[potatofrenzy]

The sucky reality is that employees at big tech companies have little interest in running a sustainable and resilient business. We want constant team growth, never-ending promotions, ever-growing salaries. If another company is growing more aggressively and paying even less sustainable salaries, we tend to jump ship. It's not necessarily wrong, but we really shouldn't act surprised when that backfires every now and then.

Tech leadership bears blame for nourishing that "there's no tomorrow" / "growth will continue forever" culture, but it's such an unhelpful take to portray this as some sort of a class struggle with shareholders. Especially since for a good number of big tech companies, shareholders don't actually have much say and founders hold controlling interests.

[coldtea]

Yes, it's the employees fault. They were "asking for it", dressing their LinkedIn profile too provocatively /s

Employees in tech wanted, and were fine with, and even cherished "a sustainable and resilient business". That's the golden age IBM, Intel, AT&T, and so on employee for example.

Then companies started being about the stock market, and short term profit, throwing them under the bus whenever they had a chance, while still paying nice bonuses to the C-level and middle managers even when they run the companies to the ground.

So, yes, they felt little loyalty not to "jump ship" to a company didn't give a shit abotu them. Hell, the C-level execs that are paid 10-100x better than the employees would not think twice to jump ship at any chance they got, and somehow the employees are at fault for doing the same?

[rodgerd]

> Yes, it's the employees fault.

I mean I half agree. There's been factions in side the tech industry for years trying to get people to think about what would happen in this sort of scenario, to understand that "tech workers" have more in common with working-class factory workers in the 50s and 60s that with Peter Thiel and Sam Altman. That faction has pointed how IBM or HP acted when they were on a downward slope. To think about collective action, solidarity, other measures that might help ensure that good jobs don't become bad jobs become no jobs to further enrich a handful of factory owners.

But the braying voices places like here have always shouted those down. Always.

[bambataa]

I’m going to go out on a limb and claim that the large majority of big tech workers would be perfectly happy with a few promotions over a career and annual inflation-matching pay rises.

Except you rarely get inflation-matching pay rises, so the only way to prevent the annual erosion of your situation is the constant team growth and never-ending promotions.

[hashtag-til]

True. Those who never complain about salary and are perceived as “happy” are in the bottom of salary increase priorities.

I learned that the hard way a few years back, then got my act together and made sure I’m always perceived unhappy with salary - to pull that off, you need to be backed by delivering stuff and being seen. Do your homework, and ask for the recognition, that’s my tip.

[Spivak]

I just got told by my company this year that they can’t afford to keep up with inflation. I really don’t see how they expect this to go.

[gtop3]

All but the most naive (or small) companies will do market analysis on the market rate of labor and have internal churn targets. I'm sure the accountants did the math and upper management decided the expected bump in churn is worth the savings. They probably noticed a recent decrease in churn at the company, and a recent stagnation of tech wage growth and thought this was a fantastic opportunity to manage labor costs. Not giving labor a 5% wage increase now will have an impact on their labor costs for years, as wage growth compounds.

The prevailing engineer perspective is that this behavior causes the smartest engineers with options and ambitions will move on. Other top engineers will leave simply because they prefer working with other great engineers. Three years of small plays like this from management is enough to cause complete brain drain, as even those waiting for more vesting will lose optimism. It's one thing to have 6% churn from engineering/product in a year. It's another if you lose the most qualified and respected 6%.

[Aeolun]

> It's another if you lose the most qualified and respected 6%.

I doubt that’s the case. The people deciding to lay off are just getting rid of 6% of their ‘resources’, they don’t consider that those 6% might be doing 50% of the work.

So 3 years on they’re just wondering why their engineering team is so useless, and thinking back to the good old times.

[gtop3]

1. My comment was on managing churn rate, not layoffs.

2. My comment described a process in which talented engineers self select to leave companies, and management only had indirect input on which engineers leave.

[nr2x]

I think you’re spot on. Elves and whatnot.

[no_wizard]

To kick inflation though, it'd need to be more than 5%. In this year, we're probably looking at 8-10% to keep up with inflation.

[gtop3]

1. Inflation numbers are hyper local to both individuals and region.

2. If we wanted to use a number with authority we would probably use 6.5%, which is the US Buerau of Labor Static's number for 2022 CPI.

3. My level of precision (one digit) should have been an informal indicator that I was using a rough estimate.

[doktorhladnjak]

They expect that the competition will do the same--raise wages below inflation. Then you've got nowhere to go to make more. Even if it doesn't work out that way, most employees complain a bit but don't leave.

