Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussles for talent

Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by kartikkumar on Monday October 14, 2013 @04:53AM (#6546100)

These numbers really make my mind boggle. Not only is it that the salaries are high for the tech industry (not saying too high, simply high), but from my recent interviewing experience, it seems that Silicon Valley bumps up the price for most engineers, data scientists etc. compared to other start-up cities/areas. Does someone know if this simply down to the concentration of start-ups and access to funding in the Bay Area or is there something else that causes the salaries to be so markedly higher than else where?

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by mathattack on Monday October 14, 2013 @07:47AM (#6546658)

It came from vested stock options. For all we know they could have been worth 200K 4 years ago.

But even if it wasn't, why shouldn't the top technical talent at high tech firms make more money that corporate CFOs?

In this case it's easy to see why their value added could have been 10 times the salary.

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by walshemj on Monday October 14, 2013 @07:19AM (#6546579)

10M wasn't a salary its stock options for being a C level executive

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by bherms on Monday October 14, 2013 @06:04AM (#6546330)

Competition and cost of living are both very high. They're not inflating the price, it's that that's what the market has demanded, for various reasons.

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by yeukhon on Monday October 14, 2013 @05:51AM (#6546288)

Valley living is very expensive. I remember meeting someone from Portland and he said with 80k he could still afford to buy a house but he wouldn't be able to do that if he were going to stay in the Valley.

I was an intern this summer and was looking around the price for an apartment (I want to return to MV at some point after college). It's at least 2k at that time. Most of them were gone and only 3000k, 4000k left. I was looking for just a single bedroom. That was hella expensive.

I used to complain about chinese dinner at Castro street cost $9. I am now back to NY and I can feed myself around $5 (well for $9 in MV I get roughly double size, so more food to eat). But then again, do I really need that much a night?

It's expensive.

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by mjolk on Monday October 14, 2013 @06:26AM (#6546389)

> I am now back to NY and I can feed myself around $5

$5 means eating street meat -- which is fine, but not sure that I'd recommend doing it every day. Unless, of course, you're comparing eating out in the Castro versus buying ingredients at C-Town or Key Foods in NYC?

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Re:Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussl... by yeukhon on Monday October 14, 2013 @06:43AM (#6546445)

$5 street food, $5 restaurant order. But when I paid $9 on Castro, I was getting nearly a double serve. I would eat half and save the other half.

That was how I lived back in MV. I would make my own food but I didn't have time.

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