If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech?

https://swizec.com/blog/if-you-re-so-good-why-aren-t-you-making-600k-at-bigtech/

by taubek • 3 years ago

70 137 3 years ago

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech

First off, because I don't live in a region where these kind of incomes are remotely possible for an employee.

I make more money than many FAANG employees in my country as FAANGS here does not offer the same salaries. They ask for the same amount of work from employees as their SV counterparts but salaries are 10x lower.

And no, my wish isn't to move to SV as there are other things that are at least as important as money for me.

Second, I started to dislike FAANGS.

wil421• 3 years ago

Same here in my region of the US. My house is on a half acre and is about 2,500 sqft (~230m2) and it costs less than a studio in SF.

I had an opportunity that would’ve given me some funny money that has gone down by 40%. I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries.

I’ve never understood the “I pay the same for a MacBook as you” mentality from SF/SV. I can assure you the housing, food, and gas costs are way higher than mine.

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

I’ll take family and affordability over chasing FAANG salaries.

And FAANG salaries might start to not be as great as for some the revenue started to decline.

tjpnz• 3 years ago

I've observed similar in Tokyo. FAANGs exist here but compensation is middling compared to what they offer elsewhere, it's even worse when exchange rates are taken into account. If you want to be paid at the top of the market you're better off working for a bank.

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

But working for a bank as a SE means you are part of the cost center, not the profit center

jwestbury• 3 years ago

I'm in finance in the UK now, because my US-based SV tech employer wanted to cut my pay by about 30%, and cut my base salary by about 50% if I moved to the UK and stayed employed with them. In finance, I'm making about what I did in the US.

andreyk• 3 years ago

FYI, the "you" here refers to the author, not the reader. Here's the gist:

"Why aren't I working in BigTech? Why isn't everyone, if the money's so good and the coasting so sweet? Rest and vest is a real thing that happens.

The short answer – I don't think I'd like it."

lordnacho• 3 years ago

There's the corp job being unpleasant, but there's also the issue of getting a job through several rounds of interviews that seem to have little to do with the job. Even if you can do 90% of questions, you've got an under 60% chance of running a 5-question gauntlet. It's like a job in itself preparing for the leetcode.

estevaoam• 3 years ago

As if one's market value is always coherent with their skills. There are so many variables that plays a role on how much one earns: where you live, negotiation skills, marketing skills, getting competent people to evaluate you properly, micro and macro economics, willingness to deal with bullshit corporate stuff, etc.

rwmj• 3 years ago

Tech compensation is funny. Yes there's engineers at Netflix and friends making 600k in "total comp", but that doesn't mean 600k hits their bank account.

I thought the common definition of "total comp" is that 600k (well, less tax) does actually hit your bank account? Is there another definition?

[For the record I've never earned anything like that or heard of any regular software engineers earning that, but I guess it may happen in SV.]

tazjin• 3 years ago

Total comp means regular salary, plus bonuses and stock, but pre-tax.

Arkhaine_kupo2• 3 years ago

Total comp sometimes includes stuff like Options (which might never cash out), bonuses (based on things you cannot control like quarterly sales) or include benefits. So for example if your company pays a dental insurance that costs 2,000 a year it might say your salary is 50k but your total comp is 52k.

So an example could be. Your salary is 50k, your benefits are calcualted to be 10k, your options ammount to 20k and your bonus is 20k.

Your total comp is 100k, but because options vest slowly you only make 1/4 of that and the bonus did not work out, so your take home salary was 55k + benefits.

This can change depending on the company, role, country, contract etc. Its not really like total comp is a legal definition.

gnaman• 3 years ago

I've never heard anyone include the value of benefits in TC. TC is usually referred to as the cold cash you take home pre-tax. It can be stock, bonuses or salary. 100% liquid

hamburglar3• 3 years ago

Total comp should never include options or benefits like medical/dental. It’s just cash or things with a liquid cash value. It’s not what hits your bank account, though, because it’s pre-tax. And yes, FAANG TC of >600k for senior IC’s is absolutely a thing.

