As YouTube traffic soars, YouTubers say pay is plummeting - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/as-youtube-traffic-soars-youtubers-say-pay-is-plummeting-30dc1ba444db <comment><USER2> When companies struggle the first thing they tend to pull is advertising. Need some help making this quarter's numbers? Pull all the TV adverts for a few weeks. "Go dark" as insiders say.

Short term this is all standard. The long term danger for Google and others is when lots of companies realize they probably didn't need to make all that spend in the first place. That big "reset" is a new normal that advertising dollar driven tech companies will need to adjust to.

<comment><USER3> The most obvious case of the Dunning–Kruger effect is when random HN commenters think that nobody in marketing is capable of using data-driven metrics. I don't think you appreciate how numerical modern marketing is -- marketers use conversion rates, A/B tests, attribution, and a lot of other techniques to actually calculate the ROI of advertising.

What you're describing may have been the case, in a number of companies, five years ago, but it's just not meaningful now-days. Companies spend marketing dollars because marketing dollars work.

Any other interpretation is ideology-driven wishful thinking. You might not like marketing, but it's silly for the conclusion to be "thus, the entire field is made of people who don't know what they are doing".

<comment><USER4> You might be underestimating the number of companies who absolutely don't know what they are doing budget-wise yet they manage to stay in business, and threw a lot of dollars in ads/marketing without deeply analyzing its effectiveness, just because raising money at stellar valuations was free until a month ago.

Anecdotally, I happen to work for a 300 people saas company who just started drastically cutting expenses with the goal of reducing burn rate and delaying the need for another round of financing in this terrible environment: ads were one of the first few things to be dramatically cut (the second one was some super inefficient AWS spending).

The ads budget shrank from 6 figures a year to near 0 overnight, and it's unlikely to return to its former level any time soon. Also, half of the marketing team was laid off. Having 30 people in marketing for such a small company was definitely way too much (just like engineering, sales, ...), and it anecdotally proves GP's argument. All consequences of the fact that money was free.

<comment><USER5> If this is the case, you should be thinking about your own job. There are very few companies that can stay afloat without new customers. And even fewer SaaS companies as churn is amplified during a downturn.

Do you know what the CFO is telling their lieutenants about now? Cut all superfluous spending and reduce monthly expenses. That means your sales people are going to be getting calls from their clients asking for a fee reduction or a contract revision. Very few SaaS companies are critical or defensible.

<comment><USER4> I 100% agree, in fact a couple weeks ago I gave my notice despite me being insulated from the current layoffs. I had been wanting to do this for a while, and hearing the CEO giving projections of how much our revenues are going to shrink due to covid, compared to our crazy speculative company valuation, was the last nail in the coffin. They should have managed the company better and more frugally, so I vote with my feet.

This is my last week and I'll be starting next week in a much more solid company with a much better compensation too, wish me luck :-)

<comment><USER5> Nice user name. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The whole advertising industry is imploding during this pandemic. I mean, it was falling apart before with privacy regulations and browsers fighting an industry that put all their eggs in the "personalized targeting" bucket, but performance is exceptionally bad now.

It kind of makes sense. There are ads for products you can't buy at stores that are closed, for cars you won't need to commute with, insurance you're already not using, other goods that won't ship for a month, and small gadgets that are totally out of stock; and that's assuming the person viewing the ad isn't avoiding spending due to financial risks.

If ads aren't converting viewers into customers, it doesn't matter if there are 2x or 20x more viewers than there were before, the ad placements are just worth less.

<comment><USER7> What about the massive increase in views from people being stuck at home ? wouldn't that lead to a higher ROI when people eventually spend ?

In terms of ad spend reduction, How would this compare to regular media advertising spend (TV etc.) ?

<comment><USER2> Most executives are very short term thinkers and thus while your logic makes sense it's generally not how most people think. They need cash now so they cut first and think later.

You're right that some smart execs will run into the fire as everyone is fleeing, buying up cheap adverts for a long term investment. There are some signs of this with a few companies seemingly increasing spend to take advantage of the cheap prices. Purely anecdotally I noticed a lot more adverts from Scott's on lawn care products. Their pitch is basically "hey so the lawn care guy is on lockdown... go to our site and we'll ship you fertilizer and tell you how to apply it."

<comment><USER8> off topic: why should they be on lockdown? There shouldn't be any infection risk from a guy working solo outdoors.

<comment><USER9> Because it's apparently hard for the people writing the lockdown orders to differentiate between a solo lawn guy or gardener, and a four-dudes-in-one- pickup lawn crew.

<comment><USER10> The same 4 guys in the truck are low risk so long as they never mix crews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's no long term risk to google and other ad exchanges because the advertisers are in a prisoners dilemma.

If the advertisers collude or trust that the competitors won't increases ad spend, the relative market share stays the same and all companies participating enjoy increased margins.

The first company to break gains market share, so as a result they all "overspend" and google is the only one that benefits.

The worst part is the cost of google's margin is baked into product pricing, so the end result is we pay more to have the companies compete to advertise to us.

<comment><USER12> OR ads aren't that effective in the first place and the whole industry is a house of cards propped up by middleman making their fat margins convincing people ads are necessary...

<comment><USER13> I've noticed HN often has two opinions about advertising depending on the day of the week:

1) It's an unchecked, all-powerful evil, making people buy or believe in things they don't want or need by hoarding their data

or

2) It's a giant ineffective scam that stupid companies who aren't led by engineers waste VC money on

The two are diametrically opposed, yet, I've seen the same person argue #1 on Monday when it fits the narrative, and then on Tuesday start arguing #2-- blissfully unaware of how both cannot be true at the same time.

Could it be, that both 1 and 2 are wrong, and that advertising spend is simply reduced during recessions in reaction to the reduction in spending by consumers? Why pay money to acquire customers when the customers aren't willing to spend money on new products?

<comment><USER14> It's possible for both 1 and 2 to be _right_.

Suppose that if you're peddling cheap junk and snake oil, advertising is effective, because nobody will have heard of your product by word of mouth (no one would recommend it and previous victims are ashamed to admit being suckered), but if you spam enough people you'll reach enough suckers to exceed the advertising expense.

But if you're peddling a popular and quality product, everyone has already heard of it and additional advertising has low marginal utility because you were going to get most of the sales anyway.

This furthermore doesn't get you out of the prisoner's dilemma, because even if buying advertising is only break-even rather than profitable, your competitor is doing it so you have to do it too or they gain a volume advantage over you and use that to kill you on unit pricing. But then you all do it and all that happens is that everyone pays money to cancel each other out.

<comment><USER15> I appreciate the attempt at reconciling these this contradiction but I don't think it holds up.

For one, if you accept that advertising can sell "cheap junk" or "snake oil" then you've accepted that advertising can sell something. That could just as easily be a useful product no one has heard of so the issue isn't the advertising, it's what's being sold and advertising is effective (which invalidates (2)).

For another, you use the example of a product "everyone has already heard of". You could point to something like Coca-Cola here. But this argument has two problems:

1\. There are variations companies make to keep their product "fresh". Think Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero (or whatever the current form is) and so on. By virtue of them being new, potential customers won't have heard of them and advertising solves that problem; and

2\. A lot of advertising isn't about direct customer conversion but "brand lift". Now companies have dreamed of the ability to accurately measure the brand lift of advertising spend but it hasn't materialized yet.

This is also why common comments here like "I don't ever click on an ad" don't really mean anything. Now you can argue that the ability to make you desire something you don't need is "evil", which is a reasonable argument to have. I think there are cases where this is true, such as advertising to children, and these should be restricted as some countries have done.

