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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

Don’t get suckered by this argument, folks. It’s the start of an abusive relationship. Whatever your sector, you should expect to be paid for your time and your skill. No-one pulled this shit at my FAANG or global ISP gigs, despite the fact I love working on high scale infrastructure. There is no special magical wonderland industry that intrinsically bathes its staff in so much joy that you can lowball their pay and it’s just fine.

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It seems like you can’t even imagine that someone might not be interested or willing to work at FAANG?

If those aren’t an option, then it might not be a lowball offer anymore. FAANG compensation is in an entirely separate category, from what I can tell.

The point is about not allowing yourself to be exploited, just because it’s what you love, and in any context. I earned as much in enterprise and consulting as I did in FAANG and ISP; there is sector median disparity, but to paint the differences as somehow magically intrinsic and inevitable would be as false for FAANG as it is for game dev and any other industry besides.

You can't avoid some level of exploitation when you have little power; and you have little power when there are 5 other people willing to do the job at a wage you think is too low.

Agreed (if you'll accept a couple of extra conditions: not just willing, but also able and available), but I don't see that as a simple supply-side glut driving lower prices, because people are not widgets. The willingness to accept the lower pay in specific sectors reads more like an abusive status quo maintained by a cycle of exploitation, one I suppose those sharing their salaries are hoping to break.

The GP is not telling everyone to go to FAANG. They are telling fellow engineers to not get themselves exploited by low paying companies.

TBH a lot of people don't have that many choices. I mean if a dream company gives me an offer with a reasonable salary, I'd jump for it without hesitation. A lot of people are OK with median salary.

Putting my hiring manager’s hat on, I recommend asking for more, without hesitation. There is practically no downside. Especially if it’s your dream company, because you are likely to be extra motivated, and this is a case you can genuinely make. Once an offer’s already on the table, the worst possible outcome from asking will be “sorry, that’s as high as we can go right now” without any rancour.

If instead the response is in any way affronted, then run the fuck away because that’s a clear early warning sign of toxic, bullying management; avoiding such environments is also on my list of good outcomes. The only exception context being, if you don’t currently have any income at all.

The problem here is that (aside from the usual "FAANG or nothing" sentiment): you assume everyone can get a FAANG job to begin with. Apple never called back after my campus interview, I didn't make it past Google's automated programming test. I had no link to Microsoft so I just have a online resume in the virtual void.

That first job hustle is painful. I definitely wouldn't be where I was today if I didn't spend a few years at a local studio, if only because it gave relevant work experience to what I wanted to do. Even if it was paying me half my current salary it was well worth the experience.

Far from it; this advice is from my current perspective as a bootstrapped co-founder, but concurs with all my prior experience, including that at other startups and ordinary enterprises, as both manager and job candidate.

Funny how people assume that just because you’ve been at one of the tech giants, that it was either the only experience you have, or that it’s the only experience you valued, or speak from. The assumption is a category error, and seems to be mostly invoked dismissively.

In your previous experience with FAANGs, were your requests for a higher offer taken as an affront?

Also, what was your role with regards to ISP infrastructure?

1. No. I'm also speaking from both sides of the table, as a hiring manager I could never be offended by someone simply looking to gain the greatest benefit from their employment. I won't say it can't happen, however, because every service team is different.

2. Well, over the course of the last few decades, I think probably most of them, having started out building dialup services in the '90s on shelves piled up with USR Sportsters, to principal engineer for a multinational service provider; developing various appliance products; developing global-scale provisioning & monitoring tools for transit and hosting services; helpdesk; operating a LIR; dating RIR staffers; standing up new IXPs; SRE; hiring; designing data centers; M&A due diligence; post-M&A systems convergence; webdev; postmaster. My concept of "full stack engineering" starts with racking the servers, or perhaps even before that: getting the business case approved and running the RFP. Never been a peering coordinator, though, I'm not demonic enough.

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