Anyone else find it interesting what companies _aren't_ on the list? I guess MSFT didn't seem relevant.
MSFT isn't really considered a Silicon Valley company, given their headquarters is in Redmond.
Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#62Facebook seems to offer the most salary/compensation. More interestingly, Facebook is one of only two companies (among 10) where the company rating is higher than the compensation rating. Google gets 3.9 for company rating and also 3.9 for compensation rating (both are good). Facebook gets 4.3 for compensation rating. It gets an even higher score 4.6 for company rating (and that makes it the only company where Glassd…
The company that has a good engineering culture to flex your skills, and keep you from slacking off, keeps you happier. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, it appears to me, Facebook has this "do it" thing much more than Google and well much beyond Yahoo.
It's also becoming ever clearer that Google isn't actually very good at doing things other than their core services: web search, e-mail, and the associated advertising platforms. Even those are slipping.
Now, that is very telling. Google should be awesome at building new products with the developer talent and general resources they have to throw at any idea with potential. And yet, they have basically released (and subsequently canned) one failure after another for a long time.
Even the advertising systems and related tools (Google Analytics and the like) are pretty poor in terms of usability/APIs; people use these tools because of Google's place in the market and because they give a lot of goodies away for free, not because the tools themselves are particularly good.
And even web search, the heart of Google's operation, isn't what it used to be: they seem to have become victims of their own success, with so many people out to game the system that a lot of their results pages aren't worth the time to type in a search term any more.
It's not clear how much of this is down to culture or management factors, and how much is just the unavoidable consequence of being the biggest kid on the playground. But either way, a lot of people at Google must have worked on projects like, say, Wave, and it's tough as a developer to put your heart into a job only to see it canned because it wasn't promoted effectively or the timing just wasn't right for the market.
Meanwhile, for all the extra features and so on, Facebook basically only has one product, and it's one of the most successful on the planet.
Other things being equal, which culture is going to be more fun to work in? It's not a tough decision, is it?
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a Googler with the opposite complaint: in my neck of the woods we seem to be so picky that you start to wonder how any of us ever got hired. A person can do 10 or 20 interviews and have none of them (even the ones who seemed good) get an offer. Google's a big company, so I'm sure that some pockets err on one side, some on the other.
I agree with you. And the effectiveness of the criteria Google uses to screen & interview candidates is highly debatable, at best. One of their recruiters once contacted me (because I went to a 'top university') but decided it would be a 'waste of time' because I hadn't done any Java or C++ recently. It used to be that Google was interviewing for knowledge of the fundamentals unlike most other 'business-oriented' com…
I've done more than 100 interviews at Google.
The first candidate who I interviewed and was hired coded in Lisp during the interview.
I recently interviewed a candidate who did a lot of iphone development and was obviously very bright, but didn't code very well in straight C get hired.
Candidates coding in Python during the interview is pretty common and I certainly don't count it against them.
I am not sure what recruiters are looking for and filtering upon, but if you are good with C++ or Java, even if you haven't used in the last few years, that is more than certainly enough. If you aren't good with C++ or Java, but you are really good anyway, you can still make it through the interviews, but it will be harder.
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#64What a weak article. 98,000 vs. 99,000, off an unreliable sample size. Expected from CNBC
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think it's acceptable for you to have read the document, no matter how simple the encryption?
Sure, why not? I don't get this whole secrecy around salaries. If it was up to me everyone in the company would know what everyone else was earning.
Well, I don't think it's a question of whether salaries should be kept secret or not, I think it's a question of whether one should access data he's not supposed to just because he can.
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think it's acceptable for you to have read the document, no matter how simple the encryption?
Sure, why not? I don't get this whole secrecy around salaries. If it was up to me everyone in the company would know what everyone else was earning.
because you don't sign the checks?
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I was looking at these thinking how under-paid they are. I contract for a company in a much lower cost of living area and I'm making more than the average Googler. I honestly don't understand why anyone would work for someone else for peanuts.
Dude, let's get real here. 100k + is not peanuts. It's higher than the median household income. There's a very real premium to working on cool stuff.
Median of which households?
Although I believe the Bay Area's[1] "high cost of living" is frequently exaggerated, I also believe, however, that it can't be dismissed. If I had to put a number on it, it would be $10-$30k annually.
[1] The location of all employees at each company may be applying a selection bias, since I don't believe Facebook has more than a tiny fraction of its employees outside of the Bay Area, whereas the same cannot be said of Google.
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, why not? I don't get this whole secrecy around salaries. If it was up to me everyone in the company would know what everyone else was earning.
because you don't sign the checks?
I did at one point (metaphorically) sign the bank transfers. At that point the company only had 3 people in it and we all knew everything so I don't think that counts.
Anyway, how does it matter whether or not I'm in charge? The question is, I think it's a good idea, why don't you?
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, let's get real here. 100k + is not peanuts. It's higher than the median household income. There's a very real premium to working on cool stuff.
Median of which households? Although I believe the Bay Area's[1] "high cost of living" is frequently exaggerated, I also believe, however, that it can't be dismissed. If I had to put a number on it, it would be $10-$30k annually. [1] The location of all employees at each company may be applying a selection bias, since I don't believe Facebook has more than a tiny fraction of its employees outside of the Bay Area, whe…
All of those are substantive arguments. I was objecting to the use of the term "peanuts", which is derisive and dismissive -- as though this salary is not even worthy of consideration.
Only 6.5% of US workers make 100K or more, according to this: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24100K+income
It's either just colourful language, or indicates that the writer is out of touch with reality.
Re: Paychecks Exposed: Google, Apple, Facebook and More
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
because you don't sign the checks?
I did at one point (metaphorically) sign the bank transfers. At that point the company only had 3 people in it and we all knew everything so I don't think that counts. Anyway, how does it matter whether or not I'm in charge? The question is, I think it's a good idea, why don't you?
I've been taught to "Never look into another man's wallet, it will either make you prideful or insecure" and have found it to be true.
I think everyone needs to work out their own deal with their own boss; sharing your pay is your choice; looking at others without their permission is taking that choice away from them.