<comment><USER14> > For one, if you accept that advertising can sell "cheap junk" or "snake oil" > then you've accepted that advertising can sell something. That could just as > easily be a useful product no one has heard of so the issue isn't the > advertising, it's what's being sold and advertising is effective (which > invalidates (2)).

It can sell something unknown, because then the advertising makes it sound good, they don't know anything else about it, and they wouldn't have heard of it otherwise.

Which is the opposite of what's happening in case 2 when the product being advertised is well known. It's not causing you to hear about it for the first time and if the product is low quality then the advertising is less able to overcome your existing negative impression of it than for something you've never heard of.

> There are variations companies make to keep their product "fresh". Think > Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero (or whatever the current form is) and > so on. By virtue of them being new, potential customers won't have heard of > them and advertising solves that problem

This doesn't really explain all the ads for Coke Classic, or for that matter why so much advertising even for new products emphasizes characteristics that are either meaningless or unrelated to the product. There isn't really any information content in telling the customer that a new cola is "refreshing" or showing random people dancing.

> A lot of advertising isn't about direct customer conversion but "brand > lift". Now companies have dreamed of the ability to accurately measure the > brand lift of advertising spend but it hasn't materialized yet.

"Brand lift" is the prisoner's dilemma thing. When everybody does it they just cancel each other out.

<comment><USER16> The reality of advertisement for established products is that they need to do it to maintain good will from the media. For example, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, BP spent billions of dollars in advertisement in all kinds of media. It became very difficult for the media to be too harsh on BP, since in the midsts of the Great Recession, they were one or the largest advertisers. Similarly it is very difficult for the media to say bad things about Coke or the Big automakers when so much of their revenue comes from these big accounts.

Another example (this one not in advertisement) is the situation of Bloomberg. They have one of the largest financial journalism organizations and, AT THE SAME TIME, they sell overvalued software to the largest financial companies in the world. One can only guess what can happen to a financial company that stops paying the fees to Bloomberg. Even though there is no real threat (and most certainly this was never expressed by the company), every financial outlet wants to be on the good side of Bloomberg reporting. The conclusion is that having a journalist institution receiving money from companies that they are covering is a kind of moral hazard that very few people understand, unless you are part of the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I run a website that gets decent ad revenue (usually around $2,000/month) and so far month to date in April is down 54% versus the same day last month, and March was already down 14% from February. CPC for March was $0.60 but April is only $0.30 so far. Traffic, CTR, and fill rate haven't changed, just drastically lower CPC.

<comment><USER18> If you don't want to answer, it's totally fine.

What ad platform do you use? Google?

<comment><USER17> Google Adsense

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YouTubers already don't make a lot of money off Adsense. The shift is already happening with companies working with individual youtubers. An integrated ad from someone you like/trust/have a relationship with is orders of magnitude more effective than a typical YouTube ad.

Expect to YouTube to try and get a piece of this pie as well when there is a "integrated" ads apocalypse when YouTube changes its terms of service.

It's expensive to store, process, and deliver all this video.

YouTube has been making money off advertisement to kids for years. Now that is being regulated.

<comment><USER20> I'm shocked YouTube hasn't cloned Patreon for video creators. YouTube needs a tip jar if the content creators are resorting to Patreon, and that was back when the getting was good.

<comment><USER21> The channel membership thing is YouTube's Patreon clone. But I don't know how far they've rolled it out yet, and it doesn't seem as flexible or popular with creators as Patreon. And the fact that it is tied to Youtube, and thus the same channel shutdown etc mechanisms, will be a big minus for many.

<comment><USER21> Case in point, after writing this I looked into it a bit more and it does a bunch of things I thought it didn't. Waaay to hidden and unattractive UI IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are a lot more people at home right now, but many are out of work and spending less. An increase in eyeballs don't always translate to an increase in revenue.

My girlfriend is a camgirl, and she tells me that while she has more people in her "room", they are tipping less and she's making less.

<comment><USER23> Camgirls making less money might be the one true metric of how consumer behavior is changing

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am baffled as to why YouTube is still primarily monetized by ads. Ad revenue is unreliable and inherently restricts the kind of content YouTube can even monetize.

The model used by Twitch seems far more reliable. I thought they were going that way with YouTube Red, but that ended up being a huge disappointment. After about a year I switched to just donating to my subs on external platforms.

Just let me make small, monthly donations to the creators I like. In exchange, spare me the ads. YouTube can even take 50% of the cut or whatever. It's more stable that way for both YouTube and its creators.

<comment><USER25> I think this is because that idea isn't sustainable for the majority of youtube content, which isn't produced by professional YouTubers. Most video is hardly even edited. In the current system, all video can be monetized whether or not it's a music video, well-produced documentary, a sponsored gear review, some video of someone's baby crawling around, an explanation of taylor series, or a 24/7 webcam livestream of someone's backyard.

In a viewer-contributed system, only creators that have a good audience worth paying into would receive donations, but those lesser known videos would essentially have to be subsidized by those donations since those videos wouldn't bring donations in themselves. YouTube's cut, 50% as you suggest, would probably be better spent making the platform better for those creators than hosting videos that brings in no donations.

Also only a very very small subset of the audience will donate. Platforms that have been predicated on donating or subscribing to receive content are struggling to lift off (besides Patreon, which is effectively a marketplace for content, merchandise, behind the scenes stuff, etc rather than just a video hosting platform).

<comment><USER26> Most of the views land on professional channels. You basically have to be at least semi-pro to reach the numbers you need for "monetization" by Youtube anyway.

There are 2 Youtubes, one for embedded viral clips you discover around the web and one for professional content that viewers subscribe to.

I think Youtube has issues shoe-horning both systems into one monetization scheme. I think this is mostly a problem of inertia but either they need to make things more stable for their professional creators or someone else needs to build a better platform for these pros.

<comment><USER27> > 2 youtubes

There's a whole ecosystem of niche review channels that have decent but transient viewership.

For instance some chromebook reviewing channel posts reviews of almost every chromebook coming out to market. There might be some people subscribing to that, but the bulk of the views will be from search results, and only for 3 or 4 videos per viewer (once they make their buying decision they're done).

That's an example I could think of on the spot, but there are many many facets of youtube that have a decent traffic with no allegiance from the viewer. They also survive by managing in-content ads themselves, having affiliates or any other system external to youtube, but youtube ads must still represent something to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well the ad quality is garbage, IME.

> This is a cardinal sin of EDM

SKIP AD FROM MASTERCLASS.COM

> We live in strange times

SKIP AD FROM MASTERCLASS.COM

> Little Red Riding Hood… Let's start the story a different way!

SKIP AD FROM MASTERCLASS.COM

These adverts never end. They are relentless. There _must_ be something wrong with the platform.

<comment><USER29> This is why I exclusively view Youtube with adblockers, and prefer to view it with NewPipe or VLC+ytdl.

I'm not opposed to ads at the beginning and end, but numerous _jarring_ cuts in a ten minute video to play a couple of ads every two or three minutes? No thanks.

<comment><USER30> Why don't you subscribe to YT premium. If there is a way to remove ads a support the platform, why not do that?

<comment><USER31> Subscribing gives a worse experience than blocking the ads. If you're subscribed and accidentally open another youtube video, it'll pause the currently playing video with a message saying that a video is playing in another window.

<comment><USER32> It doesn't for me, and hasn't. Perhaps this is a browser or addon behavior?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Data point from Applied Science: view count is constant over last 90 days. Ad revenue is down maybe 10%. Patreon is up slightly. Patreon has always been a really good idea for YT creators, and it's even better now.

<comment><USER34> Hey Ben, love your videos. Do you think your audience might be served different advertisements then the bulk of YouTube, and hence your revenue is more stable?

