Hacker News Reader

Comment by novok | Hacker News Reader

A pattern I've noticed with double job workers:

1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lower tier companies with lower standards and significantly lower pay. Because the companies are lower tier, they stagnate in their career growth because the company is not teaching them good skills. And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks.

2. Because of double working, they are pretty much guaranteed to not get promoted beyond the standard terminal level.

3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

4. You cannot work at proper startups and learn a ton, because the workload would be way too high for this strategy.

Real example: One person I know has 2 $150k jobs for a total of $300k. If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k, not be fucking stressed about the duplicity that is working 2 jobs, learn more because it's a better company and get promoed to sr engineer within a year or two and make $400-500k instead. If they have ambition, they can cross the leadership rubicon (either through becoming a staff engineer or manager) and make even more, reaching up to $700k-$1M eventually.

Maybe if your having a hard time breaking into startups or FANGMULA and your just starting out, this might be an ok strategy, but beyond that, it's not a good idea.

View on HN

> Real example: One person I know has 2 $150k jobs for a total of $300k. If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k, not be fucking stressed about the duplicity that is working 2 jobs, learn more because it's a better company and get promoed to sr engineer within a year or two and make $400-500k instead. If they have ambition, they can cross the leadership rubicon (either through becoming a staff engineer or manager) and make even more, reaching up to $700k-$1M eventually.

Sometimes I wonder if the people saying this stuff really even work there. It's not impossible, but the kind of person who would be promoted that fast wouldn't be working two crappy jobs to begin with.

Not to mention even if you were promoted you wouldn't go from $300K to $500K. You think getting promoted at FAANG gives you an over 50% increase in total comp as the norm? (edit: If you've seen this, it's almost due to the fact that FAANG stock increased drastically during COVID. If you look at 2012-2017 data for promotions a 50% increase is almost unheard of).

You should join one if you're not already there and read about how people are complaining about less than 6.7% (last inflation report) raises during company meetings and less than 10% even when promoted.

Finally, background checks work on what you give them, they're not exhaustive (unless you're trying to work for the government). So many inaccuracies in this post I wonder if it's satire. If so, I apologize.

lol

Agreed. I was a software engineer in New York, not SF (where salaries a _little_ higher), but salaries were nothing like this unless maybe you worked at a top-end hedge fund. The myth that every other random software engineer has this kind of pay is harmful.

I think the OP is adding equity compensation, which with the current bull market, is hugely inflating that number.

If you only count take home pay in cash, it's nowhere near $500k! Closer to 200k for a senior engineer imho. Vesting of shares takes a few years, so the extra $200k that you "get" is because 2 years ago, you were paid $150k in equity, and it grew to $200k (or more).

Yes, absolutely - in case this isn’t clear to anyone reading, you need to evaluate total compensation when comparing roles. Salary, equity, and on-target bonus (which are often agreed ahead of time). For public companies you can sell your RSUs as soon as they vest.

For context: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

I've worked at FANGMULA for many years, I'm an immigrant, I've recently become a hiring manager and hired people on my team weeks ago, I've done hundreds of interviews within my bigtech company, I barely finished my computer science degree from a mid-tier university (so I'm not that exceptional) and on top of that I've done the research with how promo systems work at these companies. I know what the current comp packages are for jr engineers too. When I do say jr eng, I do mean the L4 level, not the straight out of college no work experience L3 level. L5 is the terminal sr engineer level.

This friend that I'm giving an example of is real, and I feel like he has the potential to get into FANGMULA with my mentorship and then get promoted within that time frame. It's definitely all real and the post was kind of my own internal speech to get him to come over.

Go look at https://levels.fyi , and look at the jumps in comp between bands. Yes some companies may pay +/- %10 more, but it is what it is. Also the market has gone up, yet again, so even levels is a bit behind.

People thinking what I'm saying is BS is just a bunch of cope. You don't have to be a super genius with the grit of god to get into these companies.

I don't care about levels.fyi. I work at one of the companies you've mentioned. You're lying if you're saying that getting 50% increase is the norm or that the average promotion time is 2 years.

Perhaps, for example, an E3 at Meta can go to E4 in 2 years, but an E3 isn't making 300K total comp at Meta in California to begin with, nor would they go to 500K after promotion.

If you're a hiring manager then I don't need to explain to you that a 50% increase even with the highest ratings isn't some normal thing that happens.

Maybe you've seen it happen, I believe you. My point is that it's not the norm and you should stop saying it like it is.

L4 is around $300k, L5 is around $500k 500/300 = 1.6. At many of these companies, if you haven't gotten to the next step in about 2 years until L5, you start becoming a target and managed out, and I know multiple former coworkers who have been promoted from L4 -> L5 within a year or two, especially if you have a mentor or actively research on how to get yourself get promoted vs. just being passive about it.

Again, your own levels.fyi link does not support these numbers as being the norm. I do not deny that it can happen. I'm saying that you're misleading people by presenting them as some sort of normal thing.

Google L4 > L5 (270 -> 360)

Meta E4 > E5 (275 -> 390)

Microsoft SDE II -> Principal SDE (182 -> 308K; I intentionally skipped a level just to show the ridiculousness).

Amazon SDE II -> SDE III (240K -> 330K)

Apple ICT3 -> ITC4 (222K -> 333K)

And these are midlevel to senior and these are from the site you linked. If you do junior to midlevel your numbers, on average, make even less sense.

