Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.
She said "I don't understand why he doesn't understand the technical aspects. It must be me...I must be bad at communicating because [the manager] was a CTO at a startup!"
I literally laughed out loud. Her communication skills were fantastic, but she was so new and naive to think that titles from a startup have literally any worth.
Never look at titles alone. Their scope vary wildly across companies. Even in big corporations they can be used by friends patting each other on the back or to make employees feel important as an alternative to giving an actual raise.
Similarly, when I started in Engineering, I didn't understand quite how much complexity existed in all the other areas of running a company, I've since learned much about them and have much more respect for CEO's who have to manage all of those issues.
It was in a 1:1 where she was specifically seeking out advice on how to deal with this manager
Early stage startups can be especially hilarious that way, especially when young founders/early stage employees mistakenly feel they need a "big" title to be taken seriously...
General counsel (at least in the Anglo-American context) means the senior legal advisor to an organization. As attorneys, they are required by law to have admission to the bar of the relevant jurisdiction, and to observe certain ethical standards and practices. This is not a made-up title and if it is that means there's a lawsuit for unauthorized practice of law that hasn't been filed yet.
IMO, you’d be stupid to take a job like that if you didn’t have the degree and have passed one or more bar exams in the appropriate related jurisdiction(s), but I don’t know that it’s actually required.
Typically at banks, the ranks are: analyst, associate, VP, managing director. Everyone eventually gets to VP, so it's not a particularly high level. It's similar to how tech companies have a level everyone is supposed to reach (often "Senior"). So, analyst is an entry-level role, associate is a mid-level role (2yrs experience, or a higher degree), and VP is a terminal role. VP is a wide band, though, so there's often sub-levels within that (whether publicly visible or not): managing director is a very high title at a bank.
Of course, the VP being the threshold target role for this is a choice, but it seems to be useful in contexts like banks to have some sort of dividing line.
Keeping the hierarchy flatter helped more honest communication. There were lesser inhibitions to talk & express opinion. In any disagreement, experience seniority played the subtle hand to navigate discussion.
Compensation matters, title shouldn't.
The only problem with this approach is that people look for other markers of "status" (like, for instance, the amount of time you've been with a company.
At my last job, my formal title was "Systems Integration Engineer", which has a real industry definition as recognized by various engineering fellowships. Since I did very little formal Systems Integration at the job, I labelled myself as a "Cargo Logistics Engineer" on my resume. It worked fine.
That's bizarre given Wall Street has been abusing the Vice President title for generations now. (VPs at American banks report to Managing Directors, a middle-management level of which there are hundreds if not thousands. It's the tier above Associate, i.e. straight out of B school or with a year or two of Analyst experience.)
My later role as Director of a 50-person engineering group in a 200-person startup was way more relevant in terms of my experience managing development.
An easy fix for that would be to add the number of employees she managed and the size of the company. The title is scary but she did manage people and did report to the CEO, so to me it is a VP position. Of course, that won’t map 1:1 when hiring into a new company (doubt she’ll be reporting to the CEO) but the person she might report to would be managing an org of a similar size to her previous company.
> because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive.
250k total comp (including some equity) doesn’t sound outlandish to me. Very much in the market for someone who had lead experience in her 20’s. Some fresh grads land that out of school.
Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.
"OMSCS started in January 2014 with 380 students. Enrollment increased each semester (excluding summer terms). In 2019 I believed that we were very close to the peak, since we are graduating more and more students. But then, the pandemic hit and we have kept growing every semester. This spring term we just passed a new mile stone – we have over 12,000 students, 12,016 to be precise. We might be at the peak or very close to it. Apparently, OMSCS is the biggest degree program, online or not in any subject in the US and probably the world. More importantly, the degree is of the same quality of the on campus program. We have 56 courses (we started with 5); several courses now have over 1,000 students. We graduated 1,970 in 2021 for a total of 6,470 so far. We are graduating in a year well over 10% of the number of those that graduate with MS in CS in the US." - Zvi Galil
Online, Cheap and Elite: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018...
No. OMSCS is practically open door compared to other elite CS programs, but an undergrad degree is a strict requirement. It's graduate school.
In fact I don't believe there are any such Master's programs, or at least not accredited ones in the US.
In any case -- until you have complete undergrad for $5-7k and doable part time, no, these jobs aren't accessible.
And FWIW, I come from a poor immigrant background. My family was on welfare. I got free lunch at school. The American dream come true. Sorry that not everyone can hack it in life.
I did (apply myself). I did work my ass off to get into, and out of, (good) engineering school and pay for it also.
It simply wasn't an option for me to go to an expensive private or out of state school with a price tag of a couple hundred thousand dollars. So I went to the best school I could afford. Many folks are in this boat. It's not for a lack of trying or intelligence - it's for a lack of privilege.
Edit - I also want to acknowledge that compared to many folks in the world I am very privileged. It only serves to highlight my point even further. These statements are less about me personally and more about me recognizing that I, and many others in our HN world are very privileged in one way or another as compared to he average American, or Human.
That doesn't mean I can't recognize that folks are different, and that where we start out most definitely has an impact on how far we go.
I think a better term would be “advantages”. It adequately describes the meaning that’s being conveyed without carrying the implication that it’s necessarily completely outside of the individual’s control.
