Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries(daily.co)
daily.co
Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries
https://www.daily.co/blog/rethinking-levels-promotions-and-salaries/
205 comments
If you felt you were underpaid, leaving is fair. I don't really understand the requirement that all bosses are paid more than those they supervise, though. I mean, emotionally I can understand feeling that way. But I don't think it's a rule of nature or something.
For instance, coaches often make less than their star players. Directors and producers often make less than star actors. Hospital directors seem to make less than surgeons.
For instance, coaches often make less than their star players. Directors and producers often make less than star actors. Hospital directors seem to make less than surgeons.
I think this makes a lot of sense. Management is not "better", it is simply "different".
And in terms of actual value delivered to the business, I doubt that a low/mid-level manager delivers significantly more than an experienced and productive individual contributor.
Organizations need both good managers and good individual contributors. Clearly managers of technical contributors need enough technical experience to make sound management decisions. But that doesn't seem like a good reason to constantly promote people upwards, nor does it seem like a reason to always pay managers more than ICs by default.
However I think in some cases managers end up subject to extra risk if a project goes bad, so they are probably entitled to some increased "hazard pay" for that. (The risk/responsibility structure might be inverted at some toxic dysfunctional organizations, but that's beside the point.)
And in terms of actual value delivered to the business, I doubt that a low/mid-level manager delivers significantly more than an experienced and productive individual contributor.
Organizations need both good managers and good individual contributors. Clearly managers of technical contributors need enough technical experience to make sound management decisions. But that doesn't seem like a good reason to constantly promote people upwards, nor does it seem like a reason to always pay managers more than ICs by default.
However I think in some cases managers end up subject to extra risk if a project goes bad, so they are probably entitled to some increased "hazard pay" for that. (The risk/responsibility structure might be inverted at some toxic dysfunctional organizations, but that's beside the point.)
I agree that inherently management isn't more valuable than IC-ness, but in terms of scope (which is one, though not the only metric for value) it's hard to argue that you have more scope than your manager. They're still responsible for what you're working on. Often more competent ICs are more independent, so this is a bit complicated since a manager of an independent IC can focus more effort elsewhere, but still.
The way I see this usually at places with strong IC tracks and levels is that an L7 IC is payed more than an L6 manager, but its uncommon for the L7 IC to report to the L6 manager. You usually, though not always report to someone more senior than you, and very rarely report to someone less senior.
Also its far easier for a people manager to increase their scope than for an IC to do the same, so in some sense the advancement path is more clear.
The way I see this usually at places with strong IC tracks and levels is that an L7 IC is payed more than an L6 manager, but its uncommon for the L7 IC to report to the L6 manager. You usually, though not always report to someone more senior than you, and very rarely report to someone less senior.
Also its far easier for a people manager to increase their scope than for an IC to do the same, so in some sense the advancement path is more clear.
All of your points are valid. But here is the catch which many ICs might not realize. There are far more management positions than pure ICs. It's the unfortunate that you be disadvantaged if you stick to strict ICs path. The competition is also fierce. The talented ICs are so far above the rest (the 10x/100x engineers).
It's a simple supply and demand problem. The company needs a lot more of above average managers/hybrids. It's not good for average ICs to stuck to their little world if they want better promotions.
It's a simple supply and demand problem. The company needs a lot more of above average managers/hybrids. It's not good for average ICs to stuck to their little world if they want better promotions.
Just to clarify when you say IC you mean literally an IC as opposed to the leadership path in an IC vertical? Many companies expect hither level ICs to be leaders in one way or another, you don’t need to go down the management path.
I mean the essence of the problem comes down to people management. If you mean the pure technical role, then yes that's what I am referring to which has far less positions. And usually your competition would be the elites. Because many ICs try to avoid people management.
I am not talking about whether there is a such a path for ICs. I am talking about the numbers problem. The unfortunate truth is that there are far more positions involves people management. Engineering manager is good example because ICs can wield their technical skills. But still, this roles still requires you to do substantial people management.
I am not talking about whether there is a such a path for ICs. I am talking about the numbers problem. The unfortunate truth is that there are far more positions involves people management. Engineering manager is good example because ICs can wield their technical skills. But still, this roles still requires you to do substantial people management.
Here in Switzerland, most of the non-IT people I'm talking with are genuinely surprised that for instance project managers are paid less that developers. For them just hearing the word "manager" = big buck.
Supply and demand at work I guess; if it's easier to get project managers than developers it becomes obvious which one should be paid more.
Whenever I hear the term "Project Manager", and imagine all of the confusion collectively experienced by anyone who has had to explain that job, I think of Mr Burns from the Simpsons saying "Am I that out of touch? No, it's the KIDS who are wrong".
Let's call it "Project Coordinator" or "Project Advocate" or something.
Let's call it "Project Coordinator" or "Project Advocate" or something.
Let’s call them “Project Secretary”, that should tune them down a bit…
In Wall Street it's common for CEOs to make say 30 million dollars, not more, supervising sick but like SICK traders that haul in arbitrary amounts.
Also whalers in California, there were groups of guys like "we're a great team, we're men, we know how to swim, let's hunt Grey Whales" and hired a captain. On a ship it is imperative to do whatever the captain says, but that doesn't mean the hierarchy exists on shore with the money. There were also captains who hired sailors, more often.
Also whalers in California, there were groups of guys like "we're a great team, we're men, we know how to swim, let's hunt Grey Whales" and hired a captain. On a ship it is imperative to do whatever the captain says, but that doesn't mean the hierarchy exists on shore with the money. There were also captains who hired sailors, more often.
> lead of my team
A lead isn't a manager or boos.
That being said, a lead is frequently more valuable than the followers.
A lead isn't a manager or boos.
That being said, a lead is frequently more valuable than the followers.
My boss doesn't know how much I'm paid. I like it that way. He communicates how he feels I'm doing to the people that need to know and it's working out ok.
I find that interesting, and also concerning.. but I suppose it depends on the office culture.
I tried to ignore my peers and direct reports salaries when I first moved into management... I lost an employee after 2 years when another place offered him a 80% raise.
At that point, I realized I couldn't count on a 3rd party to properly evaluate an employee's worth, and I started to take an active role in ensuring people are paid as close to market as we could afford (though, as a non-profit, we struggle to compete for technical talent)
I tried to ignore my peers and direct reports salaries when I first moved into management... I lost an employee after 2 years when another place offered him a 80% raise.
At that point, I realized I couldn't count on a 3rd party to properly evaluate an employee's worth, and I started to take an active role in ensuring people are paid as close to market as we could afford (though, as a non-profit, we struggle to compete for technical talent)
> I lost an employee after 2 years when another place offered him a 80% raise.
First, I'd say it's quite normal in non-profits.
Second, I believe that in a structure when you don't know the salary of your reports, there is always someone they can discuss it with if they feel they deserve more - and that person would definitely consult your opinion then.
First, I'd say it's quite normal in non-profits.
Second, I believe that in a structure when you don't know the salary of your reports, there is always someone they can discuss it with if they feel they deserve more - and that person would definitely consult your opinion then.
Well, I make a lot. I'm sure my boss is aware of that. I don't know a single person that is paid this much in Toronto and doesn't have to manage others. Not even close. So maybe that's why he doesn't need to know.
Traditional companies paid manager more, but supply and demand of engineers vs managers means that more and more middle management is making less than engineers.
Is not about bosses and reports, it's about performance. I wasn't anyone's manager. My role as team lead was to organise, coordinate and supervise my colleague's tasks, on top of my IC contributions.
For another example, a guy joined a different team and was killing it, but was getting paid less than another college who was in the company 8 years and was hardly pulling his own weight.
For another example, a guy joined a different team and was killing it, but was getting paid less than another college who was in the company 8 years and was hardly pulling his own weight.
Telling or managing a player to kick the ball into the back of the net is a lot easier than actually kicking it in the back of the net.
Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.
Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.
I like the analogy, but I don't fully agree with it. If the "product on shelf" is a basic CRUD app, then sure, managing a team of 20 people might be harder than doing the individual tasks related to putting the product on shelf, but oftentimes there are challenging technical aspects related to the product. In some cases those technical challenges might be harder than management of the team.
I was thinking stacking shelves in a supermarket as an example of "putting products on a shelf"; but yes, as the complexity, skills required, technical knowledge or genetic 1 in a million requirement goes up for the managed worker there is a point where the degree of difficulty swaps over.
Depends on how well isolated the tricksy bits are
have you ever been a manager?
> Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.
After 20 years of experience I can tell you it depends on many factors, but first of all on the people you work with.
After 20 years of experience I can tell you it depends on many factors, but first of all on the people you work with.
And why would that be? That's a strong claim that's completely unsupported.
Personally I disagree.
Personally I disagree.
>>Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.
no it isn't
no it isn't
telling people is easy, actually getting the result that you want in each situation is hard
I had a similar reaction to this post, this is not a new way of leveling, this is how leveling was done at most companies for a long time. State Universities and the Federal Government are still very much this way, with a very similar amount of counting years of direct/indirect experience.
Back when I worked in academia I also had a very similar experience to yours. I wasn't leading a team but, especially earlier in my career, it was incredibly frustrating to be making significantly less than people who were both less skilled and less hard working, but simply had more years of experience. The perpetual theme was "you just haven't earned it yet", but "earning it" was purely a function of putting time in, it didn't matter how great the work you did was.
I left to go to tech and even now that I'm on the older side of things I still prefer the pay structure being more closely aligned with the value of your skills + the amount you're willing to put into the job. I get paid plenty, and have no problem with someone much younger and less experienced then me getting paid more with unique skills and responsibilities I'm less interested in having.
Back when I worked in academia I also had a very similar experience to yours. I wasn't leading a team but, especially earlier in my career, it was incredibly frustrating to be making significantly less than people who were both less skilled and less hard working, but simply had more years of experience. The perpetual theme was "you just haven't earned it yet", but "earning it" was purely a function of putting time in, it didn't matter how great the work you did was.
I left to go to tech and even now that I'm on the older side of things I still prefer the pay structure being more closely aligned with the value of your skills + the amount you're willing to put into the job. I get paid plenty, and have no problem with someone much younger and less experienced then me getting paid more with unique skills and responsibilities I'm less interested in having.
"Evaporative cooling" is another term for the effect. Hot talent leaves, cold talent stays, diminishing your total talent-temperature.
Those who leave are not always the best. Those who leave many places quickly are more likely to be difficult themselves and demand more. Those who leave after many years usually turn out to be great.
Those who leave may not always be the best, but those are best will certainly leave. It makes no sense to Not switch jobs if you get higher salary and have capability to get it.
In tech industry where job hopping gives significantly greater raise than yearly increment, those who switch jobs get more exposure and better worldview. While those who stay get 1 year experience 10 times.
PS: Exceptions are always there
In tech industry where job hopping gives significantly greater raise than yearly increment, those who switch jobs get more exposure and better worldview. While those who stay get 1 year experience 10 times.
PS: Exceptions are always there
Completely understand where you are coming from. I think a combo of both can be important. Some depth at one org is important to see the results of some of your decisions/actions.
Another view is that employees at the old fashioned company you mention don't have to get hired elsewhere in order to receive an annual raise. The company therefore has less turnover, does not hire as often, and is therefore less likely to hire a low performer.
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Experienced a very similar situation in Berlin. I assume it may actually be a norm. Loyalty to the company > experience/skills.
