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Comment by giantrobot | Hacker News Reader

> The people talking about working long hours at Apple are getting paid commensurately.

Not really. Most divisions in SWE do stack ranking (unofficially). The top quintile (decile in some groups) gets a majority of compensation at review time. The bottom half is lucky to get a cost of living adjustment to their base pay. They likely will get no RSUs and little if any cash bonus.

Despite the disparity in compensation everyone on a team is expected to put in overtime. Anyone that doesn't is guilted over not being a "team player", put on a PIP, outright threatened with firing. If you get put on a PIP there is zero guidance to get off.

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So then that makes me wonder, why work there? For the prestige? For having a bad-ass CV entry? I've spent my 11 year career working in start-ups and companies that nobody knows about, I get paid enough to be in top 2% earners in EU, I never work more than 40h a week because that simply isn't legal for an employer to tell me to do unless it explicitly states so in my contract, and none of my contracts have so far stated that, and so I'm puzzled why such a sweat-shop deal could be appealing to people when alternatives exist with a far better work/life balance.

> So then that makes me wonder, why work there?

To be clear: It’s because they’re still being paid very, very well.

The top paying tech companies are kind of a weird bubble because they pay so well on average but they also have a huge upward range beyond that for top performers. It leads to situations where someone can be making $200-300K per year but end up feeling underpaid because someone they know is getting $600K for being a top performer at a top company.

It’s also important to put it in perspective. Relatively few engineers work at these companies in total. The vast majority of engineers work at more mainstream companies where the pay is still good (though maybe not retire early good) and the hours are reasonable. People at the big companies are working long hours to compete for those few coveted top positions and top salaries. But you definitely don’t have to work at those companies.

It's all in the compensation.

FAANG and a few fintech operations pay the big USD. The lower bound on FAANG senior software engineers is apparently above or barely overlaps the upper bound for other massively profitable companies like Intel. So you can't even achieve FAANG comp most places unless you a department director.

I would be wary about assuming too much on "Salary estimation" websites or what people may say on HN. There's a perception that they must be highly paid, and so only the highest paid shout about it. I know a lot of people who work for FAANG in the bay area that have a similar total income to myself (and I work for a company I'd judge to be very similar to Intel).

Also a lot of their income was stock and share bonuses, great if the stock price is constantly going up and they're growing hand over fist, but when things slow down that non-guaranteed income is the first thing to be looked at - if it's not on the contract it's not guaranteed. Sure you might be lucky, but in my experience the "Buy your house in cash of FAANG" for a mid-level engineer gravy train seems to be over if you're not already sitting on the options.

I totally agree that some of the published pay numbers are a little optimistic and include stock and discretionary bonus that are dependent on market performance. However, the companies in that top sphere are still a strata above most of the alternatives.

Plenty of people want to earn that extra renumeration even if it means doing grunt work or giving up on their work-life balance.

how much do you get paid and what city?

This is not accurate. Managers have to make a specific argument to not give a minimum bonus/RSU. Generally, only very low performing people will not receive RSU’s.

Higher level engineers get paid more? And that is suprising or unfair?

The issue is there's not necessarily any fair measurement of "higher level engineer". With stack ranking if you've got five people on a team only one member of the team can be the top quintile getting the majority of compensation. Even if the work of everyone is roughly the same. It's asinine.

There's also no clarity into how to be considered the top of the rankings. The only guidance from managers is to "innovate" and work more.

It's a really demoralizing system unless you're at the top of the stack. It's further demoralizing that the managers are told in no uncertain terms to make the system as opaque as possible.

Maybe not, but it (the post in total) a legitimate counter argument to the previous message.

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