Comment by thesumofall

18 hours ago

Plenty of comparisons here between salaries and token costs. All fair but very much assumes that salaries are rational. Why do we pay some engineers 10x as much for the same role just because they are in a different location? The WFH discussion surfaced some of that. If money is cheap, all sorts of funny things are happening. Is it worth to spend 1500 USD on AI? I don’t know. Is it worth paying engineers 300k USD instead of 30k? Honestly, I don’t know

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thesumofall

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bjackman  17 hours ago

As well as rational vs irrational they are also just different types of spending.

Hiring someone vs paying a vendor for a service:

- different level of commitment

- might tie your org to a physical location

- different legal risks

- shows investors a different picture (probably this would even influence a bank loan)

- manager has to fight a different bureaucracy

Not to mention that comparing the cost of a hire by looking at their salary is pretty dumb. ISTR hearing at Google that the overall estimated cost of employing a SWE is like 4X their compensation? Can't remember the exact figures though.

palmotea  18 hours ago

> All fair but very much assumes that salaries are rational. Why do we pay some engineers 10x as much for the same role just because they are in a different location?

Who's this "we" you're talking about? Are you a software engineer or a temporarily embarrassed billionaire? Do you think the rational thing is to pay the lowest regional salary worldwide?

  • inemesitaffia  17 hours ago

    If your competitors do, you likely will

    • palmotea  10 hours ago

      > If your competitors do, you likely will

      This kind of race-to-the-bottom logic needs to be rejected: by workers, business culture, and the government.

      Unfortunately business culture embraces races to the bottom (for everyone but owners and executives), and uses its lobbying might to push the government into tolerating or even supporting it. And there are a lot of deluded workers who (for some reason) seem to be feel smart when they parrot the ideas of people who want to screw them.