The one with the better offer, taking a possible layoff payout into account. The comp ranges can be so drastically different between companies that a possibly generous layoff (that is no means guaranteed if Stripe has to do this when circumstances are more dire) is negligible financially.
For me, knowing Musk's reputation for demanding workaholic mentality.. %20 might not be enough and that is before WFH issues.
Twitter was a public company with quarterly vests where you could get liquidity on your compensation (and from what i understand you were cashed out at buyout.) Stripe remains private and much of your money remains locked. Not sure if they issue RSUs, options, or what, but quite possibly you lose a lot or your historical compensation 3mo later. They were two different beasts. (Of course, now both are private, so going forward they might be similar.)
Is the only thing that determines whether you take a job the salary ?
Because for many people how much you get paid is important but far from the only factor.
Most people have a price at which they will sell out. Those who don’t, are too few to make any significant difference
Billions of people love and use Meta products every day and their tech stack is one of the world's best with technical challenges almost no other company faces.
Palantir also has many parts of their business that benefit society e.g. combating human trafficking etc.
The same goes for twitter.
Working at Twitter now means a daily grind means being subject to the whims of an increasingly petulant emperor who does not respect anyone's expertise. What good does it for your career if he's just going to drop the ball at a moment's notice anyway?
The reality is that Twitter as a business (and, imho, as a product) was sorely in need of a course correction. Layoffs, if they need to be done, should be done crisply and thoroughly so that remaining employees don't feel like the other shoe is about to drop.
You rip off the bandaid, it sucks, then you refocus on the work ahead.
Twitter is different - there are other big companies that provide as much tech challenges or more (whether they are better/worse than Twitter is another question). Twitter employees have many more options (relatively speaking) than SpaceX employees
Working at Meta/Google doesn't necessarily do that. I'm almost certain most of these companies' moonshot divisions are not as well-run as many startups, nor are these companies assured success in these areas.
Their main products are already at a "don't fix it if it ain't broke" stage, even though many will claim these are broken. I doubt it's exciting work.
Working at Tesla or SpaceX will be like working on a moonshot that's actually taking off. I'm sure it's a thrill. But increasingly, I don't think Musk is level-headed enough to be trusted with such things.
It takes time to reject nitwitted leaders, so we can't expect employees to abandon ship overnight just to prove my point.
Thats exactly how a lot of people will view Twitter. You might think its horrible and they are terrible for laying of people, but plenty of good engineers ready to fill those roles for the money without the need of having free snacks, free coffee, rest booths, ping pong area, LED illuminated reading rooms, etc etc etc. Twitter will be fine.
I don't doubt the technical excellence of these companies. They are technically very capable because of the talent they hire, and they are able to hire top talent because of the high salaries they pay, not because of some altruistic or egoistic reasons
A workplace can actively kill humans and still treat its employees very good.
You are mixing very different factors together here.
Prestige, to name another example, is very important to a lot of people. Having "worked at FAANG" on your resume opens many opportunities afterwards that don't have anything to do with money.
For what it's worth those companies have not brought any real innovation in the last 10 years, give or take, because if they had they would have been on top of the world (quite literally). Which makes me hopeful that some of the real geniuses out there (today's von Neummanns and the like) might still avoid those companies out of principle.
Basically, if they aren't offering "f** you money", pay has a diminishing effect on my employment choices. And if they are offering that kind of money, I'm assuming that'll come with even more consequences. My resume is alright, but it's not enough for an offer of way more money without strings attached.
I can't speak for everybody of course, but I think not heeding the above leads to burnout.
> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring
The one that people want to work for and don't have to "sell out" to do it.
> Most people have a price at which they will sell out.
Sure. Agreed. But now you've tripled your OpEx vs your competitors. And the people that sold out aren't in any way loyal, so will bounce. But if they aren't offering substantially more, the money doesn't matter. It's all basically the same anyways.
And then you have to consider financials and leadership. Twitter financials got substantially worse (20x) from my understanding after Musk took over because of the debt he now has.
And as far as leadership goes: he was forced to buy it. That really doesn't look good.
Nope, this is wrong if the company can afford to pay more. Just look at companies like Jane Street, HRT, etc. The high comp they are willing to pay makes them harder to get into than Twitter, Meta, etc by a long shot. They have a far easier time hiring.
Yes.
Pornhub, Exxon, Smith and Wesson, all the big tobacco companies, the guys that manufacture fentanyl, infowars, they all have IT staffs. Some have extremely sophisticated IT staffs. Money talks, but there other factors. when you’re working on migrating from .net to cloud native at Exxon and you’re building some kind of new container registry or something you probably don’t spend your days pondering climate change; you get paid every two weeks, you are learning some cool stuff and you’re building some cool stuff. Most people need jobs too.
A pay check and some sort of plausible rationalization is all that is needed. “Twitter is free speech” sounds pretty strong. “Twitter connected Ukrainians during that invasion” sounds strong.
I mean yea I work for pay.
Does the pay by itself mitigates some of the following shitty behavior:
- Timing bathroom breaks - Requiring lengthy security check prior to entering work location - Micromanaging and invasive monitoring
Just small things that would drive some people livid regardless of pay. Scratch that, at the higher end of the spectrum it could easily drive them away.
The only time those things haven't been an issue is when I do charity work which isn't really work as I don't get paid for it, which I think is the only reason the charities take what they get and are happy with it as they have no other choice.
Oddly, my most recent volunteer gig was very.. structured. It may not help that it is sponsored by corporate so maybe they started demanding a lot of data.
If that ain't a major reason why people relocate from all over the world to SV, then I am missing something. Of course the salary is one of the major factors.