That's very interesting, and a contrary norm to many big companies in the U.S. Companies here are happy to pay whatever it takes to fill an empty position, but they often have limits on pay raises that prevent loyal employees from getting fair pay as they gain skills and rise to higher levels of responsibility in the company. Many people enjoy the familiarity and relationships at their job and would rather accept being underpaid than be forced to take a new job every couple of years, so the company loses a few people but gets to keep the rest at below market rate. Loyalty is effectively punished, and job-hopping is how you keep your salary current with the market and your experience.
I know several people who have been affected by this, but the most dramatic was a software engineer at AT&T who had started in an entry-level position in network operations. He had received the maximum allowed raise every year, but he was being paid less than 70% of what other software engineers at the same level were making. The request to make a one-time adjustment to his salary had to be escalated to an executive in another office hundreds of miles away (the VPs in our office did not have enough authority) and took months to process. It was not routine at all. It involved a physical sheet of paper with the executive's signature on it.
I know several people who have been affected by this, but the most dramatic was a software engineer at AT&T who had started in an entry-level position in network operations. He had received the maximum allowed raise every year, but he was being paid less than 70% of what other software engineers at the same level were making. The request to make a one-time adjustment to his salary had to be escalated to an executive in another office hundreds of miles away (the VPs in our office did not have enough authority) and took months to process. It was not routine at all. It involved a physical sheet of paper with the executive's signature on it.
Yes, I have seen this many times in my career. Internal transfer has no pay rise and may require equally difficult interviews as external offer. Yet, leave for similar position at another firm is up 20%. And, managers are so "offended" that you are leaving (lack of loyalty). I always think internal transfer is for suckers, as an external transfer almost always means +20%. Bizarre.
Interesting! I didn't know this phenomenon had a name. I've seen the "dead sea effect" at a well known SV bigtech co as well. And this company has biannual performance review rituals.
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
The blog has a bunch of other good article on related topics.
The blog has a bunch of other good article on related topics.
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Strong disagree with basing salary on years of experience. I see almost no correlation between output, skill, and years of experience.
I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.
I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.
I've yet to see anything better than years-of-experience (or years-in-company). I've worked in both FAANG and startups plenty, and personally I've seen worse outcomes from "impact-driven" OKRs, nepotism, team-surfing, than from coasting.
Coasting can be fixed by firing or layoffs (which I consider a healthy lifecycle for any company).
"Coasters" at least know that what they do today they might have to support for N years following, so design accordingly. (Although I've also heard horror stories when they make it intentionally hard to understand for job security reasons, fortunately never seen myself).
Coasting can be fixed by firing or layoffs (which I consider a healthy lifecycle for any company).
"Coasters" at least know that what they do today they might have to support for N years following, so design accordingly. (Although I've also heard horror stories when they make it intentionally hard to understand for job security reasons, fortunately never seen myself).
A part of me wonders whether certain organizations tolerate "coasters" as a talent reserve of sorts, expected to engage when things get busy or new/interesting challenges emerge. For whatever reason, many businesses fire underperformers, promote overachievers but treat the 80% in the middle very generically. Why work to be a top 20% performer when you are treated the same as the bottom 20% performer? Coasting seems like a natural outcome.
Your best employees should always be working on the least important projects. Thus they will seem like coasters.
By making the best be on unimportant projects you get the following benefits:
Nobody worries about interrupting them if they have a problem - who cares if you make the unimportant project take more time.
Your second best people get to experience leading important projects and thus you grow them into the best people (sometimes the previous best people may need to take a turn leading, other times the third best get promoted). See above about asking questions - the best people can mentor them as needed - again nobody cares if it makes their project late.
Unimportant projects sometimes turn into next years most important project - and your best people have been creating a good base to throw lots of people at.
When sales/marketing discovers an sudden opportunity that needs people now - you have experienced engineers to take it over without killing progress on what was the most important project. (be careful about this one - if they only rarely have such requests it is fine, but if such requests take up too much time you probably should either have a dedicated department of engineers for this - with a real budget and management to ensure the requests are really valuable enough to be worth the time - or you need to tell sales not to make such promises)
By making the best be on unimportant projects you get the following benefits:
Nobody worries about interrupting them if they have a problem - who cares if you make the unimportant project take more time.
Your second best people get to experience leading important projects and thus you grow them into the best people (sometimes the previous best people may need to take a turn leading, other times the third best get promoted). See above about asking questions - the best people can mentor them as needed - again nobody cares if it makes their project late.
Unimportant projects sometimes turn into next years most important project - and your best people have been creating a good base to throw lots of people at.
When sales/marketing discovers an sudden opportunity that needs people now - you have experienced engineers to take it over without killing progress on what was the most important project. (be careful about this one - if they only rarely have such requests it is fine, but if such requests take up too much time you probably should either have a dedicated department of engineers for this - with a real budget and management to ensure the requests are really valuable enough to be worth the time - or you need to tell sales not to make such promises)
This is a great way to lose your best people. Or it's pure /s
Not if handled right. Remember those unimportant projects are often self-assigned as try the latest thing to see if it is useful to us, and they often get high visibility to management as cool things we want to do next.
Of course if this is only treated as unimportant projects they will leave.
Of course if this is only treated as unimportant projects they will leave.
Maybe a better term would be "critical projects" instead of "important projects" in that case?
I think "coasting" is a really uncharitable word to use, too. For some people, yea they really are just throwing the gear into neutral and drawing a paycheck while they play Minesweeper. But for a lot of people, they reach the point in their careers where the next step is "up" but there are very few "up" roles available. So they end up in this slugfest, competing with a lot of people for that one rare "Director" slot that opened up. And for every 1 person that rolled snake-eyes and got promoted, there are 10-30 that are thrown back to Thunderdome to compete again the next time an opportunity arises. I don't think it's fair to label these people who keep fighting for those rare promotions "coasters" just because they've been doing the same thing for the last 15 years. I've been in the Thunderdome for even longer, and I'm still "Senior Individual Contributor number 32291." Am I coasting?
> Coasting can be fixed by firing or layoffs
Based on what? You've just invalidated all the tools one would use to evaluate performance.
Based on what? You've just invalidated all the tools one would use to evaluate performance.
You can still use self-assessments, manager and peer reports on the work done, e.g. each quarter. Just explicitly don't use them for promotion. If they are used only for "whether this person brings more to the company than company spends on them", then it unlikely to become a metric to game around.
Probably based on an engaged managers evaluation of their work output
See above - it's strange to discount management techniques for promotions and pay rises, but still use it for firing people.
I think I missed the point where parent said not to use management techniques for promotion and comp. Can you highlight what you are seeing?
We're talking about leveling and compensation based mostly or entirely on years of experience; this implies they are based only a little or not at all on performance reviews.
Recently I have been musing about a SlateStarCodex-ish "compensation systems very different from ours."
One is Oxide [0], which has uniform compensation across the board, explicitly with reference to this problem about how performance processes influence work and culture.
Another might be to take LeetCode-style interviews more seriously. We have already concluded that the most important criteria for whether we want to work with someone is their ability to solve algorithmic programming tests under time pressure. Why stop at initial hire? Maybe they got lucky with familiar material. Maybe they crammed and didn't actually internalize it in a stable way. We should probably be giving coding interviews continuously to existing employees. Further, since we have concluded that shades of interview performance are a good way to determine seniority and responsibilities, we could also use these continuous tests in place of the promotion process. Knock it out of the park? Congrats, you're a staff engineer now. Barely squeak by? Back to intern. It sounds facetious but it also addresses the "promo criteria distort architecture" problem and the "YOE isn't ability problem." The civil service is not too different. Officials get to the next level by passing written and oral exams.
Another might be to have stakeholders bid on talent per project. This would match e.g. the creative industry where teams are constantly created and disbanded, and your next gig is based on the department head or director’s assessment of the quality of your work or the experience of working with you in a previous project.
[0] https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-...
One is Oxide [0], which has uniform compensation across the board, explicitly with reference to this problem about how performance processes influence work and culture.
Another might be to take LeetCode-style interviews more seriously. We have already concluded that the most important criteria for whether we want to work with someone is their ability to solve algorithmic programming tests under time pressure. Why stop at initial hire? Maybe they got lucky with familiar material. Maybe they crammed and didn't actually internalize it in a stable way. We should probably be giving coding interviews continuously to existing employees. Further, since we have concluded that shades of interview performance are a good way to determine seniority and responsibilities, we could also use these continuous tests in place of the promotion process. Knock it out of the park? Congrats, you're a staff engineer now. Barely squeak by? Back to intern. It sounds facetious but it also addresses the "promo criteria distort architecture" problem and the "YOE isn't ability problem." The civil service is not too different. Officials get to the next level by passing written and oral exams.
Another might be to have stakeholders bid on talent per project. This would match e.g. the creative industry where teams are constantly created and disbanded, and your next gig is based on the department head or director’s assessment of the quality of your work or the experience of working with you in a previous project.
[0] https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-...
Assuming you're being serious - all of that sounds nightmarish and extremely subjective and failure-prone. Subjective assessments can easily skew towards politics and patronage. Your dept head is very likely indeed to confuse likability with technical ability.
The leetcode stuff doesn't necessarily correlate to actual productive capacity. Good teams tend to be a mix of complementary talents, and if you put a group of algo hackers together you'll get a lot of algo hacking. You won't necessarily get a lot of maintenance or debugging.
All of which highlights that the industry has no clue how to quantify talent either during hiring or after. And even less clue how to quantify the business value of talent. It has even less clue how to quantify needed talent - in the sense of creating teams with a productive mix of interlocking skills.
Abstract discussions about comp are meaningless from a business POV without that information.
This applies particularly to management. Some managers are clearly better than others, but in spite of all of the books, lectures, and general opportunism around management theory, many corps struggle with creating a sane productive culture.
The leetcode stuff doesn't necessarily correlate to actual productive capacity. Good teams tend to be a mix of complementary talents, and if you put a group of algo hackers together you'll get a lot of algo hacking. You won't necessarily get a lot of maintenance or debugging.
All of which highlights that the industry has no clue how to quantify talent either during hiring or after. And even less clue how to quantify the business value of talent. It has even less clue how to quantify needed talent - in the sense of creating teams with a productive mix of interlocking skills.
Abstract discussions about comp are meaningless from a business POV without that information.
This applies particularly to management. Some managers are clearly better than others, but in spite of all of the books, lectures, and general opportunism around management theory, many corps struggle with creating a sane productive culture.
The relative virtue of workers and work products is in fact subjective and not a measurable quantity. Creative fields embrace this openly. Success in a creative project is highly related to the reactions it inspires in people (public, funders, critics, etc). A good creative leader has access to the same subjective reactions that the audience does. She also has them at a higher level of detail. That way she can give actionable feedback on specific elements, emphasize what works and cut what doesn't, to optimize the overall subjective experience. I came to know this process through the performing arts but I'm also pretty confident that it describes Steve Jobs. Personally I don't think we have nearly enough respect for practitioner judgement in the tech world. Software also succeeds and fails in many cases based on its subjective resonance with users and maintainers. (Though not all, contractor-maintained enterprise software exists). Good taste is also part of the virtue of a senior engineer.
Now in tech we are shy about subjectivity. One way to get a measurable quantity related to virtue is to construct a game. Within the framework of the game we can all agree on what is a win or a loss. We can also rank players according to their track record of wins and losses. Someone who wins when most others would lose is a good player. Someone who loses when most others would win is a bad player. We can have neat quantitative encodings of this, like Elo. And we can agree that winning or losing the game we have constructed has something to do with the virtues we care about. But unless we're talking about professional sports, the game is only a proxy. The subjective judgement now lives in the choice of this game, and not some other game, or this rule, and not some other rule, as our proxy.