The article is correct in a lot of its characterization. Your output is a lot of documents and strategic influence and not a lot of code (aka “getting things done”). But that doesn’t mean it has to be unfulfilling. You can get things done by making a compelling technical argument based on your experience and convincing hundreds of people to go build the architecture you envisioned. Do you get the thrill of debugging the code at 4am? No, you don’t. You only get that from skunkworks projects and side endeavors. But it’s still gratifying. And it pays embarrassingly well.

mackman• 3 years ago

Part of his argument here is stock is funny money. I think that is less true at FAANG today. You start vesting in a quarter, vest monthly after that, and RSUs are treated as income unlike options. Yes stock may change a bit but it’s more likely than not to stay within the 550-650k range. It’s not at all like illiquid startups.

hamburglar3• 3 years ago

For sure. If you have 300k/yr in RSUs from a trillion dollar company, you may not be able to predict the exact value of that comp 4 years from now, but it’s pretty reasonable to assume its value isn’t going to be diminished significantly, unlike startup equity.

amelius• 3 years ago

Because most people here are oriented towards entrepreneurship, and don't like working for a boss.

keyle• 3 years ago

Yes and yes, and yet I think you'll find most people here _are_ working for a boss.

Hands up if you've got a website selling printing cards for school, or an old cd business. These are the only ones I know here that printed a ton of money. The rest are just working long hours with golden handcuffs and a carrot in front of their nose.

hamburglar3• 3 years ago

Are you and sibling responder speaking in code? I’m fascinated and baffled by these responses. :D

nske6• 3 years ago

hehe I'll repeat a cliche, that everyone's either working for one boss or working for multiple bosses. From my experience, working for a good boss can generally give more perceived freedom than working to satisfy investors or customers. When I was freelancing I felt like I was working to satisfy multiple bosses, having to do things that I didn't enjoy (i.e. customer communications, accounting) plus that I was forced to become the boss of myself, which wasn't fun. Whereas as an employee I've always been lucky to have bosses that act essentially like secretaries with executive power, shielding their staff from everyday nonsense, filtering what's relevant, helping prioritize and getting you what you need. Things can feel totally different if you have a bad boss, but at the very least, my take is that good bosses are out there and are worth trying to find.

zamnos2• 3 years ago

There are also tons of under-intellectually stimulated BigTechCo engineers here who will upvote you if you can make an oblique reference to an internal system, but one where you have plausible deniability so the social media team at BigTechCo can't get you in trouble for talking about it. Look for weird non sequiturs in a BigTechCo thread that sit high on the comment chain.

sidlls3• 3 years ago

The reality is that "$600K at BigTech" isn't as common as HN would have you believe. It's not easy to be at the $600K total compensation level at FAANG. It's not necessarily uncommon, but it's not like the majority of engineers there are at that level. Just look at https://levels.fyi and search for a FAANG company. For example, Google's L6 total compensation average is ~$450K. L6 (the rough equivalent of principal or senior principal engineer at many, perhaps most, other companies, including the one I work for) isn't easy to achieve at Google and the vast, vast majority of SEs at Google are not making L6 compensation.

In fact, I'd wager (not assert, as I haven't actually run the numbers from levels.fyi or industry salary data), that the vast majority of Silicon Valley software engineers plateau around the $300k mark on the high end.

zamnos2• 3 years ago

If the vast majority of Google engineers aren't earning anywhere actually near $600k, then I'd argue it's pretty freaking uncommon!

zoover2020• 3 years ago

Not sure why Google has been used as top paying company as it has been known for a couple of years now that they tend to low-ball.

Not saying it's paying peanuts either - just be aware that anetflix for instance pays quite a lot better even.

nunez2• 3 years ago

Someone at Google came up with this internal spreadsheet for everyone to enter their salaries and total comp into while I was there. It made the news but afaik never leaked.

That spreadsheet made very clear that salary was distributed like a Bell curve with the mean being something like $120k and total comp somewhere in the $300-400k range.

newaccount20233• 3 years ago

Big tech is going to lay off its 600k devs and rehire back the equivalent talent at 180k

They'll do it because they can

I mean, what do you think is being said in the boardroom these days when they are planning layoffs?

