[deltree7]

A knowledge worker's productivity can easily (and provably ) range from -10x to +1000x.

So, it's much easier to prove in the court of law that the ranges are justified.

Dude who created the React Framework is always 100x valuable to the company than an average Javascript developer. A couple of brilliant dudes is all that is required for a company to be a mere $100 Million company vs $1 Billion company.

It's ridiculous to pay the same $100,000 for each of them

[jedberg]

The dude who created the react framework (who I happen to know) already knows his worth, and is not getting jobs through public listings. This law isn't for him. Also he is getting higher level jobs.

And that's true even further down the line -- if your experience can mean $200K more per year, then those should be two different job listings. One senior and one junior.

[Dracophoenix]

This law applies to anyone in New York with no stated exceptions for outliers. If he ever works for a company/satellite office there, whether remote or on-site, he's as much a member of the job market as anyone else. Any company interested in hiring him would obviously provide a massive number at the higher range.

[jedberg]

But they would never make a job listing for the job. They would just reach out to him and ask for an interview. Actually they would reach out and ask to have a discussion about what he wants to do next, and it would be a multi-month effort of convincing him to even apply, including informal meet and greets with the team. There would never be an open req.

[joshuamorton]

And when hired he would be hire into the role that has the salary range he requires and possibly some larger than average performance based compensation scheme, which is totally legal, but also possibly not because at the point that you're hired as a principal or distinguished eng the default compensation is still really high.

[DesiLurker]

> A knowledge worker's productivity can easily (and provably ) range from -10x to +1000x.

this is a variation of the 10x engineer BS meme. statistically this is not possible, and realistically you'll see the companies using that line of arguments for obfuscating salary information are also doing it to comply maliciously. In fact, using a far outlier case to justify your average base case is the definition of operating in bad faith.

Also, sure if you see an actual superstar nobody is stopping you from hiring him for a different role and paying him 10x or whatever. anecdotally speaking in my many years in silicon valley I have seen very few cases for such high performance engineers and you need a lot more than tech expertise to not just produce 10x more personally but also keep your team productive & all that is not easy to judge in an interview.

[joshuamorton]

Can you prove it?

I don't think I've ever met an engineer who is, by themselves, 1000x more productive than even the least productive person I've ever worked with.

[zugi]

> I don't think I've ever met an engineer who is, by themselves, 1000x more productive than even the least productive person I've ever worked with

I guess that all comes down to how you measure it. I've worked with people who screw up the code base, suck time and productivity away from other team members, and require frequent management attention. So their productivity is negative or zero. Which makes me infinitely more productive than them.

I demand infinity dollars!

Just kidding of course, but the point is people aren't and can't be paid exactly mathematically proportionally to their productivity. About the best we can expect is for pay to be correlated with productivity. Or maybe monotonically increasing with productivity?

[deltree7]

You can easily make a claim that Google is a $1.4T firm vs may be a $40 Billion Twitter-like also ran if it weren't for this

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...

[joshuamorton]

Yes you can easily make a lot of claims. But I don't think they stack up, hence my request to "prove" it.

Also, of course, if you compare me (L5 Swe) and Jeff (L11 senior Google fellow/SVP) or Sanjay, you'll find that the roles we are hired into have vastly different compensation ranges. So even presuming this is true, it actually goes against your overall point that wide ranges for a single posting are justified. I'm not being hired for the same work as Sanjay.

[deltree7]

Jeff / Sanjay weren't L11 when they transformed Google. Also that's precisely my point.

Even though you are an L5, you'll never design an Android or a Spanner or a Dremel system or a Self-Driving System from scratch.

SWEs who create Spanner Databases are 1000x more valuable to companies than someone who adds tiny features using a well-defined process and framework.

But most SWE are entitled and out-of-touch that they demand and act as though they are Jeff or Andy Rubin or Levandowski

[joshuamorton]

> Even though you are an L5, you'll never design an Android or a Spanner or a Dremel system or a Self-Driving System from scratch.

Correct, but neither Jeff nor Sanjay did any of those things, and no one did any of those things alone, or from scratch.

> SWEs who create Spanner Databases are 1000x more valuable to companies than someone who adds tiny features using a well-defined process and framework.

IDK, I'm pretty sure there's an automated tool that can create a spanner database for me, so I'm not sure why you think that's that impressive. Less snarkily, you're underestimating the amount of collaboration that happens, even with the impressive engineers. Tellingly, it's never the people extolled as 10 or 100x engineers who claim to be such, usually they echo my sentiments!

[deltree7]

You are just digging your hole deeper and deeper dude

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...