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Comment by ceeplusplus | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but then you are hiring less skilled talent that is probably incapable of working on pricing and matching algorithms (which along with scale are the real advantage Uber has, since everyone can make a crappy iOS app and call it a day).

If the algorithms didn't matter then Uber wouldn't be maintaining 70% marketshare in the US.

Also, a quick look at levels.fyi says salary at IBM (i.e. your median salary dev) for a senior is 192k. Compared to 80k for a ridesharing coop, that's still quite the salary cut. Don't forget a lot of these coops are based in HCOL areas like NYC.

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> Sure, but then you are hiring less skilled talent that is probably incapable of working on pricing and matching algorithms

This sounds like a variation of the just world fallacy to me: in a just world, talented folk who solve hard problems get paid more, and the less talented ones - who are unable to solve hairy problems - get paid less. In such a world, you can identify the talented ones by how much they are earning. Yet in the real world, geography, and luck/ability to bootstrap to HCOL areas plays a huge part

> Also, a quick look at levels.fyi says salary at IBM (i.e. your median salary dev) for a senior is 192k.

I think you're underestimating how wide the gap is between the bimodal peaks. $192 is too high[2] still; it slots just below Senior executive average ($200k) and right above EM ($180k) in the 2022 StackOverflow salary survey[1] for the US

1. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#work-salary

2. the survey doesn't distinguish between junior & senior engineers, but I'm guessing even the seniors earn less than CxO's.

Your survey seems very flawed. It puts an average SRE at 175k yet the CxO's only make 200k. Are you sure you're not excluding stock based comp in those numbers?

In any case, even if you go by the data in your survey, a machine learning specialist is supposed to make 150k and a mobile developer 144k. Those are still a lot more than 70-80k.

> Yet in the real world, geography, and luck/ability to bootstrap to HCOL areas plays a huge part

Considering the bar to get into a FAANG is just 4-5 leetcode medium-hard questions, I think there is little gatekeeping happening. This isn't investment banking where if you don't go to an Ivy you can't get in. And there are a lot more firms than FAANG paying big salaries.

> I think you're underestimating how wide the gap is between the bimodal peaks

IBM is your quintessential example of a consulting bodyshop. If anything, they would be at the lower bimodal peak, not the higher one.

> Your survey seems very flawed. It puts an average SRE at 175k yet the CxO's only make 200k.

My guess is the sample of SREs in the survey is biased towards start-ups & big tech (thats were that role is common), where as CEOs samples have less of that bias.

> Are you sure you're not excluding stock based comp in those numbers?

Yes I'm sure! I'm surprised that you're surprised - the average developer does not get stock-based comp because they are not working at big tech or a start up. "Enterprise software" shops & Small-to-medium businesses do not generally offer stock/options to employees

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