"Why am I paying someone 450k + 150k RSUs for six hours of React maintenance coding a week?"

Most people who lucked into one of the 600k jobs will likely never see this comp again in their lives

It was a blip folks

Downvote if you like...welcome to Zuck's thought process....Elon's thought process...soon to be the thought process of most tech CEOs...

pictur3• 3 years ago

I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment. yes, they will choose the one that is beneficial for them, but the example you gave is not a situation that can provide any benefit in the long run. in other words, companies that prefer this will probably turn away from this decision in a short time.

postexitus• 3 years ago

Why? Isn't it us who defend remote working to death and say it is the same or even better output as opposed to our in office counterparts? At some point during that argument, somebody is going to realize that you can get exactly the same quality of output for 10th of the price elsewhere in the world and it will not be a shallow/short termist move.

newaccount20233• 3 years ago

I don't think companies take this shallow view of recruitment.

If 2023 has shown us ANYTHING, is that tech execs have done a complete 180 on "valuing" employees

HN is stuck in 2019, but don't worry it is curable

put yourself in the other chair - if you are hiring right now, why do you need to offer a premium salary? you don't

no different than after the .com bubble burst, candidates were grateful just to have offers, no one was offering premium comp

michaelteter• 3 years ago

And in Europe, middle managers will earn 80-90k while senior engineers will earn 70-80k (excepting a few BigTech or Fintech companies.

As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home.

If the European companies don't wake up to this, they will gradually see a brain drain (especially if the US reverses its anti-immigration attitude).

As for TFA topic, to me most jobs are roughly the same. Only when I work for myself or directly with a small client (where I have total control over the technical decisions) is it close to "fun". Otherwise, it's usually 50% useful energy expenditure, and 50% wasted energy trying to improve systems where middle management is too content with status quo regardless of the potential profit gains from improved operations (and fewer engineers working smarter).

So honestly, unless you have your own company and (near)total control, you might as well be working for the highest bidder - excepting in industries you may have moral or ethical disagreements with.

microtonal2• 3 years ago

As an American who much prefers life in the Netherlands to life in the US, I must admit the growing frustration at the pay difference... it's almost enough to make me go back home.

My impression is that with remote work this is changing. There are a lot of opportunities for working remotely with better salaries than in The Netherlands. Of course, it's not for everyone.

That said, I'd always take a cut for working in a nicer, friendly company where I can make a difference. I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate. Bonus points if I can work on FLOSS software.

admissionsguy• 3 years ago

I'd rather make a decent wage with work that I enjoy over an extravagant wage over something that I hate.

I don't think this point of view holds up, really. When the pay difference is 10x, it's hard to conceive that working 10 years at a nice job has better utility than working 1 year at a not-so-nice job and spending the other 9 years at one's leisure.

herrherrmann• 3 years ago

Not everyone is happy to move around in the world just to earn more money. I can’t imagine that a lot of people from Europe would just move to other countries or even continents, just to make more money. So, I don’t expect a “brain drain” to happen anytime soon.

That being said, I’m sure the salaries in Europe aren’t so great, but that goes for many things and other sectors definitely have it worse than tech workers (e.g. healthcare workers).

And it sounds like you could try working for smaller companies that are more agile and don’t have such annoying management issues! (At least in Germany they also tend to pay better or equally well as big corporations.)

prakhar897• 3 years ago

The Europeans might not move but they can starting working remotely. Similarly, Chinese and Indians will start working remote US positions rather than moving to Europe.

bradleyjg• 3 years ago

The entire world is filled with the descendants of people that moved around for more money (resources).

smeagull• 3 years ago

Who needs to move? I work for companies on the East coast of America, and the Philippines, and I live in NZ.

sys_647382• 3 years ago

Maybe you specifically might not but plenty of us are happy to move to high paying jobs in the USA. Greatest country on Earth.

pigsty• 3 years ago

If the European companies don't wake up to this, they will gradually see a brain drain

I think the EU has taken a pretty consistent stance in wanting to avoid America’s massive wealth divide.

