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Talent War in Silicon Valley Demands High Salary (axios.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Employees at Google's parent company Alphabet earned "a median pay package of more than $197,000" in 2017, around 18% lower than Facebook's median salary of $240,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, this illustrates the competitive "talent war in Silicon Valley, where talented engineers are in limited supply." These two salaries were more than $100,000 above Amazon's median pay, which sat at $28,446. The median price for a home in Silicon Valley is upwards of $1 million, in Seattle the median home price is just under $800,000.
There's nothing valuable or sane about comparing Amazon's median salary to that of Facebook or Alphabet. When either of the latter two start employing thousands of low wage workers you'll see their median salary plummet to Amazon levels.
But hey, I guess we can't expect the Wall Street Journal to apply basic critical thinking skills.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
...the sillycon valley. It's always going to be the center of tech, but there's a large hunk of america that costs a tiny fraction where anyone can live like a king on $100k/yr.
It's a nice place, I spent the past week there, but I am glad to have left too. Paying 33% more in gas, 50% more in food, 30% more in groceries and the crowding and density didn't really endear it to me. To get an equivalent size house there to what I own would have cost almost 20x the price, and I know damn well I'm not going to get 20x the salary.
I'm just not convinced that in the digital era that the silicon valley created that we all need to pile in there anymore. Video conferencing works well, email works well, networks work well. Let's spread out some.
First off- whoever posted that put no evidence in at all. Secondly- the vast majority of people at those companies are not IT. They're programmers. Totally different payscale. The actual IT people are probably paid well, but not anything like the numbers above.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Outsource it all to Africa as even India’s too expensive now.
Outsource it to pretty much any state east of California, it is still going to be cheaper than hiring someone local.
Is that that average salary includes data scientists, AI researchers, etc. which command higher salaries than typical software engineers. I would be very surprised to find that the median salary of a SWE at Facebook is $240k unless they bring a very impressive resume with them. The SWEs who just build out new user-facing features with Hack and React are likely not anywhere near that.
No, the blue-collar workers live in their cars, tents, and RVs, live several workers to a small apartment, or they live 2 hours away and drive in in carpools. Most are paid to well to collect many means-tested programs (section 8 housing, welfare, SNAP, Aid for Women with dependent children, etc.).
Ken
If we did not do the welfare madness one of two things would happen. The servant class would be forced to flea the city for green pastures, property values would collapse because obtaining a cup of coffee or getting your lawn mowed; the property otherwise maintained, you kids tutored would be impossible; or wages would rise, until those workers could afford to live.
Where exactly are the "servant class" going to flee to, and how are they going to finance said move and secure housing and employment in said destination? They aren't going anywhere. The people that stayed aren't there because they love working menial jobs and subsisting on welfare living in government housing. The ones that can leave have already left. Cut off the welfare for those left behind and you'll just have more homeless, more hungry people. And that leads to more crime. What those making six-figure salaries would save in taxes, they will more than make up for in higher insurance costs, or paying for security as those "servants" start breaking into their $100k cars and $1 million homes.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
And that's the flip side of it: The so-called "Golden Handcuffs". We have it, to a lesser extent, in Metro DC as well. The pay is significantly higher, and you adjust your lifestyle to it. And then. . . .companies outside "the bubble" cannot offer that level, even if the cost of living is low enough that it's a defacto lifestyle IMPROVEMENT. . .
that has made the USA the most successful company in the history of the planet.
Depends on your definition of "IT". For a lot of companies, if your customer is internal you are IT whether you are changing printer toner or writing applications or keeping servers up.
In my experience, companies that have other product engineering are the only ones who limit the definition of IT to admins and helpdesk people.
Indeed, I am both IT and programmer. I'm an experienced programmer, but because I work internally facing, and we are support to the main operations of the company (not the product itself)- I am considered IT to the rest of the staff.
No, I don't monitor network traffic, or remove people's malware, or tell them not to pour coffee on their keyboards when their keyboards stop working. I write software- but I'm still considered IT here.
Outsource it all to Africa as even India’s too expensive now.
Outsource it to pretty much any state east of California, it is still going to be cheaper than hiring someone local.
But, but, those people east of California might occasionally think unapproved thoughts!
I'm pretty sure, that's Japan, actually...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At the top of the food chain were the big iron companies that made UNIX workstations and servers (Sun, SGI, HP, Dec, Digital, Apple, Fujitsu), chip makers (MIPS, Intel), high-speed networks (Cisco) and databases (Oracle). At the far end of the peninsula were Pixar and ILM. Microsoft crushed big iron UNIX with Windows NT. They got companies to abandon their own OS variants and use Windows NT instead.
If you look around the internet for "Silicon Valley wall posters", you'll find cartoon style maps of all the companies that used to be there:
https://www.siliconmaps.com/20...
http://archive.computerhistory...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Nice maps. Where is Hooli on there? ;-)
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Microsoft crushed big iron UNIX with Windows NT. They got companies to abandon their own OS variants and use Windows NT instead.
Actually that was Linux. People running *nix tended to stay with *nix. Microsoft's OS was brand named "workstation" but it was not displacing traditional *nix workstations. *nix never really made it to the desktop of average workers, *nix users tended to be high end and specialized and remained so. DOS, OS/2 and Windows 3.x were what Windows NT displaced on the desktop.
Servers were a similar story. traditional *nix servers were largely displaced by Linux or FreeBSD. Windows server users tended to be those new to servers. Microsoft captured a large chunk of new users, of the growth, but not much displacing of existing *nix. And *nix captured a large chunk of the new users / growth too.