The market is bad but one factor is that the quantity of Product manager jobs is much less than the number of dev jobs by a factor of 10-20x so it's much more difficult to find highly compensated jobs for them.
$200k+ total comp for a product manager is pretty good.
I wonder if previous experience at FAANG is becoming a negative factor in the hiring process. Run-of-the-mill Fortune 500s aren't going to pay Meta money ($475k+) for a product manager. More like $120-150k. And maybe they're looking to avoid the expectations (read: entitlement) from those who are used to those kinds of outsized salaries.
Been discussed at length in other HN post comments - yes, faang is often seen as a negative in this market, unless they’re specialized and that specific expertise is needed
They also don't need FAANG-level competence. F500 companies would rather pay consultants and contractors truckloads of money than hire a few FTEs at FAANG rates. Ostensibly the reasoning is that it's easy to cut back spending on vendors than to lay people off, but I think a stronger reason is that tech salaries are so high that you'd have software engineers being paid more than some executives at these companies.
I live in a US metropolitan area with 2-3 million people, at a Fortune 500 company.
Junior/associate devs, hired out of the internship program usually, can make less than $100k TC (some even make less than $80k). Most of them say it is hard to live on that salary with an apartment, car, student loans and wanting to have a life.
Most of the standard SWEs make more than $100k TC. I've been told the TC for standard SWEs maxes out at under $170k at our company.
Seniors TC starts around $140k, and goes up above $180k.
Leads/Principals I'm not as sure of. Maybe for every 20 associate/SWE/senior we have one lead. I believe their TC is north of $200k.
As the standard dev is either an SWE or senior SWE, that band is probably $100k-190k. With some associates/juniors making less, and some leads/principals making more.
The H1Bs make about 10-15% less than the non H1Bs.
In India, if our programmers make the equivalent of $30k that is a lot. The company wants to hire more Indian programmers but there are timezone problems, language problems, skill level problems and other problems.
These people do a valuable job, I'm not trying to insult them. I'm only providing my observation and theory for why large non-software companies do not hire and pay software engineers the way that software companies hire and pay software engineers.
> rather pay consultants and contractors truckloads of money than hire a few FTEs at FAANG rates. Ostensibly the reasoning is that it's easy to cut back spending on vendors than to lay people off
Or maybe it has more to do with accounting practices or with liability. We're talking F500 HR logic here.
> I wonder if previous experience at FAANG is becoming a negative factor in the hiring process.
It can be. If you're not able to pay FAANG level compensation, hiring someone who is taking a pay cut to work for you is often just them getting a paycheck until they get another job back at FAANG level.
If this is done before they're contributing positively (onboarding and domain knowledge acquisition takes some time), its a loss (and they've likely commanded higher compensation based on their previous experience).
Unless you are specifically after the knowledge that they bring in, for a company hiring it can be better to hire someone with less prestigious names in their experience who can do the job and is more likely to stay for a few years before jumping to another job.
If they came from making $400k total compensation per year, and you can only offer them $150k salary (and no stocks), its more than likely that they'll be looking for the next position on the day after they start.
> If you're not able to pay FAANG level compensation
Yes. There's also a pretty significant difference between FAANG and ordinary companies in terms of development process, business customs, etc. that I've seen present an insurmountable culture shock to people who only know FAANG.
I wonder if previous experience at FAANG is becoming a negative factor in the hiring process. Run-of-the-mill Fortune 500s aren't going to pay Meta money ($475k+) for a product manager. More like $120-150k. And maybe they're looking to avoid the expectations (read: entitlement) from those who are used to those kinds of outsized salaries.