This is obviously what we have done with LeetCode. LeetCode's fidelity as a proxy for working-programmer virtue is of course doubtful. The promo packet's fidelity seems like it should be higher. But the promo packet is also a constructed game and an imperfect proxy. When programmers play to win the LeetCode game they engage in not-very-constructive studying and practice in their free time, and perform the weird ritual for a few hours in a conference room. It is mostly the programmer's loss. When programmers play to win the promo packet game they do things contrary to working-programmer virtue in their capacity as working programmers. They design overcomplicated solutions, involve too many stakeholders in their execution, deprecate and replace things instead of maintain them, leave obvious defects in their products because there is no causal inference proving their dollar value, etc. The company loses. It loses big. Given that we have already accepted the tradeoffs of LeetCode interviews with respect to hiring, are you sure it's so ludicrous that they're a better set of tradeoffs than the ones we currently use for leveling?
Now in tech we are shy about subjectivity. One way to get a measurable quantity related to virtue is to construct a game. Within the framework of the game we can all agree on what is a win or a loss. We can also rank players according to their track record of wins and losses. Someone who wins when most others would lose is a good player. Someone who loses when most others would win is a bad player. We can have neat quantitative encodings of this, like Elo. And we can agree that winning or losing the game we have constructed has something to do with the virtues we care about. But unless we're talking about professional sports, the game is only a proxy. The subjective judgement now lives in the choice of this game, and not some other game, or this rule, and not some other rule, as our proxy.
This is obviously what we have done with LeetCode. LeetCode's fidelity as a proxy for working-programmer virtue is of course doubtful. The promo packet's fidelity seems like it should be higher. But the promo packet is also a constructed game and an imperfect proxy. When programmers play to win the LeetCode game they engage in not-very-constructive studying and practice in their free time, and perform the weird ritual for a few hours in a conference room. It is mostly the programmer's loss. When programmers play to win the promo packet game they do things contrary to working-programmer virtue in their capacity as working programmers. They design overcomplicated solutions, involve too many stakeholders in their execution, deprecate and replace things instead of maintain them, leave obvious defects in their products because there is no causal inference proving their dollar value, etc. The company loses. It loses big. Given that we have already accepted the tradeoffs of LeetCode interviews with respect to hiring, are you sure it's so ludicrous that they're a better set of tradeoffs than the ones we currently use for leveling?
As someone with 20+ yoe this is true, I'm probably as good as a guy with 5 yoe and honestly I want to apply for jobs like that. Honestly tech has changed so much I'm skeptical anyone really has 20 years experience now.
Its hard though when people see my work history they only let me interview for very senior roles which I usually aren't good enough to do.
Its hard though when people see my work history they only let me interview for very senior roles which I usually aren't good enough to do.
I'm gonna be real with you here. You're not as good as a 5yoe employee, because people are expected to grow. Nobody hires a junior dev because they want a junior dev for 20 years. They hire a junior because they think the person has potential to grow into a senior dev over time.
Over 20 years, you've not demonstrated that growth, and so it makes more sense for a prospective employer to assume that lack of growth will continue. Compare to a junior dev who can bring the same productivity today, but could rise to the level of principal or staff over the long term.
For the record, I would bet that this picture doesn't match reality. My guess is that you've developed knowledge and skills that would make you much more valuable than you might think. But, you are expected to demonstrate them and use them on the job. Good luck!
Over 20 years, you've not demonstrated that growth, and so it makes more sense for a prospective employer to assume that lack of growth will continue. Compare to a junior dev who can bring the same productivity today, but could rise to the level of principal or staff over the long term.
For the record, I would bet that this picture doesn't match reality. My guess is that you've developed knowledge and skills that would make you much more valuable than you might think. But, you are expected to demonstrate them and use them on the job. Good luck!
I kinda agree, but as its common for people to change jobs every year or 3 I'm not convinced employers really look for people to develop.
Do you need to divulge your whole work experience? You can just share the last 5-10 years ( most relevant), and then you wouldn't be put up for jobs you don't feel up to.
I’d like advice on how to tackle this as well.
I think there’s a large correlation in the 0-3 years window. I agree there’s almost none in the 12-15 years window.
Amusingly to me, I think the opposite.
That’s fascinating to me. I’d love to chat more deeply about that, but I can’t see a way to get at the essence of the difference in an HN thread.
I tend toward your side of things. In your first 0-n years of experience, you're growing extremely quickly (hopefully). You're working with a lot of new tech, new people, if n is greater than 4 or 5, hopefully at least two companies if not three. But by the time you have n-teen years of experience, it's much more like you've been repeating the same year of experience over and over again.
Growth, especially if you have a decade of experience (and not one year ten times), is hard. I think especially at the upper end it takes dedicated effort.
Growth, especially if you have a decade of experience (and not one year ten times), is hard. I think especially at the upper end it takes dedicated effort.
About 15 years into my career here.
I stopped learning programming skills on the job about 7 years ago.
Today, Im still learning new languages, frameworks and libraries.
I'm also still growing in regards to,
Management skills, project skill, leadership skills, self time management, effective habits, not to mention work life balance things as my life now requires it.
I stopped learning programming skills on the job about 7 years ago.
Today, Im still learning new languages, frameworks and libraries.
I'm also still growing in regards to,
Management skills, project skill, leadership skills, self time management, effective habits, not to mention work life balance things as my life now requires it.
One thing I have noticed is that (prior to the pandemic) new positions in my geographic area were almost always limited to the kind of roles that could be successfully handled by programmers with 3-5 years of experience. There simply weren't many higher-level roles available.
I'm in a standard tech area outside of Silicon Valley - plenty of standard enterprise Java jobs with a slightly smaller number of C# positions. My experience here has been that I seem to be able to make lateral moves into similar jobs that don't particularly offer more technical or career growth.
This relates back to your original comment about not seeing correlation to gains in output and skill versus experience in years 12-15 for working engineers. Most job roles in my area simply don't require more output or skill than a software developer gains in those first 3-5 years.
I would guess that for people who do observed a significant correlation in growth in output and skill over those longer years of experience are biased by seeing engineers who were in positions that required growth in output and skill.
Another weird effect (at least in my group - which tends to have long tenured employees - I've been here 12 years) is that I see engineers get stuck in specific responsibilities centered around institutional knowledge. For example, being the devops type for three legacy systems that will exist forever. If a new need comes up, my group seems to prefer hiring a totally new person to own that new project. We have actually lost a couple of employees who (rightly) were frustrated by not being able to get off of legacy support projects. These are the programmers with 20 years of experience but really have that initial 3-5 years plus the same year of experience * 15.
In my case, I had personal reasons for staying in the area and have had to manage my own tech growth. Typically by side study and programming. Some of this has led to new work in the day job but I realize I traded career growth that I would have very much enjoyed for stability. I have also have enjoyed a tremendous amount of flexibility, some autonomy in choosing dev stacks, and collaborating with medical researchers.
I'm in a standard tech area outside of Silicon Valley - plenty of standard enterprise Java jobs with a slightly smaller number of C# positions. My experience here has been that I seem to be able to make lateral moves into similar jobs that don't particularly offer more technical or career growth.
This relates back to your original comment about not seeing correlation to gains in output and skill versus experience in years 12-15 for working engineers. Most job roles in my area simply don't require more output or skill than a software developer gains in those first 3-5 years.
I would guess that for people who do observed a significant correlation in growth in output and skill over those longer years of experience are biased by seeing engineers who were in positions that required growth in output and skill.
Another weird effect (at least in my group - which tends to have long tenured employees - I've been here 12 years) is that I see engineers get stuck in specific responsibilities centered around institutional knowledge. For example, being the devops type for three legacy systems that will exist forever. If a new need comes up, my group seems to prefer hiring a totally new person to own that new project. We have actually lost a couple of employees who (rightly) were frustrated by not being able to get off of legacy support projects. These are the programmers with 20 years of experience but really have that initial 3-5 years plus the same year of experience * 15.
In my case, I had personal reasons for staying in the area and have had to manage my own tech growth. Typically by side study and programming. Some of this has led to new work in the day job but I realize I traded career growth that I would have very much enjoyed for stability. I have also have enjoyed a tremendous amount of flexibility, some autonomy in choosing dev stacks, and collaborating with medical researchers.
I just want to say I'm impressed by your intellectual generosity here!
On the other hand, significant merit raises (over 3%) are mostly a thing of the past. Workers that gradually improve at their job are paid less and less each year.
If you increase pay regularly on a semi-fixed schedule, you at least solve this problem and improve your employee retention.
If you increase pay regularly on a semi-fixed schedule, you at least solve this problem and improve your employee retention.
They address this in the article by saying it is "relevant" experience. They've given themselves some wiggle room there and I'm assuming they will trust their hiring practices to make sure they don't hire someone with 10 1 year experiences.
I’m more referring to the culture this would create. If I’m at L3 the only thing I can do to get to L4 is… wait two years. Why would I do anything but the bare minimum to hit that tenure benchmark? More importantly, why would I stick around and wait?
Coasting can be compensated for by a "we're expecting you to be productive or we'll help you move on with our thanks & good will" policy. Make it easy for managers to fire and replace at market levels.
What metrics would you use to evaluate performance? I know what I would do, but I don’t use tenure to determine pay.
If the company has some metrics they’re using to evaluate performance for the purposes of moving on from low performers… why not just use those metrics to move people up/down instead of years of tenure?
If the company has some metrics they’re using to evaluate performance for the purposes of moving on from low performers… why not just use those metrics to move people up/down instead of years of tenure?
For "individual contributors" that breaks in a way that seems obvious, but managers deal in unmeasurable fuzziness almost by definition (since humans are complicated and they're in the business of humans), and there's significant pressure to become a manager after a few years.
It’s really the opposite. You hire people at a discount and give the 3-7% raises within a band. It’s a forward process that incentivizes performance.
I find it funny that people in tech get squirrely over annual raises, but don’t have a problem with multi-year vesting schedules with massive payouts.
I find it funny that people in tech get squirrely over annual raises, but don’t have a problem with multi-year vesting schedules with massive payouts.
The OP did not say that they were basing salary on years of experience, but that they were using "years of relevant experience". That is a big difference, and relevant experience is a pretty arbitrary measure.
Experience is relative here. While I agree, there should be an adjustment that captures something like "years of performance", but its harder to quantify.
> Not being able to pay enough for great candidates is a common problem for startups, and we’ve already had to accept that some very strong potential teammates won’t even consider us, given enormous salaries at established tech companies. But by doing the legwork to make sure we’re competitive within our cohort, we believe we’ll have enough great candidates who want to work at a company of our stage and size.
Recruiters and managers out there: I read "competitive" compensation as somewhere around median compensation. That will be attractive to undercompensated employees and employees in their early careers. It's hard to get good candidates to leave current roles without some sort of pay bump (20%, say?) unless there's some sort of serious dysfunction or mismatch with their current employers.
Daily's plan is to shoot for median-ish compensation and get "enough great candidates" to reach the next phase of growth. I'm glad they're planning on revisiting in a year or so, though it's easy to kid yourself. Especially when you're taking what current employees are willing to tell you as proof positive. For one, selection bias is certainly happening. Also, in my experience, people tell you what you want to hear. Daily employees that are significantly unhappy with compensation are a bad fit for Daily now given the blanket compensation policy. The best way to address that is to discretely look for other offers.