It’s nice to know that you can be on the benefitting side of such a divide, but it comes with social downsides. America’s rent, homeless, and crime problems are far, far beyond most places in Europe and a big factor in this is people with insane wealth happily paying insane amounts for formerly cheap properties.

wslh2• 3 years ago

And you should add tolerating a bad transport infrastructure where infinite car traffic is normal.

ChuckNorris895• 3 years ago

Don't know where you live but Europe's wealth divide is bigger than America's. We just need to make the distinction between income inequality and wealth inequality which are completely different things.

Urban property prices for Europeans are far less approachable on our wages than they are for Americans on their wages. Munich has the same square foot/meter prices as SF but at a third of the wages. I assume it's similar in Paris and London.

When I was working in Germany for an engineering company, all the guys in the Dallas-FW office had bought big houses in the suburbs (yeah, car dependence though) while everyone in the Munich office was still renting (and not living centrally).

Europe had less income inequality, but much higher wealth inequality thanks to decades/centuries of accumulated old-money that keeps growing, especially in real-estate assets.

Europe protects you from becoming homeless but it's near impossible to accumulate wealth if you start from the bottom, while in the US you can easily become wealthy from the bottom if you're savvy and healthy but you can also easily become homeless if you're not.

badrabbit8• 3 years ago

That's nice but corporate greed and exec compensation is the cause of the US wealth divide not tech workers getting paid market value.

throw0101c4• 3 years ago

I think the EU has taken a pretty consistent stance in wanting to avoid America’s massive wealth divide.

Then raise the tax rates at higher incomes.

People can be 'psychologically satisfied' with having a large number given to them during salary negotiations for their gross salary, but then once income is greater than (say) 200'000, a larger and larger portion is taken at higher tax brackets.

And a refresher on how marginal tax brackets work:

* https://www.vox.com/2019/1/18/18187056/tax-bracket-marginal-...

dindobre• 3 years ago

I beg to differ. I am western European, I was born the poorest of my classmates, friends, colleagues, whatever. I'm also the one, among my circle, earning way more than everybody else. Despite that, my net worth is and will always be on the lower end of said circle. Most if not all of my peers have parents that own their house, some of them own activities which they've already basically partially passed on their children etc. I know it sounds bitter but I feel like I was born to work while most of my peers were born into rent-seeking mode. Due to the high taxation, I've an hard cap on what I can make with my life unless I get insanely lucky, the combination of high taxation and high rent is an enormous pressure, my life would be totally different if I had started with my own home. Maybe there are statistics out there about this, but it feels like that having your own home early (e.g. through the help of parents) is more important than whatever career or academic achievement (PHD, etc.) you go through. I don't think it's the same in the USA.

RestlessMind2• 3 years ago

are far, far beyond most places in Europe

Have you been to Europe?

rent

I see frequent stories on HN about people not able to afford homes in Lisbon, London or Paris. Trivial to dig up rent stats and compare against median income.

homeless

I was in Frankfurt in summer. Entire 3x3 block area next to the main train station reminded me of Tenderloin in SF. Homeless people, urine and poop, needles, stench.. you got it all. And this is apparently one of the richest city in the strongest economy in Europe. Let's not talk about poor parts of Moldova, Romania or Belarus.

rozenmd2• 3 years ago

This changed dramatically with COVID/WFH.

Before COVID, companies in Paris were offering me 40-50k for a mid-level engineer, no WFH, maybe they'd pay for your commute.

After COVID, similar companies (I talked to around 10) based in Paris were offering 90k + equity (BSPCE), full remote, desk/chair/monitor paid for, lunch card (25 euros/day for a max of 180/mo), insurance, fancy off-site meetings fully paid for, and more

Still not competitive with foreign companies that hire remotely with a French entity, but not nearly as bad as it used to be.

I hear it's similar in Berlin, too.

ChuckNorris895• 3 years ago

Did it change in the entire France tech sector or did you simply find a much better company than your old one? Correlation!= Cazualisation.