You are right, my friend, the guy that is replying your comments is taking the lower bound of the L4 and comparing with the upper bound of L5. Lol. How it works , at least at Google (and is worst at Amazon), is when you get promoted from Ln to Ln+1 , your salary increases just it surpasses the lower bound of the level you were promoted to. I know for a fact of people at Google, L4 that negotiated better TC than what my L5 has. So, but if my L5 jumps ship to Facebook, then he will be easily get a 30% increase, at least.

Even if I 100% believe your example, an example alone doesn't prove the point you're trying to make.

"You think getting promoted at FAANG gives you an over 50% increase in total comp as the norm?"

It's like $30-50K base each level (~18-25%), but the stock grants can make a huge difference. As a junior engineer you might make ~$35K/year in stock grants; at staff it's like $200K+; and at principal it's $600K+. In total comp you can easily go from ~$350K/year at senior to $500K at staff to $750K at senior staff to $1M at principal, which is close to 50% each time.

Note that the biggest benefit is that getting promoted opens you up to having more negotiating leverage. If the company doesn't want to keep you or if they're sure they'll keep you anyway, then sure, you'll be getting < 10% raises. Same if you came in at a very high baseline because of savvy negotiating or lots of competing offers. But if you're managing a critical team with a sustained record of high performance and then you get an offer elsewhere, that's what opens you up to those $M+ stock counteroffers. Junior engineers are not going to get that regardless of performance, because they just aren't that important to the business.

I'm not denying that you can make a lot of money.

I'm saying that I know a lot of people who've been promoted.

1. Getting promoted in 2 years, especially once you're midlevel is very rare.

2. People at the lowest level (E3/L3/59 etc etc) are not receiving a 50% increase in total comp by being promoted usually.

People are getting confused because FAAANG stock has increased so much, and many bullish employees have not sold their stock and so their compensation (including appreciation) went up 50% during COVID. It's a trend that will likely not continue.

Yeah, that’s decency bias for you.

Decency bias? I think you mean "recency bias?"

Edit: It's too bad "decency bias" isn't actually a thing. I wish it was.

Yeah, recency, lol.

> Sometimes I wonder if the people saying this stuff really even work there. It's not impossible, but the kind of person who would be promoted that fast wouldn't be working two crappy jobs to begin with.

In my experience, people often stumble into these situations by simply not quitting their old job when they get a new job.

The idea is to continue to collect paychecks from the old job until they lay you off with severance.

This usually catches up with people later on when someone puts two and two together or hears from a friend of a friend that the person is working at a certain company. Imagine being recruited to a new company and seeing your former company coworker in Slack and he's been there for months. Word gets around.

This absolutely destroys reference checks. Another reason to always do reference checks and always confirm someone's end dates with the other company.

I brought up the 7% raise thing to a friend, apparently Google's solution (not sure if this took place earlier though) was to change their 4 year vesting schedule to a 3 year one. This basically acts like a raise.

So many compensation discussions are hard to get into because of the reliance on adding (sold or unsold) stock as part of total compensation. It's very reasonable for a junior engineer to get a $125-$150k base salary offer these days, but whether their total comp after 1 year pushes that to $300k, let alone if they can get a promotion that adds significantly more stock to push total to $500k the next (noting their first stock is still vesting and contributing), depends so much on the particulars of the company's stock price set by the market and stock grant plans that unless you name names and package specifics people won't believe you. Like it's possible as you say that you get promoted but with no new stock and a paltry raise, yet nevertheless your total comp over the next year goes up to $500k, this can be entirely due to the stock raising. Not very useful in a discussion trying to get at actual salary trajectories that don't depend on market luck.

The job I quit last year (Salesforce, fortune 137) I reached the "Lead" position (roughly equivalent to L5/senior at a place like google, but "Staff" at other places, titles are dumb) but I only ever had two stock grants in the years I was there: one at the beginning, one after reaching "Lead", and the second one was almost insultingly tiny (much smaller than the initial one) and I wasn't phased at all to give up ~70% of it in leaving. So for all my years there my comp was basically dominated by the base salary + the annual % bonus nearly everyone always gets and peaked at a "mere" $200k, stock didn't impact it much. A random mid-stage startup in Utah of all places trying to recruit me was throwing out $200k base as comparison. This sort of experience, especially the lack of significant stock refreshes ever, is pretty common, but there are companies (like Facebook) that give significant annual refreshes not even tied to promotions and can make stories like the GP's not too crazy.

A final factor in making these discussions difficult is that there are a lot of senior+ folks who've stayed with a place for 4+ years and are essentially getting shafted in terms of their earning potential and they don't want to admit that they need to change jobs (or even just leave and come back later) to get a lot more than they currently do, which leads them to dismiss very real likelihoods of newly hired junior or "standard" roles (what do we even call just a plain "software engineer" when so many are either junior or senior) getting as much as they do after stocks are added in.

Are you saying your comp at salesforce as a lead was only 200k including stock and bonuses? Are you remote?