Recruiters and managers out there: I read "competitive" compensation as somewhere around median compensation. That will be attractive to undercompensated employees and employees in their early careers. It's hard to get good candidates to leave current roles without some sort of pay bump (20%, say?) unless there's some sort of serious dysfunction or mismatch with their current employers.
Daily's plan is to shoot for median-ish compensation and get "enough great candidates" to reach the next phase of growth. I'm glad they're planning on revisiting in a year or so, though it's easy to kid yourself. Especially when you're taking what current employees are willing to tell you as proof positive. For one, selection bias is certainly happening. Also, in my experience, people tell you what you want to hear. Daily employees that are significantly unhappy with compensation are a bad fit for Daily now given the blanket compensation policy. The best way to address that is to discretely look for other offers.
My career path was 10 years in journalism, during which I was also programming as part of my responsibilities, and now 11 years in full-time software development.
Under Daily's levels system, I'd have 11 years of "direct" experience and 5 years of "indirect" experience, for a total of 16 years of experience, putting me in their highest band (Level 7) with a salary of $270K.
But as I've told every employer who's hired me since leaving journalism, and particularly as I've transitioned from an IC to a manager, those years of experience in journalism were invaluable. I learned how to ask the right questions; how to handle the stress of always being on deadline; how to be a generalist, quickly learning enough about a subject that you can clearly explain it to others; how to communicate effectively in general; and many other skills that are absolutely relevant today.
Obviously, it wouldn't matter for this banding whether those years are treated as "indirect" or "direct" experience -- I'd be in Level 7 either way -- but I could see it matter for others.
Full disclosure: I applied to Daily last year but they ended up filling the position with an internal candidate.
Under Daily's levels system, I'd have 11 years of "direct" experience and 5 years of "indirect" experience, for a total of 16 years of experience, putting me in their highest band (Level 7) with a salary of $270K.
But as I've told every employer who's hired me since leaving journalism, and particularly as I've transitioned from an IC to a manager, those years of experience in journalism were invaluable. I learned how to ask the right questions; how to handle the stress of always being on deadline; how to be a generalist, quickly learning enough about a subject that you can clearly explain it to others; how to communicate effectively in general; and many other skills that are absolutely relevant today.
Obviously, it wouldn't matter for this banding whether those years are treated as "indirect" or "direct" experience -- I'd be in Level 7 either way -- but I could see it matter for others.
Full disclosure: I applied to Daily last year but they ended up filling the position with an internal candidate.
Yes, the years of experience metric greatly underestimates the value brought by rare synergies.
I'm a decent programmer/developer, but that isn't my primary worth to a company. My primary worth to a company is that I'm a competent developer with additional specializations in both high-level research and media relations/communications.
I'm a decent programmer/developer, but that isn't my primary worth to a company. My primary worth to a company is that I'm a competent developer with additional specializations in both high-level research and media relations/communications.
There’s a huge loyalty tax being paid here. Although the transparency is nice to have, it’s simply not a sustainable model.
People grow at all sorts of rates professionally. Some people can grow from a formal level to another in a year as they get a hang for their responsibilities/job. Some people have extremely hard years due to external factors too. This type of system incentivizes nobody. Why work hard? Why do challenging stuff? Why take on the jobs with most responsibilities? Etc
> In the coming months, we aim to develop written guidance on what career growth looks like for different roles, and we'll start experimenting with rewards and recognition other than salary for particularly noteworthy achievements.
How do you reward or give recognition if your system isn’t fully thought through or based on the traditional methods of perceived impact and notable accomplishment? Isn’t that exactly what this would be anyway?
Honestly this sounds like a startup who just landed recent funding thinks they are “disrupting” the market with new unconventional TC methods. Not everyone is the same. One person with ten years of experience is another persons four years.
What fairness is to me is understanding where you sit relative to your peers and market. It is checks and balances of your worth and not political players reaping the rewards constantly. It’s the whole idea that there’s three types of workers: experts, operators, and politicians. The former two actually do the work, the latter just takes the credit more visibly.
People grow at all sorts of rates professionally. Some people can grow from a formal level to another in a year as they get a hang for their responsibilities/job. Some people have extremely hard years due to external factors too. This type of system incentivizes nobody. Why work hard? Why do challenging stuff? Why take on the jobs with most responsibilities? Etc
> In the coming months, we aim to develop written guidance on what career growth looks like for different roles, and we'll start experimenting with rewards and recognition other than salary for particularly noteworthy achievements.
How do you reward or give recognition if your system isn’t fully thought through or based on the traditional methods of perceived impact and notable accomplishment? Isn’t that exactly what this would be anyway?
Honestly this sounds like a startup who just landed recent funding thinks they are “disrupting” the market with new unconventional TC methods. Not everyone is the same. One person with ten years of experience is another persons four years.
What fairness is to me is understanding where you sit relative to your peers and market. It is checks and balances of your worth and not political players reaping the rewards constantly. It’s the whole idea that there’s three types of workers: experts, operators, and politicians. The former two actually do the work, the latter just takes the credit more visibly.
This is topical but your comment reminded me of Deming’s New Economics.
Rewards in a system with intrinsic variance are harmful and unjust.
Rewards in a system with intrinsic variance are harmful and unjust.
Yep, everyone needs to work together so everyone can win.
This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does.
But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out.
If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “should” today and inevitably will be the highest paid people possibly excepting the best salesperson.
If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring.
COVID/WFH only turbocharges this: tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom.
It’s going to be a painful, but ultimately necessary transition where everyone whose math stopped at calc has their TC stop at 150-200k, and that money/seniority/prestige goes to the only truly irreplaceable people, again with the notable exception of the sales guy.
But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out.
If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “should” today and inevitably will be the highest paid people possibly excepting the best salesperson.
If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring.
COVID/WFH only turbocharges this: tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom.
It’s going to be a painful, but ultimately necessary transition where everyone whose math stopped at calc has their TC stop at 150-200k, and that money/seniority/prestige goes to the only truly irreplaceable people, again with the notable exception of the sales guy.
> tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom.
Why do you leave out class analysis? This has far more relevance than arguably either height or race.
White working class boys, at least in the UK, are the demographic least likely to go to university.
The story is likely to be the same in other countries. If you're working class, you're not going to be the intake for an MBA.
Why do you leave out class analysis? This has far more relevance than arguably either height or race.
White working class boys, at least in the UK, are the demographic least likely to go to university.
The story is likely to be the same in other countries. If you're working class, you're not going to be the intake for an MBA.
I agree, I was using talk white guy as a shorthand for rich kid with several other attributes.
Being a tall white guy myself I thought it would get me less crucified.
Being a tall white guy myself I thought it would get me less crucified.
That’s incredibly racist.
Me acknowledging that I’m squarely in the demographic that needs to be very aware of how easy it is to attribute success to hard work rather than privilege makes me any kind of prejudiced?
I’ve got the same tribalism firmware as any other homo sapien, and I’ve probably said some xenophobic shit in my life without even realizing it.
But I try hard to make my way on my code rather than being 6’4”, a lean 230 and conventionally handsome, I think that’s a lame way to make a living no matter what it pays, unless one is a professional athlete or a model or something. I’d probably need to tweak my body fat percentage by as much as 10% to have the same superficial stats as an NFL half back, but I’d rather embrace my inner nerd, which feels more natural.
If you want to read about it, we’ll I post under my real name and Chaos Monkeys won a bunch of awards a few years ago.
I’ve got the same tribalism firmware as any other homo sapien, and I’ve probably said some xenophobic shit in my life without even realizing it.
But I try hard to make my way on my code rather than being 6’4”, a lean 230 and conventionally handsome, I think that’s a lame way to make a living no matter what it pays, unless one is a professional athlete or a model or something. I’d probably need to tweak my body fat percentage by as much as 10% to have the same superficial stats as an NFL half back, but I’d rather embrace my inner nerd, which feels more natural.
If you want to read about it, we’ll I post under my real name and Chaos Monkeys won a bunch of awards a few years ago.
Class analysis isn't that relevant in the workspace. At least in the US, your perceived class changes with economics, so there's not much class differential in meetings.
All said, I don't intuitively buy the idea of Zoom radically changing opportunities. At least as a short engineer, I've sensed zero difference, but then again, I never thought of my height as an actual handicap with regard to my job (studies on initial impressions be damned as the initial impression isn't that relevant once you've built up reputation).
All said, I don't intuitively buy the idea of Zoom radically changing opportunities. At least as a short engineer, I've sensed zero difference, but then again, I never thought of my height as an actual handicap with regard to my job (studies on initial impressions be damned as the initial impression isn't that relevant once you've built up reputation).
I work in finance. I have the seen the same situation play out with salespeople. As risk taking at large investment banks has fallen dramatically since 2008 regulatory reforms, the value of sales people has only risen. The "alpha" sales person seems to have no ceiling. Ideally, this sales person is working in a product area that does not increase balance sheet risk... holy moly... they are worth more than weight in gold. They bring big new accounts that trade like crazy, but balance sheet (and risk) does not balloon.
And now to offer a small criticism of your post: I prefer to say "conventionally attractive" over "tall white guys", because that would be more inclusive. Yes, really, I have seen very successful women who present just shy of pornstars-in-real-life and absolutely clean-up by selling to drooling old (dumb) white, male, portfolio managers. The sooner all of this is replaced by passive investment, the better for all customers -- but not big banks(!). After all, as the saying goes: "Where are the customers yachts?"
And now to offer a small criticism of your post: I prefer to say "conventionally attractive" over "tall white guys", because that would be more inclusive. Yes, really, I have seen very successful women who present just shy of pornstars-in-real-life and absolutely clean-up by selling to drooling old (dumb) white, male, portfolio managers. The sooner all of this is replaced by passive investment, the better for all customers -- but not big banks(!). After all, as the saying goes: "Where are the customers yachts?"
I can’t find any fault with your post, I think any confusion is due to an error in judgement on my part that dissing my own demographic as a euphemism for people who, uh, historically got more recognition for less work was a reasonably diplomatic thing to do.
Silver lining: your comment added insight to the conversation even if it was a response to clumsiness on my part.
Silver lining: your comment added insight to the conversation even if it was a response to clumsiness on my part.
If you truly believe this, then please reconsider. The tech industry doesn't reward people for technically challenging work. Consider how many large companies were/are built on what you'd consider to be terrible technology choices.
Don't expect an "ultimately necessary transition" because it'll likely go in the opposite direction.
Don't expect an "ultimately necessary transition" because it'll likely go in the opposite direction.
Please reconsider because I’ll do myself a disservice? Or please reconsider because I won’t take 1% of the marginal revenue I generate and we can’t have that kind of thinking going around?
Reconsider because you'll do yourself a disservice by expecting the world to work that way. You don't want to be surprised and upset when your employer rewards someone for introducing more bureaucracy instead of some technically challenging work you delivered.
How about I worry about whether or not my haphazardly self-medicated anxiety disorder keeps me around the p90 in comp in a bad/typical year instead of the p99 when I have my shit together, and you worry about whether or not the wage fixing scandal with the big lawsuit involving all the big names might be an example of structural suppression of engineer wages?
> COVID/WFH only turbocharges this: tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom.
Being tall probably matters less, sure.
I do find that ability to communicate in writing with English-speaking audiences is much more important than it used to be. Technical communication and persuasion that used to happen in hallways and on whiteboards is now happening in discussion threads, written code reviews, design papers, etc. In some cases, I expect people that some people that used to struggle now benefit from the ability to communicate more deliberately or without a verbal accent.