<comment><USER33> Yes, I think that may be true. It's fairly opaque even to us creators -- I don't know which ads are served, or how many people click, etc. Patreon has been a huge help, and if it gets high enough, I'll probably turn off ads altogether.

<comment><USER35> If Youtube can't make money from you why would they host your content?

<comment><USER36> If they don't continue hosting Ben's content they would be inviting competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Silicon valley discovering advertising is pro-cyclical. Which may not have been obvious in 2008 when the big tech companies were ramping up their platform in the middle of a crisis.

The other thing that is known to be pro-cyclical: luxury products. I am looking at you Apple. Again 2008 was the ramp up of smartphones, I don't think it informs us much on how high margin smartphones will do in a severe recession.

<comment><USER38> Hmm I am not sure that Apple's products are really luxury products any more. For many many people they are quite essential.

<comment><USER39> Smartphones are essential. $1000 smartphones are luxuries.

<comment><USER40> Unless you are locked into the platform. Sure, people hold off upgrading for a bit or buy an older phone, but people dont leave the ecosystem for a 200 dollar android. They'll be safe in the long run.

<comment><USER41> This makes me realize that a lot of people have never experienced real poverty.

If a depression comes, people will soon have to choose between eating and paying their rent and utilities. Phones won't even enter the picture.

<comment><USER42> A smartphone is more important than paying your electricity bill.

I really think you're living in denial of modern reality. A smartphone gives you access to jobs among other things.

<comment><USER37> We are not talking about a smartphone vs no smartphone, we are talking about a $1,000 vs a $200 smartphone (or a 4y old model).

<comment><USER40> And to my point, both of those models will be iPhones for a lot of people, and apple's brand will be fine.

<comment><USER37> I don't know if apple makes any cheap phone, but either way, the problem isn't apple's brand, it is apple's profits.

<comment><USER42> Apple's operating margin is the lowest it's been in a decade. What are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It makes sense. I imagine a lot of companies are reducing ad spend right now which means the bids on ad spots will be lower. If there is more content being made on YouTube right now then that increases the supply of videos that ads can be placed on.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Soars" seems like a rather hyperbolic description of the 15% rise given in the article. I'm not really that surprised. Yeah, people are out of work and social activities are curtailed. But a lot of people are also home-schooling and many of us just working like we normally would. I've shifted activities around because I'm not traveling but I'm certainly not watching YouTube all day.

<comment><USER45> 15% growth when you are already ontop of a saturated market is a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Who is everyone? Sure, local gyms and recreational centers may temporarily cut advertising via YouTube workout channels, but I would imagine other types of advertising increasing for online stuff like mobile games.

Also if you want true income on YouTube, your best bet is affiliate marketing and sponsorships. Many YouTube personalities have already moved to this model -- they seamlessly integrate paid sponsorships and links into their content by working directly with the sponsors. Not only does this render ad-blockers obsolete, but it cuts the middleman (YouTube) out of the equation. It also vastly improves engagement, click-through rate, purchase rate, etc.

<comment><USER47> Sponsorships are down too. It's true that mobile game ads and sponsorships are up, as well as a few other niche fields. Doesn't come close to making up for the drop in ads and sponsorships from many other fields though. (Including automotive, with which I'm most familiar.) It's not just obvious things like gyms, rec centers and restaurants. People are buying less of almost everything now, both because their incomes are down and/or less certain, and because there's less ability to use many common products (like cars). Therefore advertising has less impact, so even those companies that still have the cashflow for advertising are cutting back since the ROI isn't there.

<comment><USER46> > Sponsorships are down too. It's true that mobile game ads and sponsorships > are up, as well as a few other niche fields.

Interesting, thanks for verifying that -- honestly I was mostly just making an educated guess. The rest of your reasoning makes sense, too. At this point, we can only guess as to what the extent of the damage will be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Hey Y'All, I'm back with another video! Be sure to hit that Like button and be sure to subscribe, just click the little subscribe button there below this video. I always love your comments and feedback so keep it coming. Be sure to tell me if you have ideas for videos you'd like me to make! I have lots more videos..."

You mean that crap at the beginning, middle, and end of every video isn't working? Cry me a river. Its about content not your unoriginal gibberish.

</comment><comment><USER49> On the other side, as part of the entertainment community, they are at least sustaining some of their income, which I would consider good under the current climate.

</comment><comment><USER50> I pulled my YouTube Premium subscription once I was furloughed, along with Spotify and Netflix. I imagine many have done similar things to cut down on expenses.

</comment><comment><USER51> Probably related: all of the ads I'm being shown on Facebook and Instagram the last few weeks are really low quality. I'm assuming the ad inventory is really low right now and therefore rates have plummeted, making ads for sketchy products more cost effective. I think the quality of YouTube ads has gone down as well, but it's not nearly as bad as Facebook and Instagram.

</comment><comment><USER52> I recall reading that some newspapers have gone out of business due to the advertising crash. This is hardly surprising.

Ripples gonna ripple.

<comment><USER53> Lower circulation too - a friend is an editor of a major UK magazine, their subscriptions are up massively, but not enough to offset the drop the copies normally sold at airports, railway stations, service stations and local shops, let alone the massive drop in adverts

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> If Google ad revenues are down 50%, how can Google be at $1200/share? Doesn't that make this a good short candidate? Nothing else Google has is profitable except for the ad business. The same goes for Facebook as well.

<comment><USER55> Because share prices are based on what people think Google will bring in over the next say 20 years, not the next 6 months.

Everybody expects ad revenue to rebound fairly quickly once this is over. You don't expect COVID-19 to be cutting Google's revenue in half over the next 20 years, do you?

<comment><USER54> The idea that share price is based on the next 20 years is truly laughable. The company themselves don't plan anything concrete more than 12 months out and anything further than that is guesswork. To think that you can project revenue even 3 years out is simply fictional (Source: my wife is in finance exec at a public tech company and one of her fields of expertise is FP&A).

That said, analysts will make guesses based on financial projections and then give multiples to things like revenue or earnings, depending on the company. If a quarter of Google's revenues is impacted, it will have immediate effects. Of course, that's assuming that it's only a single quarter's revenue which in this case would be wrong. You're talking months of high unemployment globally.

<comment><USER55> > _anything further than that is guesswork_

Well of course! Nobody _knows_ what the future will be -- it's all best- educated guesses. That doesn't contradict my point.

The stock price winds up being a kind of market-driven wisdom-of-crowds situation of a ton of different people's guesswork, mostly institutions with teams of researchers.

Obviously Google's price _has_ been impacted. But the point is the _price_ hasn't been impacted nearly to the same degree as immediate revenue. Because? People expect Google to be around and doing fine for a couple of decades.

So you're right that these things can't be perfectly predicted... but the stock price still _is_ the result of everyone's predictions, as imperfect as they are. It's not "laughable" \-- it's literally how it works, and if you don't believe that, I don't know what to tell you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I just searched this page for "lifetime" to find any mention of "lifetime customer value".

I was surprised not to find any, since lifetime customer value creates an upper bound for marketing and ad spending. So when there's less overall economic activity, the lifetime customer value may very well also be going down - at least for discretionary spending - meaning the upper bound for ad spending is also coming down.

I wouldn't be surprised in shifts of lifetime customer value in many industries in at least the medium term. And therefore in ad spending for those sectors of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER57> more inventory and demand than advertisers.. CPM falls. What do they expect?

<comment><USER57> Things will course correct

<comment><USER58> Reality has a funny way of reasserting its self.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> seems like the perfect time for popular youtubers to move to a different platform

<comment><USER60> Are there better paying alternatives?

