Pay now $240k

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Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#41

Post by nordsieck »

hliyan wrote: post #6

I've been thinking a lot about the merits of the (highest income / median income) ratio in creating a society that is a little more resistant to eventual inequality. Rather than setting absolute tax brackets, what if we define tax brackets by this ratio? That way, it will be in the interest of the highest income earners to raise the median income.

1. The current explosion in employee perks (free medical, gym, lunch, etc.) is almost certainly driven my the tax system. Your suggestion would take it to the next level (along the lines of college athletes).

2. People can move. Labor is more geographically sticky than capital, but it is not infinitely so. I doubt you'd ever succeed in getting Singapore to stop being the capitalist's paradise through foreign policy.

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#42

Post by lucideer »

dx034 wrote: post #22
Buge wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cleaning staff, cooks, etc, scale with the size of buildings. Customer support staff, content flag reviewers, etc, scale with the number of users. Since Facebook has so many users, I would expect the second category to be much larger.

Facebook runs a low-support model. At the same time, they offer a lot of perks to their developers. I haven't been to their HQ but from my experience with other companies I would guess that a significant part of the people working there (20-30%+) are working in maintenance, security, hospitality, cleaning, restaurants, etc. Keeping large offices running smoothly and in nice conditions takes an enormous amount of manu…

> Facebook runs a low-support model.

Not for large advertisers they don't. Here in Ireland for example their outsourced advertising support & soft-sales, a large part handled by Accenture, are huge. Possibly more numerous than the Facebook EU HQ here. I'm sure the case is similar elsewhere.

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#44

Post by aje403 »

hliyan wrote: post #6

I've been thinking a lot about the merits of the (highest income / median income) ratio in creating a society that is a little more resistant to eventual inequality. Rather than setting absolute tax brackets, what if we define tax brackets by this ratio? That way, it will be in the interest of the highest income earners to raise the median income.

It’s (basically) called utilitarianism

I’m sure I’ll get downvoted for saying this, but lazy people will take advantage of the system and it will fall apart

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#45

Post by lucideer »

> Gap said its median-paid employee, a real person, was a part-time sales associate in Alabama who worked a partial year and whose pay was not annualized.

It seems odd to compare the non-annualised salary of a part-time worker to those of full-time/annualised. Is this a strategy by Gap to deflect attention (I know $5375 is extremely low, but I have no ration/scale/factor to compare it by, so I don't know exactly how low. This employee in Alabama could be working a day a month), or is this format of reporting actually required by Dodd-Frank?

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#46

Post by fergie »

f00biebletch wrote: post #2

I've definitely felt the challenge of hiring in a startup as a result of these kinds of numbers. I'm curious what others think will come of this seeming bubble in compensation.

Its not a bubble. $240k is a reasonable salary for a professional with good grades from a good university working for a highly profitable private company. In fact as long as there is such a gap between revenue per employee, and compensation per employee, there will only be upward pressure on pay and conditions.

In reality, software engineering salaries outside of established tech environments are kept artificially low because there is no "guild of software engineers", and therefore anybody can get hired no matter what level of skill they have.

I too run a software startup. The most common and serious error I see in my fellow startup founders is expecting to build better technology with worse pay and conditions. You might be able to wrangle something decent out of some poorly qualified yet smart people, but its a bit of a long shot.

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#47

Post by fergie »

icebraining wrote: post #14
dx034 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that was exactly the argument banks used before 2008. Not that salaries in Finance are low now but a lot of the excesses have been cut back following the crisis. Banks also made a ton of money pre-2008 but that didn't come out of nowhere. So far, there has been no industry that just continued making high margins over decades without any cut backs. I doubt tech will be the first one.

But the industry as a whole doesn't have these margins or salaries; only the top dogs do.

If you live in a first world country, try to find out what your mid-tier technology consultancies (Accenture, Deloitte, CGI, etc) are charging customers. It is almost certainly around 250-350k per year, even if they are working for an unglamorous, boring, traditional customer. The real issue is that outside of leading tech environments, too much rent is being extracted from the wages of software engineers.

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#49

Post by newscracker »

mxschumacher wrote: post #43
snvzz wrote: post #39

That's great for those with the moral flexibility to work on such a profoundly evil company, for the detriment of mankind.

Facebook is a cancer that feeds on humanity's attention

"...manipulating and feeding on humanity's attention" is a broader description, IMO.

Re: Facebook Median Pay now $240k

#50

Post by icebraining »

fergie wrote: post #40
dx034 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds interesting but would probably be a paradise for tax lawyers. You just create a network of companies, one for each income band. That way, an employee never makes more than the average. Of course only large corperations can afford that so that smaller companies will have a harder time hiring talent.

In most jurisdictions a limit a limited company has to have a board and a CEO. You can outsource middle management- this is what McKinsey, Bain, BSG etc essentially do, but you can't legally outsource the guys at the very top.

So what? They would just be the department heads of the previously monolith company (e.g. instead of having a sales department with a VP of sales and a few top managers, you just have a Sales Company subsidiary with a CEO and a few board members).
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