Seriously are $250,000 signing bonuses and 60% pay increases common in the valley. What level employee is this for. Clearly I'm doing something wrong or need to move to SV asap because I've never heard of that kind of pay here on the east coast outside of maybe NYC
It's like Facebook. You never hear of the boring meals and activities. It's only at most 0.001% of a persons day, the crap they share.
That's how I feel about HN. Theres a large percentage of quality talent that comes here, as well as bullshitters. That combined gives you the illusion that you are stranded in the wrong hemisphere, when in reality 99% of us are here.
Thanks for your perspective. As a new grad, I sometimes feel guilty reading HN comments because I'll dwell on why I couldn't also "go to MIT and make a startup at age 22" or some nonsense. It's good to hear that not everyone here is a 10k-a-day coding savant.
Keep in mind that in the press, a "low level employee" is a senior director or vice-president. Not an engineer, nor a senior engineer. That's why the numbers you see feel so far off.
Remember that the signing bonuses are often to pay people for equity that they're walking away from. This isn't common in east coast tech, but it used to be very common in financial services. 60% pay hikes - well, you have to get out of the cost-plus model of talent. If the 20 best engineers will dramatically increase your chance of getting to a $20 billion valuation, then the money being quoted is actually rather small. If the same guys are installing ERP systems on an hourly rate for a large company like E&Y, of course their value is much less.
At $250k/year you can barely afford that house. I knew abstractly that SV real estate was expensive, but presented with a 1100 sq ft house on a medium size lot for $1.2M almost gave me a heart attack.
I know I live out in the sticks, but seriously the only house I know of that costs that much around here is 11,000 sq ft, on 30 acres of land and has both indoor and outdoor pools, a movie theater room and a gym.
I know people on the east coast with $100k signing bonuses straight out of college. There are definitely coastal differences, but I don't think it's impossible to find some examples on the east coast as well.
I went to Harvard, so most of the examples I know are from Harvard at the common hot employers. I know of some examples from other schools, though. It's also often the case that not all hires get a six figure signing bonus at a particular company from a particular school, but just some of the people at the top of the pay spectrum.
But is this in tech? I know several people who have gotten these type of offers but they have almost all be exclusively in the financial sector. And even more so in trading type positions as quants or analysts.
Yes, in tech. Your typical Googamafacesoft type companies. There are people with similar offers in finance, but they're not to whom I was referring in the earlier comment.
Don't you mean "the kind who use proper spelling"?
No. Both "who" and "that" may be used to anchor relative clauses with human antecedents. To quote [1]:
Most writers use 'that' and 'which' as the relative pronouns for inanimate objects, and who as the relative pronoun for humans. This widespread habit has led to the mistaken belief that using that in reference to humans is an error. In fact, while most editors prefer who for people, there is no rule saying we can’t use that, and that has been widely used in reference to people for many centuries.
In other words, my original sentence was perfectly grammatical, and in regard to the original commenter's presentation skills -- and their correlation to his employability and salary potential -- I was simply stating the obvious. But this being HN, I've been downvoted and/or flamed at least 8 times for it.
"Automakers from around the world are rushing to set up offices in the Bay Area to tap the engineering talent. "
An honest question - is this really because of the talent, or simply because people there tend to work more?
When you have so many people competing for engineering jobs I expect that people, especially the ones with no kids, will work on average a lot more. Is that the case or am I wrong?
I suspect people without kids or other similar obligations tend to work more in any industry or location; it's not specific to the Bay Area.
The difference is that in the Bay Area it may be that the ratio of those with to those without obligations is lower. It's certainly socially acceptable to implicitly discriminate against "older" (mid-30s and up) workers in certain sectors of the tech industry out here.
That said, I briefly considered applying to Tesla. Then I did my homework and asked around: their pay is below what even a green "webdev" at some random startup might expect (well below in some cases), and the work/life balance seems to resemble something closer to the video game industry (lots of "crunchtime") than to anything respectable. (NOTE: Of course that is based on anecdotes from contacts and, e.g. sites like glassdoor.com; it's not a scientific survey of employment at Tesla.)
