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The Impact of Low Salaries At Apple
orenh writes "Recent data indicate that Apple engineers have significantly lower salaries than their Silicon Valley peers: $89,000 at Apple, versus $105,000 at Yahoo and $112,000 at Google. Paying lower salaries had a major impact on Apple's bottom line when it was struggling in the market up until 2004. But now that Apple is highly profitable, these lower salaries are no longer a factor in Apple's success. Will Apple have to raise salaries to match the market rate, or face defections?"
"Will Apple have to raise salaries to match the market rate, or face defections?"
Yes!
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
Maybe these people are fanatics about the platform.
Maybe there are benefits packages apple is offering which even google does not (though it's highly unlikely).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
But the Lord Jobs gave them all free iPhones! That surely has to make up for having to work for the biggest asshole in California.
You get what you pay for;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
HOW can you defect ?
Read radical news here
You're implying that Apple engineers are equally skilled as Google engineers!
:)
On the other hand, why are Yahoo engineers so overpaid...
Your loking at just the salary? don't be stupid.
Benefits. I make less then I could, but the benefits of where I work more then make up for it.
So, what are their benefits?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Everyone knows that Apple is ALL Steve Jobs. The people that actually MAKE the overpriced hardware are just bit-players.
The cat's out of the bag - everyone was happy at Apple until you told them they're underpaid.
Apple doesn't really need to increase salaries especially at the software division as because OS X is UNIX based there are a lot of high-quality open-source applications for Apple to take code from (KHTML for Safari for example) thus, Apple doesn't have to do a whole lot to improve software other then add a few features and clean up the code. In addition, unlike at Microsoft, Apple engineers don't have to reinvent the OS every time they need to ship a new OS, they just speed up the code, add in a few features, burn it to a DVD and release it, compare that to Windows where most of the code has to be rewritten and then extensively tested for backwards compatibility. Basically, by using a combination of open-source and UNIX, Apple doesn't have to do much with software and therefore can use lower-paying people because they don't have to work as much.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I have multiple friends who work for Google, that used to work for Intel.
They got paid significantly more at Intel, for what was effectively a lower-level job. (Not directly comparable in job function, but in heirarchy.) Google pays on the order of 25% less.
Comparing one single job isn't the way to go. Apple may pay less than Google or Yahoo, but, really, what job position at Apple are they referring to? TFA just say "engineers". Well, what kind? If you're comparing, say, the guy who designs the box that the iPod comes in to the guy who designs Google's customized Linux kernel, then it's not even close to comparable.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Now, I know Google is supposed to be an absolute delight to work for, but there is also a certain "coolness" to working at Apple. Think about it, you get to work at the company that makes some of the coolest electronics and computers out there, wouldn't it be awesome to work there? That will go quite a ways towards bridging the salary gap. In addition, if Apple really started noticing its employees leaving en masse and couldn't find competent people at the salaries they offer, then they would definitely raise salaries to attract top talent. I don't think they are having much of a problem doing that with their current situation. And, if you don't have to arbitrarily raise salaries, why would you as a company do something that would cost you more if it wasn't required?
Will the reality distortion field hold up in face of lower salaries?
Defend what? There has to be an offense to defend, otherwise we'll be talking past each other.
I mean, the summary itself defended the low salaries as necessary when Apple was only 2.34% of the market.
GPL Deconstructed
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Which level are we talking about? From a European point of view, 89000$ are quite some money. Is this before tax? How much would it be net at the end of the month? I am not familiar with US salaries so please excuse the silly question.
Freedom, Fame, or Fortune. If working for a company doesn't give you atleast one of the above items, chances are you will get another job. I doubt they have the freedom, and we all know who has the fame there, so that only leaves fortune, and if they are making that much less than their counterparts, chances are they will leave. I guess security fits in there somewhere, but I think you all know what I mean.
It's not always just the salary. There are many compensation factors- stock options, even if they are backdated and the 15% employee discount on hardware! And when you get bored at work, where else can you look at Hypercard source code?
Comparing Apple with Google is like comparing apples with oranges, or, like comparing Apple with Orange!
I DNRTFA, but compensation includes benefits and options.
Additionally, and more to the point, the environment has a huge impact on the salary I'll require.
In the words of a friend of mine: My ability to tolerate bullshit is commensurate with my salary.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
We have to remember too that Apple is not really a direct competitor to Yahoo or Google. Sure there is some significant overlap but the real question is what are their competitors at Dell, HP, Nokia, RIM, Motorola, and Microsoft paying. I suspect Apple is likely fairly competitive on the pay. HR folks are pretty aware of what the going rate for talent is in a given area.
I don't know too much about Apple's corporate culture but clearly they are able to attract some pretty talented folks. All other things being equal people talent will migrate towards higher pay but things are rarely equal. Speaking for myself I'd rather make a little less in a fun place with interesting work and cool co-workers. Benefits are also a consideration.
I guess it depends on how good the employee discount is! If I could work there and get a $9500 fully tricked out studio-quality system for significantly less than that, then maybe I wouldn't complain about not making top dollar.
In the end, though, I guess it depends on intangibles: How is the office camaraderie? What are the health benefits? What's the vacation plan? Is it a super high stress environment, or is it a bit more laid back and awesome? Is there a lot of turnover, or are jobs there pretty stable?
I know I for one would be more than willing to take a somewhat lower salary, if I know there's good job security, the job is intellectually stimulating, I can take a vacation from time to time, I like my coworkers, and I don't go home with less hair than I started with from being stressed out the whole time, and if I get sick I can pay my doctor's bills. Other people I'm sure would take the money, but I find a ton of value in comfort!
ìì!
Google is well known for paying below industry to try to keep away non-believers. As a result, they've lost some pretty good talent. With housing prices continuing to rise on the peninsula in spite of the housing bust, everyone is being forced to bump salaries to improve employee retention.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Slashdot has been a champion of the strong growth recently experienced by Apple. Apparently not reflecting this financial upturn downwards is acceptable here.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
How about "non-monetary benefits"?
Not everyone will jump at a job that pays more - I suspect for a growing number of people, there are certain non-monetary benefits that are worth way more than dollars. Things like flex time, telecommuting, vacation are often things that people may value more than their equivalent dollar value.
Maybe Apple offers a no-nonsense environment where they can work on their stuff until "it's done right" rather than "we must ship, fix it later" mentality. Maybe they like Apple. Maybe Apple as an employer treats them fairly. Who knows (I don't work for Apple). Or maybe the work environment is such that it's a healthy one, or stimulating, or something people can feel happy about and look forward to going to everyday. Or maybe they're working on a pet project (after all, Apple has hired a number of people from the open-source community, like FreeBSD developers), and they're getting paid for what would otherwise be volunteer work.
Money isn't everything to a job. For some, it's the most important thing, but for others, once they have enough to satisfy their material needs and current wants, excess money just goes to taxes. Sure other jobs can pay more, but they may make demands that are incompatible with how one wishes to spend their time. In fact, I might say if all that keeps one to a job is money, then there's something wrong.
Or, to answer the original quote - maybe the reality distortion field works great.
There is some truth to that. There aren't that many Mac programming jobs.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
There's more to a job than the salary.
Of course, we all know how well that worked out for John Sculley.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Yeah I sure would like to be working at Yahoo right now.
Now google is one thing. But the older I get the more I care about working at a place that will change the world.
Ironically, we always exhort the "young people" to forego wealth and do things they are passionate about. Maybe the reason we "elders" give this altuistic advice is that is that it's only later after we have the house, kids, and pool, that we crave some meaning in our work.
By meaning I don't just mean, curing Aids or feeding the poor. I mean bringing changing how people do things or think about things. an iPod is very meaningful. So is something mundane like a voting machine's design. Teaching has its attractions because guiding even three or four brilliant students can multiply ones impact, and that definitely is low pay.
Apple is one such place where ideas can become great products with a lot of impact.. My outsider perception of Apple is that integration of many idea-level contributions is the thing that is sold, and that makes everyones contributions more powerful and more accessible.