I don't know that white versus non-white maps to excellent writing skills as such. Partly because I'm never sure what folks mean by "white" in these contexts.
Being tall probably matters less, sure.
I do find that ability to communicate in writing with English-speaking audiences is much more important than it used to be. Technical communication and persuasion that used to happen in hallways and on whiteboards is now happening in discussion threads, written code reviews, design papers, etc. In some cases, I expect people that some people that used to struggle now benefit from the ability to communicate more deliberately or without a verbal accent.
I don't know that white versus non-white maps to excellent writing skills as such. Partly because I'm never sure what folks mean by "white" in these contexts.
Yeah, I’m personally a bit conflicted that English, especially written English is such a key skill. I once spoke a little French, and enjoyed it immensely, but there’s no money in it so it atrophied almost out of existence.
Mandarin seems to be a pretty credible candidate for a “must know” business language, but even there that’s climbing up hill at least a little.
Mandarin seems to be a pretty credible candidate for a “must know” business language, but even there that’s climbing up hill at least a little.
Why are you conflicted about this? There has to be a lingua franca for business, the internet, etc. (not necessarily the same language). Historically speaking, it makes sense how English would bubble up as this language. Why should that cause guilt or conflict?
Oh I just mean it doesn’t seem “fair” that other people have to work hard to be understood in the lingua franca, and I grew up in a household where it was spoken. Opinions will differ on whether I can construct a pleasant sentence from an aesthetic point of view, but I got “this line of code looks to be where the big is” for “free”.
It's not just sales, it's figuring what to sell, and when to pivot. It's all well to have a solid tech stack but the market changes and companies need to see changes coming and adapt. Having the most optimized compiler isn't going to help if you're trying to sell something nobody wants.
Even tech companies don't just depend on elite programmers plus an exceptional sales guy. You need good design, good customer service, good marketing, and so on. Yes, there's a lot of bullshit in those fields (not that programming is free of it), but there's real value there too when executed correctly.
Even tech companies don't just depend on elite programmers plus an exceptional sales guy. You need good design, good customer service, good marketing, and so on. Yes, there's a lot of bullshit in those fields (not that programming is free of it), but there's real value there too when executed correctly.
> If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring.
Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.
Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.
On the other hand, increasing performance by 0.5% at their scale is big savings. Certain kinds of optimizations can save over 10% in runtime performance, easily. That means less compute, less engineering time spent optimizing with other approaches, snappier performance compared to the competition, and so on.
Yeah, pay the "business" person better who decided, wisely, to fund these kinds of projects. But in my experience, it's a lot easier to find a strategic thinker who can understand my previous paragraph than it is to find an engineer who can accomplish it. It's especially hard to find engineers who can see that opportunity, explain it well enough to get funded, and bootstrap the project until it shows enough promise to justify itself.
You're not wrong, though, that network effects and so on are a much bigger determinant in competitive advantage at a large scale. But "business strategies" can and do include ideas like "don't buy extra data centers".
Yeah, pay the "business" person better who decided, wisely, to fund these kinds of projects. But in my experience, it's a lot easier to find a strategic thinker who can understand my previous paragraph than it is to find an engineer who can accomplish it. It's especially hard to find engineers who can see that opportunity, explain it well enough to get funded, and bootstrap the project until it shows enough promise to justify itself.
You're not wrong, though, that network effects and so on are a much bigger determinant in competitive advantage at a large scale. But "business strategies" can and do include ideas like "don't buy extra data centers".
1% on HHVM is a number I can’t say more about than no one would believe it.
Compilers are why we can write in C++ instead of assembly. The related fields of interpreters and language runtimes are why we can write in Python.
The optimising part makes languages that are faster to develop in run fast enough that they can actually be used to build useful things.
Bugs introduced in that stack are horrendous to run down, easy to introduce and broad in fallout.
Rather a lot of our modern tech world is built on compilers. It's a great example of where compromising on engineering capability scatters costs and breakage all the way through the system.
The optimising part makes languages that are faster to develop in run fast enough that they can actually be used to build useful things.
Bugs introduced in that stack are horrendous to run down, easy to introduce and broad in fallout.
Rather a lot of our modern tech world is built on compilers. It's a great example of where compromising on engineering capability scatters costs and breakage all the way through the system.
While you are not wrong, it isn't the full picture. For most projects we don't need more language/compiler performance. Most web sights are served with a handful of servers, likely shared servers on AWS or something (so that you can get full data center failure redundancy - which is probably overkill). The total cost to run the servers isn't all that much on the bottom line and so you shouldn't pay more for compiler optimization.
Of course google, facebook, and other large companies should be paying for optimization as it will pay off, but the vast majority of systems don't run at that scale. For most optimization is about ensuring response time is acceptable, and that is generally more about optimizing your code not your compiler.
Of course google, facebook, and other large companies should be paying for optimization as it will pay off, but the vast majority of systems don't run at that scale. For most optimization is about ensuring response time is acceptable, and that is generally more about optimizing your code not your compiler.
Its not even that you’re wrong in any meaningful way that makes this endlessly looping class of argument get under my skin.
I think it’s maybe more like: we need an HN where it’s unanimous that the computer side of optimization is life-and-death, and an HN where winning and losing is about other things, any language or database or algorithm is fine: we’re playing a different game that pays off just as much if not more.
People routinely make more money than they can carry on like node.js or whatever, it’s not a “better”/“worse” thing. But some people are looking for edge on gritty nuts and bolts of computing stuff, and some people are laughing all the way to the bank on this whole other category of thing that I can’t even do justice to in summary.
Trying to weld together an unspoken (except by idiots like me) consensus on how to stack rank these very different activities just seems to piss everyone off.
I think it’s maybe more like: we need an HN where it’s unanimous that the computer side of optimization is life-and-death, and an HN where winning and losing is about other things, any language or database or algorithm is fine: we’re playing a different game that pays off just as much if not more.
People routinely make more money than they can carry on like node.js or whatever, it’s not a “better”/“worse” thing. But some people are looking for edge on gritty nuts and bolts of computing stuff, and some people are laughing all the way to the bank on this whole other category of thing that I can’t even do justice to in summary.
Trying to weld together an unspoken (except by idiots like me) consensus on how to stack rank these very different activities just seems to piss everyone off.
This only works because you already have access to an optimising compiler and high level language implementations, likely both available for free, because other people and organisations have already paid for them to exist.
Nobody said they're not important.
Try building FB or Google without technology, and then you come back and say that the business strategy is all you need.
Sure but that isn't what I said. Big data, cloud services smart tech people definitely needs to be paid as much as the smart business people. Compilers, meh.
You’ve got a point, which is that kickass compiler people often love PL so much that they’ll do it at a deep discount.
I’ve found this on average to more true of “niche” languages: Julia, Haskell, etc.
C++ compiler people much less often fuck around on their comp.
In my experience.
I’ve found this on average to more true of “niche” languages: Julia, Haskell, etc.
C++ compiler people much less often fuck around on their comp.
In my experience.
To the GP, not the parent (who is dead on), can I watch?
I agree that there are better examples than LLVM optimization paths. I was making a lame joke about the Mozilla open source documentary: not your bad it was so obscure.
Everything is math now. Google et al played a this-far successful strategy where they made the “know your shit” engineer TC 1MM so the hackers wouldn’t rebel and take the whole cake, like they could.
Everything is math now. Google et al played a this-far successful strategy where they made the “know your shit” engineer TC 1MM so the hackers wouldn’t rebel and take the whole cake, like they could.
You may be right about many things you said, but this comes off as though you've got a complex about something.
I’ll extend you the benefit of the doubt and assume your intention is to be helpful.
Can you be a little more specific and thus potentially actionable?
Can you be a little more specific and thus potentially actionable?
I'm just a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude. But I'll give it a shot.
You come off as having an inflated sense of the value you provide while being very bitter that you're not recognized for it. You seem to project the meritocracy playing out in your head on the "inevitable future."
The work you do is no doubt challenging and you seem to find it very rewarding in and of itself. There are presumably few people that choose to do this work, but you need to keep in mind that does not mean there aren't lots of people capable of doing it.
You come off as having an inflated sense of the value you provide while being very bitter that you're not recognized for it. You seem to project the meritocracy playing out in your head on the "inevitable future."
The work you do is no doubt challenging and you seem to find it very rewarding in and of itself. There are presumably few people that choose to do this work, but you need to keep in mind that does not mean there aren't lots of people capable of doing it.
I mean, if anything I’ve spent more lonely nights with a bottle of Four Roses and some depressing existentialist book on a high rise tower balcony over not finding happiness in absurd pay than for any other reason.
Being overpaid even by the standards of what I outlined in the post tends to provoke a little guilt, in me at least.
Finding no joy in it whatsoever was legitimately depressing. Tyler Durden: “What now dad? I’ve got the degree/job/whatever, what comes next?”
Can’t buy that answer with RSUs. Or at least I never figured out how.
But yeah, the heavy duty hackers / mathematicians, who I am not one of! Are going to fuck everyone else up.
Being overpaid even by the standards of what I outlined in the post tends to provoke a little guilt, in me at least.
Finding no joy in it whatsoever was legitimately depressing. Tyler Durden: “What now dad? I’ve got the degree/job/whatever, what comes next?”
Can’t buy that answer with RSUs. Or at least I never figured out how.
But yeah, the heavy duty hackers / mathematicians, who I am not one of! Are going to fuck everyone else up.
Unfortunately, I have neither the proper information nor interest to dig into that specifically. My best recommendation is to look into why I might have said that, and decide if you care at all what I thought. If so, take actions to change what things that you have a desire to change.
Maybe keep it to yourself if the game plan is to half-ass psychoanalyze someone and then bail when asked a follow up question?
Just because it's obvious to many that you need therapy doesn't mean that any who notice are capable or willing to give it.
If it’s not obvious to anyone from the recently deceased kid brother thing that therapy is indicated, I’d be curious how.
I’ve been getting therapy since way before that happened, most people could probably benefit from a little mental health checkup now and again.
What did I do to get your knickers so twisted that you’re banging on a recently-bereaved guy with thus far zero productive suggestions?
I’ve been getting therapy since way before that happened, most people could probably benefit from a little mental health checkup now and again.
What did I do to get your knickers so twisted that you’re banging on a recently-bereaved guy with thus far zero productive suggestions?
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm not trying to hammer on you for that. I hope you feel better soon.
That’s big of you. Thank you. We all lean on one another to make the community more positive when someone else is starting to fail at civility.
In that comment you were the person who sent things in a better direction. No sarcasm whatsoever: my regards friend.
In that comment you were the person who sent things in a better direction. No sarcasm whatsoever: my regards friend.
I mean, I’m a little edgy about a fairly recent bereavement, but if that’s filtering into my opinions about comp structure then I’m probably pretty bad at my job, and therefore my opinions will trend towards utter irrelevance.
You have never applied math above Calc in your life. Just admit it here. It will be good for your soul.
Almost all my math is from MIT OCW on YouTube and a bit of 3blue1brown.
I don’t think there’s any shame in that.
What’s your PhD in?
I don’t think there’s any shame in that.
What’s your PhD in?
My Bachelors is in finance and stats. I do hope that makes you feel better.
I’m going to apologize in advance, a little bit to you, but mostly to the community, for what I’m about to say. I still get like this with some frequency, but it’s less and less and that’s on purpose.