I was under the impressions job supply was far higher than demand in the bay area (for engineers). Aren't people always complaining they can't get the talent? So I would guess that the hours you're willing to do above the standard don't matter as, if you're talented, you're in demand.
As much as I'd like to believe they are being genuine (as a developer who benefits from being in high demand) I've heard that this statement can really be re-written as "We can't get enough talent at the price we want to pay" thus the push to try to make it easier to bring engineers into the USA (One's they conveniently leave out will accept less for the same job). I'm not saying this is all fact but just that I'm not sure how much I believe that they really are scrambling for talent.
I would agree with this with one caveat. The way I read your comment was, "Large software firms want to hire you for as little as possible" but I think it's more "Large software firms want to hire the best talent for as little as possible."
I tend to believe that the throughput of the top 5-10% can be exponentially more than the next 5-10%. The objective for a lot of these firms is to get the top couple percent and get 4x as much value of out someone but paying 2x as much. As it relates to the parent comment, I think there is an incredibly high demand for the top 5-10% of tech talent and exponentially less demand for the subsequent talent. It's very similar in NYC for finance talent. I know people who work in SF and NYC both who work insane hours but they get paid SO MUCH MORE for it.
So, no one is scrambling for good engineers or good bankers or good consultants but they are scrambling for that tiny sliver of the market that they believe will generate exponential returns and turn into leaders of the company.
I think that is a very good assessment. For all the complaining people do about "senior" engineers who can't code for loops and wanting to see more applicants who can code basic programs, there is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between being able to code a simple 100-line program and the point that most Valley hiring bars are set at. There are not now, and probably will never be, enough people above those inflated hiring bars to sate all the companies that have them, but none will back off.
The 10x people thing is mostly a myth, or applies to vanishing view superstars -- not engineering employees at a large company. 10x producers are people who work on well structured and balanced teams with good management.
I completely agree with what you're saying about their needing to be context around those individuals. And I also agree that the 10x people are a myth. What I do know is that, in software, I have interviewed software engineers with VERY similar resumes, pedigrees, etc. and there are HUGE gaps when we've actually worked with them. Absolutely enormous gaps.
Perhaps this is simply too anecdotal and I've had a poor experiences, but I can say, in my personal experiences, most candidates we've talked with are doing 1x and there are other candidates doing 2x, 3x, or better. Perhaps not 10x, but I have definitely seen very similar people on paper deliver on VERY different levels.
I don't believe they're scrambling for talent. I think a lot of the supposed "demand" for labor out here is a combination of your typical resume collecting from the larger organizations and bandwagon-driven "we need PhDs from Stanford to scale our shitty RoR b2b sales app; there aren't enough 'qualified' people to write code" nonsense. Furthermore, there are just more people who are qualified to write code out here. So there may be more demand than elsewhere, but there is also more (much more?) supply of labor to meet it.
> An honest question - is this really because of the talent, or simply because people there tend to work more?
The latter is an aspect of the supply of talent (in terms of available labor hours of any particular kind and level of talent available), so those aren't really two opposed options.
I think the equation should also factor in cost of finding good software engineers, especially the risk of getting bad hires.
If you worked 3-6 year at Apple already or another company renowned for its quality oriented processes, there is probably a reduced risk in poaching you which offset the higher salary you can command.
I see that more as a way of outsourcing the cost of vetting personnel.
But you aren't hiring Apple's process, you are hiring someone who used to be there. Why do you assume he value you seek is particular to that person, and not to the Apple environment?
Witness the massive number of startup teams that get acquired and assimilated and then do nothing of note after.
that's true as well, I wasn't aiming at a blanked statement covering every case, just adding one more thing to consider: the risk of hiring a passive engineer that goes task by task should be lower when poaching from highly demanding employer.
acquihires are indeed risky, you have to factor in both the culture change and the sudden shift in middle management directives, but onboarding an apple engineer isn't the same as purchasing a whole company.
The IT workers should form a union. I'm not a fan of unions (they seem to devolve towards corruption here in Australia), but I'd prefer that over arseholes like Jobs et al making wage "agreements". How scummy is that, they're raking in billions, and they decide to be tight on the people that make them their cash? Scumbags.
