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This is a scam. It's a way to extract more value out of you than what they are paying you for (i.e. paying you for an E5 level, while making you do E6 work).
by randoglando 3y ago
This is a scam. It's a way to extract more value out of you than what they are paying you for (i.e. paying you for an E5 level, while making you do E6 work).
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoIsn’t the entire concept of employment meant to scam you out of more value for your labor than what you put in? I don’t see anything special about this specific scam
- tapland 3y agoNot sure if it qualifies as a scam. The grocery store does the same when I'm looking for fruit, exploiting the margins (and hoping I don't know the real value)
- setr 3y agoI think more important than you not knowing the “real” value is that they’re relying on you not being able to access that value. You can’t talk to the producers directly, and even if you can, you can’t purchase in sufficient bulk to see the same price they do. The margins don’t simply exist because of hidden information, but because the grocery store is actually adding something to the equation (else if capitalism does its thing, someone else would start drinking their milkshakes). In the same fashion, you might be able to add X value to Meta by adding some feature to Facebook, and they’re relying on X to exceed your pay, but that doesn’t mean you can produce X value without Meta/Facebook and capture it for yourself — if you could, then you’d be an idiot not to. And I don’t think Meta is relying on their high value ICs being smart enough to provide value, but so dumb that they wouldn’t take money just lying in front of them.
- plonk 3y agoThe real value is what they managed to pay for the product plus the cost of their own work. You could know it down to the cent and still not benefit from cutting out the middleman.
- JanSt 3y agoThe individual value of an IC outside of Meta is most certainly lower than what they get paid there. The company provides so much value that it raises the ICs value inside Meta. It's win-win.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoVery true. But we have to also consider the intrinsic value of working for Meta. The employees getting paid that excess compensation also have to live with the fact that they took more money to work for Meta. And other people now view them as a person who took more money to work for Meta. So for some people it’s a win win, I’m sure, especially if you don’t really care about how you’re perceived in the world
- xyzzy123 3y agoI think the risk is more feeling trapped. e.g. buying into a housing market you probably couldn't afford if you were taking more risk or bootstrapping. It catches up to you fast, especially if you're in the midlife crisis age band. Getting "paid more than you'd be worth anywhere else" has its price.
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoYeah I'm leaving a Big Tech feeling this pain now and it's exactly this. I stayed careful over the years to stay clearly within my means and have the freedom to walk away but still hold onto previous saved earnings. But I have coworkers who bought huge houses in high COL neighborhoods and nice luxury cars who feel too trapped to leave Big Tech.
- germinalphrase 3y agoFor you, does ‘leaving Big Tech’ also mean moving yourself/your family to a lower cost of living area?
- 3y ago
- Kuinox 3y agoCooperatives exists.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago[dead]
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoI wish cooperatives were bigger and more popular in the world in general
- tacocataco 3y agoI think you might be interested in Mondragon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation If it can work in Spain, it can work here.
- IMTDb 3y agoDid you try to get involved in creating one or work for one ? If this is fundamentally a model you think if more fair and should be more popular, the logical step would be to get involved in this. Either it will be successful for you and you will be (slightly) closer to demonstrating that it's a viable alternative to the corporate/capitalistic model that dominates the economy; if you end up being able to quit your day to job to replace it with a coop job instead and reach/maintain a lifestyle that you are comfortable with. Or it won't be successful for you and you will learn why it's not gaining in popularity despite this being a well known model.
- SllX 3y agoScams don’t usually put food in your belly and a roof over your head and keep you warm at night.
- 28304283409234 3y agoSaid the enslaver to the enslaved. Or the mobster to the shopkeeper. Or the kidnapper to the kidnapped. This system is definitely rigged. Just because you get some compensation does not mean it is a fair compensation.
- SllX 3y agoWhat’s “fair” is generally what is accepted by the parties involved. Even if you complain about the compensation, if you’re working at a particular rate, you have implicitly agreed to that rate rather than seeking a higher compensating position. Slaves don’t get a choice in the matter. Mobsters and kidnappers are criminals. Living is a choice, and in order to do so it is expected that you gather your own food and find your own shelter and we’ve structured society in a way that makes that easy. You can even form a relationship with someone where you merge your resources and time to make it easier and raise other people to eventually replace you. But if you would prefer to hunt and gather and compete with other humans through a more violent means, that option is probably available to you somewhere and you can go seek that out on your own but it’ll probably be a shorter life. I won’t tell you how to live, but however you do it, it won’t be without cost to you as it isn’t for any of us even if the cost is much more marginal for some than for others.
- mdekkers 3y agoYour argument depends entirely on scarcity of life-sustaining resource. We’ve objectively not had that situation for quite a while. What we have had, and still have, is a situation where scarcity of resources is artificially generated or maintained. Whilst we are being pushed to accept artificial stratification on economic and class levels, there are only two political / economic classes. The ultra rich hoarders of resources, and everyone else. The “everyone else” group represents 99% of the global population, making the hoarders a statistical anomaly. Those folk, however, have amassed $26 _trillion_ dollars of resources, just during the pandemic. The asinine suggestion of “you are free to go out and hunt” only has meaning when you remain oblivious to the fact we are _all_ enslaved and we only get the illusion of choice about which set of bastards get to pretend to represent our interests. There is enough to cover the basic needs of everyone on this planet. We just need to get rid of a few powerstructures before we can get to it. We are being conned.
