[asdfman123]

Will you work for me as a software engineer? I'll pay you $20 an hour, which is vastly more than nearly all of your ancestors throughout history have made. Why is it a dealbreaker? Don't you enjoy software engineering?

My point is that human psychology doesn't work that way. You compete with people around you. If they're getting promoted while you're being left behind, you're not going to be very happy about it.

[shadowgovt]

Actually, that varies from person to person. I've been fine not being promoted (less time doing the self-reporting monkey-dance leaves more time to work on projects), and I make enough to satisfy my material needs and desires. And at most startups, there's nowhere to be promoted to when you're a double-digit hire. There's just the work and the chance of a cash-out (or of changing the world, whatever gets you up in the morning).

Very different from the BigCo rat race.

[taneq]

> And at most startups, there's nowhere to be promoted to when you're a double-digit hire.

This is something I'd assumed every engineer-type person faces sooner or later. Unless you're in a massive corp with hundreds of engineers, there's only maybe two or three tiers of engineering roles. That's two promotions, ever, unless you want to be promoted out of engineering and into management. So if you want to stay technical, instead of chasing higher status job titles, you have to chase higher status projects.

[cdrini]

It's less about comparing to your ancestors, more your peers in other industries. If you're getting payed say $40/h, that's muuuuch more than most other jobs, and can give you a comfortable living for quite a while.

I agree human psychology is part of it and can help explain someone's mentality, but I don't think human psychology can fully justify someone's behaviour, since humans aren't automatons beholden to their psychology.

[klipt]

Not if you live in a very high cost of living area. Which is where the biggest Google offices are.

[cdrini]

That's a good point, but I don't believe it scales at the same rate -- meaning I believe the salaries are much higher than the living costs.

Eg average us salary is probably somewhere around 60k. Let's say single bedroom apartment not in SF is maybe like 1.5k/mo, that leaves like 42k left over.

Google salary I would guess is closer to 150k (low end probably); SF single bedroom is probably closer to 4k/mo, that leaves 102k. Big difference, and note the ratio here isn't as important as the absolute value. You live a very different life with 102k than with 42k.

And also note wealth doesn't really increase linearly with how much money you have, it tends to be more than linear, because people with lots of money are more comfortable investing large chunks of it, which further increases their wealth.

[Karrot_Kream]

Internally most larger tech companies index their salary bands based on the CoL of the employee. The downturn over the last couple years has had many companies move reqs from high CoL areas to low CoL areas to save money.

[mattlondon]

IME of Big Cos, it is never cost of living that is taken into account, but what "the competition" in the local market are paying, and then some percentile of that.

Who "the competition" are specifically is 99.9% of the time entirely black-box, as is the percentile that the company is targeting. So they claim it is open and transparent ("we benchmark against local employers in tech") but the actual details are hidden - are the other employers they are using FAANG or someone else? Are they targeting 50% or 95%? Etc etc ("oh that is confidential sorry")

This is how you end up with situations like London, which is obscenely expensive cost of living, yet gets lower salaries than SF and Zurich which in my experience are a bit cheaper than London for day to day costs (e.g. transport, food etc).

London is a physically & metaphorically huge cultural World Capital and attracts loads of people from across the world so there is more competition for tech/high-skilled roles because so many people move to London after they graduate, and stay for good. So salaries are lower but everything else is more expensive due to population density and resulting demand. No one wants to live in Zurich so there are less people competing for each job, so salaries need to be higher to attract and retain staff in such a dull and boring place that people naturally and understandably plan to leave after a few years.

[r0m4n0]

Agree and not only that, Google attracts a certain type of person that I feel like is more competitive and slightly obsessed with self image (senior role titles for example)

[raincole]

> Why is it a dealbreaker?

Because they can find a job that pays way more than $20 an hour. That's it.