Yup, and nope (I wasn't at the HQ office in SF but the Bellevue office, formerly Seattle). Look at https://www.levels.fyi/company/Salesforce/salaries/Software-... (I never added mine there; Glassdoor is also useful https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Salesforce-LMTS-Software-En...) and pay special attention to years-at-company. I'd get more if I returned, at least $300k, but... What was amusing is that the next tier, "Principal", has many employees at it where even if they're at HQ they were making less than me as a Lead (and some Seniors). (And it's still the case for levels data judging by the distribution if not the exact numbers.) The next level after that, "Architect", is where significant stock grants actually start happening at that company, but it's rather more work to get there and as far as my interests go not really desirable since almost always it meant you stopped coding in any meaningful way.

When people talk about salaries, I feel they always just talk about SF.

I was an SMTS at Salesforce (also not HQ) back in the day on $150k~ total comp, which people in this thread regard as junior pay; and that was on my initial stock grant, never got to find out what my refresher would have been.

In my experience, the stock grant from a promotion is generally 50% higher than the previous level, and base salary is around 15% higher. Given that stock is a majority of comp, a promotion comes pretty close to 1.5x the previous comp.

In another comment, you’ve mentioned that you don’t care about levels.fyi, which is basically saying you don’t care about accurate data. levels.fyi actually underestimates total comp, because they use base + (grant / vesting period) to calculate comp. For high growth tech companies, stock usually grows so comp gets higher naturally over time.

which company and when? levels.fyi didn't support the thesis, so obviously I don't care about it.

also, I don't believe in using appreciation of stock as part of comp. were you paid less if you held on to vested RSUs and the stock dropped? no. you just decided not to sell and faced the consequences.

same way I wouldn't count someone taking their entire salary and dumping it into options successfully as "apprecation"

If the stock price drops, yes you get paid less going forward. If the stock goes up, you get paid more. That’s how it works. Try telling Uncle Sam at tax time that you want to calculate your income tax based on your RSU grant price. I’m sure the IRS would be thrilled.

What your income is at tax time and how much you were compensated are not the same

How are they different in this scenario?

Incorrect on background checks - there are employment verification services that get quite a lot of data (many companies opt in to sending them payroll data).

Which ones?

HireRight and Sterling both only verified what I sent.

That's not a meaningful statement without quantifying what "a lot of data" and "many companies" mean.

I tried pulling my TheWorkNumber report, and I was surprised to see my weekly salary history not only at my current and prior BigCo jobs, but also at my prior small (~100 employees) company. Apparently they used ADP for payroll and that was enough to get into the Work Number database. I’m not sure I HireRight always cross references with databases like TheWorkNumber, but it would be trivial for them to do so.

Isn't that illegal? Checking on candidates current salary?

Not in most states. California is a big exception.

The vast majority of applicants can not get into those prestigious companies, and to be frank - if you can get two remote CRUD jobs that pay a total of $300k - that's probably 3-5 times higher pay than the average "normal" physical job in their area.

I get that this is HN and a very SF-centric board, but sometimes users here are so incredibly out of touch with the real world, it's not even funny anymore. I'm not attacking you directly, but it's something you see here all the time ("why not just join google and become a principal engineer")

I burst out laughing when they said that you get a 50% pay bump with a promotion.

Maybe the average skill of an HN developer is Jeff Dean, and in a few years when they all graduate the world will be a great place :)

Nobody is making $300k as a junior engineer. And certainly not getting promoted to senior engineer within a year on top of that. Stop talking out of your ass.

Well I do know someone who pulls that as a junior but he also has a PhD in inverse kinematics simulation and that job was really needed.

Great I also know Elon

> Nobody is making $300k as a junior engineer. And certainly not getting promoted to senior engineer within a year on top of that. Stop talking out of your ass.

>>Well I do know someone who pulls that as a junior but he also has a PhD in inverse kinematics simulation and that job was really needed.

This is the problem with using words like nobody, always, etc. Someone will usually (see what I did there?) come along with one single piece of anecdata and think the original statement is invalid.

This ~always happens.

you're taking me too seriously. I'm sardonically pointing out that the parameters for the original statement to be possible exist, but they are at least two standard deviations over the median reader of HN, even, thereby supporting the sentiment of the parent post (if not the letter of the parent post), not undermining it.

I think the point is you're being taken too seriously here because someone almost always comes into these types of discussion and makes the same point you did in a serious way, then claims victory for refuting the original claim.

Your post does nothing but make noise and clutter the discussion. It's frustrating when someone points out a fact that is overwhelmingly true and someone else jumps in with some ridiculous counterexample, even if your intention is to do it sarcastically.

That's like pointing out the secretary of defense is a rich secretary.. He didn't get the job for his typing skills.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Microsoft&tr...

Explore this site, it'll open up a whole new world of SDE pay at unicorns / startups / FANGMULA. I'd look at the entry level positions for maybe ... Dropbox or something, or Stripe. Those two off the top of my head get pretty close to 300k for "junior" engineer - SWE I.

Stripe is still private company: the SDE1 "my stock > FAANG" folks shouldn't consider that yet until they're fully vested.

The rest tier-1, tier-2 are on avg below 200k. Some get closer to 200k but majority are not. Facebook would be the "gold standard" for now.

> Stripe is still private company: the SDE1 "my stock > FAANG" folks shouldn't consider that yet until they're fully vested.

Fully vested and liquid and have taken the tax hit one often gets in IPO situations (if applicable).

I'm just saying, the claim is that no "junior engineer" can make 300k. That's pretty false. You can also look into HFT "junior engineers" like at Citadel which will clear 300k easily. Facebook return offers for new grad can hit very close to 300k, and there are definitely other companies that pay just as much, if not more. Of course, it's rare, and these people are in elite air.