I think for a guy who had negligible exposure to literacy, let alone math, I’ve realized a substantial fraction of my mathematical potential. We could split hairs about which parts of the CUDA CNN stack I wrote in PyTorch or which convex optimizations I did that turned up about 700MM/year recurring for Instagram’s shareholders, but that’s kind of missing the point that whoever handed you any kind of document that makes you part of the broader enterprise of knowledge, and curiosity, and rigor fucked up badly.
I’m still an advocate for the idea that there should be universities, and that whatever fraction of the millions of dollars I’ve paid in taxes go to them, but I sincerely hope that you’re as much of an outlier as I think as to why I should stop paying for the part of that I do.
Now here’s the olive branch: I’m a contrarian and often cranky/negative person myself, and if you’re actually hot shit an financial mathematics, well I need to hire about three of those people, and I’ve got a soft spot for cranky contrarians.
Come do a month or two of contract-to-hire for any plausible wage and show me that you can back it up. Or go fuck yourself. That’s as productive of a reply that I’ve got in me right now.
I think for a guy who had negligible exposure to literacy, let alone math, I’ve realized a substantial fraction of my mathematical potential. We could split hairs about which parts of the CUDA CNN stack I wrote in PyTorch or which convex optimizations I did that turned up about 700MM/year recurring for Instagram’s shareholders, but that’s kind of missing the point that whoever handed you any kind of document that makes you part of the broader enterprise of knowledge, and curiosity, and rigor fucked up badly.
I’m still an advocate for the idea that there should be universities, and that whatever fraction of the millions of dollars I’ve paid in taxes go to them, but I sincerely hope that you’re as much of an outlier as I think as to why I should stop paying for the part of that I do.
Now here’s the olive branch: I’m a contrarian and often cranky/negative person myself, and if you’re actually hot shit an financial mathematics, well I need to hire about three of those people, and I’ve got a soft spot for cranky contrarians.
Come do a month or two of contract-to-hire for any plausible wage and show me that you can back it up. Or go fuck yourself. That’s as productive of a reply that I’ve got in me right now.
> But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out.
I think you have some unresolved emotions regarding the "nerd/jock thing".
I think you have some unresolved emotions regarding the "nerd/jock thing".
I just did the vouch that got you unflagged enough that I can comment. It’s a pissy remark, but I’ve done plenty of that myself, and frankly you’re not completely wrong.
Ive got my knickers a bit twisted that looking like a jock seems to produce more recognition than actually being a nerd. And if I feel like my accomplishments kind of sit in the shadow of my appearance or demographics or whatever, it must be 100x worse for some people, which sucks ass and is kinda depressing.
Code should talk, and bullshit should walk.
Ive got my knickers a bit twisted that looking like a jock seems to produce more recognition than actually being a nerd. And if I feel like my accomplishments kind of sit in the shadow of my appearance or demographics or whatever, it must be 100x worse for some people, which sucks ass and is kinda depressing.
Code should talk, and bullshit should walk.
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> We start counting years after formal schooling (high school or college). Grad school often counts as indirect experience.
As someone who worked in software development during High School, and took time off before University to work in software, this somewhat frustrates me.
Alyssa Rosenzweig has 0 years of experience under this model.
As someone who worked in software development during High School, and took time off before University to work in software, this somewhat frustrates me.
Alyssa Rosenzweig has 0 years of experience under this model.
Me too. I never left school. I shipped my first commercial product in 1978 at the age of 11, launched my first company at age 14, and sold my first company at age 19.
Here I am 44 years later with zero years of experience because I keep adding more years of college and university. I am not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but I found college "easy" because I had years of professional discipline meeting deadlines.
This idea of counting experience only after you left college is absolute nonsense.
And too add, I never actually graduated from the UK equivalent of high school, which drives HR people nuts, especially when they find out that the CTO of the company they are acquiring is a high school dropout.
Here I am 44 years later with zero years of experience because I keep adding more years of college and university. I am not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but I found college "easy" because I had years of professional discipline meeting deadlines.
This idea of counting experience only after you left college is absolute nonsense.
And too add, I never actually graduated from the UK equivalent of high school, which drives HR people nuts, especially when they find out that the CTO of the company they are acquiring is a high school dropout.
May you continue to work until you no longer want to, create on your own terms, and drive as many HR people nuts as possible!
I have never worked a day in my life. I get paid generous amounts of money to play.
Yeah, I was a bit frustrated with this as well. I was somewhat down-leveled right after finishing my PhD because a lot of employers didn't consider it experience, even though I did high performance computing work with projects that had multiple stakeholders. Honestly, I was more technically savvy then than I am now 4 years into working at a large tech company.
>Honestly, I was more technically savvy then than I am now 4 years into working at a large tech company.
The usual reason I see for down leveling is because being technically savvy is not what companies actually look for. I'm talking most jobs rather than being in an R&D division that is PhD heavy.
* Understanding the modern SDLC in a corporate environment and best practices. Academia often doesn't do things in a way that would be considered good production practices outside of it. Both from a process and a technical (CICD, heavy testing, layered frameworks, etc.) point of view.
* The culture of academia differs from corporate which means that while you gain soft skills they are biased versus what you'd get in a corporate environment. That can have subtle or not so subtle impact on decision making.
The usual reason I see for down leveling is because being technically savvy is not what companies actually look for. I'm talking most jobs rather than being in an R&D division that is PhD heavy.
* Understanding the modern SDLC in a corporate environment and best practices. Academia often doesn't do things in a way that would be considered good production practices outside of it. Both from a process and a technical (CICD, heavy testing, layered frameworks, etc.) point of view.
* The culture of academia differs from corporate which means that while you gain soft skills they are biased versus what you'd get in a corporate environment. That can have subtle or not so subtle impact on decision making.
Yup. I started web development when I was 5. There's a lot of very good, important things that you won't learn working as a kid (conflict resolution, dealing with bad business requests/requirements, etc), but at the same time, it's not like that experience is completely inapplicable either. If nothing else, 29 years of perspective on how web development has evolved and developer discussions means I have a radically different perspective than an 18 year old who decided to start learning to code last year.
Strongly agree. In some countries (for example, most of Eastern Europe), formal CS education is compatible with a full-time developer job during masters and even the last years of bachelor's studies.
Therefore, some highly motivated guys can get 2-4 years of production experience upon graduation. Paying them a minimum wage is a great idea to distract talents!
From the article:
> Direct experience in our rubric means substantially the same kind of work (coding, design, product management, etc.)
This is a recipe for finding people without "n" years of experience, but instead finding people with one year of experience repeated "n" times. Great if you need a specialist in something, tragic if you need generalists - which most startups do.
> Direct experience in our rubric means substantially the same kind of work (coding, design, product management, etc.)
This is a recipe for finding people without "n" years of experience, but instead finding people with one year of experience repeated "n" times. Great if you need a specialist in something, tragic if you need generalists - which most startups do.
Having founded and worked at quite a few start-ups, start-ups should aim for one specialist for every half-dozen generalists, preferably even lower than that. It's not a hard and fast rule, and pretty flexible, but if you have a single generalist and lots of specialists in a start-up, you are in trouble.
I’ve worked with plenty of people with “bad experience”. People who don’t learn from their mistakes, and consistently repeat the same errors, even things as basic as not testing their code before creating PRs.
I guess this model works if you identify and fire those people early, but in general, this seems like a great way to retain proven career underperformers.
I guess this model works if you identify and fire those people early, but in general, this seems like a great way to retain proven career underperformers.
On one hand, this is pretty nice. I've always hated the career management aspect of working in the software industry, and so to have it so transparent and approachable makes a ton of sense so you can focus on doing work.
However, my big question is how expectations and performance management scale with level? If someone's not there yet, but hits the years of experience for the next level, are they fired? Likewise, whose responsibility is it for people to get those skills by the time they age into the next promotion?
Quick edit: Also wanted to call out how well written this post is. It lays out the facts, peoples objections, unknowns, and anticipates questions (salespeople remain on variable comp, equity isn't being addressed yet). So kudos to the author for the great writing on this thoughtful piece.
However, my big question is how expectations and performance management scale with level? If someone's not there yet, but hits the years of experience for the next level, are they fired? Likewise, whose responsibility is it for people to get those skills by the time they age into the next promotion?
Quick edit: Also wanted to call out how well written this post is. It lays out the facts, peoples objections, unknowns, and anticipates questions (salespeople remain on variable comp, equity isn't being addressed yet). So kudos to the author for the great writing on this thoughtful piece.
I like the transparency and fairness. I dislike that it rewards time rather than merit and will likely discourage people from developing expertise away from their core skillset as there could be an argument that their experience in that area isn't relevant, or that their relevant experience in this area is so small.
Salary based on your "experience" as measured by the number of years you survived sitting by the computer.
This is absolutely, fucking dumbest idea I ever heard.
Say you have two engineers that both have 10 years of experience, one is barely scraping by and one is working his ass off and significant contributor to the team.
They earn the same money and, more importantly, they both know it. And the team knows it. And the manager knows it.
Can you guess which one will feel treated unfairly and will start looking for a new job?
Imagine a good employee comes to you and says she is going to leave because she has been offered better salary somewhere else.
You have now only two choices:
1) break the commitment you made to entire company,
2) let her go.
You can also decide to promote her, but management is really a different job and you lost your team member anyway.
Over time your business will accumulate people who just barely passed your recruitment process and are just barely competent to avoid being let go.
If you think you will keep the better one just because you say some nice words and give them recognition token, guess again.
Let me explain what this means: it promotes people who sit idly by the computer (because they gain regardless of their involvement) and punishes people who actually give a shit and who try hard being better every day.
It punishes your business HARD. In most businesses, most progress is being done by small minority of employees. And now you are leaving gates open and saying you are not going to even try to keep them doing good job.
This is absolutely, fucking dumbest idea I ever heard.
Say you have two engineers that both have 10 years of experience, one is barely scraping by and one is working his ass off and significant contributor to the team.
They earn the same money and, more importantly, they both know it. And the team knows it. And the manager knows it.
Can you guess which one will feel treated unfairly and will start looking for a new job?
Imagine a good employee comes to you and says she is going to leave because she has been offered better salary somewhere else.
You have now only two choices:
1) break the commitment you made to entire company,
2) let her go.
You can also decide to promote her, but management is really a different job and you lost your team member anyway.
Over time your business will accumulate people who just barely passed your recruitment process and are just barely competent to avoid being let go.
If you think you will keep the better one just because you say some nice words and give them recognition token, guess again.
Let me explain what this means: it promotes people who sit idly by the computer (because they gain regardless of their involvement) and punishes people who actually give a shit and who try hard being better every day.
It punishes your business HARD. In most businesses, most progress is being done by small minority of employees. And now you are leaving gates open and saying you are not going to even try to keep them doing good job.
> Ambitious people like achieving goals.
Like coming in, making the biggest impact they can eg. do a large spectacular redesign, leave for 10% pay jump immediately and never sticking around for that maintenance nightmare that were hidden in the details?
Incentives will always be a tradeoff because you can't measure skill.
Like coming in, making the biggest impact they can eg. do a large spectacular redesign, leave for 10% pay jump immediately and never sticking around for that maintenance nightmare that were hidden in the details?
Incentives will always be a tradeoff because you can't measure skill.
> Incentives will always be a tradeoff because you can't measure skill.
Oh, so because it is hard let's just stop trying?
You can't measure skill accurately. But you can try to find correlations and you can measure other things that are as much or even more important like... erm... results?
