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Comment by angarg12 | Hacker News Reader

Let's put it another way: we are looking at the top 1% of software engineers. Is it surprising that they have incomes in the 1% range?

For comparison, in Amazon, Senior and above engineers count for ~20% of the total, and those are the ones pulling +300k regularly. So only the top 20% of one of the top companies are getting such compensation.

And to follow the article, this won't last forever. Whenever the next stock market crash comes, almost half of that compensation (the equity based one) will almost vanish. But maybe on the next bull market we will see a similar situation (remember people in the 90s making 250k?).

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> Whenever the next stock market crash comes, almost half of that compensation (the equity based one) will almost vanish.

You're saying the value of (for example) Google stock will plummet to 10% or less and then not recover at all over the following few years?

Amazon went down over 90% from peak to valley after the .com bubble. It then took 7 years to recover to peak valuation.

I don't think a 90% drop is common, but I also don't think it's outrageous.

Wouldn't be the first time (see AOL, Yahoo, Pets.com, etc).

> we are looking at the top 1% of software engineers

Working for a big company that pays well does not mean you're at the top 1% of software engineers. It means you're willing to do what it takes to secure that job and maintain it, including moving somewhere many don't want to live.

It means you're in the top 1% of software engineers in the only metric that matters.

Not really, I rather be paid less but work remote and have more freedom with my time and where I work.

To be explicit, you're saying the only metric that matters (when we're ranking software engineers) is how well-paid a software engineer is?

When we're discussing income, that seems reasonable.

people working on new systems and tech are generally better programmers than people hacking away at enterprise spaghetti at a big corp. big corp jobs like that pay better for less work though.

To be fair - that's not the point he was making. As we were discussing income - that's the only metric that matters in the discussion at hand.

"willing to do what it takes to secure that job and maintain it"

Some (most?) of that is innate ability and intelligence. Sure, there are well-paying jobs that are unpleasant. But for many others the company literally gets to choose 1 out of 100 candidates.

No one has "innate ability" for programming. It's a human construct you have to learn.

Getting a job at these companies largely requires studying up on CS101 trivia and CS basics to pass stupid tests. It's practicing how to pass their interview process. It's not "innate ability and intelligence."

Less. Closer to 10%

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