Considering most labor protections in the US are written to create an "exempt" employee who is largely unprotected in labor matters, and that exemption is almost entirely for anyone working in the software industry... yeah, unionization and law change would be nice.
If software companies were forced to pay overtime instead of expecting it for no cost, I think work/life balance would look a lot different.
This is a colossally bad idea. As a Chicagoan I can tell you unions only cause more problems. They make damn sure that patronage and favor systems rule, not meritocracy. That you can't fire terrible people and that all promotions are done via just seniority. That's on top of the eventual corruption, dues, and worse outcomes and being run circles around by non-union shops.
> but I'd prefer that over arseholes like Jobs et al making wage "agreements".
Under existing law this is collusion and illegal. The real question is why the, ironically, union-friendly Obama administration didn't crack down on this with an iron fist? I think Obama's DOJ needs to be held accountable here. Its clear they let Jobs become an untouchable man and this attitude hurt a lot of people's lives, moreso than anything Gates did and he was nearly destroyed by Clinton.
Unions have their place, though they seem more suitable for situations where there isn't any potential for employees to accelerate their careers on the basis of merit.
The transportation sector is an especially good example of this. A cab driver, airline pilot, and train engineer are all expected to operate their respective vehicles safely and efficiently. The opportunity for rapid career advancement that creatives in the tech industry enjoy is simply not present.
Therefore, the meritocracy-breaking overhead often associated with unions isn't nearly as much of a concern as it would be in an industry that's heavily dependent on the meritocratic dynamic.
If unions somehow become a thing in Tech, I suspect it will have been due to their implementation being so radically different so as to resemble the traditional model in name only, if that.
Yeah sound points. I guess I'd just say it feels like we're relying on the foxes to regulate the henhouse, when its really not in their best interests.
Due to the rampant hostility towards unions, a professional association like what doctors and lawyers have, while serving the same purpose, would be an easier sell.
How would union bureaucracy affect changes in the environments. From changes in hardware, software and organizational? Unions seem to typically act very protectively and hence allow change very slowly. I think while this would make for a more comfortable labor market for engineers in terms of labor, in terms of dynamism I suspect it would slow things down. After all automation (efficiency) is at odds with membership numbers.
Well, sign me up for that hehe. I honestly don't know anyone that gets that kind of cash.
Its probably a bit of a supply/demand thing, but that seems like a pretty obscene salary. This is what I don't understand - if you have in excess of 1-5m dollars, why do you want more?
SpaceX is guiding rockets into space which I'm guessing is a lot like guiding missiles. SpaceX is probably required by law to guard some, if not most, of their technology.
I had these posts bookmarked because I was curious myself. You may have already googled these, but thought I'd share. I'm a web developer myself but would love to work here someday :)
SpaceX has a lot of open positions for web developers. It's kind of a misconception that it's all embedded work here or that you need an aerospace background. The web work is a little different because it's usually internal-facing but there are a lot of interesting problems. Definitely check it out.
Thanks for the response. From my perspective, SpaceX is probably the coolest company on the planet right now :) I looked for web dev jobs a while back (that's when I bookmarked those quora posts). Unfortunately, I'm staying in my current location for about another year so won't be able to move.
Any tips on what sort of people they're looking for? Particularly what technical areas they look for in a web position?
The discussions I've seen online are all related to the product engineering side of things.
On the front end it's pretty cool since you are targeting internal tools you can assume modern browsers and use the latest frameworks and tech with zero legacy support to worry about. We look for people who have full stack experience and can be flexible and help out on any area of a large web application (including a some ops and continuous integration). Communication skills are super important - usually these projects are on small teams that need to work well together and support people within the company who use the tools. We also try to make sure people are good with details and are thorough in their ability to properly build and test their stuff - these tools are critical for the success of the mission so they are every bit as important as the code on board the vehicles.
Hopefully you can get out there and find something better then. Plus, Apple will work you 50+ hrs a week. You can make the same money or more somewhere else, working less hours.