Google seems to me to the place where individual simple ideas reach the outside and then are backed by a legion of busy beavers to implement them. Apple I'm sure has many more hunchbacks. I'm just saying that one seems to be about pure concepts that a single PI can think of, and one seems to be about concept fusion--more like building an airplane. So one has to ask onseself, will I be one of the few google technologies that takes off, or would I rather create a novel low power Software controlled radio inside an ipod.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They are paying what the market demands
The day they can't hire quality talent at those prices, they will pay more. Until then, it would be stupid to do so, now wouldn't it? And if the Apple employees think they are being "wronged" by being paid this insulting, sweat shop type wage (har har), well they, like you, can STFU and GTFO.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Designed by an underpaid Apple employee. Lame
My question is... how are comparable salaries for designers and developers? Engineers commonly make a bit more than designers and developers. Apple has a very design-centric philosophy, and engineers may be lower on the totem pole than they are at other companies like Yahoo and Google. Maybe they are simply leveling the playing field a little, or at least adjusting it to their needs.
Engineers can bitch all they want, but it may very well be that Apple is putting their salaries elsewhere, which would make a whole lot of sense.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
That's why you don't hear me complaining about salaries.
Maybe the comparison holds up when you are talking about Dell, Gateway, Microsoft, and so forth - but Apple, Google and Yahoo are primarily analagous here only because they all have engineers. Google and Yahoo don't have any hardware that I am aware of (vaporware excluded). Not the best comparison to make, unless there is an agenda...
He loved it. The only reason he quit was that his wife took a position in Boston and there was no comparable position for him at Apple over here. So he took another position, reluctantly.
... \*shrug\* that's all you get.
He said it was the best job he'd ever had.
I've never worked for Apple, so
Google, Yahoo, and Apple are peers?
I mean, yeah, they are all three tech companies, but with entirely different products and workplace cultures.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
No the engineers are paid just fine, it's just that Steve Jobs' $1 salary is dragging down the average...
Anyone who has a good paying job in the US today is lucky.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Everyone has already forgotten the tech run up. Wages and bonuses were flying fast and furious then after 2000 so were the lay offs. Apple has had a couple of good years but if they start spiking their wages and it falls off in the second half of this year or next year they'll have to lay off a lot of the people. The last keynote didn't exactly set the house afire. Better to keep people employed than overpaid and unemployed. Another good year and I'm sure they'll ease up on paying people but the economy is shaky and they are likely looking long term. The money may sound good but if the economy tanks they may be able to hang onto most of their people where are Google and the others will face massive layoffs. It's not all about being the evil empire some of it is done to promote stability. Now if the department heads are getting massive bonuses and there's a pay raise freeze that's another story and I'd send a resume to Google. You have to look at the balance sheet and not the stock price and profits. They are likely investing big in pushing iPhone to the next level. Personally I'd rather have stock than the raise anyway. Just imagine if you had been given 5K in stock three years ago instead of a 5K raise. Instead of 15K you'd have enough for a very sweet sports car or even the down playment on a house.
Either they will have to pay more or severely lower their expectations.
I hope the benefits include remedial education.
Honestly, someone too inept to create a userID should not be casting the first stone as far as intelligence.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, good heath care plans and options are just the kind of thing that wears thin and makes you seek something else.
Or not.
It's not like we're just talking free soda here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
stock options perhaps worth much more than salary
Well, I RTFA and while the data from the TechCrunch posting is quite interesting, the conclusion drawn from the blog post mentioned in the blurb is missing one important factor:
It takes Apples R&D budget and spreads it over the total number of employees from Apple. It then gets to the conclusion that Apple has underpaid its software engineers especially in the last few years as the R&D budget was not nearly as big as it should have been for the number of employees Apple has.
The problem with this conclusion is found in this article, which estimates that half of Apples employees are now working in retail i.e. in an Apple Store. Since Google and the likes do not have a brick and mortar business, so most employees are actually engineers, the simple calculation from the article might work there, but with Apple, it is a bit more complicated than that, especially since the retail store business has just been built in the last couple years
Dont understand me wrong, Apple could still by all means underpay its engineers, but the conclusion of the article is too simple, I think.
People love working for Google, but my friends there tell me they work 70+ hrs/week.
People like working for Yahoo, but my friends there tell me they work 60+ hrs/week.
People tell me they love working for Apple, because they only work 50hrs/week.
Maybe the salaries reflect that? Maybe the salary difference between Yahoo/Apple reflects the relative financial positions of the company? Maybe the salary differences have to do with Cupertino vs Mountain View cost of living? Maybe Apple employees have made buttloads of stock and HR doesn't need to pay them $20k more because they're making $50k each year in restricted stock that's vesting? Maybe Apple gives 30% bonuses and the others don't?
I don't know, you tell me. I know Salary vs Salary is normally a weak comparison.
Defend that the engineers continue to work at Apple despite lower than average salaries? Nobody's making them stay, and with Apple on their resume they could get work other places quite easily. This isn't like Wal-Mart dragging down the wages of an entire town.
If anything, Yahoo should question why they're paying their engineers so much.
Apparently not reflecting this financial upturn downwards is acceptable here.
No one will ever know, as your sentence is unparseable.
If you meant to say, why are employees not getting more because Apple has done well - I invite you to look up the term "options" which would indicate exactly the opposite is true from what you seem to think.
A company can't just be giving raises and taking them away every year or quarter depending on the market or profits! That's exactly why employees get options, so they can benefit from the good times without imposing a financial burden if later years are not as good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know you're being sarcastic, but that does touch a subject that I've genuinely wondered about.
See most stories we're graced with from Apple (which isn't to say it's a comprehensive set, but just that that's the image that Apple itself is perfectly happy to give) is that everything happened because of the Great Man Steve Jobs, and (thinly veiled) in spite of those lazy incompetent engineers. X is all due to the Great Man's vision. Y was personally tested by the Great Man. Z only happened because the Great Man yelled at the engineers and told them to make the things He wants. W happened because, frighteningly enough, the Great Man didn't yell for a change, but just fixed the engineers with his iciest stare and asked them when are they going to get it done. Etc.
Frankly, it gives the impression of something more like Stalin's USSR or Mao's China than anything even vaguely resembling a company or a boss I'd like to work for. Not saying that it's necessarily that bad, I wouldn't know, but that's the impression that Apple's propaganda machine leaves. Seen from outside, and if the question came, "well, would I want to quit my job and try to get a job there?", it doesn't exactly sound motivational, to say the least.
Even skipping past the other implications, I never heard the Great Man giving credit to anyone else but himself. You hear all the time about how the iPod's success is because Steve Jobs himself said how loud the volume button should go, but you never hear who was actually the guy who designed the bloody thing. Well, not from Apple. It's not hard to dig up the names, but I'd like just once to hear Apple just come out and say "we'd like to thank these guys for making it possible."
Even from MS, for all its other sins, you hear about who championed, say, their getting into the whole Internet thing, against Bill Gates's vision. Or about those two guys whose bright idea was to make DirectX instead of just going with the OpenGL flow. Heck, you even hear about the Bob clusterfuck being the brain child of Melinda Gates. Good or bad, it's not particularly hard to find out who was really behind what.
I'm not saying that Bill Gates is a nice guy, and Ballmer probably even less so. But between one narcissistic bully who at least gives credit, and a narcissistic bully who doesn't, Bill comes out as a bit less of a low life on my scale.
Frankly, just about the only positive thing I hear about Apple as an employer, is that they don't discriminate against anyone. Their world is so centered around the cult of Steve Jobs, that there is no room for caring whether you're black, gay or whatever else. You're the worthless peon, and that's enough about you already.
Now I hear that the wages aren't that great either.
So, really, please help me understand. Why _do_ those guys go work there? I'm genuinely curious.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I doubt those numbers are worth the paper they're (virtually) printed on. For Google, their results are based on TEN responses, according to the article. That's not statistically meaningful for a population of several thousand.
In addition, they don't verify the information they're given (how could they, anyway?), nor do they have any idea who is actually posting those salaries. Interesting idea, but very suspect methodology.