Oh, so because it is hard let's just stop trying?
You can't measure skill accurately. But you can try to find correlations and you can measure other things that are as much or even more important like... erm... results?
It's the dead sea effect. All the good people evaporate leaving only the salt.
While I like this promotion system, I think it lacks something like what the military calls "billets". If I'm a principal engineer and I lead two teams of engineers to deliver projects then I should be compensated for my knowledge as a principal engineer, then I should be compensated for the magnitude of responsibility of being a team lead. They are, in fact, two separate things.
"If everyone can get promoted simply by sticking around, managers have to be active in communicating with people who aren’t meeting expectations and helping them improve. Managers also have to be willing to let people go if they don’t show progress."
I appreciate the intent here of making levels more transparent & evenly applied, but in practice this seems to be tying levels/comp to a demographic attribute people have no control over: their age. This makes me feel uncomfortable.
It’s interesting to see these salary levels. A senior developer (10+ years of experience) here in Sweden is paid less than their entry level salary.
The difference in pay between Europe and the US seems huge. I wonder why.
I am disappointed this comment does not receive more comments! I feel the same. From far away, it seems like Berlin is bursting with great technical talent, as well as Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki, yet the salaries are terribly low. (I see you Oslo, but not the same reputation!) Oh hey, please include France. They have such great, underrated technical universities... do amazing comp-sci research... but their commercial software industry is so small!
Some theories:
* High taxes actually means lower gross pay? (I am someone who strongly supports the "social safety net" -- do not read that question as some kind of weirdo libertarian / low-tax promoter.) As a counterpoint, usually high taxes means higher quality of life.
* Or: Labour mobility is higher in US than many high-tax, strong-labour countries in Europe/Japan/Korea/Taiwan. In short: It's easier to hire and and fire in US. As a result, I see massive income inequality in US, but much less in wealthy European countries -- and Japan/Korean/Taiwan.
Another way to think about it: If software engineers are paid 50% of Silicon Valley in Helsinki, then Starbucks baristas are paid 100% higher in Helsinki. (I have no hard references to offer... but my point: Lower skill jobs pay living wages in Northern Europe/Japan/Korea/Taiwan, but less in US.)
Personal question: Would you prefer to live in Sweden with your current wages, or a place with "up 100% wages for you", but much higher income inequality? When you answer, please assume much higher personal crime rates and visible poverty (or working poor).
I live in a place with simply appalling incoming inequality. The visible poverty and working poor are so depressing. I would easily take a 25% pay cut to build more social housing and help the elderly who collect cardboard to retire immediately and play with their grandchildren all day long!
Some theories:
* High taxes actually means lower gross pay? (I am someone who strongly supports the "social safety net" -- do not read that question as some kind of weirdo libertarian / low-tax promoter.) As a counterpoint, usually high taxes means higher quality of life.
* Or: Labour mobility is higher in US than many high-tax, strong-labour countries in Europe/Japan/Korea/Taiwan. In short: It's easier to hire and and fire in US. As a result, I see massive income inequality in US, but much less in wealthy European countries -- and Japan/Korean/Taiwan.
Another way to think about it: If software engineers are paid 50% of Silicon Valley in Helsinki, then Starbucks baristas are paid 100% higher in Helsinki. (I have no hard references to offer... but my point: Lower skill jobs pay living wages in Northern Europe/Japan/Korea/Taiwan, but less in US.)
Personal question: Would you prefer to live in Sweden with your current wages, or a place with "up 100% wages for you", but much higher income inequality? When you answer, please assume much higher personal crime rates and visible poverty (or working poor).
I live in a place with simply appalling incoming inequality. The visible poverty and working poor are so depressing. I would easily take a 25% pay cut to build more social housing and help the elderly who collect cardboard to retire immediately and play with their grandchildren all day long!
The income inequality in the US is not that visible in day-to-day life. A large fraction of the income inequality is a side effect of the scale of US geography. The States with the highest and lowest median incomes are separated by 2x income and 1500 kilometers. It is also worth pointing out that even the poorest US State (Mississippi) still has a median income that is the same as Germany, so "poor" is relative.
Different States have different economies due to geographic locale, history, and specialization. Consequently, the US has States that specialize in agriculture, manufacturing, services, technology, natural resources, etc which have very different economics and compensation structures which is reflected in local incomes.
The median income is much higher in Washington than Mississippi, for example, but that doesn't imply anything about the distribution of income within those States. It would be like comparing incomes between the Netherlands and Romania.
Different States have different economies due to geographic locale, history, and specialization. Consequently, the US has States that specialize in agriculture, manufacturing, services, technology, natural resources, etc which have very different economics and compensation structures which is reflected in local incomes.
The median income is much higher in Washington than Mississippi, for example, but that doesn't imply anything about the distribution of income within those States. It would be like comparing incomes between the Netherlands and Romania.
North East San Francisco vs West Oakland
Closer: San Francisco: Montgomery Street business district vs Tenderloin district
Even closer: Mission District -- Mission and 16th Street. Walk east one block and you reliable find used needles on the street. Walk west two blocks is quickly wealthy.
New York City: Manhattan vs Bronx
Closer: Upper East Side vs East Harlem (125th Street and above)
All of these pair are close and would surprise many by the huge gap in quality of life between both of them.
This one should be like catnip for HN: Palo Alto vs East Palo Alto
Are these close enough for you?
Closer: San Francisco: Montgomery Street business district vs Tenderloin district
Even closer: Mission District -- Mission and 16th Street. Walk east one block and you reliable find used needles on the street. Walk west two blocks is quickly wealthy.
New York City: Manhattan vs Bronx
Closer: Upper East Side vs East Harlem (125th Street and above)
All of these pair are close and would surprise many by the huge gap in quality of life between both of them.
This one should be like catnip for HN: Palo Alto vs East Palo Alto
Are these close enough for you?
It's hard to answer your question without actually experiencing the differences first hand. It's not like we don't have visible poverty in Sweden. Almost every day I see people digging through the public trash bins for bottles and cans that pays a little for recycling and there are beggars in front of the stores and approaching you on the street asking for a money.
There is however a base pension that each senior citizen is entitled to. About 15% of the elderly only gets the minimal amount which in many cases doesn't cover basic expenses, like rent and food, so they need to be on social welfare as well.
But would I accept a 100% salary increase if it meant that social welfare had to be removed and people couldn't afford a place to live and to put food on the table? Of course not. Would I like if people that study hard and get well educated also get well paid jobs? Yes!
There is however a base pension that each senior citizen is entitled to. About 15% of the elderly only gets the minimal amount which in many cases doesn't cover basic expenses, like rent and food, so they need to be on social welfare as well.
But would I accept a 100% salary increase if it meant that social welfare had to be removed and people couldn't afford a place to live and to put food on the table? Of course not. Would I like if people that study hard and get well educated also get well paid jobs? Yes!
Different idea: If you get the chance, take a very high paying job in the United States for a few years. You don't need to stay forever, but you will see with your own eyes... and make a bunch of money. You'll be "richer" in more than one way -- savings account and experience.
I pay some of the highest taxes in the country in exchange for some of the worst highly-visible poverty and most dysfunctional public services. Either would be a huge improvement.
Yes that is something that comes up on hackernews a lot, and I personally still struggle to accept it.
According to the Daily level system I should be in their band 5, so $210K, but in England I am paid less than half their entry level salary (at current exchange rates).
Americans don't have IQ scores, or any other metric to suggest being approximately 4-8 times the quality of other developed countries workers, so it's hard to just take it and accept that their compensation isn't due to their ability (on average), and that life isn't fair.
According to the Daily level system I should be in their band 5, so $210K, but in England I am paid less than half their entry level salary (at current exchange rates).
Americans don't have IQ scores, or any other metric to suggest being approximately 4-8 times the quality of other developed countries workers, so it's hard to just take it and accept that their compensation isn't due to their ability (on average), and that life isn't fair.
I am an American who has worked in Europe for many years at multiple companies, so I feel at least somewhat qualified to give some insight.
Europeans are just as talented technically as Americans, that has never been the issue. As a broad generalization, European business culture is consistently poor at leveraging that talent to generate value, often treating it like factory work. Because American business culture is so efficient and effective at converting engineering talent into revenue, often on the scale of $1M revenue per engineer, they can easily afford to pay the higher wages while still making a fine profit. This has the side effect of making the market for engineering talent extremely competitive.
In short, European technical talent as a resource is often being wasted by poor business practices, which means there is much less money to go around. There is no reason in principle that European engineers could not earn much more in Europe but changing business culture is slow, though some companies are trying.
Europeans are just as talented technically as Americans, that has never been the issue. As a broad generalization, European business culture is consistently poor at leveraging that talent to generate value, often treating it like factory work. Because American business culture is so efficient and effective at converting engineering talent into revenue, often on the scale of $1M revenue per engineer, they can easily afford to pay the higher wages while still making a fine profit. This has the side effect of making the market for engineering talent extremely competitive.
In short, European technical talent as a resource is often being wasted by poor business practices, which means there is much less money to go around. There is no reason in principle that European engineers could not earn much more in Europe but changing business culture is slow, though some companies are trying.
Yes, I am aware that the salary for an entry level employee on the Daily system is more than the total value I bring to my employer per year. I am paid less than half because I already eat up about 60-70%* of the total income I bring to the company.
The ability to earn American style wages, without trying to emigrate, is entirely out of my hands. There isn't anything I can do short of risk homelessness for myself and my family in the attempt to create a better business (which I am incredibly unlikely to be able to do).
* depending on quarter, project, year by year, etc.
The ability to earn American style wages, without trying to emigrate, is entirely out of my hands. There isn't anything I can do short of risk homelessness for myself and my family in the attempt to create a better business (which I am incredibly unlikely to be able to do).
* depending on quarter, project, year by year, etc.
Thanks for this comment. A very interesting observation.
Do you have any thoughts regarding American companies that are established in Europe, shouldn't they be able to introduce that American culture in their European offices?
A very interesting follow-up to an insightful post. I think the answer might lie in why the american business culture is more efficient in the first place.
I believe american business is more fluid, allowing for better arbitrage opportunities that ultimately leads to better arbitrage abilities for its actors.
More law and protection has the same effect as more code: it slows things down because it increases dramatically the amount of requirements you have to contend with. A double edged sword indeed!
I believe american business is more fluid, allowing for better arbitrage opportunities that ultimately leads to better arbitrage abilities for its actors.
More law and protection has the same effect as more code: it slows things down because it increases dramatically the amount of requirements you have to contend with. A double edged sword indeed!
The company I’m with now makes promotions without salary increases. The salary increase comes in the next review cycle when you’ve proven that you can do the job. It seems very unusual to me, has anyone else seen this?
So you get promoted, then have to do that job at a lower salary than the position should get you.
Once you get the raise at the review cycle, is this also back paid for the time you were under paid for the role ?
Once you get the raise at the review cycle, is this also back paid for the time you were under paid for the role ?
With overlapping bands, it’s not necessarily the case that you were being underpaid (in a cosmic fairness sense).
If you are a level N Foo and doing well (as determined by doing some amount of level N+1 work), you might be earning the top of the level N Foo band. If that’s above the bottom of the N+1 band, you might be making the same as or more than the most recent N+1 hire.
The day the company decides that your level “rounds” from N to N+1, you might already be being paid the exact correct amount.