You seriously, honestly, from the bottom of your heart, think that 90% of the 70k people living in the Complexo do Alemão are just lazy and don't fix their lives due to sloth?
Before you start, I'm happy with my life and my circumstances.
You claim that not everyone is intelligent enough to make it into these schools in another post but we know from science that even just changing the way you study can improve performance by half a standard deviation [1]. So maybe you just didn't work as hard as the competition? Maybe you didn't look at all the aspects of _how_ you work and do some self-reflection about working more efficiently?
Don't blame intelligence when your own decisions have much more impact on overall performance than 10-20 points of IQ do. Why do you think Asians comprise 50% of school populations where affirmative action is banned? Hint: it's not because of superior intelligence, but work ethic.
There are many poor people that are never given that opportunity regardless of ability. To those people, you had an easy path.
>>> So I went to the best school I could afford. Many folks are in this boat. It's not for a lack of trying or intelligence - it's for a lack of privilege.
and
> But you had the privilege [o]f uncommon intelligence and test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.
It's simply the way the world works. The rich get richer.
The one is just the logical contrapositive of the other.
My statement, which is the simple reality of the world, was that top performing students who are able to prove so via grades, test scores and other admissions requirements and scholarship requirements, are able to have top tier educations paid for via scholarships and similar aid. For folks, like me, who weren't in that bucket, have a different set of opportunities and tradeoffs. Those include paying for a 200k "top tier" education if our situation affords it, or the choice I and many others make which is to go to the best state school (or other "affordable") option.
I'm not complaining, it's just how the world works. If you were to create a flow chart for college that covers any input (student), this is what it would look like.
Reducing the above to "college is free above a certain intelligence" is missing the point and focusing on a needless obsurd detail.
Once again, you are refusing to acknowledge that the word "typical" is not appropriate here. Even in your example it's not typical for American people to achieve that American dream, as America is absolutely awful on the social mobility scale.
Edit: also it's really classy you are just deleting your replies to my comments instead of actually engaging in a discussion. Your choice I suppose.
> Why is it nonsense? The wealthy and connected can already give their progeny undue access to opportunities via their social networks, and can afford the best education that money can buy. That's already way more of an advantage than the average citizen gets. Besides, the whole point is to maximize equality of opportunity.
For computers, not everyone can afford computers in America. I was lucky to find a job walking fields as a child to afford one but that opportunity doesn't exist for everyone.
https://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/151956595/a-need-for-speed-in...
Spoiler - it's because it's seen by kids. If a kid in Jamaica wants to be a runner it's obvious to them what to do. Its being told to them every day in their sports entertainment, local events, advertising, etc. It a kid in Jamaica wants to be a CS person, they have no clue what to do. No TV ads, local clubs, events, races, all grooming them day by day to he a better programmer. We have that in the US, in the Bay area, etc. We are grooming young STEM folks from the beginning.
The book « The Sports Gene » discusses that the West African heritage of Jamacians actually gives them a genetic advantage. I forget the details but basically, to resist malaria they have sickle cell anemia which leads to powerful anaerobic systems ideal for sprinting.
You could put someone of different genetic stock in the same culture bit they wouldn’t be as successful at sprinting.
Yes, and globally that's still nothing. You are talking about the elite of the elite, chosen ones among the chosen ones. In other 1st world countries, and even in majority of USA no, recent graduates are not paid quarter of a million dollars. There's a select, very exclusive, very limited group of people who do. But like others have pointed out already - that's not "typical" by any definition of the word.
If you grew up in a shitty high school, you can go to a community college and then transfer to one of these state schools. I know for certain California has excellent policies that favor CC applicants transferring in. There are multiple ways in the door if you apply yourself.
Perhaps consider that a student that can't even get into a state school has no business or ability to write code at a level that would merit a 250k salary. The bar is on the floor.
Like I said, the software engineering job market is red hot right now. I rejected a few offers and they still asked me a few months later if I would be interested in joining. That’s how desperate they are for anyone with even a reasonable amount of talent.
Meta/FB is down 35% since September. Many public mid-cap software unicorns are down 50%. Smaller companies that IPO'd last year are often down even more than that.
If you joined one of these companies last fall and got a $150k base salary + $400k stock grant that vests over four years, your total compensation was $250k when hired, but is now down to $200k after the stock has lost 50%. Of course the stock price may go up again. (But it also may not, as anyone who lived through 1999-2001 remembers.)
Since when does "typical" mean "graduated from a top 10 school"? That's why you're being downvoted.
Is it typical for the general population to make a million a year? No, but it is entirely typical for investment bankers and quants at hedge funds. To say that is atypical of the average worker in America — well, of course, but that isn’t a very meaningful statement when you’re specifically discussing people in investment firms. And that’s what this article is about — the subset of the population for which this is entirely normal and expected.
San Francisco: 4.7 million
Berlin: 6.1 million
London: 14.3 million
NYC: 20.1 million
Shenzhen: 23.3 million
Tokyo: 37.5 million
As of next week, as soon as the Fed starts raising rates, the stock market will crater. These compensation values will then become what companies are really willing to pay. Not much different from other parts of the world.
If you factor in the risk of bankruptcy in the US due to unexpected medical bills and that you have to be on the 0.1% of Developer pools in the US, does not make it so amazing.
That's mare than stretching "typical"
The vast majority of people talking about those salaries just heard of a few people that make that money and extrapolated to the rest.