Hacker News Reader

Comment by glotgizmo | Hacker News Reader

I'd agree with this, 12 years experience here but all self-taught. From reccomendations I have gotten to final stage interviews with large silicon valley companies (I am based in Derbyshire, UK), without recommendations I rarely get a callback.

I found this increasingly an issue when applying for remote jobs.

Locally though, degree's don't matter because there aren't enough good programmers, when there are lots of options it seems people will look for degree's as an indication if you are "good enough".

View on HN

> Locally though, degree's don't matter because there aren't enough good programmers

Aren't programming salaries much lower in the UK than the US? If there's a shortage, why don't companies start paying more?

By locally I am talking mostly about the city Derby and county Derbyshire, where I live. London and other big cities (Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester etc.) are full of great programmers who are paid a much higher salary than Derby(shire). Albeit, a much much lower salary than the US.

If you are from around here, you're main options are Nottingham (quite a good city for programming jobs) or move away to a bigger city with more opportunities, that isn't to say it's necessary and I have been forunate to find good jobs where I live.

The success of applying between local vs remote jobs is staggering, and have been told many times by local companies they really struggle to find decent programmers (maybe salary is the factor here as you say!)

> Albeit, a much much lower salary than the US.

Can you define "much much lower" please? Is that by purchasing power (i.e. university, housing, medical coverage)?

Because they don't get outsized profit returns like FAANG does. FAANG is head and shoulders above any company in the US as well (someone who reads The Economist a lot told me that, I unfortunately have no source).

The Information, a great Silicon Valley news site, keeps track of FAANG profits and revenues per employee:

"Still, even with the declines, Facebook continues to generate by far the most profits per employee among the Big Five tech companies—$141,552 in the third quarter. In second place was Apple, with $99,898 per employee. Facebook’s core advertising business carries significantly higher margins than Apple’s business, which is based primarily on hardware sales."

That's $140k of average annual profit per each and every one of Facebook's ~40k employees, not just engineers.

However Apple still takes the lead when looking at revenue rather than profit:

"On a different metric, revenue per employee, Apple tops the list at $467,445 in the third quarter, higher even than Facebook’s $410,225 in revenue per employee (see chart above). Apple’s headcount for the quarter was 137,000, including workers in its retail stores."

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/after-hiring-binges-...

Aren't those quarterly numbers? So the average annual profit per employee in FB would be about $650k?

You're absolutely right. The numbers are flabbergasting to me. It's like pumping digital oil or something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com