I would categorized HFT eng on a different category (they, historically, always are outside of the typical SWE)

They make 200k base but have 0.5M bonuses (or more depending on the HF perf).

That FB eng that got return offer for 300k? Most likely just the only one. Probably not because of elite but because of niche skill (SME/PhD in a specific field that happened to be relevant). Probably skipped I3 to I4. Majority (95%) of FB I3 won't get close to 300k.

The poster above is inflating by about 15-25%. The “junior”/L4/E4 , level (one above entry level and one below senior) makes ~$270k at Google/Facebook according to levels.fyi [0]. Senior comp can vary more because the band is wide but $500k year would be possible with some stock appreciation.

0 - https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook&track=Softwa...

E4/L4 is SDE2 (intermediate).

I have anecdotes from the hiring side. I've only seen the two-jobs phenomenon a couple times in my career, but it always involved someone getting a new job and then simply not quitting their last remote job. They eventually realize they can collect two paychecks until their old job catches on and lays them off.

However, it's not that difficult to spot if you're paying attention. Two job workers tend to:

1. Have elaborate excuses for why they can't update their LinkedIn profile to show the new job. Obviously they can't tip the old company off that they have a new job.

2. Have mysteriously complicated and ever-changing schedule conflicts throughout the day. We support (and encourage) flexible work, but when someone is disappearing throughout the day and can't reliably jump on a phone call (despite supposedly being online and active) without ample notice, they're probably doing something else.

3. Are extreme people-pleasers in superficial ways (want to keep up appearances) but only actually deliver good work when it's high profile and they know they're in the spotlight.

4. Are loathed by their teammates after a while, because everyone they work with slowly catches on that the person is absent-mindedly doing the bare minimum to not get fired. Inevitably, the teammates have to pick up the slack and do extra work to compensate. Few people are better positioned to recognize this than the people who are in the trenches with the person all day.

5. Have a different jobs on their resume with start and end dates that don't match what you confirm with the company. That's because they need to massage the start/end dates to appear as though they weren't overlapping the two jobs.

6. Are religious about "If I get my work done, why does it matter when I work?" Sounds great, but then they play every game in the book to shrink "their work" to be as small as possible and move the "done" part as far in the future as possible. End result is that team mates suffer (see #4).

> 1. Have elaborate excuses for why they can't update their LinkedIn profile to show the new job. Obviously they can't tip the old company off that they have a new job.

Why is this being stated as if a person is required to update LinkedIn with their current employer? What employer is pressuring new hires for an explanation on why they haven’t publicly claimed their new relationship status?

I don’t often update LI, but your phrasing of someone having “elaborate excuses” means there’s pressure from an employer (or coworkers?) for an LI update before anyone could even receive such “elaborate excuses” … and that’s just plain weird.

> What employer is pressuring new hires for an explanation on why they haven’t publicly claimed their new relationship status?

I honestly don't care for in-person employees, but it's something I ask remote employees to do for this exact reason.

If a remote employee makes vague excuses for why they must keep their old employer on their LinkedIn, it's worth investigating further.

Fortunately it's usually easy to call up the old company and confirm the person's start and end dates. Companies love to learn that one of their employees has started a new job but hasn't actually quit yet.

> I honestly don't care for in-person employees, but it's something I ask remote employees to do for this exact reason.

It sounds like you're just nosy, then. The content of my LinkedIn profile is no more your business than the content of my Tinder profile, and just as relevant to my work.

> The content of my LinkedIn profile is no more your business than the content of my Tinder profile, and just as relevant to my work.

What? LinkedIn profiles are literally about your work.

It's not about being nosy. It's about noticing inconsistencies. If someone is going through the trouble of maintaining a LinkedIn profile but they're also listing a different company as their current employer, it's time to start investigating.

LinkedIn isn't the final say, obviously. However, it can act as a canary in the coalmine for further investigation.

No, my work is about my work. If you're happy with my work, you, as my current manager at a company I already work for, have no business checking up on my LinkedIn profile. If you're not happy with my work, checking up on my LinkedIn profile isn't going to make you any happier.

I wouldn't be looking if I was happy with the person's work.

Empathetic managers trust their employees when they say a task is difficult and will take longer than expected.

Double job workers (and slackers in general) thrive on taking advantage of this empathy by lying and manipulating their way into perceptions that they are doing more work than they really are. Not fair to the manager, company, or team mates.

It's basic due diligence of any manager to check these things.

No, it's a waste of time and you being nosy. If you're not happy with my work, your responsibility is to come to me and tell me that, then see if we can work together to get to a point where you are happy.

Tell me honestly for a second: if you weren't happy with someone's work, would anything on (or not on) their LinkedIn profile make any difference to that situation whatsoever?

> Tell me honestly for a second: if you weren't happy with someone's work, would anything on (or not on) their LinkedIn profile make any difference to that situation whatsoever?

The LinkedIn point was about looking for clues that you might need to investigate further. I think you're trying to twist my statement into something else entirely.

Is that an admission? Being evasive about the question is not a good look. It's precisely what you're accusing the employee of here.

You've been breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread, particularly these:

"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

And some of these cases have been egregious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29668822

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29668427

Those kinds of comment are bannable offences on HN. I don't want to ban you, but this has been a problem many times before, and we need it to stop. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules in the future?

