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Comment by notJim | Hacker News Reader

Are there really 23 year-olds making $600,000 per year (=5x what I'm told Google pays) at large tech companies writing javascript? Or is that just hyperbole?

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I know of a 25 year old who got a 7-digit counter offer from Google when a friend tried to recruit him so I was hoping the 23 year old example wasn't too much hyperbole. Plus, the idea is to pay a big premium over what everyone else pays anyway.

A 7-digit salary, or a 7-digit retention bonus / stock grant / whatever? A 7-digit salary would be absurd (Tim Cook didn't even have a 7-digit salary when he was COO), whereas a 7-digit retention bonus is plausible (and lines up much better with your follow-up comment about a "vesting period").

Wow! Google counter offer numbers always fun to hear. Without the risk of divulging too much info, would you share, if he was a back-end, front-end or mobile app developer?

I mean, I would consider doubling or even 1.5ing a pretty big premium.

That's insane though. It's hard to imagine a single programmer being worth a million dollars a year to a company.

It's hard to imagine a single programmer being worth a million dollars a year to a company.

AdWords is worth, round numbers because I'm lazy, $100 billion a year. One million dollars is 10^-5 times AdWords. Want to make a guesstimate as to how many engineers are associated with 10^-2 improvements in AdWords in a given year?

I'm pretty sure there was a vesting period - it wasn't for one year.

But, but it's actually crazy that they don't. Companies buy startups just for these types of people and pay up front for them (with no solid guarantee that they'll get their money's worth).

Hire someone who you think is a kickass dev for 200/hour and when they stop being worth it, get rid of them. Seems way more economical than the current setup.

But maybe (probably) I'm the one who is crazy.

I've always heard the rule of 1000 when comparing hourly rates to salaries, to take into account taxes and buying your own healthcare and such. 200,000 a year is a much less stratospheric salary for a programmer than 600,000, in my view at least.

Good point regarding team-based acquisitions though.

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