The Programmer Salary Taboo • Hacker News Board

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#51

Post by ebiester » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:33 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #29

Consider a hypothetical scenario for the person on the other side of the table: You are hiring up an engineering team and hope to hire up a team of 10 engineers paying 100k/yr each. So far you've hired 9 people at 100k and are working on filling that last slot. You find someone perfect but he has a competing job offer and is asking for 110k/yr instead of just 100. He's no better than the other 9 people you have alrea…

At that point, you ask the team. Tell them, you've found someone perfect, but they're asking for 110, and you can't afford it for everyone. They should have been on the interviews, so they'll know if it's worth it.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#52

Post by xnxn » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:33 PM UTC

tjarratt wrote: post #31

xnxn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only paid $45,000 a year Reading this kind of thing on HN makes me feel ill; my W-2 says $47k. Maybe I need to make some changes.

Really depends on where you work. There are some managers that make $47k in some parts of the US and live very comfortably. Aside from that, contracting can help get bump your salary up. Fresh out of college I was making less than $47k and then easily tripled my salary within a year of contracting (although I was working insane hours and basically used all of my allotted overtime hours). It isn't always great for men…

Thanks -- I've toyed with the idea in the past, and I think it might be time to just dive in.

So if anyone has resources for a web developer in Portland looking to break into contracting, I'd love to hear from you.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#53

Post by krosaen » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:38 PM UTC

Interesting that all of the examples provided, google, amazon, facebook, MSFT all apparently provide units of stock with a predictable initial value; with stock options, all you can do is guess whether the company will grow and by how much, but if the company didn't grow at all they would be worthless. In fact, are we sure facebook doesn't grant options? Seems like they are still in the growth phase to the point where they could offer options instead, whereas MSFT would have a hard time keeping a straight face offering options at this point.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#54

Post by thmzlt » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:38 PM UTC

How are startup salaries compared to the big companies?

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#55

Post by nostromo » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

Here's a trick I once heard to share salary with your coworkers without the uncomfortableness of finding out you are over or under-paid.

Over beers with several of your coworkers, each write down your salary on a piece of paper and then mix them up. Randomly draw them out of a hat and then read them to each other.

If you're all roughly peers, then you get all the benefit of knowing the salary range of the group, with none of the downside of feeling embarrassed about making much more or less than your peers.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#56

Post by okaramian » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #35

As a developer who, admittedly, has never had trouble finding a salary I'm satisfied with, and who is comfortable negotiating, I'm not a fan of transparency. It seems like it would cause more problems than it solves. If salaries are private, then salary is purely a function of negotiation between employer and employee. Presumably both are happy, or at least happy enough not to terminate the relationship. If salaries…

The problem is that when you're hiding salaries you can't really evaluate the market. Really by hiding that information you're giving the salary giver most of the power and those shopping around for a higher salary need to do a lot more work to evaluate how much they're worth on the market.

I mean if Joe is doing half the work I'm doing, shouldn't he get paid significantly less? You're kind of attacking this from an "ignorance is bliss" standpoint, but that seems to support the market acting kind of erratically.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#57

Post by joezydeco » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #21

joezydeco wrote: post #15

My teeth always grind when I read articles like this. Yes, you can make $100K at Google. In Mountain View, California. How does that correlate to someone doing the same job in Austin, Seattle, Chicago, or Cleveland? The cost of living swings greatly when you depart the west coast. Decent wage databases will add another variable to the position and experience axes: the geographic area where the job is offered. (Exampl…

A cost of living adjustment is one of the easiest calculations to do. Is it as simple as this ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount... ), or did I misunderstand your point? It doesn't seem that complicated to take a $100k salary point and normalize for cost of living.

It's just another data point. A lot of kids about to graduate will look at these salaries, go "holy crap! I'm headed to the Bay!" and completely overlook other parts of the country where they could make comparable or even better salaries, relatively speaking.

And yes, I did read the part where Google adjusts for region in their other offices. I just don't think other companies always do the same.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#58

Post by hack_edu » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #36

Wait...Google starts at $100k/year for people fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree? So what do they go up to for people with experience?

Bear in mind they're not hiring just any old graduate. Google loves to claim they are only interested in candidates from the Top Schools.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#59

Post by joezydeco » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:44 PM UTC

dstein wrote: post #39

joezydeco wrote: post #15

My teeth always grind when I read articles like this. Yes, you can make $100K at Google. In Mountain View, California. How does that correlate to someone doing the same job in Austin, Seattle, Chicago, or Cleveland? The cost of living swings greatly when you depart the west coast. Decent wage databases will add another variable to the position and experience axes: the geographic area where the job is offered. (Exampl…

According to CNN's cost of living calculator ( http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm... ): $100,000 in Mountain View, CA = $58,302 in Austin, TX = $73,992 in Seattle, WA = $71,306 in Chicago, IL = $61,660 in Cleveland, OH And from a quick skim down any real estate listing for Mountain View, CA I think these numbers might be a bit on the high side.

Yeah, real estate in the area is what stuck out in my mind the most. I have no idea what rents are like, but then again a new, single grad doesn't mind shacking up with a few other people and keeping costs down.

An experienced engineer with a family and kids looking for a house might not fare as well.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#60

Post by nathanb » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:44 PM UTC

It would be extremely interesting to see whether or not having these data publicly available (especially in such a context-free fashion as in this article) is truly helpful or not. It reminds me of another HN story which saw the front page today: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3930466/...

Full transparency could lead to a more equitable distribution of salary, or it could mean that companies are less able to pay top dollar for great talent because they know that there will then be a hundred wannabes who are demanding the same salary.