<comment><USER61> [https://watchnebula.com/](https://watchnebula.com/)

<comment><USER62> Can you explain further? Is this a better paying alternative to Youtube?

But aren't we really talking about Adsense? If we're talking about Adsense, aren't we really talking about the overall capabilities of the system?

Is there any alternatives to Adsense? No, if Adsense isn't working for you, then you're looking for a totally different approach for monetizing your content.

But we still haven't arrived to the fundamental issue, which is that we're in the midst of a global economic meltdown. A lot of Adsense buyers are pulling out and that's driving down the market for ads.

I'm not a marketing guru, but I'm guessing that advertising spend in general is one of the first things to get cut during difficult economic times.

Does Nebula address this? Are they giving away helicopter money? Perhaps the service can open a portal into another dimension where COVID-19 has never happened (or maybe not for a couple of months, so we can get some quick partying in.)

<comment><USER34> Nebula is a competitor to YouTube that was created by a bunch of YouTubers in the educational video space. It's a paid subscription only model.

I have a subscription but for some reason it doesn't scratch the same itch as YouTube even though it has a lot of the same content that I watch on YouTube. It may be because there isn't much Nebula only content so I might as well just check one website instead of two. I also don't think it has comments. And all round just isn't as slick of an experience as YouTube.

Also by design not just anyone can upload to it and so I belive it will probably be quite limited in its growth.

<comment><USER62> If it's subscription only, then it's not a better paying alternative. It's a different monetization method altogether. Thanks for the clarification on how the service works. That's interesting, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> As an entrepreneur, with a company that relies on paid advertising, this is a FANTASTIC time. Our cost per lead has cut in half. And I just hired three people last week, to capitalize on the higher lead flow.

I'm sure it depends on the business sector. But for any company that can operate in this environment, this is the time to spend MORE on ads, not less.

</comment><comment><USER64> I think the flat earth movement would die off if youtube stopped paying out.

I don't think anyone would have an incentive to make the videos anymore and without fresh content believers would lose interest and Eventually evidence of a round earth (plus peer pressure) would build up and outweigh their older ideas of flat earth.

<comment><USER65> I think you overestimate how big the flat earth movement actually is. There's no way anyone of them actually makes any significant money off youtube ad revenue when even the most well-known flat earth videos ("flat earth clues" by Mark Sargent) only have a few 100k views each.

The flat earth debunking channels, on the other hand ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Totally expected. I was actually expecting that this pandemic would be a test to the current business model of the internet.

Business closed means no need to advertise, no ads means no need to turn on servers... But apparently it seems to be ok so far.

</comment><comment><USER67> Interesting, because it seems like I've been seeing an increase in ad displays at the _end_ of videos (not running a Pi-hole yet so I'm still seeing ads on mobile). Anecdata, I know.

</comment><comment><USER68> What percent of YouTube's revenue goes to YouTubers?

</comment><comment><USER69> I (might) sound arrogant but never understood this industry, the value of it (other than financial). Feels quite embarrassing to me.

Would love to hear opinions.

<comment><USER70> Well, imagine you create a 1-person startup. You make the perfect tool, but you have no customers. How do you acquire them? You can try pumping your own personal network, organically market yourself every chance you get (like HackerNews comments or Facebook posts). However you can, with a relatively low investment, reach an order of magnitude more users with digital advertising. Your startup makes a great product, right? So you'll naturally acquire at least some of the users who see your ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> It's almost like revenue doesn't come from usage, but form ad dollars, and there's fewer of those being spent right now.

</comment><comment><USER72> YouTube's algorithm adds another wrinkle to how many creators, especially smaller ones, are likely to be negatively impacted by the fact that much of our collective attention is on the coronavirus.

YT and other socials have essentially been creating a whitelist of who is "trusted" to speak about coronavirus, allowing them to capture audiences by promoting their content and opting to not display and essentially censor that of smaller, independent ("fake") voices.

</comment><comment><USER73> Lots of questionable citations (and many "facts" with no citations at all) here...

</comment><comment><USER74> Could it be because companies are cutting advertising budgets and freezing all non-essential spending?

</comment><comment><USER75> Is that bad?

</comment><comment><USER76> Well, it's the economy and not just food or travel sectors. Generally speaking, many buying decisions have been postponed both in B2B and B2C sectors. Essentially it means that doesn't really matter that viewership is going up or that rates are going down, what matters is that purchases are way down, so conversions are plummeting. Here's an example. Suppose, are sales averaged 10 billions a month and 10% (1 billion) was pure profit. Some of that money went toward buying ads. Now your sales went down 50% (5 billion) and let's say for the simplicity sake that profit margin stayed the same, even though that's not really true. So now your profit is only $500M. It doesn't really matter if views go up or down and how cheap advertising becomes. What REALLY matters is that your market is now half of what it used to be.</comment>


NordVPN is "100% owned" by a dutch entity Stichting Raveset? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/filings/DVEQOP2A/VPNetworks_LLC_v_Collective_7_Inc_et_al__flmdce-19-01179__0055.0.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Can someone explain to me what a Stichting is?</comment>


An innovative approach to making electricity from the wind - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/08/an-innovative-approach-to-making-electricity-from-the-wind <comment><USER2> Hello! I work at Makani ([https://makanipower.com](https://makanipower.com)), which is mentioned in the article:

> _Nor is it absolutely necessary that the electricity generation is done on > the ground. Makani, a firm recently absorbed by Alphabet, Google's parent > company, has a different approach. It is lifting the generators into the > sky, on board a pilotless aircraft with a wingspan of 26 metres. This craft > has eight rotors, which act as propellers for take-off and landing. Once at > operating altitude, however, they become miniature turbines. The electricity > they generate (600 kilowatts at full capacity) is sent to the ground through > a power line encased in a tether nearly half a kilometre long. Makani's > prototype has been tested in Hawaii and, later this year, a further series > of tests from an oil platform off the coast of Norway are planned._

I'm excited to report that we really did pull off the offshore test a few months after this Economist story went to print.

Video of our recent offshore test: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA) (I know it almost looks like a rendering, but it's for real!)

And a company blog entry about the test: [https://medium.com/makani- blog/makanis-airborne-wind-power-s...](https://medium.com/makani-blog/makanis- airborne-wind-power-system-takes-flight-offshore-907fd4c9af86)

Makani was funded in part by ARPA-E earlier in its existence, and they recently also made a video about Makani that might be of interest: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ly6na58e0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ly6na58e0)

<comment><USER3> How visible are these things from the ground?

Edit: Ignore the following line. It is too early in the morning.

\--A single one is producing 600KW, so you need a few per household, and many thousands for a town.--

<comment><USER4> That's kw hours. A big house running air conditioning is only 6kwh.

<comment><USER5> kWh is a unit of _energy_ , that is, power over time, kW is a unit of _power_ , that is, instantaneous energy.

Your car _engine_ is rated in _power_ (typically horsepower in the US, though kW is equivalent), your car _fuel tank_ is rated in _energy_ , that is kWh or joules.

Power determines how hard you can work. Energy determines for how long.

A big house running AC _for a hour_ would give you a kWh number. The instantaneous load is measured in kW.

<comment><USER4> Yeah but if it makes 600kw then it can do it for an hour since it's a generator not a battery

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer the method of releasing ions to be carried away by the wind, producing charge separation that can be used to perform work. No-moving-parts windmills should be the future of wind power.

It doesn't need any exotic materials, and it scales up to unlimited size. Stretch a mesh between a pair of tall buildings, or between pylons of old, worn-out windmills, or, yes, across a kite.

Alvin Marks patented a version of it in the 80s.