[oxfordmale]

Competition will do the same initially, until the growth curves reverses. At that point, when you really need your experienced staff to drive growth, moat of them will be busy finding new positions.

[ryanbrunner]

Except that making lateral moves has almost always resulted in higher salaries regardless of macroeconomic trends. The competition may be giving current employees sub-inflation raises as well, but odds are that they're willing to pay more than your current company on an initial offer.

[Spivak]

I think the dynamic I would be most afraid of is employees who have enough years experience to get a more senior position using this as catalyst to move on.

[whateveracct]

I think they'll be surprised.

I have noticed that recruiter outreach to me has picked back up. I'm pretty senior and they're offering me senior roles that could pay more. My current employer has benefitted from current events though so I'm staying put. But if I ever want to fuck off, I easily can.

I have a friend who is very junior. He got promoted but still fucked off to a new better job because his current employer treated him poorly.

I think people are gonna start remembering they can fuck off again, and we're gonna end up somewhere between here and where we were when the job market was on fire pandemic and pre-pandemic.

[pc86]

We got raises across the board this year that are about 2/3 of the current annual inflation rate, which is not a lot of money month-to-month but is more than I expected tbh.

It's also important to note that wage inflation and the inflation of goods and services are separate and not always correlated. Just because milk and bread and cars cost more doesn't mean that the value provided to a company by an hour of an employee's time has risen by the same amount (or at all). I'd love raises that beat inflation every year, and for most of my career I've gotten them, but now that I'm not it doesn't necessarily mean the company is just trying to screw its employees.

[CapstanRoller]

The correlation between "value provided to the company" and "salary paid to retain a worker" is much lower than you might believe.

Also, critical parts of employee retention include "keep the worker alive" and "keep the worker satisfied". If housing goes up 20%, the wage better increase by 20% as well. Homeless or unstably housed engineers are not productive engineers.

[pc86]

It's important to keep in mind we're talking about engineers, who make good money. Unless you're already making very bad financial decisions, nobody on HN is getting evicted because your raise is 4% instead of 6%.

These are all very good arguments for why people making $15/hr should get regular raises to keep pace with inflation as a matter of course, not a very good argument for why someone making $200k copy-pasting JavaScript from StackOverflow should.

[CapstanRoller]

>nobody on HN is getting evicted because your raise is 4% instead of 6%

That's an unfounded assertion. I know plenty of software devs & other tech industry folks who cannot afford a house and are being squeezed by relentless rent increases (myself included). Many on the lower end of the pay range are a layoff away from homelessness.

[coldtea]

Well, they hope other companies will do the same, or even fire people, so that there will be no hirings, and so people wont have a chance to jump ship...

[jzb]

Wow. This is the most amazing take I have seen. It is truly boggling to see somebody trying to lay this at the feet of the employees.

It’s not that activist billionaire, shareholders are demanding layoffs. It’s the workers fault for wanting a share of the pie and not just taking what they’re given quietly and meekly.

You’re right, it’s not a class struggle. For it to be a struggle both parties have to recognize that it’s actually a struggle.

This argument would make sense if the companies doing the layoffs were largely unprofitable, and not spending huge sums of money on stock buybacks and inflated executive salaries.

[jzb]

To further elaborate, a big part of running a sustainable business is the leadership.

I keep seeing this idea that people need to work harder and you’ve got the Mark Zuckerberg‘s of the world pushing this idea that the Meta employees aren’t working hard enough and that’s why they are flailing. Not that the actual core strategy and shit like the Metaverse are bullshit. Or Google that has had some thing like 3 to 5 different chat systems over the past 10 years and utterly baffling product strategies along with a reputation of killing products or neglecting them.

But it’s clearly the employees fault and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with completely bullshit leadership.

[voidfunc]

You're not wrong - The real problem is I don't give a shit about the product. I'm here to make money and retire. It's the companies job to either figure out to how to eliminate needing me or make the job compelling enough that I give a shit (which is extremely difficult).

[flyinglizard]

I always tell our candidates that the only thread connecting all our employees — some as young as 20, other 50+, some are mechanical engineers, some technicians, others are algorithm researchers etc - is that all of them personally care about doing a good job, just like a craftsman of old who is proud of their work. It makes for an awesome work environment, even if slightly emotionally elevated.

[8note]

I assume they all see through that, and that the common thread is that they all are paid to be there?

If you stopped paying them, would they stay?

[ip26]

They are paid to be there instead of somewhere else that would also pay them for the same craft. You can care about compensation and your craft together.

Say you took pride in your skill as a smith. That’s hardly incompatible with finding an employer who will pay for making quality armor.