Design of pay scales and how they interact with promotion thresholds is complex enough that many fair systems can evolve. Most systems have evolved to slightly underpay the “almost N+1” employees for a period of time, leading to the expectation that promotion come with an immediate salary bump (and often companies do that to make the promotions “feel bigger”), so maybe the problem is promotions under that system should come with back pay rather than the situation described here being the one where back pay is owed.
If you are a level N Foo and doing well (as determined by doing some amount of level N+1 work), you might be earning the top of the level N Foo band. If that’s above the bottom of the N+1 band, you might be making the same as or more than the most recent N+1 hire.
The day the company decides that your level “rounds” from N to N+1, you might already be being paid the exact correct amount.
Design of pay scales and how they interact with promotion thresholds is complex enough that many fair systems can evolve. Most systems have evolved to slightly underpay the “almost N+1” employees for a period of time, leading to the expectation that promotion come with an immediate salary bump (and often companies do that to make the promotions “feel bigger”), so maybe the problem is promotions under that system should come with back pay rather than the situation described here being the one where back pay is owed.
At my place (not software), they ask me to perform the job at the next level, in order to prove that I can do it, before promoting me. They also require that at least 2 years are spent at each level. And during Corona they didn't promote anybody, meaning everybody`s career slid back by up to an extra year, depending on where u were in the cycle.
I would've much preferred if they had promoted ppl and done salary increases later.
I would've much preferred if they had promoted ppl and done salary increases later.
Pretty cunning, I bet whoever thought that one up got a raise (in the next review cycle).
sure. usually more common in places where workers have low self confidence and don't think they could do better. if only they knew what opportunities were out there
Are there many well paid good jobs for people with low self confidence? Ie can low self confidence people actually get those jobs by passing the interviews and succeeding in the role etc?
I suspect that, for most locales, they're beating the market. There's a good chance I'd count for 15+ years of experience, and thus they'd pay me much more than my local market normally pays me.
On the other hand, I had a company with a similar salary structure approach me. They were based in a distant country with a much lower cost of living. I pointed out that their salary was about half of what I normally earn.
They didn't "get" it that they were out of their game trying to recruit me.
On the other hand, I had a company with a similar salary structure approach me. They were based in a distant country with a much lower cost of living. I pointed out that their salary was about half of what I normally earn.
They didn't "get" it that they were out of their game trying to recruit me.
This seems broadly sensible. Only counting experience after schooling ends won't work for everyone though. I was employed full time as a software developer before I went to university. And I had 5 years of non-commercial experience before that while I was still in high school that most people won't have. Presumably there's some wiggle room for managers to use their judgement on what counts as experience, so it probably works out.
You would negotiate how that experience is recognized in the hiring process.
So couple of things that stood out for me here:
* Constant pay hikes per level (~30k every 2-3 years)
* Any equity guidelines for level (especially since it is a startup) - I assume this is not a 9-5 job given it is a series B startup?
* No mention of what leadership team makes (VP of Eng is ultimately a managerial role - is it equal to L7? L8? YoE a consideration in this role?)
* Company is fully remote - Remote within the US? Any where in the world?
* How will (if at all) cost-of-living be adjusted (for remote)?
* What is the interview process like (Is leetcode grinding still required - effectively pushing for a "fresher" workforce?).
* If comp affects the "quality" of hire - what is the perf management (and appraisal) culture looking like in there?
* Constant pay hikes per level (~30k every 2-3 years)
* Any equity guidelines for level (especially since it is a startup) - I assume this is not a 9-5 job given it is a series B startup?
* No mention of what leadership team makes (VP of Eng is ultimately a managerial role - is it equal to L7? L8? YoE a consideration in this role?)
* Company is fully remote - Remote within the US? Any where in the world?
* How will (if at all) cost-of-living be adjusted (for remote)?
* What is the interview process like (Is leetcode grinding still required - effectively pushing for a "fresher" workforce?).
* If comp affects the "quality" of hire - what is the perf management (and appraisal) culture looking like in there?
I am not sure if this kind of transparency will be beneficial to the employees or not.
Like the article mentioning there is leverage missing for salary negotiation.
That mean, that some folks would earn less assuming the model was adapted everywhere. However it may clean up inequalities.
In the end people are divers. There are hires with only 2 years delivering better results, than one with 5 years.
you got to appreciate that honesty about leverage. this whole program was designed because they weren't competitive in the market.
This is quite interesting, and I'm curious to see how it goes.
I do think the definition of "fairness" is off, though:
> Because using years of relevant experience is transparent and repeatable, both for leveling and promotions, it carries a strong measure of fairness
Or more precisely, there are lots of ways to define "fair". And in this case fair is defined as "more years in post means more money, whatever your job is".
This is not general fairness (perhaps nothing is) but it rewards loyalty. Other types of fairness (which actually their sales teams get) is "create more value, get paid more". I.e. kicking back for 10 years in a role that's fairly straightforward and hard to measure might reward someone as much as working incredibly hard and transforming the business for 10 years. That could well be considered unfair.
I think rather than "fair" it's just "easy to measure", which accounts for the lack of need for promotion recommendations. I've never known them take very long, but yes, a length of tenure calculation will always be quicker.
I would say also that I am curious as to how competitive this can possibly be for attracting talent. Desirable employees who need incentive to move to a company will generally get more money, as otherwise they won't move. Additionally retention might be an issue, as the same principles apply; market forces will mean that other companies that pay according to what an employee will agree to work for will have extra cash to wave at daily.co employees.
Finally, I suppose that in the short term, powered by VC money, this is likely to work, and it's as good a way to spend VC money as any. I don't think we should call it a revolutionary way of working, as having a pit of money to prop up an idea does not make the idea sustainable for other companies. It might remain automatically workable for years to come if the company raises more money without having to survive on its own merits.
I do think the definition of "fairness" is off, though:
> Because using years of relevant experience is transparent and repeatable, both for leveling and promotions, it carries a strong measure of fairness
Or more precisely, there are lots of ways to define "fair". And in this case fair is defined as "more years in post means more money, whatever your job is".
This is not general fairness (perhaps nothing is) but it rewards loyalty. Other types of fairness (which actually their sales teams get) is "create more value, get paid more". I.e. kicking back for 10 years in a role that's fairly straightforward and hard to measure might reward someone as much as working incredibly hard and transforming the business for 10 years. That could well be considered unfair.
I think rather than "fair" it's just "easy to measure", which accounts for the lack of need for promotion recommendations. I've never known them take very long, but yes, a length of tenure calculation will always be quicker.
I would say also that I am curious as to how competitive this can possibly be for attracting talent. Desirable employees who need incentive to move to a company will generally get more money, as otherwise they won't move. Additionally retention might be an issue, as the same principles apply; market forces will mean that other companies that pay according to what an employee will agree to work for will have extra cash to wave at daily.co employees.
Finally, I suppose that in the short term, powered by VC money, this is likely to work, and it's as good a way to spend VC money as any. I don't think we should call it a revolutionary way of working, as having a pit of money to prop up an idea does not make the idea sustainable for other companies. It might remain automatically workable for years to come if the company raises more money without having to survive on its own merits.
Living in the Midwest and currently working remotely for a NY based company. Remote / coastal salaries are so much higher than typical Midwest engineering salaries that I'll never be able to return to the office again. This feels like a problem worth examining, but what can be done?
For possibly the first time in human history we workers are able to get the benefits of geographic arbitrage and still command some of the highest salaries in the world. I really like that and appreciate it. However, if the dual benefits of going into an office and living in the Midwest are important enough for you, that office will cost you a lot in missed opportunity costs. I don't know if that's a problem that can be solved, or just a natural law of constraints.
I live in the Detroit area, and also noticed a huge salary discrepancy between local salaries and those for remote positions. The positive is there are many great opportunities for us to increase our income while living in a lower-cost area than Seattle, NYC, SanFran, etc. Midwest based firms need to reconsider their pay bands, or they’re going to have problems competing for talent.
Midwest salaries have been low for a long time, and it has had an effect on the ability to attract and retain top talent. The difference now is that the market for employment for engineers unwilling to relocate to those coastal cities has expanded dramatically. The new entrants are coming in with market-clearing salary offers. I predict we'll see salary expectations in the Midwest increase dramatically. Some Midwest employers will have to adjust their business plans accordingly. For instance, consulting shops may have to increase pricing quite a bit.
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Same here, midwest working for a SV company. Nobody in my city is even close to competitive to my salary, and my salary isn't even that amazing for SV.
My company has four IC titles, the description of which includes typical experience, with credit for graduate degrees. When we went from two titles to four, I was assigned the highest title, and joked that it was another way of saying "old".
I would be level 7 under Daily's system, making more than I do now, but then what's my monetary incentive to improve? Younger, less experienced colleagues can literally set a countdown timer to their next promotion/raise.
It feels a bit lazy, to be honest. Some people have commented that it will lead to coasting. The alternative that I anticipate is up or out: you're a level 5 performer at a level 7 salary. You might be happy at a level 5.5 salary, but sorry, you're out.
I would be level 7 under Daily's system, making more than I do now, but then what's my monetary incentive to improve? Younger, less experienced colleagues can literally set a countdown timer to their next promotion/raise.
It feels a bit lazy, to be honest. Some people have commented that it will lead to coasting. The alternative that I anticipate is up or out: you're a level 5 performer at a level 7 salary. You might be happy at a level 5.5 salary, but sorry, you're out.
It makes me think of Amazon's PIP system, where managers HAVE to get rid of the lower 20% of performance - whichever performance metric that is. When applied to this, it kinda means - assuming it's x years at the same company / using the same system - you don't get paid more for having X years of experience, but surviving X years of performance review firings. It's X years of not being in the worst 20%.
I mean if using that system I'd probably set the bar higher, but thankfully I'm not.
I mean if using that system I'd probably set the bar higher, but thankfully I'm not.
It really feels like the objective for growth is just to wait, and not based on actual skills.
Not sure if this is a good metric tbh, years of experience have a lot to do with type of challenges, and type of challenges have a lot to do with environment and architectures.
you can be working 10 years on a small flower shop or building a huge distributed system that can handle crazy traffic or have really complex business logic.
The worst thing to me is that it encourages engineers to focus on less risky challenges since the complexity of the work does not contribute to experience.
Numbers wise looks good to me. Amazons recent base cap has thrown recruiters sideways and numbers instantly jumped in reach out emails.
Turns out yes, compensation should be increase for hard to find skills that people use to create huge revenue. Shocked.
Turns out yes, compensation should be increase for hard to find skills that people use to create huge revenue. Shocked.
This seems like a reasonable strategy worth if you plan to exit in the next 3 years. It is simple to manage, is designed to be competitive for a point in time, and focuses on performance for growth (up or out).
I think simple to manage and “people who don’t like it won’t bother us about promotions” is high here. Whether that makes it worth losing out on corner cases where you’d benefit from a more individualized approach isn’t as clear to me, but there’s a lot of benefit from elimination of all promotion discussions, referring all of those to “check the calendar; if we haven’t fired you by X, you’ll be level Y on that day.”
One thing I have always wondered about is if seniority based compensation can promote training without fear of replacement, actually improving the team over the longer term.
holy shit are people with 5 years experience really making 200k!?
Wow, just aging into a promotion?
This seems very attractive as a worker. But even I can see this could be problematic and not align to value production.
This seems very attractive as a worker. But even I can see this could be problematic and not align to value production.
YOE has little correlation with performance.
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I believe these systems produce a "dead sea effect". High performer will leave, being able to get better deals elsewhere. Low performers will stay, since they can' find a better deal elsewhere.