He didn't say how to make the ions. Some materials spontaneously give up surface electrons to wind, so you might get away with streamers of the stuff tied where warp meets weft, if it is made slightly conductive.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see such things with a lot of skepticism. Here's why:

With varying intensity I've been following renewable energy development for many years. I've seen many proposals for new forms of wind energy, many of them looking promising. Same for new forms of solar, new forms of water power and many other things. The Kite approach isn't new either.

However the reality is that the only thing that's been successful for wind energy is to do almost the same thing they've been doing in the past, just bigger, better and cheaper. The biggest efficiency win in wind energy is to build similar technology, just with bigger wings and larger towers. The biggest innovation was to bring costs down. Technology got better in the details, the basic "three blades that spin around" stayed the same.

I know this is pretty boring. But it's successful. I'd bet on "make wind energy cheaper and larger" more than on any fancy new tech.

<comment><USER8> I feel that way with a lot of tech, the best way to upgrade is to make it larger and reduce costs. But we still gotta try other approaches on the off chance they work, don't we? Without that don't we lose on innovation?

I could be biased because I do not want to live in a world where we're mainly making incremental updates, but it seems like that's what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unpaywalled: [https://outline.com/uPXtNv](https://outline.com/uPXtNv)

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope something comes out of this one. Kitegen has been around 2006 and nothing to show for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few years ago a similar story about similar technology popped up, and I referred [1] to a New Scientist story[2] from 2000 that described something remarkably similar, being designed and built by an Australian researcher called Bryan Roberts.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9222149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9222149)

[2] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16722574-800-reach- fo...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16722574-800-reach-for-the-sky/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's a video explaining it, from the same company: [https://youtu.be/3VKFJ2_cQmM?t=147](https://youtu.be/3VKFJ2_cQmM?t=147)

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why none of the projects is trying balloons... Or are they?

<comment><USER5> Mass vs. lift.

For the stated generation model, the kite's lift is being directly used to create electricity as it is reeled out and in. For lofted generators (Google's power kites), you're putting the turbines and generators in the air. Both are more effective with kites than balloons, as in the first you get more lift providing generation directly, and in the second a far smaller wing can support a much larger weight than is possible with a balloon.

Frankly I don't think any of these approaches is very practical in the long term at scale. Too many fiddly bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wind is a second-order force. It's even worse than solar - hard to believe!

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but I think 2nd order force is a fair description. Except you diss solar, so I'm a little confused.

To me, solar is first-order. Solar leads to wind, so it's second-order. (Though really, solar heats water and air, producing wind, so it's kinda third-order.) Oil is... uh... the sun grows the plants which die and get compacted, then we pump up the remnants. I'm not sure what you'd call that.

Uranium is, like, zeroth order then. Fusion in the Sun produces solar.

And yet, none of this really means much. Unless you're constructing Dyson spheres, it really doesn't matter how efficiently you're capturing the max theoretical energies. If you don't believe me, stop eating. Try replacing food with sucking on a power cord.

<comment><USER14> I'm referring to energy density. Because civilization requires ever-increasing amounts of energy to grow and prosper.

Solar, even concentrated desert solar, is no good at all. Wind is a distant derivative and much, much worse.

Hydrocarbons and nuclear are the fuels of today and tomorrow because they are orders of magnitude more energy dense. These energy sources are so dense they double as energy storage.

<comment><USER16> Come back with your concerns when we fully exploit the potential of wind and solar and run out of energy. Right now covering single digit percentages of the world with solar panels would satisfy our energy needs.

<comment><USER14> I am concerned now because covering the world in solar panels and wind turbines is unsustainable. Each siting location by definition is worse than the one before. The vast land area required will cause tremendous societal and environmental impact. Problems of energy storage, rotating mass, and baseload power remain unsolved by wind and solar.

We need to get on nuclear. Then we can help poorer nations with nuclear power so they can undergo their own Clean Industrial Revolutions. In 80 years we all want the world's ~11 billion plus people to live far better than we live in the West today.

<comment><USER16> Energy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage.

I'm in favor of nuclear power too, but it takes too long to build.

<comment><USER17> > Energy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid > (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for > overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage.

That's far from solved, countries close to each other have very similar weather pattern and wind electricity is especially unreliable. We're also very unlikely to have a massive breakthrough in turbines since we're close to the theoretical maximum already.

<comment><USER16> The talks I heard by the engineers that actually studied this disagree with you.

<comment><USER17> Here's what a real wind production looks like: [https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1153626109814202368](https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1153626109814202368), spot the problem.

Wind turbines obey Betz's law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law) and are already close to maximum efficiency, the only thing you can do is drop the production cost.

<comment><USER16> Now add enough batteries to those charts to store 10h or so of energy and expand the grid to western Europe. Add in some solar as well.

Experts wrote thick reports on how to transition to renewables. You shouldn't dismiss their work with half a dozen graphics on Twitter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do one small thing for a greater impact - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/55d0221261bc <comment><USER2> Step by step philosophy is what we follow at our company. Clear goals and day by day solutions. Works fine.</comment>


Ask HN: MBP user making new job win/pc switch - <AUTHOR> I recently joined a large company in a senior tech role.  I was given an HP zbook/dock/monitor.  I've been a Macbook Pro user for over 12 years.
I have a 2000 char limit here so wont expand, but imagine docker, WSL, freezing constantly, etc.  Form-factor/keyboard/no-trackpad is also a huge problem for me.  I feel like a beginner: key combos, finger placement, reaching for the mouse, etc.  I know I'd be tearing through learning this new codebase on my mac.
They know I want a MBP (pre-touchbar, luckily still sold), and they are genuinely making an effort to get one, but it sounds like it could be a while and won't be an easy battle for them.  100% MS shop.  For anyone wondering how I didn't know this going in - I had a feeling it leaned heavily MS, but was caught off guard that Apple wasn't even an option.  Plus there were other factors that made this interesting so it wasn't at the top of my checklist. That part hasn't changed - I want things to work out well, I like the people, the project, the company, etc.
A part of me actually likes what MS has been doing lately and hates what Apple has done.  For example, I tried to buy the MBP w/ Touch Bar when it came out and that only lasted a week until I returned it:  Hated the Touch Bar (I need a real esc), hated the keyboard (especially the arrow keys with a full-size left/right), hated the monster trackpad that my palms rest on and hit all the time.  So my problem is deep... I'm basically stuck with my Late-2013 MBP, but how long can that last?  So I'm open, just scared out my mind and want to settle on something I can eventually feel as at-home with long-term.
I'm looking for any relevant advice, particularly related to 1) approach with management, 2) closest/comparable feeling laptop models I should explore that might give me what I'm after (hp is easiest for them), or 3) general advice about my own personal problem of being so attached to one specific model. <comment><USER2> I've bounced between mac, windows, and linux throughout my life. Each has been good for a time, and becoming familiar with each has helped me understand the others better. I recently started using a mac again for the first time in years, and I found myself completely unproductive.

I have found it humbling. I don't ever want to be stuck in one technology stack, so when there's a good reason to, I like to dig into something new. It's definitely a productivity hit to learn a new OS, but it's also an opportunity to not grow stale.

I have approached learning macOS by making a list of the things I can do efficiently on windows/mac, and making myself learn how to do that on macOS:

\- set up workspaces

\- place and switch windows

\- learn the file system, and how it's displayed in guis

\- etc.

These days, there's a lot you can do on windows to make it more like a mac/ linux machine, particularly at the command line. But I also enjoy learning windows cli commands.

It might be worth the time to become comfortable on windows, rather than always being the one person on macOS in your company. I imagine that will end up causing more frustration in the long run than the initial period of getting used to a new OS.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've made the opposite jump to you. I recently switched stacks and moved to a company that almost exclusively uses MBP's and OSX. To make matters worse, my first time using a Mac in anger was my first day on the job.