- taneq 3y agoThis whole meme needs to die. I'm so sick of reading "Piotr the factory worker spends an hour making a chair. Piotr is paid 5 roubles, but chair sells for 10! Piotr has been robbed of 5 roubles!" No, Piotr supplied one hour's labour, but not the training, raw materials, design, packaging, tools, workshop, electricity, financing, liability, insurance, accounting, management, marketing, shipping, or after-sales support. If the company is being run competently then the total cost will be less than the sale price, and the company will make a profit, but that doesn't mean the workers could produce the same value independent of the company. If they could, they wouldn't be working there.
- hgsgm 3y agoThe same argument goes for the shareholders whose capital value is increased by labor. Getting an unfair share is still being ripped off.
- edgyquant 3y agoThe shareholder risks their capital
- TimPC 3y agoMarxists are insane. GDP per capita in my country is $71,000. Wages are $59,500 which means all other capital gains make up $11,500. A good chunk of that is non-business capital gains (like housing) which means capital is taking under 10%. But Marxists always act like you could double your wage if not for the greedy capitalists. That’s not true, do the math.
- taneq 3y agoUltimately it always comes down to a position of "private property is theft, except for mine of which I deserve more."
- TimPC 3y agoIt's less about the self-serving approach which I've seen on rare occasion. It's more the complete inability to estimate magnitude effects. If you found a way to replace capital entirely but keep all the efficiency of price mechanisms you could maybe give people a 10% raise (but I bet whatever mechanism replaces price loses the entirety of that 10% due to inefficiency) but the average marxist will confidently tell people they could double their paycheque if the greedy capitalists weren't taking half.
- harles 3y agoScams usually don’t make their victims millionaires. I think that’s much too strong of a reaction. The FAANGs I’ve been at, and especially where I’ve managed, high impact work is rarely passed over when it comes to both comp and promo. The problem is the opposite of that: there simply isn’t enough high impact work to go around. It’s a common problem in pure engineering, and one that’s becoming more obvious in management as the article alludes to.
- 28304283409234 3y agoThis system leans towards certain types of people becoming managers. Which crates a monoculture. Never a good thing.
- notyourwork 3y agoI agree. Promotion oriented architecture becomes a real thing because of this.
- tcbawo 3y agoI saw the term Resume Driven Development on here once, and I’ve been using it ever since. I like this term a lot, also.
- bigpeopleareold 3y agoI think it is better to just justify if a task has a high impact to one's self, particularly in well-established companies. If I can get paid decently and learn new stuff to keep my knowledge fresh, that's good enough for me. However, that's something I had to train myself, because high-impact work doesn't come along well but there is a strong social component to it; it's great to talk about, at least. I left my last company because there was simply nothing to gain from, unless I wanted to spend the next few years trying to maybe become a manager, which felt like a distant possibility there anyway.
- djur 3y agoMost tech companies do not make ICs millionaires.
- tylerhou 3y agoThe claim is that a high performing E5 will get good ratings, and there is enough comp overlap between levels that their pay will be in the same range has a meets E6. (At least, this was the official stance at Google.)
- mcbain 3y agoThe painful part is that if you at or near the top of the previous band it often means not a significant bump at promo time. The top of the new band is much higher of course, but there isn't as much immediate payoff.
- UncleMeat 3y agoRight. That is working as intended if you really are performing at the next level prior to your promo.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd what’s the alternative? Promoting someone who hasn’t demonstrated that they can do the job?
- coldtea 3y agoAn awful way to phrase "giving someone an opportunity".
- scarface_74 3y agoSo what happens when you get promoted and are not qualified for the job? What happens to their reports that have to deal with an unqualified manager? What happens with the organization? I work in a half technical (hands on development)/half customer facing role in BigTech - cloud consulting. I was a software developer mostly working at small companies until 2020. There were never any promotion guidelines and I knew to make more money I needed to job hop. For context: a “work stream” is a series of task meant to achieve an outcome. Depending on the complexity of a project, it can have multiple work streams. The expectations are for the first 3 levels are: An L4: you’re expected to be able to gather requirements from a customer and understand their business needs for one work stream. Help implementing a solution and present the solution to the customer. If you can’t demonstrate that you can do that as an intern, you won’t get a return offer. The problem is well defined. You are not expected to design the solution without help. L5: You should be able to do what the L4 does and lead a work stream, design the solution, implement it, and manage your own work and customer delivery. The problem is mostly defined (ie low ambiguity). You are expected to be able to define the solution. L6: All of the requirements of an L5. But you should be able to manage multiple work streams in a project and here the problem is not well defined (high ambiguity). At each level it is about increasing “scope” and “impact”. Do you suggest someone be promoted without proving they work at the next level? How will that affect the customer? Just because you’re good at taking orders when everything is spoon fed to you (L4) doesn’t mean you can design and manage an implementation. Are you going to let an L4 with no demonstrated skill loose on your AWS account? Be responsible for your HIPAA compliant implementation? An L5 that can handle their work well, show a deep technical understanding and can manage their workstream is not necessarily good at managing multiple related work streams (more scope), nor does it mean they can handle pre-sales work unassisted (high ambiguity).
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoI'd say I've seen this at most companies in many industries. You have to be doing the work of the next level in order to prove you can do it, so you are always being 'extracted' from. Or always behind a level. So in you head, just slide the whole scale up one notch.
- refurb 3y agoScam is a weird word to use. Demonstrating you how to do the next role, before getting the role, seems reasonable. Not a hard requirement, but not unreasonable.
- hgsgm 3y agoNo, it's not. Higher performance is rewarded with higher equity, salary, and bonus. You can argue that someone's worth more less than they're paid, but there are paid less because they're performing at a recognized higher level but not promoted. Also, higher level is imaginary anyway. Directors aren't better than ICs just because they sit at choke points in the org chart.
- ogn3rd 3y agoYou are correct. At AWS you can perform at a L7 for years and never get a promo if you're not best friends with the skip level manager.