Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcole2929 | Hacker News Reader

Seriously are $250,000 signing bonuses and 60% pay increases common in the valley. What level employee is this for. Clearly I'm doing something wrong or need to move to SV asap because I've never heard of that kind of pay here on the east coast outside of maybe NYC

View on HN

It's like Facebook. You never hear of the boring meals and activities. It's only at most 0.001% of a persons day, the crap they share.

That's how I feel about HN. Theres a large percentage of quality talent that comes here, as well as bullshitters. That combined gives you the illusion that you are stranded in the wrong hemisphere, when in reality 99% of us are here.

That situation is the 1%.

Thanks for your perspective. As a new grad, I sometimes feel guilty reading HN comments because I'll dwell on why I couldn't also "go to MIT and make a startup at age 22" or some nonsense. It's good to hear that not everyone here is a 10k-a-day coding savant.

There should be a SlackerNews for the rest of us. :)

With headlines like

"32 year old developer launches feature after a grueling 8 weeks"

"Entire company extremely surprised to see Mike come in on a Monday after last Friday's firing round"

Sign me up!!!

Keep in mind that in the press, a "low level employee" is a senior director or vice-president. Not an engineer, nor a senior engineer. That's why the numbers you see feel so far off.

Remember that the signing bonuses are often to pay people for equity that they're walking away from. This isn't common in east coast tech, but it used to be very common in financial services. 60% pay hikes - well, you have to get out of the cost-plus model of talent. If the 20 best engineers will dramatically increase your chance of getting to a $20 billion valuation, then the money being quoted is actually rather small. If the same guys are installing ERP systems on an hourly rate for a large company like E&Y, of course their value is much less.

Why do you think real estate is unaffordable is some parts of the Bay Area? Some people are getting sky high pay and bonuses.

As they say: It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.

Or because of zoning restrictions.

They have become quite common now at the top tech companies.

Keep in mind, $250K doesn't go very far when real estate like this is considered a "bargain": https://www.redfin.com/CA/Cupertino/1157-S-Stelling-Rd-95014...

At $250k/year you can barely afford that house. I knew abstractly that SV real estate was expensive, but presented with a 1100 sq ft house on a medium size lot for $1.2M almost gave me a heart attack.

I know I live out in the sticks, but seriously the only house I know of that costs that much around here is 11,000 sq ft, on 30 acres of land and has both indoor and outdoor pools, a movie theater room and a gym.

I know people on the east coast with $100k signing bonuses straight out of college. There are definitely coastal differences, but I don't think it's impossible to find some examples on the east coast as well.

From what schools, from what companies?

I went to Harvard, so most of the examples I know are from Harvard at the common hot employers. I know of some examples from other schools, though. It's also often the case that not all hires get a six figure signing bonus at a particular company from a particular school, but just some of the people at the top of the pay spectrum.

But is this in tech? I know several people who have gotten these type of offers but they have almost all be exclusively in the financial sector. And even more so in trading type positions as quants or analysts.

Yes, in tech. Your typical Googamafacesoft type companies. There are people with similar offers in finance, but they're not to whom I was referring in the earlier comment.

Off-topic: Any advice for a business school hopeful? I'm a financial analyst for a tech company but want to move into management/strategy consulting.

Cash or vesting equity?

The 100k was in reference to cash. I know people who have gotten up to $500k in vesting equity upon graduation.

Increases relative to what?

Seriously are $250,000 signing bonuses and 60% pay increases common in the valley. What level employee is this for.

The kind that use proper spelling and punctuation, perhaps?

Right, because no talented engineer has ever spoken anything less than perfect english.

That's not what I was saying. Nor is it implied by what I was saying.

> The kind that use proper spelling and punctuation, perhaps?

Don't you mean "the kind who use proper spelling"?

If you're going to correct someone, at least get it right.

Impossible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

Don't you mean "the kind who use proper spelling"?

No. Both "who" and "that" may be used to anchor relative clauses with human antecedents. To quote [1]:

Most writers use 'that' and 'which' as the relative pronouns for inanimate objects, and who as the relative pronoun for humans. This widespread habit has led to the mistaken belief that using that in reference to humans is an error. In fact, while most editors prefer who for people, there is no rule saying we can’t use that, and that has been widely used in reference to people for many centuries.

In other words, my original sentence was perfectly grammatical, and in regard to the original commenter's presentation skills -- and their correlation to his employability and salary potential -- I was simply stating the obvious. But this being HN, I've been downvoted and/or flamed at least 8 times for it.

[1] http://grammarist.com/usage/that-who/

Both the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style recommend spelling out numbers less than nine and ninety-nine, respectively.

That's just a style recommendation. It doesn't mean that doing it the other way is wrong.

Which is, of course, hardly a comparable proscription.

Nor is it widely adhered to, in colloquial usage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com