A few months later, and I'm fine with Macs. I'd prefer a Linux box, but I'm productive enough to not stand out, and I'm comfortable enough with some of the shortcuts to not feel stupid.

My advice to you is to stick with Windows, and to use it as a learning experience. Once you've got the standard tools set up, and feel productive in WSL, Cmder and similar recommended tools you'll probably wonder why you were so worried in the first place. You'll lose all the tools you knew and loved, but you'll pick up new ones.

On the hardware front, I'm a very happy Surface Book user and if budget is no concern I'd recommend that. In terms of form and power it's the closest in quality I've found to a MBP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a feeling the Surface Book might be comfortable for me, looking at images of the keyboard/trackpad layout. I'll see how open they are to this vs their normal hp route. They just suggested an elitebook x360, which also looks nice. I'd have to lose an inch or 2 of screen, but unfortunately it looks like most everything is moving that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am in a similar situation for the last four months. I have no choice in evening asking for a Mac, and am working on a high end Dell workstation.

I have used computers for over 30 years and most of the last 20 have been primarily with Mac desktops and Linux servers. My Windows experience has mostly been to run single apps and some servers.

Fortunately. I have been allowed almost complete free range to install software on my Windows system.

Windows lack of efficient keyboard Control has frustrated me the most. Some of this is learning a new system, but some is flaws in Windows.

I have used the following to make my experience better:

1\. Listary

This is the closest replacement I have found for LaunchBar. (Or whatever your preferred cmd-space tool: Spotlight, QuickSilver, Alfred)

[http://www.listary.com](http://www.listary.com)

2\. AutoHotKey & FastKeys

This replaces Keyboard Maestro. FastKeys is mostly a polished front end for AHK, but I do use both independently. I use this for MANY things, but the biggest is to remap the cursor keys to be Mac-like. (I know this is a VERY personal preference, but I love the Mac cursor key-bindings, and hate the separate Home, End, PgUp, PgDn keys on Windows)

[http://www.listary.com](http://www.listary.com)

[https://www.fastkeysautomation.com](https://www.fastkeysautomation.com)

3\. AquaSnap

I use Moom on the Mac, AquaSnap actually out does any utility on macOS.

[https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap](https://www.nurgo- software.com/products/aquasnap)

4\. Cmdr

For terminal, I have found cmdr to be the best.

[http://cmder.net](http://cmder.net)

Also, Microsofts new Linux layer is pretty good, and you can get an nice local shell and unix tools.

GRIPES

My biggest gripe with Windows is the lack of a good way to switch windows and apps via the keyboard. On the Mac I use cmd-space to LAUNCH __OR __SWITCH to an app, and cmd-` to switch the windows of an app. I have found nothing to replace the elegance of this functionality. The closest that I have come is a combination of using Listary and Switcheroo.

[http://www.switcheroo.io](http://www.switcheroo.io)

Finally, I am a bit appalled at the Windows small utility software that is available. I always thought that being on macOS I was limited in the availability of software options. I now strongly feel that macOS has more quality options in most areas. The Windows software is hard to find, hard to determine the Trustworthiness of the developer, and I am struggling to find great Windows power user blogs. (Why does so much Windows software have websites that look like 2003 and still use SourceForge!?)

I have found that the best way to find software for Windows is:

[https://alternativeto.net](https://alternativeto.net)

Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER5> Senior tech role ... didn't know they were MS shop ... deal with it?

</comment><comment><USER6> How about install VirtualBox and use Linux OS?</comment>


Ask HN: How much do you make at Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Netflix/Google/Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> There was a proper discussion on it about two years ago. Recently a similar thread was posted, but not to many response.<p>I do not work at any of the above. I work at a fintech company and make 80k + Bonus (Europe) with no equity (12 years experience, senior dev). <comment><USER2> For anyone reading this: contributing how much you make honestly empowers everyone in our field to bargain for themselves. The ability to bargain is orthogonal to the art of engineering afaict but is whats mostly responsible for how you are compensated for your labor.

</comment><comment><USER3> Staff SWE, Google Seattle.

Total 2018 comp will be around 550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split if GOOG shares remain constant. Historically they have typically gone up meaningfully over the course of any given year.

The cash component includes base salary and bonus.

<comment><USER4> I'm still a student, I have a few questions:

-What tech skills sets do you have? Do you need a MS/PhD at your level? If not, does it help?

In school we learn the standard algorithms/data structures material, but I want to expand my horizons and begin learning what is applicable to industry.

I am very curious to learn what someone at your level has skills in. I'd like to pick up something not taught in school and begin hacking away on a project that will help me... which leads to my next question

-What are good beginner resources/tutorials you recommend to learn these skill sets? Are there any good projects you can point me to?

-Just curious. Does "550k with a roughly 55/45 equity/cash split" mean you make ~247,000 base + ~302,500 in stock options? I am not too familiar with how compensation is broken down.

<comment><USER3> Not going to talk about my specific skills (throwaway account).

The algorithms stuff is useful. More useful than it seems. It comes up often in many engineering jobs. Perhaps more importantly at your stage in life, it will get you an internship.

Do internships. If you miss the one you really want, think hard about why, then try again. Internships are the best place to start into my next piece of advice.

Specialize in something valuable while you're in school or once you start into your career. Jobs I might look for if I were entering the work force today:

\- Image processing or other noisy data handling.

\- Robotics, especially something requiring interdisciplinary skills like control theory.

\- Deep learning techniques are all the rage; you'll be much more useful if you understand how they work and can build novel topologies. Being taken seriously here will likely require a portfolio (maybe graduate work).

\- Systems programming is an unending hellscape of horrible problems. Some people seem to enjoy it.

\- If you have a knack for it, security. It takes a certain deviousness to think of new ways to misuse things. It takes a wizard to do something like Meltdown and Spectre.

It doesn't really matter what you become a domain expert in as long as it's valuable. It does matter that you don't treat "domain expert" as a fixed target.

In terms of extracurricular work, find an open source project that's got engagement from companies with lots of senior people (Kubernetes would be a good example, it has many very talented people working on it). Fix open bugs. Fix the onboarding experience. Start with trivial things and go from there. Don't get dismayed when you end up with hundreds of review comments, that's how you learn.

Regarding compensation, the split is approximate. The cash is both salary and an annual bonus paid out in January. The stock is actual stock, not options, so every month some number of Google shares show up in my brokerage.

<comment><USER5> Could you say more about why robotics today? It has always seemed very mature and saturated to me. I went into the automotive/manufacturing industry after getting graduate degrees in controls and recently shifted toward software and simulation work at the same company. What business problems are out there right now creating new demand for expertise in this area?

<comment><USER3> I think we're entering a new generation of controlled machines. Aerial drones, in particular, have found a staggering number of commercial and industrial uses, and many of them are operating under constraints that require bespoke platform designs to minimize weight while meeting requirements. Aquatic drones also seem to be coming into fashion. At the "that's a bit large to call it a robot" end of the spectrum, I'd put SpaceX and their auto-landing rockets in the same category (not to mention the drone ships that provide the stable landing platforms!)

It provides exposure to embedded systems, likely involves caring about communication protocols, sensors, etc. It might involve hard real-time constraints, and if you're really lucky it will also involve dealing with noisy data and maybe even a taste of applied machine learning.

That said, I could believe that all of the fun work is being tackled above the entry level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone needs to quit complaining about the sample size and the like and bringing up things like Glassdoor and just answer the prompt. The lack of transparency in salaries keeps us all at a disadvantage

</comment><comment><USER7> SWE II [1], Google Cambridge, MA. I was hired in 2016 with a little under 2 years of professional experience, with total compensation of about $150k and a roughly 75/25 cash/equity split. The equity has risen in value significantly, the cash only slightly.

