How would start ups compete well with those salaries?
1. Startups give whatever sexy title they want to the people they can afford, which makes titles fairly useless, because they almost never can afford the talent commanding “sky-high” salaries.
2. Within large tech companies like Google and Facebook, it’s hard to immediately tell which of the many data sciencey, machine learning-y titles correspond to the truly stratospheric salaries versus the engineers that work with those roles. For some teams, like DeepMind, Google Brain or FAIR, it’s easier to tell. But for others it’s a mixed bag.
For comparison, see the fashionable term of art “quant” in the financial industry, which has similarly devolved into marketing and a bimodal distribution. As a rule of thumb, you generally can’t trust AI titles or salaries at startups unless those startups are really known for their talent; further, you can safely assume that, at companies capable of paying for top talent, the very impressive salaries belong to titles which seem the most exotic and out of reach for general engineers in the job description.
Fortunately startups don’t really need to compete for top talent as a genuine technological differentiator, they just need to engage in signaling, so this is mostly a non-problem. Startups almost never have problems usefully improved by the cutting edge of machine learning research, and can instead use off the shelf tools and existing software to accomplish the same things. Frankly, it’s exceptionally rare for a startup to even have the massive data, pipeline and munging infrastructure requisite for actual research.
As Napoleon said: titles don’t honour men, men honour titles.
In most enterprises, 90% of problems can be solved by somebody who can get phone calls answered, a $20/hour intern and Excel.
But... Consider the wide variety of solutions for taking notes. It’s a trivial problem that can be addressed in any number of ways. But it’s a problem that people spend a lot of time solving.
Coders should stop being so mercenary.
Why?
Also, how do you reconcile your statement with the fact that companies will fire someone as soon as it makes sense for them?
My solution to your "fact" is to not work for a bunch of dicks. I've never gotten fired "as soon as it makes sense" once I transitioned into development. You seem to work for a lot of dicks. Stop doing that.
This is going to be the last reply, but you've not made your case as to why I should gift my employer free money by leaving it on the table. There is exactly zero benefit to me for not getting everything I can, and quite a bit of upside. I have also found your double standard regarding the behavior of companies and the behavior of employees, and your handwaving away of that double standard, to be quite insane.
In short, you feel free to do whatever you want, and gift your employer free money. I, on the other hand, am going to take care of myself and my family by getting the maximum value I can out of the time I have to give my employer, and get paid as much as I can.
So yeah, I think that was an inherently civil relationship. Agrarian empires were the original forms of civilization. Just because there's a hierarchy doesn't make it not civilized. Hierarchy is instead what makes it civilized. Hierarchy means that everyone can relax and focus on what's in their wheelhouse.
Look, if we're talking giant corporations here, I agree with you. The company isn't going to miss another $5k/year. But if you play hardball with a $3M company, then they're only going to keep you until they can outsource your job away. Their budget is what they live and die on, and surplus profit typically gets rolled back into the business, not wasted on dividends.
You're directly affecting company viability by not being willing to leave some money on the table.
You've got the start-ups that are focused on a big exit to pay their investors and let the founders cash out. They (and their VC investors) want their employees to sacrifice/invest/commit "like a founder" - but without the founders upside.
You've also got the large businesses that will, in your own words, "keep you until they can outsource your job away" for a little more profit.
This is the reality for developers and they have slowly decided to seek their fair share to the consternation of businesses that were used to adding that value to their own bottom line.
When I hear someone saying that "coders" (or sometimes "code monkeys") shouldn't be focused on salary I hear someone who (A) doesn't respect my profession and (B) doesn't see why they shouldn't be able to exploit me.
(When it comes to my own clients, I do leave money on the the table. I could justify it by saying that I do it "in the interests of a long term relationships" but in reality I'm emotionally invested in their success and I want their projects to succeed.)
To paraphrase on old saying "Developers go where they are wanted and stay where they're well treated."
Look at from a developers perspective; why should they bust their hump to deliver 20% more value only to be rewarded with a 3% increase in salary? ("Gee Chris, I would love to give more but company policy...") Why shouldn't I go someplace that does value my efforts?
> Look at from a developers perspective; why should they bust their hump to deliver 20% more value only to be rewarded with a 3% increase in salary? ("Gee Chris, I would love to give more but company policy...") Why shouldn't I go someplace that does value my efforts?
You should not bust your hump. Deploy adroit political acumen to reduce your workload. I can't remember the last time I busted my hump on a development job.
But if you want more money, you absolutely should go somewhere else. What I'm saying is that expecting your existing company to be the vehicle for that advancement is naive at best.
I requested, and got, two large raises at my last job. I was still underpaid at the end of it. I'm underpaid now, even though I got another massive raise when I switched companies.
The reality is, you get a market salary from the market, not from any one company. A company is either going to be open to paying market rates or they won't be. You have to make the decision whether to accept that. Playing hardball with a company that's not prepared to pay you market just won't get you anywhere. Find a company that's prepared to pay market.
They're going to do that anyway.
"You're directly affecting company viability by not being willing to leave some money on the table."
If my extra $5k is the difference between live and die, then the company was failing anyway, and I should take as much as I can before the company closes, to tide me over while I look for a new job.