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Beijing Startup Offers Engineers $1M Salary Plus Options in Battle For Talent (financialpost.com)

Posted by msmash on from the marketing-dynamics dept.

An anonymous reader shares a Financial Post report: Beijing ByteDance Technology is the brainchild of entrepreneur Zhang Yiming. The company is best known for a mobile app called Jinri Toutiao, or Today's Headlines, which aggregates news and videos from hundreds of media outlets. In five years, the app has become one of the most popular news services anywhere, with 120 million daily users. Toutiao is on pace to pull in about US$2.5 billion in revenue this year, largely from advertising. It was just valued at more than US$20 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, roughly the same as Elon Musk's SpaceX. In China, the Beijing company is controversial because of its recruiting. ByteDance hires top performers from such giants as Baidu and Tencent Holdings, sometimes raising salaries 50 per cent and tossing in stock options. "Our philosophy is to pay the top of the market to get the best," says the slight 34-year-old in an interview at the company's headquarters, his first with foreign media. "The company that wants to achieve the most, you need the best talent." Top performers can make US$1 million in salary and bonus a year, plus options, according to people familiar with its hiring. Total compensation can exceed US$3 million.

21 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. $50,000 by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I already make $50,000 working IT in Silicon Valley. Why would I want to move to Beijing?

    1. Re:$50,000 by pr0fessor · · Score: 2

      Doesn't California have like the 3rd highest cost of living for US and silicon valley being the highest part in the state. $50k would be an Ok wage for the mid-west where the median household income is around $45-55k depending on which state and housing is cheap.

  2. Always wondered... by w3woody · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's well known that the productivity difference between someone just starting in software development and someone who is proficient in the art of development can be as much as a factor of 20. (Source: Mythical Man Month, and personal experience.) Yet somehow the difference in compensation (unless you win the lottery in some startup IPO) is more like a factor of 2.

    This, unlike all other industries, where the difference in compensation correlates with the difference in productivity.

    I hope this starts a trend. And I hope the trend also correlates with a trend towards weeding out unproductive--but politically connected--developers who seem to be managerial favorites but couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag.

    But I doubt it.

    1. Re:Always wondered... by pez · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My experience is that at the low end of that 20:1 ratio is the dead weight that should never be in the programming profession. Those are the people you should really fire. A more reasonable number between an average contributor and a top contributor is 2:1 or 3:1... and you sometimes see that big a gap in pay.

    2. Re:Always wondered... by w3woody · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've seen much bigger productivity gaps between the best developers and average guys who have maybe 1 to 3 years of experience under their belt. I'm talking about folks who have mastered their art over the corse of a couple of decades and who could (for example) design and build a new programming language and a basic compiler proof of concept in a month.

      I understand that there are a lot of folks out there who are down on the idea of "superstar programmers" and who believe the idea that anyone mastering the art of development is somehow detrimental. But in my experience the ones who are the loudest to complain about substantial productivity differences are ones who have risen to "Senior Developer" status but who still engage in "voodoo stick" programming.

    3. Re:Always wondered... by w3woody · · Score: 2

      As an aside, the "dead weight" you refer to, I've also encountered. And I would suggest some of them have negative productivity--meaning your team would have been farther ahead had you never hired them in the first place. (Which means you're paying money to slow your team down.)

    4. Re:Always wondered... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In my experience, the major difference between the most productive devs and the least productive devs isn't what they do. It is what they don't do. Experienced guys know where all the blind alleys are, where all the unneeded flexibility should be trimmed, and where all the bad requirements are that can be negotiated away.

      Been in the business for 20 years. I spend a lot more time making other developers productive than I do actually coding myself. By applying my experience to all of their work streams rather than just my own, I make the entire project run much much smoother.

      The trick is finding enough time to actually code myself to keep those skills up to date.

    5. Re:Always wondered... by w3woody · · Score: 2

      If their productivity is negative 1 and they're paid $60k/year, and your productivity is 10x average, then doesn't that imply being paid negative $600k/year? :-P

    6. Re:Always wondered... by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      Your off topic.

      Check on the bottom. I lost one so it could be mine.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:Always wondered... by jbengt · · Score: 2

      Actually pay rises as the square root of productivity, so we're in imaginary territory here.

    8. Re: Always wondered... by Type44Q · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem with superstar programmers is they are hard to count on: they are difficult to recruit, offer no guarantees on retention, and can have friction with other superstars.

      So you're saying they're still people.