Anyway, I'm glad if it changed in France but it didn't where I live (Austria) where the market is depressing and they're still paying 2020 wage brackets. Europe is very diverse.

orwin• 3 years ago

I can confirm that.

Before Covid, it was 40-50k in Paris and 30-35k in smaller cities.

Now i'm way north of 60k and i live on the coast in a medium-sized city (our population doubles each long weekend and during summer). And i have my transport costs reimbursed, as well as twice as much paid training.

gniv• 3 years ago

That's impressive. Are these CDI jobs? Also, do you speak French or are these English-speaking start-ups?

aa-jv• 3 years ago

I've also transplanted around the world a bit in different tech markets, albeit I don't have as much desire to return to the California madness, just for the paycheck.

Life quality in Europe is great - sure, you maybe don't get paid raw numbers comparable to the states, but on the other hand (at least here in Austria), if I tumble down a mountain having some fun and break my arm, the state will take care of me so I can go back to paying taxes. :)

And really, can anyone really say they enjoy living in the valley? That commute, man. Europeans sure have that one up on the Americans.

CalRobert• 3 years ago

May I ask where in NL? Wife and I (and kids) are looking at moving to bloommerwede.nl/ in Utrecht. I want to walk out my door and not see a car.

I'm an American who moved to Ireland. The month I got stamp 4 (meaning I wasn't tied to my employer) I got a job working for an American company that hired remote (Auth0) and a 50% bump in base, and several hundred k in options (but that was luck since Okta bought us). Since then I started my own limited company and work remote for US clients. I make about 150k a year. What's crazy to me is that European companies pay just appallingly badly, while (many) American companies consider me cheap. I was on a call with a startup and they asked about pay requirement and I said "around 140k" (I shouldn't have given a number but I was pretty sure I didn't want to work there) and they were delighted. Only later did we realize they had heard me as saying "40k" and they thought my ask was utterly ludicrous.

Similarly, accelerators here offer peanuts. I looked closely (and got in to) carbon13, which looks great in many respects since I want to work addressing climate breakdown, but if you get through their phase 1 AND find a cofounder then they will invest.... eighty thousand GBP. To start a company. I could move to America and just save 80k in relatively short order, and not split with a cofounder. I don't want to live in America (every time I go back I remember why we left) but.. still.

If I talk to friends in Europe I feel awkward about how much I am paid, and if I talk to my friends back home in California I feel awkward about how little. I suppose it's valuable perspective but I _WANT_ Europe to be a strong counter to the US making amazing companies and instead they bleed talent to California. It's pathetic that Ireland's biggest business success story is the Collisons, who got the hell out as fast as they could and moved to California to start Stripe. To Stripe's credit, they're one of the only companies in Dublin with not-terrible pay.

I'm sure you've seen https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... (there are in fact decent paying jobs in NL) but also https://techpays.eu/ is good for weeding out the cheapskates.

rcarmo6• 3 years ago

There's also the fact that most technology presence in Europe (especially US based companies) is essentially sales and services (even if you get a FAANG job locally, expect 3-5 years of shuffling around internally until you manage to move to Engineering, and even then you mostly have to relocate either to the US or to one of their arbitrarily chosen "hubs", which are typically not in well-paying countries).

But I agree that European companies need to get their act together. Not just about salaries, but also about hiring processes--I've had instances in the past where they tried to ape Valley interviews (quizzes, on-sites, etc.) without any of the reasoning behind them (ok, bear with me on the quizzes here--they never made sense), and others where I'd be much more senior (or at least more experienced in running things at scale) than the hiring manager.

rjh29• 3 years ago

If the European companies don't wake up to this, they will gradually see a brain drain

I wouldn't move to the US for any amount of money.

rcarmo6• 3 years ago

Neither would I, but I also have trouble seeing myself working for a European company given the way they slowly circle the drain when making decisions instead of being more pragmatic.

throw0101c4• 3 years ago

I wouldn't move to the US for any amount of money.

