
Twitter pays SVP of Engineering $10 million as Silicon Valley tussles for talent - acak
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/13/us-siliconvalley-engineers-twitter-idUKBRE99C03R20131013
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kevinpet
This is misleading. His compensation may have been effectively $10M last year,
but it's almost certainly based on a stock grant several years in the past.
Twitter did not offer him $10M/year, they offered him some probability of
$250k/year and a small chance of $10M/year. Now the bet has paid off and he's
collecting, but it's incorrect to compare a winning lottery ticket to how many
lottery tickets are being offered to current hires.

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timr
_" This is misleading. His compensation may have been effectively $10M last
year, but it's almost certainly based on a stock grant several years in the
past."_

They hired him this year.

~~~
kevinpet
You're right, or at least close enough to make my comment based on faulty
assumptions.

It looks like they hired him without the "senior" title last year. I was
basing my assumption on the article's statement that he made $10M "last year".

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7Figures2Commas
> At Hotel Tonight, which offers a mobile app for last-minute hotel bookings,
> CEO Sam Shank described staging the office to appear extra lively for a
> prospective hire. He roped in two employees for a game of ping-pong and
> positioned another group right by the bar...It worked: the recruit signed on
> and built a key piece of the company's software.

I don't know what's more disturbing:

1\. That seeing employees playing ping pong and sitting at a bar would mean
anything at all to a highly-sought after and ostensibly experienced candidate.

2\. That CEOs apparently believe these things can convince the most desirable
candidates to join their companies.

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21echoes
a company that looks like it has a good, lively culture is way more attractive
than one that does not. this seems obvious, no? clearly there was more to the
interview than just pointing to a ping pong game and a bar-- the visible
(albeit, staged) culture was just icing on the cake.

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antjanus
Well, not really. I've interviewed at a bunch of places with different
cultures; however, what I see on that day is not what I think will happen in
the future.

I've worked and interviewed at plenty of companies that put on the best front.
Just like that ping-pong thing and similar equivalents. But as soon as I
started working at these places, I realized that it's not like that and I've
learned to ignore it over the years.

The "lively" culture is most likely a product of the upswing that justified
the hiring. Meaning that a week later, everyone will be just as shut off as at
any other company.

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npalli
Most examples given are for VP of engineering and other technical management
roles. If you are a plain-vanilla engineer (from the article), no $10 million
or $1 million for you. Maybe a time slot for playing ping-pong. Please don't
try to break your head trying to figure out how to be 10x or 100x or whatever.
Totally different skills.

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Achshar
How are engineering and VP of engineering "totally different"? AFAIK, there is
no special qualification that makes you VP material from engineering material.
An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just
fine.

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GrinningFool
"An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just
fine."

If you can also manage people.

If you can also manage projects.

If you can also see the broader picture and how your company fits into it.

If you know how to delegate.

If you know how to hire and retain the right kind of talent.

If you can resolve conflicts effectively.

If you can communicate well with both engineers and customers.

Depending on your org structure you may also need to make the correct choices
regarding infrastructure and technical direction as you go consistently and
over a long period of time.

I've known a lot of engineers in my career. Most of them were not suitable to
become a VP of engineering - including those with many years of experience.

The ability to engineer is often the smallest subset of what a VP of
engineering does. It's a starting point.

~~~
codeonfire
In reality that's not how it works. No one above senior engineer, and
certainly no managers where I work have the ability or desire to design or
write software or even cares about software or business. A VP of engineering
may be able to talk about technologies and approaches very generally, but
technology is changing so fast that even legitimate tech leaders have
knowledge that is 10 years old. But these guys are not legit. There is an
implied software gangsterism present that says "you better not challenge the
abilities or knowledge of someone in power or you know what will happen."
These people want their $10 million payday and are willing to enforce whatever
reality it takes to make that happen.

~~~
zobzu
Sounds about right. I meet many VPs of engineering of the big companies -
they're nice and smart. But they don't know that much about tech. They also
don't know that much about management. In fact all you really need to know is
appear as a nice guy, make some decisions and delegate 100% of the rest. It's
not like if you were recruiting directly whoever you delegate to either.

Most of them spend .. most of their time in the intra political wars to keep
their precious salary. I'm pretty sure they'd like to work on their stuff
better, but you don't let go your millions that easily... plus you'd be
replaced by someone pretty much alike.

For smaller companies, what I wrote above is actually not true. The ones I
know are actually passionate, and drive the engine of the company. But then
again, they don't make more than the average engineer.

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supergirl
title should be "Twitter pays SVP of engineering $10mil" but I guess it
wouldn't be such a click bait then.

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ericthegoodking
great story, but my question is how can i be a 10X engineer? or what does 10X
engineer mean ?

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Asparagirl
Extremely timely post from Shanley about the mythos of the "10x engineer", how
it began, and why it is so pernicious:

[https://medium.com/about-work/6aedba30ecfe](https://medium.com/about-
work/6aedba30ecfe)

(Hint: 10x _what_? what is the thing being measured, and how?)

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paulrademacher
Not a myth at all. I have seen this in real life many times. The engineer who
finishes a task (correctly!) in 2 days instead of 2 weeks. Who fixes the
system along the way. Whose code is readable and maintainable. Who doesn't get
blocked.

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mahyarm
Nobody can be a 10x engineer if they are working in a molasses of a codebase
or workplace. And fixing the codebase would be a many month project.

