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Comment by asaph | Hacker News Reader

This article is nearly 10 years old. Is this still true?

Yep. Inside Meta there was a robust network sharing offer and raise/promo letters. Someone hired in at your same level today would be making 10-20% more per year that you had been employed there.

So the hiring bump was going up faster than inflation? So after 2-4 years a new hire at the same level would be making almost at least 50% more than you...

Yes, compensation competition between FAANG in that era was savage (though I would guess that this has slowed down since the great layoff)

Huh? This must have been in equity, right, given that the bands were consistent for everyone when I was there. I find it hard to believe that they changed that.

Total comp. TC of most L4+ was >50% RSUs, it doesn't make much sense to discuss only base+bonus

> TC of most L4+ was >50% RSUs

In the US, during a period of insane stock price appreciation, yes.

People who joined in Dec 2022 got massively screwed though, so it's not really reliable cash.

Even without appreciation - my RSU grants were 50% of my TC at the time of grant

As a manager, it seems true to me. It's much easier to convince HR to pay $X for a new employee than to give a current employee a large enough raise to hit $X.

Yeah, love how HR says, "We can't do that..." Um, yes, you can. You just won't.

Because they have to answer about the budget in aggregate. If three developers are paid $100k each on year 1, and they hire a new one on 120k on year 2, the average salary has only gone up 5%. If they don't hire and just bump the veterans to 120k, overall expenditure is lower but the average salary is now 20% higher and it looks bad (and you're not growing).

What a self-sabotaging setup. No wonder the mainstream tech got so bloated.

Sadly it's the norm across all companies and all sectors.

This concept is timeless. Numbers might vary though..

I assume it will always be true outside of employees who are exceptionally VIP or employees selling to union/government roles that are compensated strictly according to length of tenure.

The employer gets labor at a lower price, and the employee gets lower volatility.

If you want the best price, you have to do the work to keep buying and you have to do the work to keep selling, only way any market can work.

Except the employee isn't guaranteed lower volatility. At. All.

There is volatility due to the buyer changing the terms of deal (including ending the deal), and there is also volatility due to the seller choosing to sell to different buyers, such as working in a different location or getting along with new colleagues, etc.

The former is not controllable from the perspective of a labor seller, but the latter is. Whether or not the tradeoff is worth it is dependent on the seller and always in flux.

I would say the tradeoff is usually not worth it.

Certainly feels like it.

Definitely, yes.

yes

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