As a Canadian I wouldn't move mostly for family reasons, but in a more general sense there are very few places that seem appealing to me.

I grew up and have always lived in an urban area, and when I look at the US there don't seem to be that many places that have the 'vibe' I'm into: as a high-level litmus test, it'd be places with good public transit that I could bicycle around as well. Given that a good portion of the US was built post-WW2, large swaths of it are very car-centric. (True in Canada too.)

sys_647382• 3 years ago

Your loss then. America is the best country in the world and I say that as a European.

pictur3• 3 years ago

Working individually can keep a person at a better level in terms of ego. If you have a mind that constantly compares yourself to others, working in a company can make you sad. Of course it varies by company. maybe you can be happier.

Southland• 3 years ago

Strange to phrase the entire post off "I never have worked in BigTech, but here's anecdotal thoughts of why I've heard it would suck"

mlazos• 3 years ago

I work in a FAANG and I e always loved my job (switched teams and companies a few times) if you don’t love it anymore, find a project you do love, that’s the glory of a big company tbh. This was a pretty surface level article. There isn’t any industry on earth where you can be an IC making 600k except tech. At a FAANG 600k is reaching your bank account(stock is real comp)

DrBazza• 3 years ago

Are those numbers on levels.fyi realistic? And those stock/share grants, presumably vest at one quarter of the amount every year after the award, or something like that?

So if you're there for only two years, you might only collect your basic salary, and that's it.

jstx12• 3 years ago

Better in some vague notion of engineering goodness? Eh probably not. On average we're all about average.

This doesn't make sense. You're picking people from the top end of the income distribution, assuming they are average and using this as evidence that people from the top end of the income distribution are average.

It might even be true but the reasoning doesn't follow. It's more likely that it isn't true and there is a difference in skill but that difference isn't proportional to compensation e.g those people are 15% better than average but get paid 100% more.

crmrc114• 3 years ago

100% why I left the Amazon meat grinder and RSU weighted compensation packages. I am one million times happier working for a midsize business that actually treats me like a creative, not an assembly line worker.

jstx12• 3 years ago

I'd love to work in big tech or finance but it's hard because even if I can make up for skills (on the job skills and interviewing skills), it's hard to fake the necessary background to get an interview (having good education or previous experience in a similar company).

papito• 3 years ago

This is exactly the reason why Big Tech is in trouble. The candidates cram Leetcode for months to get the jobs, and since their practical skills are irrelevant in that process, we all wonder what the hell this army of engineers is actually doing.

They are building unnecessarily complicated systems that you will need to hire even more engineers to maintain, that's what they are doing. But you pay them well, so there is that.

hirako2000• 3 years ago

Because i intend to remain good and believe being surrounded by exceptional enginners is actually more easy, or influenced by my side in smaller orgs. Getting to code regularly is rather important.

+ Tax brackets makes it far less a difference between to earn some high end median salary vs top salaries. So even on the compensation side of benefits along with costs of living, the gap then becomes rather slim/irrelevant

ramijames4• 3 years ago

Because a long time ago I understood that the value of my salary has to come from somewhere.

If that somewhere is ads, tracking, or other types of surveillance capitalism, then I'm not interested.

All of the biggest companies in the world are complicit. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They should all be burnt to the ground.

If you work at one of these companies and enjoy a fat paycheck, you should take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are ok with the price that society as a whole pays for you to be able to make bank.

badrabbit8• 3 years ago

Are you kidding me? People should feel guilty about getting paid? What a marvelous perspective, long live the oligarchy?

Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf?

And then you wonder why corporations control democracies so easily.

For everyone else reading: if your work is honest and legal and you don't have to violate your conscious to perform the duties assigned to you the make as much as you can. Fulfill your responsibility to your family and community firsr and the worry about the world. Use your own money to influence politics instead of using employment activism, investor activism, social media cancelling,etc... to lobby for causes. Talk to and convince your peers. This is how you fight for democracy and democracy is dying because people are allowing proxies like their employers to speak for them. Companies have no place at all in democratic discourse. It is "we the people" not "we the corporations".