[1]: I believe this is a relatively normal entry point for people either just out of school or with 1-2 years experience.

<comment><USER8> Do you mind if I ask where you went to school? I would very much like to work in Cambridge but my experience with interviewing in Camberville is that I end up talking to people from MIT and similar schools. Or I don't even get an email back. Which makes me feel like I just don't have the credentials. Do you just have an undergrad or do you have another degree?

<comment><USER7> My CS background before my first job was:

Grew up interested in computers, learned a little BASIC.

Took two intro CS courses during undergrad at an Ivy League school, but majored in the humanities.

Years later, attended a bootcamp.

None of this took place in MA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Senior Fullstack Dev" in NY at a non-tech company.

Currently 100k + 5k (bonuses, i've gotten 20k bonuses here in the past but those days are gone). Roughly 35-40 hrs/week with only two week-long crunch times in about 3 years.

I currently have offers for 135k + worthless equity (startup) and 110k (non tech company). Waiting to hear back about a Systems Engineer role offering in the 100-125k range (hot tech company).

Part of changing gigs at the moment is to plan to take on additional work on the side to increase my compensation. Not possible in my current role.

I started off making 60k as a developer and not even that long ago...proving value added 40k on to my salary quickly, but honestly I negotiated poorly. I left at least 25k on the table starting.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you are interested in compensation numbers and have thick skin (its anonymous so there is a lot of racism/sexism/bullshitters/negative hostility and more), I recommend getting the mobile app blind as there is a ton of this information there. I will regurgitate some of that information here for you though.

For level comparison at different companies, lots of people point to [http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi)

Here is a compensation poll for amazon employees only based on job title and level with 161 responses: [https://goo.gl/V9QKHh](https://goo.gl/V9QKHh)

The total compensation rages I have heard for Amazon are 145k for new grads, 170k-230k for SDE 2, 250k-350k for SDE 3, 400k-600k for principal engineers. There are 2 more levels after that but have not really seen any data for those levels.

Here are Facebook's total compensation numbers quoted from "fmwf":

E3: 107K-125 Salary, 40k stocks a year, 10% bonus.

E4: 140k-160k Salary, 70k stocks a year, 10% bonus.

E5: 170k-195k Salary, 120k stocks a year, 15% bonus.

E6: 200k-220k Salary, 200k stocks a year, 20% bonus.

All Facebook numbers assuming expected performance if you kill expectations you get more (25%-200% more shares).

</comment><comment><USER11> $160k, $105k RSUs over 4 years, $15k signing bonus - started half a year ago, currently have a little more than 5 years of experience as a software engineer.

<comment><USER6> That package is with what firm?

<comment><USER12> > ApplThwaway100

Apple, probably

<comment><USER11> Yes. To clarify, I work in Cupertino, CA as well. Stock also had a nice bump too, jumped 10-20% since my vesting start date.

I was hired at one level above entry level.

<comment><USER6> what's the life/balance if any like? is it super high stress like is reported?

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for everywhere in the company, but my job is fairly relaxed. Good work-life balance, most collaborative work environment I've been in, and lots of autonomy.

I did have a period of 2 months where I was working 80 hour weeks, but it was due to a very unique confluence of events including a reorg, and highly abnormal from my understanding, but I was rewarded for it by getting a couple of extra days off.

<comment><USER6> You probably can't tell us but do you work on the mobile side of things or desktop or services or data science? Other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> joatmon-snoo 2016-2017 data from another tiny, absurdly biased forum: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NZLCpnaaKCMIb0OrKElE...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NZLCpnaaKCMIb0OrKElEOcuuCKbG4zUggy2PNgJnYys/edit#gid=1723005296)

Also from said forum: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFIC...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/search?q=%5BOFFICIAL%5D+salary+sharing+thread+2017&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of posts on HN related to this, some with links to spreadsheets of anonymized data:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538984)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15501158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15501158)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331223)

</comment><comment><USER14> SWE III (One level above new grad) in Boulder, CO with 4 years at Google: ~$225k total comp with 60/40 cash [Salary+Bonus]/equity.

For reference, Google's ladder goes: SWE II -> SWE III -> Senior SWE -> Staff SWE -> Senior Staff SWE -> Principal -> Distinguished.

<comment><USER15> This seems wrong. Google's starting position for full time employees is SWE III.

<comment><USER3> There's a difference between the numerical levels and the job titles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One request here, can people include a rough estimate of how many hours they work weekly to add some perspective?

</comment><comment><USER16> W2 Contractor Senior Software Engineer, $85/hr, REACT/Rails Posting as anonymous. Regular HN user here. I work in Denver, Colorado at a TV company. I am a contractor through a local tech firm. I am making $85 an hour on a W2 open ended contract. Through my contracting company, I get access to 401k (no match), medical/dental/vision (company pays atleast 50%) and they send me to conferences/training.

I really dig the gig, they treat me like an employee but pay me like a contractor. I tend to take 5-6 weeks of time off (unpaid) so I tend to make $160,000-165,000 at the end of the year.

My background is about 10 years of tech experience. Working on React currently. CS degree.

<comment><USER16> I only work 40 hours a week

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recent new grad that joined Google in the past few months.

Total comp (base + bonus + stock + signing bonus amortized over 4 years) is 185k. Higher than expected because of recent stock increases & I negotiated with competing offers.

TC next year will be closer to 200k.

(throwaway account)

</comment><comment><USER18> Denver, CO and not any of the big companies mentioned in the title.

34 years old, approx 7 years experience. MS stack.

$125k plus annual bonus of approx $9-10k. 2019 hoping annual salary pushes the $135k mark.

</comment><comment><USER19> What about Stack Overflow's yearly survey? That's got a lot of people and has data for salaries by job and geography. It won't tell you where they're working, though. [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary)

ETA: 5yrs exp, Dev III in logistics; $95K/year, ~$6k in stock, insurance fully paid by company.

</comment><comment><USER20> Glassdoor is the place you want to go for this kind of information. You're not going to get anywhere near a large enough sample from a few comments on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is one major problem with glassdoor - the salaries that are collected today are grouped together with salaries that were collected 7 years ago. Which is why you always see lower salaries looking at the glassdoor.

This post is to get a (however small) current sample and it is purely to help me evaluate a couple of opportunities, no commercial interest whatsoever.

<comment><USER21> Salaries I see on Glass Door for Amazon for Scottish jobs are fairly accurate.

A Developer will make anywhere between £35k and £50k depending on experience (this matches with what I saw when I was looking for a job a year ago)

<comment><USER22> Just curious: That seems disproportionately low compared to US salaries. Is cost of living proportionately lower in Scotland?

<comment><USER21> The cost of living where I live in Scotland is pretty small (IMO).

I make around £40k as a developer with 11 years experience, which seems about average for my city.

My total cost of living each month is around £930. That includes my mortgage.

The company where I was working before I made ~£29k as developer, some people in that company were on as low as £21k. The average was probably around £25k.

Contracting rates can be good, I regularly get calls about contracting jobs from recruiters with rates around £400-£450 a day for a 6 month contract. But then you have the hassle of looking for a new contract every 6 months or so. That hassle is just not worth it for me.

I get emails each day from a job place with jobs. Today the jobs are

C# .net developer - £30k - £45k

C# software developer - £28k - £35k

Senior python developer - £65k

PHP Developer - £35k - £42k

.NET Developer -£38,000 DOE

.NET full stack developer - £35 - £50k

Java Developer - Upto £65k

Javascript Developer - £30-£40k

These are all for positions with many years experience. I don't know where people are seeing £100k a year salaries?