[coldtea]

Pride in their skill has nothing to do with staying at a company. They can take pride in their skill as a smith elsewhere too. Even better at their hobby projects.

Pride in the end product might, but most companies make nothing to be proud about, except the skill itself.

So, let's be real, they are at the company to make money, and if they have a better chance, they'll take it. Lack of those, good enough salary already, inertia, and "the devil you know" is closer to the reason they stay.

[Aeolun]

> They can take pride in their skill as a smith elsewhere too.

I can take pride in my skill anywhere I want. What I care about is that my employer takes pride in my skill.

Even if another pays more, I’d prefer working for someone that appreciates my skill (and shows that in ways not necessarily salary based).

Of course there’s a limit to this, but it’s generally true.

[ip26]

Reflecting, I think people who take pride in their skill do like to work with others who feel the same way. So that could be a factor for why here for $X instead of there for $X

[eastbound]

I pay my employees 30% above market rate. I know that because I negotiate their salary to hire them, then 6 months later I add 30%. I also care deeply about then finding a girlfriend, a house, a motorbike or anything that’s good for them and that they say they want, and I’m happy when they do.

I also have to tell, honestly, they give me shit. They act like “Yeah we don’t care that your business survives, it’s your job to make your company earn money. At worst we’ll find a job elsewhere.” I’m constantly tempted to fire them before they tank my company.

[fullshark]

I care about being a professional, and delivering quality work. That's not the same as caring about a product/company.

[lisasays]

I care about being a professional, and delivering quality work. That's not the same as caring about a product/company.

Right - it isn't altruism; it's basic professionalism - and the only psychologically healthy thing to get through the day, actually.

"They're paying me decently, they don't take me for granted, don't get in my way of helping them and they definitely aren't jerks. So why not do a good job?"

Actually caring about the product/company doesn't need to factor into it.

[rektide]

It's wild host so many companies make doing the right thing extremely hard. I've never been at a big org, and sometimes we are super profitable & trying to make big long term investments in the future, and folks seem to want to rush & smash code & go go go.

My pace has almost always felt a bit off, but I've always hated shipping subpar systems. Whether it's other engineers or some local managers or the business, there's always been extreme pressure in competition with my desire to just do a good damned job.

It's been isolating & draining. Sometimes it's just a matter of spending 3x as long as it would have taken to line up the 300 reasons why at each spot the shit slapdash plan is shit and the good plan is good. Trying to be OK with the process, walking through people who really barely can understand any of... You have to just keep saying to yourself, fine, this is my job, I'm the expert, it's OK that you don't know, & I'm not sure that you do need to know, but here we are & this talking it through is how we're going to decide where we go I guess.

[YuriNiyazov]

I’m usually on the other side of this. I regularly request that people spend 3x the time it would take something to prove to me that it’s a good idea, so maybe let me offer you some perspective - the outside view, if you will.

The primary job of an executive is risk management. Let’s say I run an engineering team where people have good ideas 70% of the time, and bad ideas 30% of the time. Famously, it takes 10x the number of resources it originally took to develop and deploy, to remove a bad system from production and replace it.

.7 * 4 + .3 * 3 = 3.7

.3 * 11 + 0.7 = 4.0

An engineering team that doesn’t take 3x the time it takes to do something to verify it ahead of time is actually slightly less efficient overall ( assuming that 3x the time it takes reduces the error rate to 0)

Yea there are lots of simplifying assumptions here, these are all averages, plans don’t all take the same time, etc, etc, etc, and a more sophisticated system would take it all into account. But the results don’t usually change, unless in very special circumstances.

[cgio]

If this is the commitment offered by employees is there an equivalent offered by the employer? I.e. how does that affect lay off decisions? If the assumption is that employee passion will keep the ship afloat, then how is that reflected on compensation and profit shares? I am all for dedication and have mostly been passionate about my work, but with my eyes open that this is a one way game, and I play it to feel better myself with a risk of even bigger disappointment when reality hits.

[neilv]

I can believe that's a common value at a company, and I'm a little surprised that some others here can't believe it.

I'd add to that: for all but the most intractably huge companies, there's a somewhat different, or additional, atmosphere that I think is even more important: everyone is focused on the success of the project/company.

Put another way: if you could somehow omnisciently and top-down get each person individually coordinated such that all they need to do is their complete their assigned tasks on schedule and with high quality, that'd be great. But, realistically, you can't (well, not in innovative startups, nor in a lot of tech work). So, if you can get people thinking and coordinating towards goals beyond whatever task someone told them to do, then then you can be more effective collectively.

