Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 365 posts

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#61

Post by [deleted] »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #52
oneanddone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have refused to go into management precisely to avoid what you are experiencing. My wages have somewhat stagnated because of this, and most of my working acquaintances have moved up, but they are miserable in comparison. Yes, they make more, in some cases much more, but after being in IT for over 20 years, I desire my "8-4 M-F no work nights/no work weekends" life more than I do a little extra coin. I go home and d…

To each is own, for sure. I have the exact opposite philosophy. I would rather my kids see me as someone who is trying to achieve something big. After a while, they have their own interests and don’t want to do projects with you anyway.

[deleted]

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#62

Post by throwaway080383 »

anontechworker wrote: post #56

What about engineering managers? I’m betting the average tops both PMs and SWEs.

At my and other FAANG companies, this is necessarily true. EM track runs parallel to SWE track in terms of total comp, but there is no EM equivalent to the junior SWE roles.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#63

Post by oneanddone »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #52
oneanddone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have refused to go into management precisely to avoid what you are experiencing. My wages have somewhat stagnated because of this, and most of my working acquaintances have moved up, but they are miserable in comparison. Yes, they make more, in some cases much more, but after being in IT for over 20 years, I desire my "8-4 M-F no work nights/no work weekends" life more than I do a little extra coin. I go home and d…

To each is own, for sure. I have the exact opposite philosophy. I would rather my kids see me as someone who is trying to achieve something big. After a while, they have their own interests and don’t want to do projects with you anyway.

Fair comment. By projects, that is not limited to strictly IT. My kids may not choose IT as a career, but they will certainly understand how to do basic coding, build a computer, understand the inner working, etc., for if nothing else, they understand cause and effect and that they are capable of being makers should they choose.

I take my kids fishing and hunting, for example, things they thoroughly enjoy. We go to the cinema, bookstore to get hands on reading time, they have learned how to budget for groceries, gas, fun money, etc. I could do none of this were I chained to my desk at work pounding out code in Visual Studio.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#64

Post by luckydata »

dawhizkid wrote: post #46

As others have mentioned, this is because unlike developers few companies hire PMs straight out of college. As a current PM, I'm actually fairly bearish about the sustainability of this role as far as a long-term career outlook goes. It's an extremely nebulous role, hard to prove your value, wildly differs from company to company, and most of your time will probably not look anything like what is considered textbook…

I'm exactly in the same boat. I love the job when I actually get to do what the ideal product manager job should be. It's very stressful, not very rewarding and it's very unstable work because EVERY fuckup down the chain will just be absorbed by the PM. We're always the first in line to be fired if someone else decided not to do their job (can be Eng, marketing, sales... doesn't matter).

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#65

Post by dasil003 »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #52
oneanddone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have refused to go into management precisely to avoid what you are experiencing. My wages have somewhat stagnated because of this, and most of my working acquaintances have moved up, but they are miserable in comparison. Yes, they make more, in some cases much more, but after being in IT for over 20 years, I desire my "8-4 M-F no work nights/no work weekends" life more than I do a little extra coin. I go home and d…

To each is own, for sure. I have the exact opposite philosophy. I would rather my kids see me as someone who is trying to achieve something big. After a while, they have their own interests and don’t want to do projects with you anyway.

How old are your kids? A word of advice: your kids will never be impressed by what you do, to them you could be POTUS and it would just be the normal set point for them. What they will remember is whether you cared more about your work than you did them.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#66

Post by lozaning »

instaheat wrote: post #35
err0ne wrote: post #6

Wait until you see how much the sales people rake in.

Where? I have been doing inside sales for 3 years. Looking to move.

Enterprise hardware sales is incredibly lucrative, and even more cutthroat.

The closer you are to the actual customer the more money you'll make. The sales guy at the VAR who actually knows the customer makes the most, followed by the sales guy at the manufacturer, then any SE's, then maybe inside guys.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#67

Post by chasedehan »

gammarator wrote: post #51

I felt ill just looking at the office plan in the lead picture (your keyboard slots in between two monitors facing the other way...). Are there places in SV with open offices that dense?

This has to be some data entry type position - old Dell monitors and every seat taken.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#68

Post by meritt »

henryfjordan wrote: post #47
meritt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or get the best of both worlds: Work at a company where engineers receive direct profit sharing for their contributions.

I'm having a hard time picturing this as anything but standard stock/option grants negotiated per employee. How do you correlate a particular individual's contributions to profit in software? And even if you could really understand how much value everyone was contributing, how would you ever keep a cooperative atmosphere? If me sharing a good idea with you potentially costs me money, I'm suddenly going to stop talkin…

My company takes precisely this approach, though our business model (we sell data products) and size (we're quite small) definitely makes it easier. There are usually 1-2 employees (engineer and analyst) responsible for a given product so calculating their respective contribution and profit-sharing on a per-product basis is quite straightforward.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#69

Post by gowld »

gammarator wrote: post #51

I felt ill just looking at the office plan in the lead picture (your keyboard slots in between two monitors facing the other way...). Are there places in SV with open offices that dense?

Many of them are wearing red-ribboned lanyards, have water bottles (and no other drinks), and all visible monitors are running the same IRC-looking app, so it's probably some sort of training/class at a conference or a college programming contest. The photo is a stock photo.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#70

Post by alistairSH »

jimbokun wrote: post #44
alistairSH wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the senior PMs all straddle the line between sales, consulting/services, and R&D. They tend to spend a lot of time in the company booth at conferences, dealing with client C-levels one-on-one, and working with our sales to team to ensure R&D is building stuff that will generate revenue. Their day-to-day interaction is with VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE mores than with us plebes. There shouldn't be any surprise that the…

If anything, I'm surprised the salaries aren't higher than what's reported in the article.

$133,000 is baller money anyplace but SV and the other high-cost cities. Also, the article is discussing salaries - I can't say for sure, but I'd bet PMs frequently have significant bonus eligibility, so that $133k could easily be $150k+ in actual annual income.

And the numbers in the article appear to be national, not limited to SV (despite the headline)...

"...31,146 interview requests from 1,848 companies made through Hired’s platform..."

"...Analyses of H1B work visas and Glassdoor data from Google, Facebook..."

Post reply on HN