Can you tell me what company do you hire for, so I don't apply? People's LinkedIn profile are private to them, none of your business. I wonder if you just hire in 3rd world countries, or focus on hiring people in need with no leverage, coz, if you ask me about my LI profile, I will tell you to take a hike.

I work 3 jobs for 1 year, had 2 only for maybe 5. Most of your observations are correct but I can tell you that I do not have it that hard to synch the meetings to make them not overlap. And I make an conscious effort of being really prompt when answering queries. I am perhaps more prompt than many that do not do what I do, since eI would not like people to suspect what I am doing.

LinkedIn has proven a fucking pain indeed, and that is why I am not active on it anymore.

> LinkedIn has proven a fucking pain indeed, and that is why I am not active on it anymore.

Yep. There's another person in this thread trying to argue it away, but I've found LinkedIn to be a huge canary in the coalmine in these situations.

Someone who insists on maintaining an active LinkedIn profile but also isn't updating it with a new job isn't a red flag by itself (people just forget, obviously). It is, however, another piece of the puzzle.

If someone updates their LinkedIn and broadcasts their new job to all of their peers then I'm much less concerned.

It's interesting that you actually spotted them. In my experience it's really hard for people to tell what I'm doing, but I guess the expectations at the companies I contracted for were much lower and by comparison, I actually did my job. Most people seemed pretty happy with what I delivered. I was the most unsatisfied with it, to be honest.

Regarding #1, why do I need to make any excuse to anybody about the content of my LinkedIn profile?

You don't have to have a LinkedIn profile at all. I really don't care.

But if someone has clearly gone through the trouble of setting up a LinkedIn, listing all of their jobs and details on it, and collecting a lot of connections, but for some reason they must continue listing their previous employer as their current employer, it's worth further investigation.

Why?

If someone joins your company as a remote employee but publicly advertises themselves as working for someone else, you investigate further.

The "why" is in the linked article: It's in the playbook of people trying to manipulate you into letting them work half as much as their coworkers (thereby screwing over coworkers, who are forced to pick up the slack).

If you care about your team, you don't sit idle while one of the employees is slacking off, putting in half the effort as their peers, or manipulating their way into doing less than others.

> If you care about your team, you don't sit idle while one of the employees is slacking off.

There we go! "Slacking off" is not relevant. What's relevant is that you, as my manager at a company I already work for, are happy with my work, or not. It shouldn't matter whether it takes 100%, 80%, 50%, or 20% of my capacity to make you happy. This would be completely non-controversial in the vast majority of jobs.

In the real world, managers don't look at a task and schedule out exactly 40 hours of work each week. We trust our employees to give us feedback and healthy estimates.

Truth is, double job workers are usually caught because they're underperforming. But smart managers give employees the benefit of the doubt and don't go firing people at first signs of underperformance. If someone has a legitimate reason for falling behind for a while (maybe overleveled during hiring, maybe struggling with real life issues, etc.) then we work with them. If they have a manipulative/deceptive reason (working two jobs, avoiding work) then it's better off that we replace them with someone who cares.

If you think that a job is a simple matter of "do fixed pile of work every week", that's not how 95% of software jobs work. We rely on a 2-way communication with employees to establish what's reasonable, and if someone is manipulating us into lowering expectations (literally the title of this article) then they must go and be replaced with someone who cares.

It's not "do fixed pile of work every week." It's "provide a multiple of N worth of your salary value to the company." The amount of work necessary to do so is (should be) irrelevant. Effort is not relevant, and you don't get to demand I commit body and soul to please you if I'm providing a reasonable amount of value.

No, it's about "Is this employee occupying headcount and payroll that would be better used on someone more deserving".

And you've still misunderstand the 2-way feedback loop about effort estimation.

You have this misconception that a job is an isolated 1:1 relationship with an employer where units of work are passed in isolation back and forth. In the real world, something like this does huge damage to the team by forcing everyone else to compensate for the deliberate underperformance.

Oh, wait, now I need to deserve a job in addition to being able to perform all aspects of it adequately with respect to the offered compensation? You really are something if that's what you believe.

> Oh, wait, now I need to deserve a job

I didn't say a job. I said the job I'm hiring for.

If you're going to come in and deliberately do as little work as possible to extract as much as possible from the team, why should I give the job to you instead of someone who is actually honest and cares?

You're not entitled to any job you want, obviously. I usually have 10-100 applicants who would honestly do the job and not sandbag their work onto peers. Obviously we would all rather have the honest employees working on the team.

In what moral system do you deserve the job more than literally any other honest employee if you're dead set on doing less than them and lying your way through the job?

If nothing else, having two jobs becomes a conflict of interest with a huge monetary incentive to continue lying. There's also the matter of trade secrets as people often come from related companies.

Well, okay. If I can do the job, and I am doing the job adequately relative to the compensation offered, why do I need to deserve your job?

Not to put too fine a point on it, people like the parent are just scum who make life difficult for everyone else. Having a tough period for whatever reason? Oh, they probably have another job because that's what the cool kids do.

If, as an employee, your philosophy is to grift what you can, expect companies to do the same. And good employers actually don't.

> If, as an employee, your philosophy is to grift what you can, expect companies to do the same. And good employers actually don't.

Well said.