Maybe you the craft you had in mind already implicitly encompassed this focus towards larger goals. But if you look at popular modern methodologies, organizational incentives, etc., it's pretty clear that's not implied many places.

[tayo42]

Theres a differences between caring about me your work as a craft, and caring about the meaningfulness of the work.

I care about the quality I'd work I do, I feel it's a reflection of me, even though it find the product to be pointless

[flashgordon]

Out of curiosity - and I mean this in earnest:

* What response do you get from the candidate?

* How do you account for candidates who might be faking enthusiasm due to need for a job?

* How are you measuring this enthusiasm within the company (ie are you having high employee survey scores compared to what you are paying them)?

Like seriously the "we are making the world a better place" only goes so far - especially in a climate where employers have shown who they truly care about. And may be you are suggesting that you might not be messaging that you are making the world a better place and instead everybody gets to be a davinci?

[fzeroracer]

I think the mistake you make is assuming that being proud of your work also means being proud of where you work.

I personally do care about doing good work and ensuring what I do is well thought out and performant. However that does not mean I always care about the company. And what little care I do have can rapidly be eroded.

Workers nowadays are more aware than ever that you pay a passion tax. If you want to work where you really want to work, then companies know this and will take advantage of it.

[throwaway292939]

As an aside: I wonder what you say at interviews

[maxlamb]

“employees at big tech companies have little interest in running a sustainable and resilient business”

By “employees” in your first sentence I assume you mean the C-suite?

[hashtag-til]

As a regular “individual contributor” it is very hard to fight ill thought plans coming “from above”.

Those who complain are usually cast as “negative thinking folks” and get subtle punishments.

If you are on a mid career senior salary range, are you going to pick a fight and risk being punished or carry on getting your good salary, bonus, stocks, insurance, retirement plan and perks - in exchange for slighly useless work?

[rektide]

Not even just fighting ill fought plans but whether we decide to execute well or dial it in. The pressure to ship ship ship comes from a lot of places, and relatively few of them have the technical competence to assess, care about, or evaluate code & quality. They don't actually understand what they're pressuring forward, so often.

And most of them face no real consequences. They don't have to maintain or repair some grossly abomination of a system, that's the engineers job. They'll be leading new feature dev new business dev forever & ever.

[8note]

As a regular IC, the things you do are largely disconnected from whatever leadership is thinking. You have a lot of leeway to do what you want as long as it implements things that leadership cares about.

Eg. You can build a section of a tunnel to be wider where you think there should be a subway station, even if the president's wife doesn't think there should be a station there. Eventually the station will exist

[dilyevsky]

> Eg. You can build a section of a tunnel to be wider where you think there should be a subway station

And what is your explanation for why it took you twice as long as it did Bob who just plowed that thing with uniform width?

[komadori]

The ground was harder.

[the_gipsy]

We don't want constant team growth. It's the managers, the psychopaths, the ladder-climbers that do. And they are rewarded for any growth, as that's the only measure the higher-ups know, and the one they used to get where they are so it can't be so bad.

For startups, it's the investors who know only to measure growth because there is no expected profit until the bing bang happens.

[fzeroracer]

Whose fault is it exactly when staying at a company results in my salary going down over time?

No one is asking for endless growth on the employee side. But growth should match responsibilities, and if I gain more responsibility over time then pay should match. And if my salary can't match inflation at minimum then you're telling me I should be paid less for my current work.

Companies prefer to funnel that money to investors and as a result this is where we're at. Note that privately owned companies or worker owned companies avoid this issue more often.

[seanmcdirmid]

Inflation has a made it that FAANG salaries aren’t really excessive, just slightly better than middle class. Salaries are really just messed up related to costs ATM.

We need to get a handle on inflation and the housing bubble first before we can figure out what reasonable salaries are again, and that’s going to hurt all around.

[rnk]

I disagree with that. First, Faang salaries are way over middle class. If inflation reduced your salary by a bit, think about how much more ia reduction impacted the salary of an average middle class person. As you make more money you have more disposable income so the impact of little bit less money when you make more is smaller.

[seanmcdirmid]

Our buying power isn’t much more than our parents, it is noticeably less when it comes to housing. My dad got a mortgage on a $100k home in the late 80s when he was making above that per year contracting. There is simply no way a FAANG job at below director level would allow for that.

From that perspective, yes a lot of people make less, but that just means life is becoming impossible for most people making normal salaries.

[satvikpendem]

That's due to NIMBYism and people not wanting to construct more housing, not due to wages per se.

[seanmcdirmid]

> That's due to NIMBYism and people not wanting to construct more housing, not due to wages per se.