~~~
paulrademacher
Nope. The top engineers will be drastically more effective than the average
developer, in ANY codebase. They take the time to understand it, and change
things when necessary. I have seen this in every place I've worked.

~~~
mahyarm
They will still be more effective, but if the codebase has a bunch of
fundamental structural flaws that they have to work around, he would be a lot
slower in net effectiveness if he didn't have to work with that code base
until he gets the 4 months to a year it will take to fix the structural
problems. His work ability, along with everyone else's will be divided by 10.

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Swannie
I'm not sure you've worked with a 10x developer.

They see the mess, and they see the way out. Any change they make is a
refactor with the end goal in mind. Before you realize it the codebase is
cleaner, concerns have been separated, interfaces made extensible, concepts
more clean.

They use a number of tools, from creating facades of the previous
interfaces/implementations. From judicious use of aspects, annotations,
functional elements. And just plain old better coding.

Of course, sometimes they are too clever for their own good, and things
quickly slide backwards when they move on, because no-one else understood the
grand vision, the master plan, and quickly things fall back to hacks-upon-
workarounds-of-kludges.

~~~
gexla
There was a post a while back talking about the myth of the 10x developer. It
mentioned that there aren't 10x developers, but there are 10x teams. In these
teams you have the developers who are productive and churn out a lot of code.
Then you have the developers who can stand back and be more thoughtful about
the whole. Together they can be productive while still producing quality code.

In your example, someone has already written the code, possibly shipped it and
if it's not a complete disaster, created value. The "10x developer" comes
along and is able to take the time to refactor and clean things up (or direct
someone to do so.)

As you mentioned, there are pros and cons for each role. The "10x" developer
might think too much. The grinder might not create the prettiest code, but he
might be great at moving the chains.

I think we can all place ourselves in either role. To get something out the
door to meet a deadline sometimes requires the quick and dirty way. And
sometimes shipping quick and dirty is far more important. To move from one
role to the other is sometimes as difficult as switching between projects, so
it's great to be able to have one person who can go in with one mind and
another person to go in with a different mind.

As I'm usually the sole developer on my projects, I don't know if this is how
things work in practice. I imagine in a cash strapped start-up all developers
might be the type to shove out as much code as possible.

Perhaps all other things being equal, a 10x developer in that environment (a
cash strapped start-up as opposed to a mature Twitter) might be the person who
understands that shipping is more important when resources are short. The
"other type" might not realize that things will probably work out in the end
as long as the team is shipping. Things are never perfect, the stack will
always be a house of cards, but the cash must keep flowing be it from
investments, from clients or from customers all of whom are expecting
progress.

Personally, I seem to switch back and forth. Sometimes I get on a roll and I'm
knocking stuff out at a pace where I surprise myself. Sometimes I get locked
up trying to over-think a problem. Sometimes I can go back through my code and
see obvious problems and refactor the code with the same momentum as I had
when I originally wrote it. I think the tricky part is finding the right
balance and knowing what you need to be doing within your particular
environment.

ETA: Changed things around for clarity.

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jrs235
Pays? Shouldn't that be compensates? I do believe there's a distinct
difference.

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prakster
This should be the rule, rather than the exception.

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known
He might be having good connections

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bsullivan01
_Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussles for talent_

He may be an engineer but he got the $10 Mil for being "The senior vice
president of engineering"

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michaelochurch
Startup compensation is weird. Pretty much everyone makes about the same
amount (currently, $100-150k for engineers and executives) but equity
allotments are _massively_ skewed. Equity in the VC-funded world exacerbates
inequality monstrously, because management often takes 10-100+ times more per
person.

Personally, I don't think it's worth taking equity seriously unless (a) it's
public stock, which has a published value, or (b) you know the cap table. If
you don't get to see the cap table and term sheets, that employee equity is
pretty meaningless-- not worth taking a pay cut or working typical startup
hours.

~~~
chii
it is basically a matter of getting paid the value you are worth.
Unfortunately, its hard to tell sometimes, and even harder to know if you were
being tricked =(

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sthkr
That's good for them! These engineers deserve it much more than some
disposable turd in a suit!