  3. Chinese Overtime and most of pay is in locked stoc by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Chinese Overtime and most of pay is in locked stock also we can you right before it vests and you get 0

  4. roughly the same as Elon Musk's SpaceX by tomhath · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is that the new standard of company valuation measurement? Or do /. editors have an Elon Musk mention quota to meet every freaking day?

  5. I always wonder how they define 'best' by computational+super · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whenever I read about tech companies trying to attract "top talent", I'm reminded of a guy that I used to work with. Actually sat right next to - we worked together in one of those "collaborative" open office nightmares. This guy seemed to know everything. Every time somebody had a problem they couldn't figure out, they brought it to him. He taught me how to read Oracle explain plans, how to use Excel pivot tables, and how to write Emacs macros. Well, since I sat right next to him, we ended up getting to know each other pretty well over the course of a year - turns out this guy was a legitimate genius. He taught himself to program in elementary school, started college when he was 12, had a master's degree in CS, had published a couple of books about cryptography... he even spoke like four languages. I finally got around to asking him, "no offense but... why on Earth do you work HERE?" He seemed surprised by the question - turned out he had been out of work for a year before landing this (relatively unglamorous) job working on insurance software. He listed some of the places he had interviewed and been rejected for - all "brand name" places, all places that insist that they're trying to attract "top talent". Now, he was an older guy (mid 40's I think) and personality-wise a little bit like Milton from "Office Space", but it didn't take much time talking with him to know that he was exactly the type of "tech guy" you'd want in any position, but he had major trouble finding any work at all. The kicker? They downsized him after about a year... but they still kept me. No idea why.

    --
    Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
    1. Re: I always wonder how they define 'best' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People generally hire other people they like. If they are actually productive its a plus. I've noticed in jobs and in life your pay grade is dependant upon how much people like you. Management probably thought he was weird so out he goes.

    2. Re:I always wonder how they define 'best' by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The kicker? They downsized him after about a year... but they still kept me. No idea why.

      The main issue is that the management had no idea what they're doing. You can't attract and maintain talent if you have no idea what it looks like to begin with. The second factor is that in absence of an ability to recognize talent, people fall back on other methods and poor Milton here probably wasn't overly personal or the type to make friends with the weasels in middle management.

    3. Re:I always wonder how they define 'best' by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wow. He knew how to use Excel pivot tables AND how to write Emacs macros? Truly a genius.

      Now now ... play nice or no sweets for you ...

      You left out "how to read Oracle explain plans", BTW.

      The point clearly is, the guy could do pretty much anything. Very broad areas of experience and expertise. The comment provided samples, not a resume ;)

    4. Re:I always wonder how they define 'best' by stanjo74 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      All organizations I've worked at want "top talent", but they don't know what to do with top-talent or don't have the environment for top-talent to perform disproportionately well. So, the top-talent are only slightly more productive than average, but they are fickle (don't take BS from management/business, no loyalty), not very likable (straight shooters, try to change the organization), or outright a liability (don't fall for PC agenda, diversity programs, social skills not honed).
      In the context of medium to large organizations, it's best to hire "above-average" rather than "top" talent.

    5. Re:I always wonder how they define 'best' by Pulzar · · Score: 2

      In a company, talent isn't important. You need to be perceived as having talent that makes the company a profit, and whether or not that perception matches reality isn't really important.

      The rest of what you wrote about communication is spot on, but this conclusion in a bit too cynical, in my opinion.

      Talent is important, otherwise there's nothing to advertise. There's only so much that you can do to mediocre work to make it appear great to higher-ups, and most managers will still prefer to advertise the work that's the most easiest to advertise.

      Talent + communication = success. Communication alone will get you further than talent alone, but neither can compete when you have both.

      --
      Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
  6. Pay roll costs are probably the same by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
    If you compare the total compensation this company will be in line with many American companies.

    The big difference is, in America almost all the compensation will be taken up by the PHBs in C$O titles and very little will be given to the developers and front line managers. In addition they developers will be called code monkeys by the C$Os derisively when they are having their three martini lunches in the corporate suite.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  7. I've only met 3 programmers worth 1 million a year by FeelGood314 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And all three are exploited, making 100k-150K salaries. The best developer I ever met started at what is now a very large and well know company as a high school student. 20 years later the company has 5000 engineers. If it was a choice between him and 200 random engineers at the company, management wouldn't even debate it, everyone knows he's the smartest person they ever met. The frustrating part is in all three cases management knows they have people that are worth over a million a year and that these people are responsible for a significant part of the companies profit but they still treat these people worse than their average employee.