Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

> deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive

Interested in how that turns out. I seriously doubt that it will make the work environment any more pleasant.

That said, the salaries at Meta are pretty crazy. I guess folks are willing to put up with a lot to make that kind of dosh.

Of course, if, as has been speculated, this is a full-court press by all the top tech companies to push down salaries, then even the thought of "sticking with it for the great money" might not matter, anymore.

Soooo glad to be out of the rodent rally.

View on HN

My work environment has been improved by AI tools so far. I do hope it never gets to the point where the expectation is that devs are just full time code reviewers. Feel like it would get boring at that point.

Which tools are you using for code reviews?

> help our engineers be more productive

That’s the phrase that makes me think that it won’t make the work environment any more pleasant for the worker.

“Productivity” is a rather loaded term. Amazon has found ways to make their drivers and warehouse staff “more productive.”

Pee bottles.

I understand there's problems with the way the gains from bonus productivity are allocated today, but I find it hard to root against bonus productivity.

If you'd earn less going somewhere else, then there's no reason to jump ship till you have to: keep banking the money till the situation becomes untenable.

As if only money counts. There is also somrthing like the fun part of work. Maybe i am spoiled by living in a country where money is not really an issue.

Where is this magical country where money is not really an issue?

He probably meant in his own bubble.

There are definitely countries where money is less of an issue, but I've never heard of a country where it's not an issue. More likely he's referring to the former country. Nevertheless I'm also curious about which country this is.

There are levels of remuneration where you'll put up with a lot though.

You're right, but it's not binary.

You won't feed your family or pay of that house with the "fun part of work". It's great if you get both but there are unfortunately priorities in adult life that might bog down the romanticism.

A high-salary worker (like a Facebook employee) has more than their immediate survival needs covered. It's pretty easy to drop a high-paying job and coast on the inevitable savings (in cash and/or securities) for a good long while. At that point, priorities shift from survival to satisfaction.

Not sure if I buy the fun part of work (sure that is important too) but frankly I'd sacrifice X% for somewhere that is secure, absent political bs and the ensuing stress and damage to mental well being. Heck if this saves me time I can use that time to do fun things/projects outside work. Given big tech has shown it's true colors why bother?

There’s no evidence that “all the top tech companies” are trying to push down salaries. I’ve neither seen nor heard any evidence of this at Netflix or Apple. Google?

Salary ranges for open positions in California are public.

Welp, they've done it before ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You must have missed that time they all colluded together with anti-poaching agreements to minimize liquidity in the job market then turned around and used that as an excuse to demand higher H1B quotas for more guest serfs.

> they all colluded together with anti-poaching agreements to minimize

Meta explicitly refused to join that agreement. See https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/shery...

Are Mark and co. incapable of changing their minds?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... in which "top tech companies" (including Apple and Google) were successfully sued for trying to push down salaries.

I actually got a few thousand dollar settlement from a settlement around 2005-2006.

So… I stand corrected. Netflix plays its own game, and is the exception to the rule?

> Salary ranges for open positions in California are public.

It seems that they've figured out how to get around that: https://news.yahoo.com/90000-to-900000-pay-transparency-laws...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com