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Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

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Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#71

Post by radarsat1 »

ellen364 wrote: post #69
radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

Recruitment is bizarre right now. I chat to recruiters sometimes and in the last few months have specifically asked about salaries in the UK. Essentially, “What’s the going rate for a web dev with 5 years experience?” The answers have ranged from “£45k-55k” to “£100k-130k”. The most common response seems to be “£70k-80k”. And everyone who’s answered seemed confident they know “the market rate”. Sometimes people even…

Not a bad idea, do you think it would come off well in an interview setting to come right out and just get that question out of the way by (politely) beating them to it? Genuinely curious if this could be a good approach.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#72

Post by higeorge13 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

Imo it’s a better approach to ask the salary range first and respond whether it’s adequate or not. This way the ball is on your field.

And btw i think you can make 90k+ eur as a contractor in europe, even more in companies with homogeneous pay across regions.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#73

Post by heynowheynow »

It depends. Goog and Meta pay good engineers (SWE/SREs) twice that and more.

For engineering managers, 3-5x that and more.

Edit: People gotta hate on those who bring home the bacon. America is one of the least fair countries in the world because it's excessively unconstrained in some areas and missing fundamental services other countries provide.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#74

Post by codegeek »

My honest opinion. If you are profitable and not burning free VC cash, pay whatever you want by all means including $1m/Year if you want/can. But if you are using Free/VC money and you are deeply underwater, throwing 400k or whatever is not something you should do just to compete. I think it is unfair to legit businesses that have to work with what they got vs the cool startups. Yea I am a bit salty but being honest.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#75

Post by nickff »

IceMetalPunk wrote: post #58
nickff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "... as though it's literally stupid to care about other people." That's not what the quote means. It's generally understood to describe how young people are well-intentioned but naive, and that you come to understand your limitations and get wiser as you get older, which causes you to adopt more philosophically conservative views (see Leo Strauss for a good example).

Perhaps I exaggerated the dichotomy, but you just associated being well-intentioned with being naive, and being wiser -- explicitly in contrast to that younger state -- with being conservative. So even in your own comment, those associations are implied.

I didn’t say people who were well-intentioned were therefore naive, I said that young people tended to be both. Wisdom can be seen as understanding one’s limitations, as well as appreciating the insights of others (including one’s ancestors), and is more associated with conservativism.

I am not saying young people or leftists are dumb, or that right-wingers are smart.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#76

Post by ellen364 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #71
ellen364 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruitment is bizarre right now. I chat to recruiters sometimes and in the last few months have specifically asked about salaries in the UK. Essentially, “What’s the going rate for a web dev with 5 years experience?” The answers have ranged from “£45k-55k” to “£100k-130k”. The most common response seems to be “£70k-80k”. And everyone who’s answered seemed confident they know “the market rate”. Sometimes people even…

Not a bad idea, do you think it would come off well in an interview setting to come right out and just get that question out of the way by (politely) beating them to it? Genuinely curious if this could be a good approach.

In a proper interview, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable asking the money question first. E.g. I’ve chatted to managers who consider it a sign the candidate is only interested in money, not the company. Though, as I write, it occurs to me that kind of manager and company probably won’t pay well. So maybe asking the money question yourself would filter out the most price sensitive companies? Interesting idea, but not one I’ve tried.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#78

Post by cmrdporcupine »

betaby wrote: post #61
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

Consider: Upward pressure on our salaries is in large part driven by the compensation packages given at Google and Facebook, etc. Those compensation packages can be that high because they've tapped into (and in large part monopolized) absolute firehoses of revenue in the form of online advertising. Those companies do "other" things than advertising, but advertising makes up the vast majority of their revenue. Without…

Unlikely it´s FAANG related. Upward pressure is indeed supply/demand right now, even in countries where FAANG has no offices at all.

Doesn't matter, it affects the whole supply-demand curve. But also people can and do relocate to take FAANG jobs.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#79

Post by cupofpython »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

"What is the budget for this role?"

"the scale and scope of responsibilities for the type of work I do have so much variation that it is impossible for me to tell you what I would expect to be paid for this position this early in the process"

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#80

Post by 908B64B197 »

ellen364 wrote: post #59
xenadu02 wrote: post #16

I don't think his tweet is saying SWEs don't deserve 400k. He's saying some business models are not viable at that price. So in relation to his tweet that's not wrong. If your medical business needs to hire doctors for 20k/yr to be viable then you don't have a business. At the end of the day that's no different than a child saying they're going to start a money tree business so they can just pick money off the trees…

> Software is an extremely scalable business where the marginal cost of every copy beyond the first is nearly zero. and > If you can drive the cost of doing business and your inputs toward zero almost any business idea could theoretically make a profit... but real markets are not so accommodating. I agree with many of your points, but these vary by product. For example, FAANGs sometimes have applications where some i…

> I’ve also noticed that FAANGs sometimes outsource work that doesn’t scale as easily. The contracting companies are either in cheaper countries or they’ll accept a smaller profit margin. Or both. The devs and analysts at those companies indirectly contribute to the FAANG’s product, but don’t get the bumper salaries.

It's also lower complexity tasks.

Cleaning-up training data or monitoring a manual test pipeline isn't really work that would make sense to be done by a team of 400K/y US-based team.

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