>There's more to a job than the salary.
Yes but a job that requires the employee to be located in any major city in California, needs to pay in the 250,000 range as a base salary, if it is expected to attract any kind of mid-career talent.
Remember, you aren't trying to recruit "kids" out of "college", that's easy. But what you want is experience -- the kind of experienced people that you need to persuade away from operating their own businesses. You don't get that for $90K in California. 90k after taxes is about 55k in California. If you already have some kind of equity in the housing market there, you can do it, but you're still looking at something on the order of 25k after expenses. It's doable, but it's not lucrative.
That said, I don't know anything about Apple's career band, or how the staff is distributed to get this "89,000" average. It could mean a whole lot of things. But I can assure you, experienced engineers at Apple are getting much more than that. One thing they aren't, is stupid.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Moderate Parent Down.
This factor was obvious to anyone who has worked at a large company before. Many of the people working at Apple right now are probably doing so out of goodwill!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What was that?
I didn't hear you over the voices of about 20000 George Washingtons singing "Money makes the world go around".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Apple engineers feature Fairplay DRM that prevents them from working for alternative employers.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
I make a bit less, but I work from home and don't even need to get out of my pajamas till I want to go out to lunch.
Point is that people will often given up a higher salary for a more interesting position with better benefits.
People work at Apple because they want to, even if Jobs is a jerk (met him, he is).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Google is a major employer of Engineering PhDs for a reason! Google does bleeding-edge DS research while Apple is basically Microsoft minus Microsoft Research plus a lot of designers.
There's just no need to hire the best for that kind of work, so they can afford to continue paying inferior salaries.
I think apple will have to face defecations.
Southwest Airlines has always paid less for just about every single position than the industry standard, from the CEO to the pilots to the attendants. Yet every time SA is hiring for a new position, they'll have dozens or hundreds of people from the other airlines interview for it. Why? Because working at most airlines is a crappy, thankless job, and at Southwest it's fun.
;-)
Not sure how well that applies here though, as Google has a reputation for being pretty fun while Apple has a reputation of having people scream at you when your project is late or experiencing difficulties. I guess some people are gluttons for pain
Given that the job market is doing just fine, the above is either an election-year troll or an anecdotal whiner. Mod it up if your politics require you to do so, but insightful? C'mon!!
I hate articles like this, it's a typical american frame of mind, I'm saying this because I was born in poland but have spent most of my life in the states, and I work in management. Apple doesn't have to do anything, if engineers jump ship, there are PLENTY of qualified people over seas that would do the jobs for alot less, or just keep the senior most people and take a bunch of interns in and pay them nothing. Saying someone isn't paid enough is a bad frame of mind to be in, especially right now when people should be happy they have jobs. If I hire you and we setup how much you get paid then, don't expect more if the company makes money, do you want a pay cut when we lose money, no, your not the owner/ceo or what ever of the company, your just an employee. Trust me everyone is replaceable, the only time your not, is when you literally know exactly where the bodies are buried. If someone came up to me and said they want a raise because at company X they could be making more, I'd tell them, "So that means your quiting, please leave the property now."
Good post. Google and MS are said to expect you to live there. If Apple is 40-45 hours, then a lower salary is fine.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
This is the kind of shit that bothers me about modern America. Oh noes, those guys get paid more than me, I am the suck and must leave for greener grass. It is unbelievably short sighted and materialistic to base these kinds of comparisons strictly on salary. Even outside of taking into account other benefits such as medical, retirements, or other such things there is who you work with, who you work for, where you work, where you live, what you actually do. You know, lots of job satisfaction things. It saddens me to watch people constantly bail on jobs they like for more money only to find they hate their new job, don't get to do what they want, have completely lost seniority, etc.
I turned down job offers easily 30k more than what I make now. They weren't where I wanted to be for one. Also, while at my current employ I had to have some major surgery on my ankle. I spent 3 weeks "working" from home, which was really little more than keep up on what was going on and help with what I could through the fog of pain killers. No vacation or sick time used. Then when I did take some vacation time they had to get a hold of me for a few things, on those days they didn't charge me vacation time. I enjoy the people I work with, my boss is great about letting me just get things done (I have worked for micromanaging cockmasters before so this is GOLD in my book), and generally enjoy doing my work even on the shitty days.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
saying you worked for such a trendy trend-setter like Apple got you laid more.
Maybe there's a correlation? Damn 10.5.3. You'd think i/o bugs as big as the ones in the latest OS X updates would be caught at some point in the testing.
It makes sense though, that companies like Apple and Google pay less. Because they can! It's essentially supply and demand. They have strong name recognition and are touted as desirable places to work. As such, they have a glut of applicants, and can thus pick and choose and lowball at their discretion.
Whereas other companies here in the valley that don't have as strong a geek cred. has to offer a strong salary to attract talent.
One more factor to consider is the perks. Those free organic meals and other benefits aren't free you know.
The only people working 70+ hours/week at Google are the folks nearing a deadline, putting out a fire, or dealing with some other emergency. Some other folks do get close to that, however. The fresh out of college, in-a-new-town sort of folks have no life and so they work all week. Google gives them dinner (though I suspect dinner service will be stopping soon; shortly before I left, they were sending out surveys to see how they could "serve you better"), there are showers, and if you're young and energetic you can hook up with another geek. You get a few years before you burn out, so these guys are fine; they'll learn.
The other ones working insane hours are the people that want a pay raise. You have to get promoted to get a raise at Google. And since promotions are essentially popularity contests, you need to Be Seen (and be seen as a go-getter). Since I'm getting up in years, and I have a family life I enjoy, I never bothered to nominate myself for a promotion. It meant a few years without a raise, but the stock did well so it was a wash in my mind. The bonuses were fairly generous anyway.
The final group working long hours are those who are doing a 20% project. These are few and far between, the 20% project being primarily a myth to entice people into applying for a job. (I did a lot of interviewing, and about half the interviewees would ask about 20% projects, what mine was, etc. I could never quite bring myself to lie to them and say that there was ever the slightest chance they'd get to choose and work on a 20% project). There's been a real severe crackdown on 20% time. There's just less need for a "throw everything at a wall, see what sticks" mentality. They have a core set of products, so what you'll see from here on out is acquisitions as a way to get into offering new products/services, and add-ons to existing products (new features in Google maps, etc). There's actually a little room for 20% time in the latter areas, but the barrier to entry is non-trivial. Long gone are the days when you could host some new whizz-bang idea on your workstation or a borrowed machine in a coloc. If you want to integrate with existing services, you have to speak borg, borgmon, etc.
Anyway, there are a lot of people who put in a normal working week at Google an dare perfectly happy. They won't get promoted as often (or ever), and they won't get involved with the internal Google hip-crowd, but they can have happy, productive careers there. It's actually a pretty non-stressful place to work, once the golden handcuffs come off. I don't know that I'd work there again, but it's a fun place to be, with a lot of energy about the place.
As far as Apple, the stuff I was hearing is that there's a lot of fear for one's job, everyone needs to swear allegiance to the Cult of Steve, etc. I gather it's not a very fun place to work, and I gather that long work weeks are all but mandatory. That could just be sour grapes from overworked engineers, though.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
True, but those salaries don't meet their material needs.
Median cost of a home in Cupertino: $649,000.
Median mortgage payment: $2,145
The rule is, you take your annual salary ($89,000), you take 28% of that, and divide by twelve, and that is your upper bound for mortgage payment ($2,076).
Want to work for Apple? Odds are you'll be renting.
All of those salaries seem very low (even the Google ones). Assuming the average engineer has 7 years of experience (pulled that number out of my ass), that seems like a pretty low amount to be making after that amount of time. How do these engineers support a family in the Bay Area?
Glad I'm on the East Coast.
Especially since Apple threw Java support out the window.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
I wish my salary were "only" $89,000! I make a bit over $14/hour, which equates to ~$30,000 a year. Unless your hours are cut, in which case you only make ~$22,500 per year.