If the entire relationship is built on lies and deception, it begins to show over time. Employees who build their relationship based on manipulating their employer (setting low expectations, as the article suggests) aren't the same employees helping their teammates, working together to get things done, and shipping good work. They're the ones that need constant manager attention and slowly siphon the energy out of their peers and managers. Removing them from the team is a win for everyone.

Allowable small side gigs (which I've always been very open about) are totally cool. And often even positive for my employer. But this idea that so long as you can slip under the radar with working at 50% and beg off of tasks?

But pretending that working two full-time salaried jobs are OK because no one has actually caught you? Wow.

And you're basically providing a template for manager who don't believe in more flexible working arrangements to deny them. I'd love for people for that to be kicked hard to the curb.

It's also why employers are tempted to install monitoring software.

Companies do precisely what capitalism gives them incentives to do. "Grift" is not a meaningful concept. A company can and will do anything the people managing it believe they can get away with that will increase their bottom line, yet, somehow, this behavior becomes unacceptable when it's a lowly worker doing it?

Honorable people are honorable in spite of what other people do.

Yes, and that is a non sequitor.

Do you think it's honor that's keeping the peace? It's fear! Fear and blood!

Would stealing from your employer be ok as long as he doesn't notice?

Who's stealing? Why the red herring?

Working half of the agreed upon hours is, what?

You've already implied you'd do whatever you could get away with:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29668597

Again, I told you, I never agreed to work X amount of hours for any tech company I've ever worked at. In fact, it's always been made clear to me by my managers that time and effort spent is irrelevant, and only results count. Deliver on your sprint commitments, and you're gold, regardless of how long it takes.

Oh, and let's not pretend companies won't do "whatever they can get away with," either. Read the news if you need examples.

Then you're doing piecework? I thought you said you weren't a contractor. I've done piecework, too, which is deliver a product to a specification. But that's not as an employee.

Employees get W2s, contractors get 1099s.

No, I'm not a contractor. I work as an employee.

And, no, I've never signed anything stating I'd work "40 hours" for a tech company. I edited this into a previous comment, but this is literally the applicable phrase from my last offer letter:

> As an exempt salaried employee, you will be expected to work the hours, including evenings and weekends, required to perform your job duties.

It goes both way, you see. I accomplish my duties in less than 40 hours, I get to be done. If my manager is happy with my work, quite frankly, why does it matter how long it takes?

You said you worked as an IC. I presume that meant Independent Contractor.

Individual contributor, as distinct from, say, an executive, who is someone who actually might get an employment contract in the US. I apologize for the confusion.

Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate it. Apology accepted!

BTW, it does appear that, despite you being technically an employee, you're doing piecework like a contractor would. Piecework work is, indeed, paid for the piece, not the hours. If that is the agreement with your employer, then there is nothing dishonorable about it, and I withdraw my criticism.

You're quite welcome, and, BTW, I also edited out the rude phrase I used in my frustration trying to communicate my status here.

I don't know if you want to call it "piecework" per se or not, but, every tech job I've ever had has required me to make an estimate of what I think I can accomplish during a given period (generally a 2 week sprint). As long as there's no push back on whether that's sufficient or not from my manager, if I accomplish those things, it doesn't matter how long it takes. I can take 50 hours, or I can take 20, and I still get paid the same. I don't get paid additional money if I finish my original commitment in 20 hours, then take on more work, which, as you may understand, doesn't give me a great incentive to do so.

Recent years have seen a flurry of expensive lawsuits over the difference between a contractor and employee, most recently at Uber, so my views on that are likely outdated. I shouldn't be surprised that employers these days err on the side of caution and reclassified many traditionally contractor jobs as employee jobs.

Salaried jobs I've had all expected me to work 40 hrs. I'd moonlight on my own business, but was always careful to get a signed agreement in advance from my employer allowing me to do so. Some people moonlight and then live in terror of their employer finding out and claiming ownership over the moonlight business, but getting the agreement in advance forestalls that problem.

You're misunderstanding me again. I do the job of an employee. I simply have never had any expectation of "40 hours," or any other fixed amount of hours placed upon me as a salaried tech employee.

> as their coworkers (thereby screwing over coworkers, who are forced to pick up the slack)

Why is it their coworkers responsibility to make sure enough total labor is present? According to you, anyone not giving 100% is slacking and doing something wrong, so I assume their coworkers are already giving 100%. Why should they have to work harder than 100% because management is bad at getting workers?

>They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

I'd be curious to see stats on this. My experience at large corporations (multiple of FAANG) has been the opposite. For instance, at Google my L4-5 salary bump was 10-15%, my bonus target percentage is identical, and to be honest the stock grants from L4 Strongly Exceeds were better than L5 Consistently Meets Expectations. There's theoretically a higher ceiling over the long term (and the L6 bump seems to be better) but it was nowhere near 50% for me.

Yep, and if you negotiate hard and come in near the top of your salary band, they will use that against you at raise time so you only get like 3% or something. Granted, that may be equivalent to just taking your first year raise up front before you start, which is better than waiting a year for it, but that's what happens.

If you were promoted to 5 then you had high ratings within 4. You should compare CME at each level.

This is kind of an absurd counter. Not everyone can just choose to become a high level engineer at the handful of the most selective companies in the world.

Maybe some could, but you need to be _there_. So you create different kinds of opportunities where you are.