Not really. Housing is simply becoming more expensive to construct, even in places where land is cheap and building regulations are open. But let's say even if NIMBYism was significant factor: why are all the good jobs where people want to live correlated with higher factors of NIMBYism? Why doesn't everyone just want to move to Houston (which is losing population these days, even if the metro is gaining)?

[satvikpendem]

> why are all the good jobs where people want to live correlated with higher factors of NIMBYism?

What a strange question, as if it reverses the correlation. People who buy a property before new people come in, such as SF during the 60s, will inevitably see their home prices rise and want to capture that value without wanting to build more housing. The places where people don't want to live simply...don't see this phenomenon, because people don't want to live there. Of course supply and demand still matters, you can't just build houses in some random part of the country and expect people to move there. You need to build where people want to move. This doesn't really have to do anything with not building more housing, and indeed NIMBYism explicitly denies housing construction approvals.

[fzeroracer]

FAANG salaries are not over middle class and this kind of rhetoric is used to fuel class warfare by businesses and companies among the poor and middle classes.

The fact is that in the modern day even on a FAANG salary a lot of people cannot afford to buy a home of their own. And the salary band at those companies is incredibly wide, owing in fact due to the wide disconnect in salary between engineers, middle management and the c-suite.

[jghn]

The median *household* income in the US is around 80K. That's well below the *starting* income for a FAANG engineer.

[satvikpendem]

I think the point they're making is that salaries should be higher, given the discrepancy between productivity and pay that started appearing in the 70s [0].

[0] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[triceratops]

That's the point GP is making. FAANG salaries aren't too high, median salaries are too low.

[fzeroracer]

Yes, thank you. That's the exact point I've been getting at. Median salaries for workers in the US is far too low and should be brought up, rather than fighting to bring FAANG engineers lower which is exactly what businesses want.

[fbdab103]

Uhhhh, if I go to levels right now, the Google Entry Level L3 total comp is $190k[0]. The US median household income in 2021 was ~$71k [1]. Where do you think the middle class line lands?

[0] : https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...

[1] : https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

[fzeroracer]

Above what even your average senior engineer is making.

I'm not a FAANG worker; I make well below what they make. I simply do not ascribe to the crab-in-a-pot mentality that a lot of posters here seem to have in attempt to further divide what is ultimately a large range of middle class workers. Total compensation also only matters depending on the total CoL because a lot of those companies require you to live in areas with incredibly high rent, especially with the attempt to remove remote work. And even with FAANG the salary between an engineer at Amazon and one at Google is going to vastly differ, especially depending on what part of Amazon you're working at.

For reference, Pew Research defines middle class as 1.66 - 2x the median salary in America. That would make most tech workers middle class, and FAANG engineers in the lower upper class. In places like San Francisco where the cost of living is significantly higher, you would need to be earning ~230k a year to be in the upper middle class [1]. Though that's by one narrow definition.

The fact is that even your senior tech worker making ~200k a year is barely a blip on the radar compared to how much executives and investors are stealing. If you want to fall for their rhetoric and wonder why things are getting worse for everyone then you shouldn't be surprised.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/02/middle-class-income-in-major...

[ZephyrBlu]

The median income in the US is $41k for all workers and $56k for full-time, year-round workers. $71k is the average household income.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...

In your CNBC article everything is based on household income. Many SWEs would be classed as not middle class based on their own income let alone household income.

The median SWE salary in the US is $110k: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/....

If you take increased salary due to location and partner salary into account, the majority of SWEs are easily upper middle class.

> In places like San Francisco where the cost of living is significantly higher, you would need to be earning ~230k a year to be in the upper middle class

A solo entry level FAANG engineer basically qualifies for upper middle class. Add a partner and you're definitely upper middle class.

> And even with FAANG the salary between an engineer at Amazon and one at Google is going to vastly differ, especially depending on what part of Amazon you're working at

What are you talking about with "especially depending on what part of Amazon you're working at"? As far as I've seen Retail vs AWS doesn't have different comp.

Google and Amazon also have pretty similar comp: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Amazon&track=Software....

Their comp bands likely have a lot of overlap. Differences are more likely to be based on negotiation than working for Google vs Amazon.

[CapstanRoller]

"Middle class" doesn't actually mean anything.

[VirusNewbie]

What are you talking about? Maybe for entry level with only a couple years they couldn’t own a home but come on? You think there are mid/senior level people with 5+ years working there who cannot afford a home??

[photonbeam]

Yes there are, as the homes they want to buy are near work and those are really expensive

[fdgsdfogijq]

Agreed and its a shame you are getting downvoted