And I'm a programmer/sysadmin with a college degree!
If you put Steve Jobs up against Chuck Norris?
Yes mod me down but this is an Apple post, It's meant to be joked about.
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
I'm sure a lot of people would take lower pay if they knew they would have a job for the next 20 or 30 years vs a job that pays great, but you don't know if there will be layoffs a week, a month, or a year from now.
No clue as to whether Apple has job security, but I'm guessing it would be a huge factor if they do.
It is a little known fact that he made both iPod and iPhone from an old Newton in a cave in Afghanistan using only rocks and guano for tools.
OSX?
"Hello World" and a lot of spit.
MacBook Air?
An abacus, some duct-tape, half a paper-clip and a tablespoon of sand.
That show MacGyver?
It was originally supposed to be called "That Mac Guy: The Steve Jobs Chronicles".
Steve asked them to change that, because he is so modest, and he didn't want all other guys in the IT industry to implode out of jealousy.
Ain't he just great?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Is that another name for a reacharound?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Think Tom Cruise staring in "The Firm"!!! I worked for them for a short time, and things were just a bit to cozy for me. I would point out a security flaw, and they would start with the Jedi Mind Tricks(R), "This is not a flaw you see" and "Do What is good for the company, not Microsoft". I am just sayin'.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
I know, right? Where else are they going to get all that free Kool-Aid?
Mod me down too
Outside the Bay it might note known, but there is a running joke about the coming downfall of Google from within due to it's arrogance. Google actually doesn't pay that well and uses a *lot* of 3rd party contractors who make shit on the hope of coming onto google for real.
What's really terrible is Google operates with a quit long interview process, often with a number of people. These people are all very similar and have huge chips on their shoulder and only look to hire people much like themselves. That is people from academia with not too much real market experience. They are quickly becoming a very self referential mono-culture of people who genuinely believe they are better, but without the actual experience to back it up. A telling sign is their over reliance on logic puzzle interviews, raw information queries and needing to gel solidly with a large number of people. They ask very few "how would you do X" or "how do you deal with Y" questions, instead thinking that the raw intelligence is the best feature to grade an applicant on.
Anyone who has dealt with tech "darlings" knows the danger of this. Sure they may be smart as fuck, but it doesn't mean they know how to finish or deliver. It may be hard for the slashdot poster to believe but people used to dream of working at microsoft (and before that IBM) the way they talk about google now. It's just another cycle.
--- I do not moderate.
You don't pay more than people are worth. The current salary levels are about right.
Jobs thanked the engineers at the end of this year's WWDC keynote.
Jobs said there were many managers ready to replace him at the annual shareholders meeting.
Jobs is always praising Jonathan Ive, the designer behind Apple's hardware look and feel.
Jobs always invites engineers on stage at keynotes. View the keynotes... they are online.
Where have you been ?
It's not Job's fault that the press wants a cult of personality. Jobs rarely grants interviews.
I would higher a Apple Engineer...
Now you're just putting them on a pedestal!
While Apple has paid lower salaries, what Apple HR refers to as 'competitive', a weighted range below the industry mid-point, they also gave out stock options. An engineer at Apple who had amassed options with exercise in the low teens or better per share might find themselves pretty well off on paper with the stock price now at $181/share. The last of these nice options vest over this year.
Other benefits such as medical are also 'competitive', or poor to mediocre. Things that you might have read about, such as the old sabbatical program, are long gone.
This now turns into an entirely different problem for Apple, as the senior technical people discover that they can exercise those options, and even after covering the taxes can invest the proceeds in a fairly conservative manner and easily replace their salary. The ability to pop on that T-shirt saying "F#@k You I Am Fully Vested" does wonders for one's BS tolerance level. Some folks might not tolerate being put on maintenance duty, code cleanup ("Please alter the tabs and indentation of the following 310 source code files") , or being given a series of problem reports that 'Function F() is 1.1% slower in Leopard than in Tiger. Fix as your top priority item and send Bertrand daily status!" (This gets old after a few hundred repetitions.)
It remains to be seen as to how much of Apple's more experienced workforce might depart in the near future, and what impact this will have on the business and those who remain behind.
I think the confusion here is the assumption that Apple is in the same league as Yahoo and Google.
It's reading things like this that help put my little worldview in perspective. I'm out in the sticks of Eastern Washington (the state), earning ~52k writing software, paying 645 for a two-bed, and maybe a mile from the Columbia River and the mess of parks cluttering the shore.
That sound fantastic, as long as it's a mortgage you're paying not rent. At one tyme I wanted to move there so I could scuba dive and observe the J, K, and L pods of orcas as well as do some hiking.
FalconShould there be a Law?
..."stock options"
salary is only part of "total compensation" - (i.e. "benefits" are worth a lot) so directly comparing "salaries" becomes very hard
"salary" isn't one of the top reasons people voluntarily leave jobs (Google has millions of results for "reasons people change jobs")
the top reason is always some form of "company culture" issue - e.g. "I just didn't like it there"
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
All Americans are lucky.
However, by historical standards, "good paying" is about the same today relative to inflation as it was in 1998, and 1998 was better than 1988. Don't believe the doom and gloom the press pushes in an election year. By any European country's standards (except Ireland), the USA has an awesome economy.
Unemployment is low, exports are surging, national debt as a percentage of GDP is relatively low.
France has 12% unemployment even with a less tan 40 hour week.
Germany has 8% unemployment.
USA has 5.5% unemployment.
Union jobs in manufacturing have declined in the USA for 35 years, but that is hardly the whole economy.
It's worse than you stated...
> I can't wait to see how the Apple faithful attempt to defend this one.
I'm seeing a LOT more noise from people trying to bait Apple fanbois than from the fanbois themselves.
I think you guys are forgetting that they get stock options and thier stock over the past few years has blown off the roof. No one is complaining over at Apple, believe me.
Palm Inc has been buying up all the Apple personell they can lay their hands on. Executives, engineers, apparently anyone they can woo over.
Will it help Palm? Unlikely- they already had their opportunity to dominate the small device market and let it pass them by. They mismanaged their way into irrelevance, it's unlikely they will mismanage their way out of it. And short of convincing Steve Jobs to jump ship, its not likely to be enough to help them.
However... the brain drain can definitely hurt Apple. Some turnover is ok, but losing a majority of your experienced people is not only bad for the company, but incredibly damaging for morale.
Assuming 1 income family.
This leads to a rant about the problems with dual spouse incomes, and how they have driven up the price of goods while destroying peoples time...but I'll spare you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why is YHOO paying so much? Easy: been watching the press??? No right thinking Yahoo employee wants to get borged by MS and Yahoo need to sweeten the deal to keep employees.
I'm surprised that China isn't producing low-$ apple clones.
Macs are built in China, the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on was shipped from Shanghai. As for clones, the problem with them is that if there's a problem with them Apple will get the blackeye. And more importantly cheaper clones will reduce Apple's hardware sales, Apple did allow Mac clones but after Apple bought NeXT and brought back Steve Jobs he looked at the books and saw Apple was losing more in hardware sales than it made in licensing the Mac OS. So he ended licensing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
no way, they all think different about salaries
It's all about the benefits. I could be making 2x more than what I am at my current job, but I can't get anything matching the benefits.
BUT, most of them were unique that now server no interest to me. I'm trying to negotiate a raise instead, but it's looking like I'm moving on. Now to just find another telecommuting job.
Nope. Have a look at any recent OS X x.0 release if you don't believe me.
Apple hires a lot of workers at the lower end of the 'food chain', which skews their average salary. Workers in their factories, Apple Store employees etc. An overwhelming proportion of Google/Yahoo/MS employees are software/business folks, who on average are paid higher. Its a case of comparing Apples and Oranges.
Hmmm, record sales, doubling of market share, #1 Music Player, #1 Music online store, iPhone, iLife, OS X, etc.. fuck, all of it. If this is the result of paying your employees peanuts then my employees are in for a big surprise come Friday when their paychecks are replaced with boxes of Cracker Jacks®.