For a short time I was "working two jobs" as part of a transition (everyone was aware) and I found it almost impossible to even manage one or two meetings a week at each job - conflicts were crazy.

What are you supposed to do when you have a conflict, if you're keeping things secret? "that time doesn't work for me" "uh, why? I just hired you. You have another meeting?"

Do you speak in the meetings you are in? I have a lot of meetings, but my part usually involves joining the meeting and doing little else. I could plausibly see someone doing both at the same time.

Absolutely. Not for the entire meeting, but I try not to join meetings (at least long ones) where I'm not going to be participating.

Ah. Maybe you are more senior. I speak in maybe 1 in 10 meetings that are not standup. I have muted them. Taken naps during them. Most of the time I just carry on working.

Ah, that does suck. Yes I am a senior developer (or like to call myself that... I guess..)

That makes sense. I am just moderately experienced run of the mill worker dev. At every company I have been with, there have been meetings between team lead/senior dev and product manager and then there are 4-10 other devs just chilling while they have this conversation.

Or the even bigger architecture convos involving several team leads and all their subordinates chilling in the Zoom. Have had too many fellow devs joke about how half our value is as a visual entourage.

Could someone be in two visual entourages at once? Probably.

That sucks! I'm sure you're aware, but the wasted resources are insane.

Absolutely. The GP scenario is a prime example of a meeting that should be an email, or, really, more like a wiki page.

I can see how a lot of it would be theoretically valuable if people had 5 year careers at companies, but that is not what happens.

You are a very old hat at two years everywhere I have worked.

I am in Canada, and we don’t really get equity like Americans do, and even if we do, not a lot of it so many people have 1 year stints everywhere.

You can’t just take any two random jobs, you need the right two jobs. One that doesn’t require meetings preferably.

How many jobs are like that? All the jobs I have had, contractor or otherwise, require at least some meetings. I can't imagine a new hire who is making $150k/yr+ not being in a few meetings a week.

this happens when you ride along rather than drive the meetings and schedules. if you stay ahead you have control. it's when deadlines become an issue that other people start acting out of line with your predicted work windows.

Uh, I don't know man. I don't agree. People will always ask you to have a meeting at a time that conflicts with another meeting.

Just say to have it 30 mins later or whatever, problem solved. Come up with some excuse, or don't say anything at all. And then have the meeting and be as effective as possible during it. Cut bullshit meetings to a minimum. If you have more than 6 people in the meeting and you're not essential, don't attend. If you have meetings longer than 1h, try to go through the points as effectively as possible and underscore the conclusion dor each point until you get a resolution (important, so you don't get invited to _another_ meeting)

I am talking from experience here, not just out my ass. I can't imagine how it would be remotely sustainable with two full time jobs, nevermind more than that.

> They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

This is not true in most of the world I believe.

All 7 million tech workers should work at a FAANG and make 300K.

Oh, shit, I knew I was doing something wrong.

"the company is not teaching them good skills."

Do companies actually teach anyone, ever?

"If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k,"

This assumes they could spend the time to pass the interview and then deal with the performance expectations. Losers like me could probably work two $80k jobs if they are simple enough. But I'll never get into FAANG, nor would they pay me $300k for a remote role.

"They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income."

Where the hell do you work!? My company gives a 7% raise with a promotion. I want one of these $300k jobs with a 2x promotion. Even the $150k job would be a 50% raise for me. I have been looking for a while and see almost nothing over $120k.

> and this will show up in future background checks.

I’m not interested in working two jobs, but can you provide some sort of reference around this?

My last two background checks included no employment info and I was fairly certain private sector jobs have no reporting outside the IRS, hence ridiculous interviews.

They might be referring to The Work Number from Equifax, which you can check out of, but never leave.

I don't think "no reporting" connects in any way to "ridiculous interviews." It is perfectly possible to do a reference call to a company, at which one's name, rank, serial number, and dates of tenure would be verified. That would be as much or more than you'd get from most background checks.

I'm currently wondering if I should try to double-dip and this nonsensically-out-of-touch attempt to dissuade people from that behavior with its ridiculously unrealistic numbers has actually convinced me that it might be worth pursuing more than the original article linked

The FANGMULA salaries that you mentioned I could not dream of reaching. I have 3 gigs and cash in maybe 70k, and that is very good for my location. I could, I suspect, if I applied myself, land a FANG job, but I would _have_ to relocate. And the COL increase alone would probably make it not worth it. A FANG level remote job would not happen and the stupid niche I work in is not as highly paid as FANG.

haha in Germany the 150k alone would be three jobs

Before taxes? After taxes more like six.

High tier are not accessible everywhere. I do this, work 3 jobs in paralel and it is very lucrative for my location. I do not see a path I could make as much doing what I do, without relocating. Only way I could beat it is going the SAAS way or doing my own startup. Being a local early employee would not cut it.

My employers have so far been very happy with my work, although I am aware I could have performed much better and have done very stupid mistakes because I was moving too fast.

OT: first time reading FANGMULA. Top hit:

"FANGMULA" is a dumb acronym that a cringey YouTuber made up because he couldn't get into FAANG, so he had to make up a new acronym that would include the company he did get into.

Comment on the note:

  FANGMULA is from blind
  FANGULTAD is from youtube

I still don't know who ULTD are. I usually just say FAAMG to mean all the like.

> And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks

hah. yes you can. No one cares if you have multiple concurrent jobs on a resume. And no one cares about what the background check is going to show.

