When I looked into it and talked to some hiring managers, the big names were offering cash comp similar to total comp for big tech, with stock (sometimes complicated arrangements that were not options or RSUs) on top of that. I’m talking $400k cash for a senior engineer with equity on top.
Because op’s usage of base implies base + stock. including a place where base = total comp is really misleading and is just being unnecessarily pedantic about terminology.
OP is correct that a base cash of 400k is truly rare if you’re talking about typical total comp packages where 50% is base and 50% is stock.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make other than being super pedantic. This was a discussion about how OpenAI’s base of 400k is unique within the context of a TCO in the 800-900k range. It is. That quantfi and Netflix offer similar base because that’s also their TCO is a silly argument to make.
> This was a discussion about how OpenAI’s base of 400k is unique within the context of a TCO in the 800-900k range.
That's not how I interpret the conversation.
I see a claim that 900k is a BS number, a counterargument that many big AI companies will give you 400k of that in cash so the offers are in fact very hot, then a claim that only finance offers 400k cash, and a claim that netflix offers 400k cash.
I don't see anything that limits these comparisons to companies with specific TCOs.
Even if the use of the word "base" is intended to imply that there's some stock, it doesn't imply any particular amount of stock. But my reading is that the word "base" is there to say that stock can be added on top.
You're the one being pedantic when you insist that 400k cash is not a valid example of 400k cash base.
Notice how the person being replied to looked at the Netflix example and said "Okay that's true". They know what they meant a lot better than you do.
ok so the conversation starts out with 900k TCO with 400k in cash, a claim that that’s BS and then morphs into a discussion about a TCO of 400k all cash being an example of equivalent compensation to OpenAI packages?
Nobody said it was equivalent. The subdiscussion was about whether you can even get that much cash anywhere else, once TCO got pulled apart into cash and stock to be compared in more detail.
Again, the person that made the original claim about where you can get "400k cash base" accepted the Netflix example. Are you saying they're wrong about what they meant?
It's amazing to me how many people are willing to just say the first thing that comes to their head while knowing they can be fact-checked in a heartbeat.
It's cheapest overall for an employer to pay market rate for new hires and give existing employees small, regular raises.
If you need to hire someone, you're going to have to pay market rate for a particular hire. You can pay less for less skill or in certain locations. You can try to offer below market and wait for a candidate with few options to accept. But you can't really get around this. If market pay is going up, you're going to have to pay more than for existing employees. If pay is going down, you can pay less than existing employees. Usually it is the former, but there are absolutely companies right now in the declining wage situation where they are paying new hires less.
As for existing employees, most will complain if they are being paid less than new hires, but only some fraction leave. Usually bringing everyone up to the new hire pay level costs way more than the cost from backfilling positions where someone left for more pay or to give counter offers for those you want to keep from leaving.
> Why should someone living in Indiana make less money than someone living in NYC for a remote tech job?
Because on average they'll accept less money. Someone in NYC is more likely to have other options with higher pay. If a business wants to hire them, they have to offer more. Simple as that.
Crazy reading about this here. I just had this problem. Spent a couple hundred bucks for the local mechanic to track it down to parasitic drain from the SOS module (“Starlink”). He just disconnected it since I don’t pay for the subscription anyways.
DC recently eliminated the tipped minimum wage and tipping culture is definitely in flux. Mostly because many restaurants have started adding a 10-20% service charge (called various things, like a “restaurant recovery fee”) to make up for the higher wages, which they claim is not a tip. But many diners interpret this as a mandatory tip and do not tip additionally, or if they do, they tip a lower amount than they previously would.
If a company is charging me a service or recovery fee that is a percentage of my bill, I am taking it out of the tip. If they want to use that money to pay the expense that is their employees, they can make it part of the cost of the food, just like everything else. It's not like I pay a separate lease fee or food inspection fee or menu printing fee or electrical hookup fee or whatever.
Paying your employees a decent wage is part of running a business. It's disgusting when bosses pull tricks like this to try to lay the blame on their employees.
Sure. But whether you spin it as "return to work" [as if you weren't doing something/somewhere that could be considered "work" before] or "return to office" is likely to be revealing as to your mindset about the whole thing.
Language has connotations that influence how we interpret others' arguments.
That's wild. I must have said "I am going back to the office" organically hundreds of times.
For example, if I went to lunch with a colleague and had to get back to the office for a meeting or to get back to my computer. Or if I was at an off-site meeting that just ended and I was going to trek back to the office.
I don't say it much anymore, as WFH has cut all this needless commuting from my life, but I use to say that constantly.
But here, where people are already working from home, saying these already-working people are violating the "return-to-work" order is just fundamentally disrespectful of the work people were already doing.
It makes sense why those workers would seek to form a union; it sounds like management is really belittling their work, even through the language they feed to the press.
Which is based from "work" predominantly being done in offices and factories and such.
In the era of increasing "working from home" and working remotely from cafes and elsewhere, mixing the two is an anachronism that should stop. It also diminishes WFH.