Step 3. Profit!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
ABORT
One of my brother-in-laws worked at Apple during the late 80's early 90's time frame. From his pov, until Windows 95 really started to eat Apple's lunch, Apple had a coolness factor for young engineers that allowed the company to pay a bit below industry standard, and work them like dogs until they burned out.
With any luck, today's cadre can enjoy the run up in their stock-based net worth without the Dickesian working conditions.
Luke, help me take this mask off
After coming from an interview today, it could be because they have a lot of women working there, as most engineers can attest, are rather rare in most high-tech environments.
I see a lot of numbers thrown around for what a reasonable salary is for a software developer. It would be nice to see some real data as to what jobs get what salaries.
Every company has this kind of data internally, but the public is intentionally left in the dark because companies know that they can get away with paying less if employees know less about what they are worth.
What I'd like to see is a detailed breakdown on what people are getting paid based on job title, location, prior job experience, and education, which seem to me to most likely be the most significant factors.
I've been pretty happy with the salaries I've been paid, but just the same, it's stupid to not want to have information that could give you a better hand in negotiations.
Don't remember even mentioning health care and options, probably because they are fairly ubiquitous and offering them does not make you stand out.
I am in absolute disagreement here. From one company to the next, there can (and will) be huge differences in health care coverage. It's easy not to care when you are young but as you start to get into later thirties it can make a large difference in what you pay out of pocket.
Even more so with option plans, where from one company to the next you can have a pittance or a huge amount, never mind what they actually provide in the way of additional options for good performances.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I haven't seen much from people who have actually been there on this thread. I was an engineer with Apple for seven years, and I think I can speak to what it's like there. Yes, the pay is less than at comparable companies. The hiring managers gripe about it; I know that we lost many good candidates because we couldn't match the offers they got from other high tech companies.
What offsets this? First, like many high tech companies, we got stock options. When the stock price soared recently, employees hit a jackpot. Second, there are long-term benefits from being an Apple employee. Having Apple on your resume is a definite plus in the industry -- it's something that potential employers definitely give weight to.
Additionally, the environment is incredibly stimulating. You are surrounded by the best of the best, and I found myself working up at a level I wouldn't have thought possible. There's also the feeling of being a part of something that you couldn't do by yourself -- and the company culture recognizes more than just the core engineering teams.
--Paul
That $89K figure sounds like salary alone for the average new hire. I got considerably more than that in salary and when I add in the value of 5,000 stock options priced at $22 pre-split, I did very well indeed.
If an Apple employee buys all the shares they can through the employee stock purchase plan, they'll come out fine. I procrastinated a bit on enrolling in the plan, though.
I bet you even managed to type that with a straight face. You might even believe it!
I know a lot of people who work at Apple and, to a man, they all describe an extremely hectic and overworked environment in which the ship date is king, and all else is secondary.
They're underpaid and overworked. The only reason they can hire anybody is because of their name, and because so many people have a dream of working there and don't care that they barely get paid enough to rent a microscopic apartment that they'll hardly ever see anyway due to working all the time.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Also because it's extremely difficult to get a job in airlines. Southwest is really just paying what ought to be the market rate, considering supply and demand of workers in that area, which other airliners are unwilling or unable to pay due to union agreements and other such constraints that Southwest doesn't suffer from.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Sounds like Microsoft, but with free food and more stress.
Sorry, I just googled rederick and it's a proper name, so the poster you tried to correct was most likely talking about someone named "Rederick" who acts like a president, hence "presidential rederick". The real error was that proper names are capitalized, so it should be "presidential Rederick".
Yahoo is paying their engineers so much because they're not Apple.
Apple has a huge pool of potential talent whose dream job is working at Apple. Getting a job offer from Apple is, to these people, one of the best things that actually has a chance of happening to them. Being able to say "I work at Apple" and work on an Apple project is worth tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary to them.
I know what I'm talking about because ten years ago, if Apple had given me an extremely sub-par salary in a job offer, I would have accepted it in no time flat.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
If not facing defection, defecation for sure.
Is this data anywhere near accurate? The iPhone group recruited me earlier this year for a software engineering gig (I got through two rounds of interviews, but didn't get the job), and they all but laughed at the idea I was making $85K, saying "we can blow that away." And I mean really, there's no way an engineering professional in Silicon Valley could live on $89K.
I'm sorry, but I just can't accept the premise here.
2) They work for apple anyone involved with Apple seem to be somewhat in love with the company (slightly humourous to me anyway)
3) Money < Job Satisfaction (actual valid response)
Job satisfaction ensures retention not money.Money will placate employees for typically no longer than 6 mths if my memory of HR stats serves correctly.
If Steve Jobs and his fellow executives keep staff happy they will probably work for a bit less as long as they're meeting the cost of living.
that I happily did for less money. because I was really in to what the job was producing. pride can be worth a lot of money.
the thing about a job like that is that if you are reasonably sure that you can stay there if you want to, and you really enjoy the job, you don't have to spend all your time building up fuck-you money.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Look at damn near ANY x.0 software release and you'll find that OS X isn't as bad as many, especially if we want to compare it to Windows.
I am still waiting for them to fire the idiot who wrote Delete on the Backspace button! Where is QA when you need them?
I had one job somewhat like that about 15 years ago, and I didn't appreciate how great it was at the time.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Want to work in Silicon Valley? Odds are you'll be renting, even if you work for Google, unless you're just stupid with money.
It's been a good while now (10 yrs, my how the time flies) since I worked at Apple. And when I did, it was in the support environment, not engineering. But. I daresay the principles will be much the same. A lot of folks were there because it was *Apple*. And they'd toil away in conditions they'd ditch anywhere else, because it was Apple, and I'll be the first to say it was damn good fun to be a part of "one more thing". Yes, the landscape has changed a bit since OS X, and at least IMHO there's less of the fanatics then there were in those days (remember Guy Kawasaki's Evangelist?). But the unixy underpinnings are arguably quite attractive to a lot of engineering and coder types.
So. I'd say they may have to bump a bit, but they're gonna do alright based on added bennies, stock perks, and the simple fact that a lot of people will put in 2-4 years at a reduced salary just because they can work for a legend like Apple. When they get fed up with it, they'll jump ship and enjoy the 20k raise. And another keen bright noob fresh out of Uni will jump in and enthusiastically fill their seat, in exchange for a few years of being part of it and the positive resume fodder.
ehintz
"How about "non-monetary benefits"?"
Like what? Basking in Steve Jobs' ethereal glow?
That's a pretty big chunk of change they're giving up to stay at Apple.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"A salary isn't just about money. It's also about perks.
For example, every year I get a $100 gas card. Can't put a price tag on that."
Tweet, tweet.
I am sick of the smug attitudes of people on sites like this looking down their noses at lower class servicemen, its good to see someone at least point out that it is illegal in the work place.
It's always a possibility that their hiring practices have leaned toward the "true believer" type, willing to sacrifice the higher salary for being part of "it." Incidentally, what makes you all think that these engineers' spouses don't work? Insensitive clods...
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Great book...believe it won a Pulitzer Prize.
I read it in the early 80's. When I started my own software company in '89, I took a page from the book, specifically hiring kids right off the campus of Oklahoma University.
They worked for the nearly nothing I could afford and were fanatical. (and yes, I'm a pretty good salesman!)
Interestingly enough, we developed software for the NeXT. So, we got a glass or three of Steve's Kool-Aid whilst doing business with NeXT.
We've all since moved on to other things, but one of the kids went on to become Chief Systems Architect at a company that is doing some amazing stuff. I don't know for a fact, but I'd guess he worked on the cheap while they were spinning up.
A lot of NeXT folks went to Apple and I've stayed in touch with several. My impression is that Apple is a good place to work, regardless of salary.
I am my own gestalt.