This is why shit like your healthcare being tied to your employer is a thing!

ramijames4• 3 years ago

Not kidding, no.

"Take care of me and mine" is a fine way to burn the world down to cinders.

Can you honestly tell me that how surveillance capitalism has unfolded over the past twenty years has been a net positive for democracy or for world stability?

I say no, and those well paid cogs in those machines are complicit. They don't need to feel shame. They need to accept the scope of what they are doing and be mindful of its impact.

Honest and legal doesn't necessarily mean "right". Those that work in the fossil fuel industry are for the most part doing what is honest and right. They are also (as are we all) complicit in catastrophic climate change.

em-bee13• 3 years ago

if your work is honest

if you work for advertising then your work isn't honest.

it's like saying being a janitor for a crime syndicate is honest work.

either way, your salary is coming from a dishonest source.

ofer2• 3 years ago

Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf?

What % of your money do you spend on political causes and charities, badrabbit?

margorczynski3• 3 years ago

BigTech paying those absurd figures is I think only a thing in the US. In Europe they pay well but no way that much compared to the national (or continental) average.

And if you think the work you're doing there in SF is boring then you need to be aware that most of the boring stuff goes to "low cost regions" usually. For the US that also means Europe, for BigTech especially.

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

It's only a thing in the US, in specific cities where big tech companies are present and poaching people from each other.

These jobs with big rates have a few things in common:

- Salaries aren't the only thing that have inflated price tags in the places where you might hope to get those. Rents, mortages, and cost of living are expensive there too. You kind of need 2x-3x what you'd need somewhere else. More for some places. Basically, you pay more for less for most things that matter.

- Those big rates are fairly hard to get for any random person. You have to be able to sit up be a good little code minion, do your code exercises perfectly, climb corporate ladders, kiss the right asses, etc. And you have to keep that up for many years. Not everyone can do that. Or even pretend to enjoy doing that.

- There's no such thing as a free lunch. These companies want value for money. The big salary is the carrot that they dangle in front of you. But they don't give it to everyone. They give it to some so they can give far less to the rest of the crowd. The median is nowhere near the top of the range.

- It's a pretty exclusive club that gets these wages. The exclusivity is what buys compliance from those outside that club. Max salaries are insane. Median ones, not so much. In SFO, median salary is still high but not high enough to live there comfortably.

- It's a corporate rat race. With all the negative effects as well. Like toxic work culture. Political games and a lot of tech bros (let's face it, equality is a problematic topic) slapping each other on the back and over using words like "awesome". This kind of behavior is common fiercely competitive places. It isn't necessarily very nice to deal with or be around such people. And it attracts people that are good at that kind of thing. I.e. sociopaths.

mkl95• 3 years ago

Just want to back the most upvoted comment by highlighting how rare 6 figure jobs are in most areas of Europe. For example, $65k / year puts you in top 5% highest paid workers (P95) in France.

Capital flows like water in a river in the richest areas of the US, whereas the EU is more like a swamp. You can save thousands / month while many of your coworkers struggle to make ends meet.

nunez2• 3 years ago

$NFLX pays all cash, IIRC. But that's not the point.

The point is in most cases, you need to move to a Tier 1 city with homes in the $800s and above or rents in the $3500/mo+ range to get offered that much cash/equity/bonus mix. (That's the low end. Stuff isn't great in that range unless you move far.) The total package is less to much less elsewhere.

You also need to factor the risk of being called back into the office (or losing your job if you can't do that).

Also, it depends on what you value. Some people really really value that big vest. Same problem as those who go into law, medicine or management (out of an MBA), generally.

antibasilisk• 3 years ago

considering those sorts of salaries usually exist to override people's morals, i'd say having morals. People don't talk about this fact enough.

squalo• 3 years ago

There was a time I didn't believe anyone but execs were making over 500k a year in IT. Last year an acquaintance bragged that his daughter was making 500k at Netflix as a security person. Her job is to keep their content from being pirated. My first thought was "heck of a job Brownie" (not that most of you would get the reference).

If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech?

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