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Comment by skyyler | Hacker News Reader

No, you are not reading correctly.

The 60% number is the percentage of the budget, not the staff member's allocated time.

However, what do we know about the duties of this staff member? $150k isn't a very high salary for an experienced systems administrator

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Presumably the $150k also includes all oncosts, so the actual salary is quite a bit lower still? As a side note I don't understand the arguments about salaries for nonprofits. Sure they should not be outrageously higher than the average, but shouldn't we want to get the best people for these jobs (instead of them working on aware?), or is the argument that if you work for a nonprofit you should be doing it out of altruism and be glad you receive a salary at all?

The argument that I assume you are talking about has some nuance around it. It's mostly about politically connected or nepotistic people who are pulling large salaries for essentially little to no work. I'm sure most regular employees at a nonprofit get treated as poorly as those of us at a normal business.

But's usually not the argument being made, the complains (same in this case) are often about the salaries of the people doing the actual work. Sure I understand the complains about multi-million salaries for the CEOs of some non-for-profit (on the other hand I have the same complains about the ridiculous salaries of CEOs of for-profits), but if that's the nuance, it doesn't come out in the complains.

Well without actual examples from any supposed position, this discussion goes nowhere.

What do you mean? We are discussing an example right here???

It's higher than an SDE in Seattle, but less than a senior position at those same companies, for people who want some perspective.

Firmly "Middle ground of the area"

It is unclear from this request, but if this is the cost to the employer it is almost certainly a larger number than the actual pay which goes to the individual.

Cost of living in Corvallis <<< Cost of living in Seattle

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

$150k is not "higher than an SDE in Seattle", unless you meant to say "higher than the average salary for an entry-level junior SDE role in Seattle."

That does seem to pretty clearly be what they meant, given the rest of the sentence.

There are usually three main levels people talk about, entry, mid career, and sr. If you say SDE, I'd assume a mid-career person, which is 100% earning way more then 150k in Seattle. https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... has more data.

In Big Tech(tm) you’d have at least lead/staff and principal on top of those levels, who make even more.

From a university grants perspective that likely includes benefits.

Grant hiring math is

Salary + benefits = cost

Where benefits = salary *~.4

Does "benefits" also include the tax contributions the company pays? After being 1099 for so long, those definitely sound like a benefit to me!

I honestly don't know but I assume so.

They technically call it 'fringe benefits'. My university has four categories of fringe benefits:

Full

Limited

Partial

Grad Health

The only things it specifies are that partial includes social security and full includes life insurance. But given that whatever I set for a post doc/research scientist/etc. salary is the amount they are paid, I assume that everything else including payroll taxes are encompassed in that 1/3 extra for fringe.

I've been in the IT field for 20+ years, but I've never made that much in a year. What's stopping someone from saying, "Hire two cheaper guys, so there's redundancy?"

>I've been in the IT field for 20+ years, but I've never made that much in a year.

What on earth have you spent your time learning? How do you have 20 years of experience but no specialized skills that bring a modest salary?

Do you not have time for personal development while at work?

I'm not trying to be rude, I'm legitimately curious.

The lack of people who are willing to do the job at comparable capacity for $80k a year.

The $150K probably needs to cover other costs, like payroll taxes. Perhaps other benefits as well? (Health insurance would be the big one -- in the rough ballpark of $20K).

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