I pay $1000 a month for a large 2 bedroom in a decent neighborhood in Indianapolis. Average in the good areas are $650 - $850 for a one bedroom and about $750 - $1500 for a two here.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
"This isn't like Wal-Mart dragging down the wages of an entire town"
Everywhere Wal Mart has gone, its had beneficial effects for the area as a whole. Mom and Pop dime store go out of business because of big bad Wal Mart? So what? Small food stores and delis go under because of chain grocery stores too. General stores and hardware stores went under when Sears and JC Penney were dominant.
Wherever a chain store like Wal Mart or Target or Costco opens, a whole ecosystem of small stores spring up around it. You not only get cheaper prices with chains, you also get a much better selection of goods. The tax base always... always increases in that area, not decreases. And last I checked, Wal Mart isn't the only chain that doesn't pay big bucks to their employees. Are you bitching about Best Buy, Circuit City, and Food Lion as well? Do you shop at those stores anyway, or do you voluntarily pay higher prices at places like Whole Foods? Do you seriously expect anyone to pay good money for slinging stock at a department store? Had Wal Mart never come to these small towns, how is it that you figure their income or the town's tax base would have increased otherwise?
You people act like Wal Mart conquers and forces entire populations to shopping enslavement. This is a market economy, and businesses succeed because they give customers what they want, or someone else comes and takes their business away. If there's money, there's going to be competition for it. Mom and Pop stores, cute and quaint Americana that they were, weren't getting it done. Someone else built a better mousetrap. For that matter, why don't you bemoan the loss of small bookstores, neighborhood gas stations, and Five and Dimes while you're at it? They've all been swept away too, and Wal Mart had nothing to do with their death.
While you're at it, would you like to curse the web? Amazon and their like are also doing what Wal Mart did, only on a wider scale, and you don't get the benefit of any local brick and mortar presence... or the tax funds they bring. But would you argue that Amazon has been a bad thing? If you feel that strongly about small businesses, you patronize them, by all means. But don't expect to be able to force myself and other customers to shop at such places when there's a better alternative.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You, sir, do not know what you are talking about.
Mac OS X is the *first* UNIX(tm) *not* derived from AT&T sources.
I was one of the people who made Mac OS X into UNIX(tm), and we started from not even being able to compile the test suite.
My first one line header file change to xnu to test the water (not defining size_t in ) broke 156 projects, including Open Source that was written by people who assumed promiscuous #include files, in violation of the standard.
A relatively small team of us fixed well over 40,000 total test case failures in a period of about 2.5 years, many of those in command line tools, most of that code being pushed back out to the various Open Source projects. Like, oh, "gcc", "bash", "vim", "tar", "bc", "pax", and hundreds of others, which are now UNIX conformant because of us.
In the middle of things we were working 80 hour weeks, sometimes more.
At the end... *almost no one noticed the changes*, because we worked our *asses* off to make sure there was so close to zero *both binary and source* compatibility issues that it would *not* be noticed. One member of the team put it this way: "It's like raising everyone 12 feet into the air, and replacing the Earth underneath them, then lowering them back down to the ground".
All told, we changed more lines of code in the kernel, libraries, compiler, and UNIX(tm) standardized utilities, than all of the non-conformance related changes in Tiger and Leopard combined. I counted.
And then we published the sources for everything needed to build your own Darwin system that could pass the UNIX(tm) conformance test, including our kernel.
So let me repeat: you, sir, do not know what you are talking about.
-- Terry
Difference in interpretation, Consumerreports is on what you should realistically consider for yourself. The previous post is the historic mortgage lender/banker model. It's how people get upsized and in trouble but tend to muddle through in non-bubble markets.
I went for a job interview at Apple last year. I asked the hiring manager about the housing situation in the area. He told me he rents because he can't afford a house. I figured if my manager was renting, I'd have to live in a van down by the river. Needless to say, I didn't take a job there.
H-1B Visa Holders in Apple make More than $100K. Check out
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It is much worse if you consider those not already IN a house. A 6.5%, 30 year, $585k mortgage (assuming you managed to save the $85k for a downpayment while paying more than $2000/month in rent) gives you a monthly payment of around $4500 per month--over 85% of your take-home pay. With the cheapest houses anywhere near Cupertino or Mountain View running over $500k, there's not much room for improvement, either.
*gasp* Wow...I don't even make half of that.
Maybe I should move to California. Oh, no, wait, I can't, because they limited the number of visas.
And people wonder why jobs are being given to people in other countries...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Would you rather have iMovie or Windows Movie Maker on your resume?
I'd rather have Apple Final Cut Studio 2.
What about iTunes vs Sonic Stage?
I'd rather have Sound Forge and Audacity.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I just asked for 100K for a new job today. Thanks /. For ruining my chances, because if apple only gets 90K, what the hell am i worth?
theres itunes the single biggest clusterfuck of a program you could imagine.
If it's so bad then why do millions of people use it? And not just on Macs, but on Windows too?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Erm, I take aerial photos [that are stitched together] for Google earth/maps. I also work about 90 hours a week, 7 days a week, and I've been holed up in a hotel in BFE(Yukon territory, Canada) for the past 15 days eating ramen noodles. With the overtime...about 50k annually, maybe less? Which robot replaceable idiot at Google actually makes 112k for a 40 hour week? I'm envious.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
Hi. I work at Apple, though I'm not speaking on behalf of the company. There seems to be a lot of speculation going on here, most of it unfounded (in the FA as well), which I will not comment on.
What I will say is that Apple is growing, rapidly. We need engineers. Software, hardware, embedded, QA, IT, tech support. You could be working on Macs, iPods, iPhones, or one of our many applications. Start here: Apple Jobs. Talk to a recruiter or a hiring manager. Ask them about compensation if that's what you're worried about. I bet you'll find everything to your satisfaction and a great environment full of smart people and challenging work. I know I did and that's why I started working here.
I missed the part where MacOS was the same thing as Unix. If you want Unix behavior, use Unix.
I can, by dropping into the terminal. OS X is built on Unix, er BSD from Nextstep. Aqua is the user interface built on top of OS X. And with X11 installed I can run most any program that runs in X Windows.
Actually I'm typing this on my new, well about 10 months old, MacBook Pro. When I switched from MS Windows and bought it I was thinking I'd install Ubuntu on it as a dualboot system, but then I started wondering why, I can do almost everything on it now I could do with Ubuntu.
FalconShould there be a Law?
BTW the only reason itunes and quicktime are number one is because everyone with an ipod is forced to use it.
I could use my iPod, if I had one but I don't, on my Linux PC, which I do have, using gtkpod.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea but Larry Ellison knows how to sail.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No, NT4 was the best, and the only good MS Windows OS. Of all the Windows OSes I've used, since 3.x the only I have not used is 2003 and Vista, only NT4 didn't crash on me.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Tiger has never crashed on me, though I've only been using it about 10 months. The only software problems I have had is with Firefox, once in a while it unexpectedly shuts down. The one hardware problem, well it might a problem with Tiger I don't really know, is that occasionally when I close then open the lip on my MacBook Pro it doesn't always resume. Closing then reopening it, repeatedly some tymes, usually works though.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why you would set-up a company that could literally be located almost anywhere in one of the most expensive states to live in? What's the competitive advantage of being forced to pay people a lot more money than they are actually worth virtually everywhere else?
Cite your sources. The median price of a single-family, detached home in Cupertino is nowhere near $649,000. That may well be the entry price, but the median price is well over $1 million.
Further, the number of engineers buying any home at all as a single wage-earner is infinitesimally small. They're renters unless they previously owned property that they sold at a large profit. No engineer at Apple, Yahoo, or Google is buying a mid-priced home in Cupertino on their own salary. Condos, townhouses, and some entry-level bungalows, maybe.
No salary meets the material needs of homeowners in California. That's why there were so many subprime mortgages here, and why the real estate market has been a difficult prospect for almost two decades now for new buyers.
That's because the statistics are a load. The actual median home price in Cupertino is somewhere around or above $1 million. Yahoo Real Estate says $924k, MLS listings are around $1.2M, Nextag says about $1.05M. The California median might be $649k, but that's because it includes all the sparse, cheap areas in the middle of the state and the high number of flats, condos, and townhouses in urban areas that sell at a lower rate.