This is all easily explained away.

> Maybe if your having a hard time breaking into startups or FANGMULA and your just starting out, this might be an ok strategy, but beyond that, it's not a good idea.

Most people are never good enough to break into FANGMULA.

And, of the ones who are good enough, some get unlucky and never overcome the "interview random number generator" and always get stuck in the "interview anti-loop." [0] You would think there would be less luck involved in a process that really wants to select the best available employees, but it is not so.

---

[0]: http://recursion.org/2012/1/10/interviewing-anti-loop

It's not about being good enough. More often than not it's about having the time to grind LeetCode for months on end. Understandably not everyone can or wants to do this.

This too. I know a guy who spent 4 months full time and several algo bootcamps prepping for a Facebook interview.

Didn't get in. Total cost to him was about 30K between courses and foregone income.

Jr at 300k? Someone's lying to yah. Maybe total comp including RSU and 401k matching and you based in HCOL like San Fran.

>3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

This is false on average, even at FAANG, getting promoted to the next level doesn't boost your TC that much, the company assumes that the promotion on itself is good enough prize. You usually get a better deal applying to the next level at another FAANG.

> 1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lo..... This is also false, plenty of people that work for small companies, even being a 10X , "rockstar" , ... developer, would never get "promoted" to the next level, because , there is no next level, and the C-level positions are reserved for friends and family, and in some occasion to outside experienced executives.

30 years ago, climbing the corporate ladder was "the way" to get ahead, nowadays, people with small mildly successful SAAS businesses, consultant companies, podcasters, indie hackers etc... make way more than any Director at FAANG.

This is a very "boomer" take in general, and is also pretty cringe.

> 30 years ago, climbing the corporate ladder was "the way" to get ahead, nowadays, people with small mildly successful SAAS businesses, consultant companies, podcasters, indie hackers etc... make way more than any Director at FAANG.

Dir at FAANG makes $1-2M with probably less stress that comes from running-your-own-business.

How many podcasters at the level of $1-2M that works less than Dir at FAANG?

I rarely seen IndieHackers at that level (a select few who struck gold, not as "common" as Dir at FAANG).

Not true either, Directors at FAANG have wayyyy more pressure than people who have bootstrapped their own business. Obviously depends on your business, but on average, running your own business gives you more flexibily than working for someone else. Once your at the Director level, the company owns your time, the pressure to deliver is way higher, because you can always spin another SaaS, but is very hard to get another Director position at another company once you get fired from one. Also, your kids/family can inherit your business, but not your job.

> Obviously depends on your business, but on average, running your own business gives you more flexibility than working for someone else

Depends on how hard you run your own business. You can't go to $1M without driving hard. The ones that got lucky (struct on once-in-a-lifetime idea) typically don't stay up at $1M that long if they continue to run it like a side-hustle doing 20 hours per week.

> Directors at FAANG have wayyyy more pressure

That pressure is pushed down to the army of EMs and SWEs (-_-"). FAANG is a body shop because they have their hiring pipeline with potential candidates; they can afford to burn bodies (hi Netflix and Amazon :D :D).

> because you can always spin another SaaS

Not to $1M level that easily within 1-2 years...

> but is very hard to get another Director position at another company once you get fired from one

I don't know... I rarely seen Dir got fired and tailspin in the career. Can always go as Senior EM and climb up again.

> Also, your kids/family can inherit your business, but not your job.

This is the only thing that might be a WIN for entrepreneurship but now you have 2 worries: 1 running the company, 2 finding your successors.

> 1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lower tier companies with lower standards and significantly lower pay. Because the companies are lower tier, they stagnate in their career growth because the company is not teaching them good skills. And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks.

That's bull, man, sorry. Most of the devs out there, I'd wager at least 95%, don't go through background checks ever, as a start.

Second, I work as a dev for 20 years now and I have never known anyone who got promoted by more than 20%. I have only known one guy through another guy who got promoted with 35% once and that was actually a strategy to make him accept more responsibility. He burned out and quit in less than 6 months after. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but then again, what you cite seems statistically insignificant to me so I don't know if I even believe it because I've not seen it and I haven't even heard of it.

Thirdly, "lower tier companies", really? Sure, use that connotation if you like it -- but I've been all over the spectrum and different combinations of work/life balance vs. income are literally endless. There are companies paying top dollar but there's always some gotcha, and more often than not that gotcha is not worth the extra money. I'll concede here that I have been unlucky -- or not that skilled to begin with, why not, I don't claim I am the greatest -- but it's what I've (not) seen.

2. Because of double working, they are pretty much guaranteed to not get promoted beyond the standard terminal level.

Working your arse off in one primary job is seldom if ever rewarded well. I love your positive bubble but you seriously have to think about for how many people out there it applies to.

3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

Nope, doesn't happen almost ever. Maybe in startups but let's be honest -- will you be in this startup 5 years from now? Also you can't eternally job-hop to more and more money.

4. You cannot work at proper startups and learn a ton, because the workload would be way too high for this strategy.

At least that's true, I'll give you that.

---

I realize that I've been at shitty employers most of my career (took me a while to get a good baseline data from other people and understand my position) but still, most devs out there are at shitty employers. What you're talking about no more than 5% of the total programming workforce, I'd wager it's more like 0.5% even.

Are you high, sir?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com