Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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.
--Toll_Free
Except the engineers at Apple are second to none, and the industry knows it.
.net programmer.
.net.
I would higher a Apple Engineer before I hired a
Even if it was to program in
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you ever actually watched the end of keynote you'd see that often Lord Jobs asks the engineers to stand for a round of applause. The atmosphere of the company is secretive though. Most tech companies issue endless press releases and promises of things to come and then produce crap where as Apple stays quiet until they're actually ready to release something of value.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
When the other companies in the Valley are hiring again, and Apple continues to have lower salaries, yes they will need to raise them.
$89K/year won't get you a house even with today's market. Maybe an OK condo, assuming a bank will give you a loan. But if you don't mind driving 100+ miles each way, then you could get a decent structure, though the neighborhood might be in the middle of nowhere. Rents are going back up, but if you don't mind living in small apartments to be able to have some play money, then sure, $89K is enough.
For those who just see the numbers and have no idea about cost of living, $700 for an apartment is awesome in the midwest, but $1400-1600 in the Valley will at least keep you out of the bad neighborhoods. After gas, food, and utilities, you'd be lucky to have anything left over to go out and socialize. In the midwest, you'd live like royalty.
The iPhone does have a removable SIM card in the top of the device...
($removable_SIM && $can_use_on_any_GSM_network) == (true && false) == false
HTH HAND.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The point was that the apartment you could get for $700 would be awesome. Perhaps I could have phrased it slightly better.
Wow....I mean, I figure if you've got a few years experience under your belt...$89K/yr is really NOT that great?!?! And I mean not great in areas that aren't nearly as expensive as out there in Silicon Valley.
As the parent said...people paid over a million dollars a pop for homes out there that aren't that palatial. How they hell does anyone make a house payment like that on $89K/yr? Hell...how do you pay for what a condo or apt must cost out there on that salary? I'm not even talking having wife and kids to support....
$89K is not a high salary in this day in age...it is middle class...medium-low end of it really.
This is what bothers me in the presidential rederick that is going on wanting to raise taxes on the rich. Use to..the rich was $250K and up....today...well, apparently it is $75K and up from what I've seen. Notice where the tax rebates started declining in full value recently? Yep....$75K and you start getting rich and don't deserve a full rebate.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's worse than you stated...
I wish that was true of anywhere (anywhere worth living, that is) in CA, really. When I lived in San Diego I was paying $1200/mo for a pretty terrible 1br apartment. Now in PA, I'm paying $500/mo for a nice 2br house.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
...I never heard the Great Man giving credit to anyone else but himself.
Then you must have never watched a single keynote or any interviews with Steve Jobs.
I'm certain the man is an asshole, tremendously difficult to work for and has an gargantuan ego. But, you could not be more wrong in terms of the way he speaks publicly. In interviews, he almost never speaks in the first person about the achievements at Apple. I always talks about the "great team" that is key to Apple's success. In fact, I can't think of single time when heard him say "I did this" or "I did that" regarding Apple's achievements. It's always "At Apple we....blah, blah."
And, at the end every single keynote, Steve Jobs thanks all of the employees and their families for their hard work and sacrifices. Then he asks the employees in the audience to stand up and asks the audience to give them around of applause.
Now, it's quite possible that it's all false modesty and/or clever, disingenuous PR. But, your assertion that publicly credits only himself for Apple's success is complete bullshit.
The iPhone HAS a removable SIM card and can be used on the GSM network. Have you ever bought an iPhone in Europe?
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
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
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 /.)
stuff |
This posting is a joke. The "average Google salary" is based on 10 self-submissions. Aren't /.ers supposed to have a better grasp of statistics than this?
kdawson has accounted for more wasted productivity this week than that Tiger Woods character.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck