Ask HN: What factors determine compensation in companies like Facebook?

9 points·frostnovazzz··3 comments

What are good things that make you outstanding, and get more salary than others?

Specialization is probably the most common way to get significantly higher compensation as a grunt. Make yourself an expert in some hot area of technology. Higher demand and lower supply = higher compensation.

Just imagine being the guy trying to hire a kernel developer vs hiring a PHP developer familiar with Wordpress. You're going to have to pay more, a lot more.

And continually invest some of your time in 1> keeping current (meaning right at the leading edge) of your specialization as well as something else that's emerging, and may replace your specialization, that also interests you and 2> getting the word out. In a specialized domain this doesn't mean you need to have some intense twittersphere / githubsphere presence as the "networking" maketroids claim, it just means that fellow experts in your area should know who you are (not necessarily in person) and respect you.

Working at Facebook is what determines compensation at Facebook. Facebook is forced to pay its employees a high salary because they work at Facebook. If they did not, other companies would simply hire all their new employees away within a year of their start date. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with the individual.

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