A fairly pedestrian one-bedroom condo in Cupertino is $300,000. This house down the street from a friend is currently on the market for about a million. It's ~1400 square feet, 3 bedrooms and probably a typical Cupertino home in all respects.
The people Google/Apple/Microsoft hire get PHDs younger than navy recruits getting into SEALS.
That's it right there, it takes so long to become a Navy SEAL that if you went to college instead you might earn your PhD first. I went into the Army, and tried to go into the Special Forces, which was easier to get into back then. I was told nobody could enlist for the SF, you had to go into something else, such as the Army Rangers or 82nd Airborn first. Once you had served in that for some years then you could request SF training, however the waiting list was more than 2 years long back then. I don't know how they do it now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Mod Child Down.
...
Just wondering... If we had a -1 Down mod, wouldn't it be a bit retarded?
Ignore this signature. By order.
they make you feel really "special"? "hip" people? "hardcore" hobbies, like playing in bands? good lord... I mean, honestly, I'm 21 and after reading your description I'm actually *scared* of Apple, so I can't imagine a 30-something experienced engineer thinking "wow, that sure sounds like a cool place to work for".
It sound good to me. I don't have dreadlocks but my hair is longer than many others like and my beard is unruly, actually my neighbor who moved in is making a bunch of noise about tying me down so he can cut my hair and beard. Some have also called me, and in some ways I am like one, a hippy. For hobbies other than camping and hiking I love to cliff and scuba dive, hunt, rock climb and repel, and would like to hangglide. I would also love to learn to play an instrument, specifically the Nighteagle flute I own.
And I'm 40-something.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
because the people that work there would probably work there for for free because there all sad mac fan boys.
Maybe these people actually just don't have a choice.
Being a desktop software develop or kernel hacker does not qualify you to "improve systems to sell ads". You need a lot more math and statistics for that, and much less low level hacking skills.
As the Xserve RAID was a RAID shelf, and Xsan is a SAN distributed file system, the Xserve RAID wasn't replaced by Xsan 2.
Sorry but I don't understand the differences, they're both mass storage with some sort of failsafe built in aren't they?
FalconShould there be a Law?
xsan is a software product that allows a unified volume of storage over a network of available space, while the xserve raid was a physical piece of hardware comprised of an xserve and an array of hdds
No, I may not understand right. I thought Xserve RAID and Xsan were mass storage devices with some sort of failsafe protection. So I was thinking why offer two different systems, Xserve RAID was dropped right after Xsan was offered.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You want exploitation? Look at the salaries at Red Hat!
"Will Apple have to raise salaries to match the market rate, or face defecations?"
Apple is a business.
They pay what they need to pay, no more. That's how they succeed.
The fact that they pay a tad lower than some, suggests that the other factors (stock options, free iphone (!), future potential, etc.) is enough.
You can bet that they monitor staff turnover, and the quality of the staff who leave - if it's disaffected types, they won't worry. Once there's a trend towards good guys going, then pay will rise.
This is a non-story by someone who knows nothing of the real world.
I work for an Indian IT company and my salary is $7000 a year.......
Love me or leave me. Hey, where's everybody going?
In the valley if you're not making at least $150k per year you will hate money and life. I would not recommend taking even what sounds like a high salary from Google at 112k... in the midwest that's a ton of money, but in the valley, nope. You couldn't live close enough to bike to work for less than 2000 per month unless you like rats. either work for someone that will pay a living wage, or move someplace else. (or have dual income with a spouse... but hey, this is /.)
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There is no justifying people being underpaid, and in this case they are not though relative to Google they may be, however there are other things than money, culture of a place, the people, your bosses, the day to day work; sometimes these factors play a far important role than money. Not everyone is motivated by immediate financial criteria.
It's not an accident that Apple is doing well, its not an accident that Steve Jobs has been so successful in turning around Apple. Business is not so simple, to make a success of iMac, iPod and now iPhone is is not trivial or obvious and we won't even talk about Pixar. It's just so fashionable to hate Apple that no reasonable discussion can be had about their success. Those who don't understand this or are too keen to explain it away are probably too thick or stupid to get what makes some companies successful and other not and worse reluctant to learn or understand. There are many like these in the corporate world hence why some companies are successful while others are happy to follow and merely exist.
There is clearly something in the culture there that is enabling execution of ideas and anyone who's worked in a corporate environment will understand that its not enough to have a good idea, by the time the idea has gone through the org its probably been reduced to something generic and harmless by those unwilling to take a risk, play safe, so they are not exposed to failure personally. At Apple they execute well from the idea to the end product and clearly there are some valuable insights to be garnered here, is it a people thing, a culture thing?
People want to do interesting stuff and perhaps Apple will give you an opportunity to do this more than Google or Yahoo. The trade off is for individuals to make.
Everyone in Apple is paid in iDollars. They are more valuable than plane Dollars because they are made of iHype...
So you are chatting a chick up in a club and she asks you where you work. What answer do you think will get you further?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I'm one of the biggest Apple supporters on slashdot but this is crazy man! Engineers only make an average of $89k a year in the Bay Area???? That's hardly a livable wage there. I'm a lowly tech writer/trainer at a software company in Austin TX and make nearly that. Our Software Engineers mostly suck, but I'm sure they make at least that much a year! Maybe there is some altruistic logic behind working for less, like maybe they want to work for Apple (fanboy Engineers, if you must).
TFA shows that the Google numbers come from a huge sample of 10 (in words: ten) Google engineers. No number is given how many Apple engineers participated.
Actually, all that we really know is that ten people visited the page who _claimed_ to be Google engineers, and they put in numbers that they _claimed_ was their salary, plus an unknown number _claiming_ to be Apple engineers doing the same.
Trying to draw conclusions about which company pays how well from a sample size of ten is nonsense. It would be nonsense even if you knew that the information they got is actually correct. But you don't know even that.
Apple engineers make less than three times what I do!! Oh, they're so horribly underpaid, I can't believe it! Whatever shall we *do*!??
Most companies that think their jobs are "super awesome fun" will basically factor that in as part of the compensation.
That is pay you less or work you more because your job is "super awesome fun".
See Record labels, magazines, TV stations, Games companies, High visibility tech companies.
This is why everyone knows someone that has quit a job working for some "super awesome fun" company.
Compensation is more than salary. People regularly forget about the various health insurance subsidies, disability, life insurance, stock options, 401k matching, and other things offered by many companies.
I have no knowledge of what Apple offers its employees, but my guess is that they offer many of these things. There are other perks like telecommuting that are more difficult to assign a dollar value to. Then there are personal things like commute time. I'd rather have a slighter lower salary if my commute time is significantly shorter. Time with my family is more important than than extra money.
Does Google provide its employees with all the free Koolaid they can drink? Ha, didn't THINK so!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
All of the Apple fanatics I know, which isn't a huge number but I do know a few, would work for Apple simply because they love Apple. Regardless of the pay, I know a couple friends that would go to Apple simply because they love their Macs and iPhones and everything else, and would want nothing more than a chance to work on those things they love (or perhaps even the newest gadget Apple is ready to pump out the masses). Personally, I'm not a fan of Apple, although I do have an iPod, but I do realize that a lot of people would get the benefit of doing something they love there. That can be hard to put a price on.
I look at it in a completely different way, its incredibly flattering. They're still the ones who made it happen. Jobs just held them to the usual Apple standard, perfection.
As fro the keynotes, I've never been to one either. Apple always posts the keynote videos for the most recent keynote for months on their website until the next keynote comes along. Here it is for you:
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0806wdt546x/event/index.html
Another reason by the way Apple doesn't point out the names of key engineers or lets them do interviews is to reduce the likelihood that they can be poached by competitors. It also gets everyone onboard with the mindset that talking to the media without approval just isn't done at Apple and this helps keep down on product leaks.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
In other words, anyone who wants to say something without their name being attached to it is an idiot.
Slashdot is proof this is true, so yes - I'd agree.
I'm sure Deep Throat would love to meet you.
And real informants are the exception to the rule. You seem to be arguing that grammar nazis require some sort of special protection, like mafia informants.
You may as well have posted AC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...when they don't have enough.
There are many better reasons to choose a company than money http://tinyurl.com/6s6rjm
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
This is how I saw Apple. I left on my own and they've since called to ask me to return. I joined when Apple was at $60 and didn't sell my original options until I left. These were my observations on the topics I've seen brought up...
1) money - definitely low but they do keep up with everyone else. What I mean by this is if you accept the lower salary you'll always be lower then every other engineer in the valley but you won't fall behind even worse. I was at a company which suspended salary increases for years because of hard times (2000-2005) and only began adjusting when the salary differences became extreme.
2) benefits - same as everyone else. Actually, the 401k is a little weak as they only match 1/4 the first year, 1/2 the 2nd year, etc etc until the 4th year. My previous employer matched 100% on the 1st year but vests at 25% a year (if you stay 4 years you get 100% the first year in other words). My medical is much much better now then it was at Apple but no match on the 401k. Exercise facility costs additional money. Give and take... I call it par for Apple... nothing exceptional.
3) coolness factor - sorry to burst people's bubble here but as a slashdot reader you're probably an engineer working on code and/or hardware. that's the same where ever you work. It's easy for a data base guy to say that working at Apple would be great because of the iPhone but really... if they worked at Apple they would still be working on the data base.
What most people talk about when they're talking cool is the industrial design and UI but unless you're Steve Jobs or one of the people that work in the studio (and that's like 5 guys) you have absolutely no say in what is cool or not. I spent weeks on incredibly minor cosmetic changes because the ID guys would come in for 15 mins... play with the results and decide to revise what they said the last time they walked in. The product ends up with exceptional thought behind it but a hardware/software engineer at Apple has NO say... sorry.
3) technical growth - Apple allows $8k of funding for classes relating to your work. You can take a couple of classes at Stanford if you have the time (which you won't). That's about the same as most other large companies. There's no technical career ladder like there is in some other large companies. You plug away at your job and grow on your own time... Apple won't really recognize your growth and achievement unless you become a major leader in your field.
4) golden handcuffs - ever since Steve came back there hasn't been an evergreening (you don't get more options/stocks every year). Stock options are given out but engineers are on the bottom of the stack (don't let them tell you different on the interview). I thought evergreening was the norm so I asked around and of all the engineers I've worked with only a small handful (5%) have gotten additional options since Steve came back. Also, what I've noticed is that people who exercise all their options get a trickle of new options. Basically, Apple only gives you more options (and very little) if you don't have any reason to stay anymore. They focus on the "golden handcuff" effect and not on rewarding the loyal employee. It's a subtle difference... if you believe in the company and never sell you're probably not get any more options. I've worked with engineers on skunk projects (multitouch), lifers (15+ years) and engineers considered "elite" (not an Apple title) and it's all the same. Consider that when they give you an offer. I personally found it insulting that Steve gets a $1 salary and a ton of options. I would have traded my salary for some options as well.
5) life - engineers accumulate an incredible amount of vacation. when they eventually cash it in to take a breather we basically write them off. People almost never come back from a big vacation/sabbatical. That's why they've suspended the sabbatical program at Apple. Once people leave the distortion field, the cool aid wears off and the blind
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
Or you could live 4 miles away where the median cost of a home is only $420,000. Much more affordable.
GPL Deconstructed
RETRY?
cantaffordtheirownproducts
Median cost of a home in Cupertino: $649,000. Median mortgage payment: $2,145
Awesome! I guess I can afford a $649k house in California. Here in Oklahoma, I can only get about a $250k house for that mortgage payment.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Another bit of common knowledge here in the valley, is the vast majority of google's products(google maps, picassa, blogger, etc), weren't developed in-house, but were from acquisitions. A more complete list can be found here.
... of working for Apple.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They also pay new pilots a reasonable salary from the beginning with modest raises along the way rather than the extreme form of seniority that other companies practice (or have practiced in the past).
At other companies you get jobs. At Apple Jobs gets you!
Salaries are a supply and demand issue. Its probably more likely that the wages at Yahoo and Google are over priced.
A lot of people - especially Blue Californians - think they deserve pay increases and benefits just for showing up.
But if you insist on comparing Apple to Google, just look at the companies over all values. They are not the same.
Every engineering team is overworked on unrealistic schedules. The only reason engineers put up with it is many are vesting stock worth 100Ks to millions each year. Apple is not a fun place to be, despite the external appearance of "cool." I'm glad I left.
Nah, they won't.I live in the area, and let me tell you, people would rather KNOW they are going to have a paycheck, at least in theory because of seniority if nothing else, than NOT because they jumped ship to get a 20K a year raise.Not when you paid nearly a million dollars for your 3 bedroom house.There ARE people within a few miles of my house paying 25 thousand dollars a month in RENT.... My neighborhood is in the 2 to 3K a month range, and if I KNEW I could pay my bills with the economy going to the toilet, there is NO good reason for me to jump ship for a raise.Three years ago, they ALL would have jumped ship. It's a different type of world now, since foreclosures, etc. are looming everywhere. Local trash mags have foreclosure sales listed, as do newspapers.Apple should pony up some of those profits, but a smart board and CFO would realize, they might need a bit of cheese to get them through the thin period we can all see coming.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
Are we laughing at the fact that his salary is 1$ or are we laughing that he is considered an engineer?
In 1980, when most of these homes were last mortgaged, they were $250k. Hence the worthlessness of that statistic. Median mortgage of a 2008 purchase in the area is around $7000/month.
The biggest problem with their methodology isn't the sample size (though I would indeed bet their sample size for Google is too small). The biggest problems are that (a) the sample population is self-selected, and therefore, not random, and meaningfully unrepresentative; (b) the possibility that their respondents misreport their salaries and benefits.
Sampling error depends primarily on the absolute size of the sample, not its size relative to the population. This is the reason why you can often use a sample size in the dozens to test a hypothesis about a population of millions; e.g., if you're testing the male/female ratio of a population where the actual (unknown to you beforehand) is 49/51, the probability that a truly random sample of 100 will turn out with 90 males and 10 females is, very roughly, the same as the probability of flipping a fair coin 100 times and getting heads 90 times. Therefore, if your sample truly is random, you really are almost certain to get a decent estimate for the whole population.
With the surveys we're talking about, however, you have reason to disbelieve the results even if the sample size is large. To continue the analogy, if you selected the sample for your male/female experiment by responses to flyers in men's restrooms and nowhere else, then well, you might get an unrepresentative sample.
Are you adequate?
Uh, you're not proposing this, are you? It's actually axiomatic in the computer industry that you should never, ever buy the Revision 1.0 of anything from Apple. (You must be... new... here?)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thank you to you and all the other developers. Your work has made my life so much easier.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
> Where do you work? Mexico?
No, but I'm not far north of it.
since you're never home.
iTunes != Unix. Are you saying that because iTunes runs on Windows OS X is not Unix?
even something like KDE sticks to more of the core tenants of unix than Mac os X.
Mind telling that to the KDE developers who ported KDE to OS X? Or Gnome? How can X11 apps be configured for Gnome?
Simply, as I said in my post you replied to I can install many Linux programs, I wont say all because I don't know if there are any that can't be installed, on my Mac. Just as Linux users can use Debian packagers apt-get and dpkg to install .deb software on Linux, I can use Fink to install those programs on my Mac. I can also install software using Redhat's RPM package manager on it using MacPorts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Don't have fink, but yep I have. I'm using iterm instead of Terminal. I'm not currently using Fink, but I have in the past.
On Windows and Linux I used HTTrack website copier to download some websites or pages and sections. Since there wasn't, isn't, a native Mac port of it I installed Fink and Fink Commander to download the X11 version. However I couldn't figure out how to get them to work.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For whatever it's worth - thank you for a wonderful product and your contributions to the open source community.
What can I say? Without MacOS X I don't think there'd be any OS I could tolerate using. Thank you!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's called "Metrologistics."