<comment><USER23> Salaries that have been <£40k for the past few are starting to look really abysmal. UK inflation is currently 3.1%. In England we have above-inflation rail fare increases, inflated rents that keep going up, potentially 5.99%/year council tax rises and not to mention utility bills and food.

The effect of price rises (council tax, travel, utilities, rent etc) combined with your salary remaining stagnant is nothing short of devastating over a period of 10-20 years.

Companies pretending that inflation doesn't exists probably contributes quite a bit to job hopping

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I make 290k total comp as a SWE III at Google.

I would make around 240k if my initial stock grants hadn't nearly doubled in value since I joined. I will probably actually make less money once my 4 year grant runs out, all things being equal.

5 years total experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there a way for an outsider to figure out which level they would be slotted into if they passed the interview process? For instance if you are a "senior engineer" at an average company, would Google only interview you for Senior+ roles or could you potentially interview for _any_ available job and be evaluated and hired as say SWE II or something?

</comment><comment><USER26> IBM, Austin, TX, band 10 (Senior Technical Staff Member)

Base salary: 190k / yr base salary, ~6k / yr performance bonus

Equity Grant: ~$125k stock grant, vesting twice in four years, so ~$31k/yr stock presuming I stay for all four years

So - total annual compensation (excluding healthcare benefits and our 6% 401k match) is about $216k annually.

<comment><USER27> You and the other poster at Google in Boulder have probably found the sweet spot between comp and cost of living. Nice work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something I'd love someone to explain: in USA as in UK contract developers seem to be paid around $600-1000 a day with a few exceptions. In the UK this is higher than at least 95% of the permanent jobs I see - which is what you'd expect given you're hiring an expert who is taking on some risk.... But in the USA (if the data in this post is to be believed) I'm seeing even inexperienced graduates earn more than experienced contractor devs. Is that right?

Also, I'm curious; I read figures like $400-600k... Is that actual salary you see on your wage slip or wrapped up in that are things like healthcare that you never "see" normally?

I'm curious because these figures are astonishingly high and I'm wondering 1) how on earth do startups find devs 2) how on earth there's any developers over 30 when you can become a millionaire and retire early.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm at a gigantic (50k+ employees), soul-sucking company that is mostly nontechnical business consulting, working remote as a Software Architect from a borderline-BFE city. $105k + 150%ish 401k match up to 5% of pay + decent benefits. Supposedly some kind of bonus next month.

</comment><comment><USER30> London, 0 experience, have Phd. Google Research Scientist:90k£ base, 100k£ bonus and stock

<comment><USER31> How bad are the visa issues surrounding hiring of internationals who do Phd in the UK?

Do you have any idea if smaller companies and govt research labs sponsor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Google, swe 2, 2y prior experience, didn't finish degree, Bay area.

205k total, 45k from stock

</comment><comment><USER33> This might sound silly, but to get a position at Google is it mostly experience or just white boarding practice?

Is it possible to go from new grad -> first job -> Google? By that progression I mean what sort of background is required language/stack/etc aside from studying and practicing?

</comment><comment><USER34> Check out [https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com) you can filter by any function in the organization, educational background, years of experience, recency of data, etc. We tried to include as much granularity as possible to avoid the issues with glassdoor. After you sign up, navigate to the career explorer, you should be able to get the information you need without being required to add a ton of personal information. More information is required if you want to get to the highest levels of granularity.

<comment><USER35> Requiring the education section is kinda silly given the number of people that haven't gone to college in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It would be nice if HN had a system to allow new accounts to post in threads like this without getting the "you're posting too fast" message on the first comment.

</comment><comment><USER37> 155K + 15K signing bonus + 25k yearly bonus+ some equity (10% of base salary/4 years = vesting)- Boston, MA Sr SWE

</comment><comment><USER38> SDE II Amazon Seattle, ~$200k total/y

</comment><comment><USER39> You probably want to setup a form for this. You would get much more willingness to share anonymously.

Also, which country in EU?

<comment><USER40> Just not a Google form, lest they know which employees are discussing salaries

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> 12.50 USD/hr.

Hi from Amazon's shit tier.

</comment><comment><USER42> FB/Google figures here are mostly from the US, but can someone enlighten me on theirs UK offers? Particularly, Google/Dublin and Facebook/London - are they on the same level? Or 1.x less?

</comment><comment><USER43> Read this: [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-policy-to-pay- unfairly...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-policy-to-pay- unfairly-2015-4)

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know of an open, semi-anonymized data sharing platform? Let's use that if so. If not exist, let's make.

</comment><comment><USER45> Making about 320k/yr, with a 47:47:6 split between cash, stock, and bonus. 4 years with the company.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is there anyone who wouldn't mind sharing salary from Intel?

</comment><comment><USER47> Anyone who is reporting _appreciated_ stock compensation is ruining the thread with inflated numbers. People who join _today_ don't get a retroactive stock grant.

<comment><USER48> I was paid in bitcoin in 2011, total comp in the billions ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Only slightly related. Since many google employees will be here: How can I plan to land a job with google in 2 years if I have a physics masters and 1.5 years of web development + little exp. with other software stacks? I am trying to figure out a strategy to make it happen and I am willing to do anything, even go back to school.

* How can I get an interview? It seems simply sending my resume through the online portal will not work because I don't have a stellar academic record or much experience.

* How can I figure out what to apply for? I have experience in UI but does google even do that? I want to work at google because I want to work with the people there who are just the smartest people around. But I don't really care what I work on.

* How and how long should I prepare for the interview? I am working through the Cormen's algorithms book but I don't really have a solid CS education. And I hear that they just want you to know everything. So should I just go back to school?

* I have heard that one way is to participate and excel in coding competitions. Should I then focus my entire energy on this front? Or will this be misguided?

<comment><AUTHOR> Others here would be in far better position to advice you, but from what I can say, having an awesome github portfolio will go a long way to compensate for the other handicaps you mentioned.

Once you are there, I'd say the best way would be to find someone in your network who works at google, and get referred. If you don't know anyone, make contacts through various channels.

<comment><USER50> Github portfolio might help one get the interview in the first place, but once you get your foot in the door, it is 99% useless. Hiring committee will only look at it if they are unable to give yes/no decision based on the data from the interviews. Preparing for interviews is much better strategy compared to creating stuff to post on Github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't feel like discussing my salary publicly. Have you considered checking glassdoor.com or other similar sources?

<comment><USER52> Why do people feel this way about their salaries. Always seemed to me that in the grand tottal we will be better off if we did discuss our salaries publicly. I make around 60k usd in a Scandinavian startup as a programmer with experience. What is so big deal about it

<comment><USER12> > I make around 60k usd in a Scandinavian startup as a programmer with > experience

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why European developers earn _significantly_ less than virtually all their American counterparts, even in high cost of living areas (like Scandinavia)

I do understand you specified you work for a startup, but even at one of the many established regional consultancies dev salaries tend to cap out at around $90K IME.

Is it the lack of lucrative VC funding, the prevailing sense of egalitarianism at all costs, the abundance of (comparatively) well paid middle managers, all of the above or something else entirely?

edit : changed wording

<comment><USER53> One big factor is growth potential.

US tech companies can scale into a ~$21 trillion economy between the US + Canada, with barely any adjustments for culture & language. From there they can then use their considerable footing to push into any number of other foreign markets and press the scale further.

Most software businesses benefit immensely from such scaling.

If you're a Scandinavian tech company, doing something like that is far, far more difficult. It caps the upside for most companies. That's not unique to Scandinavia of course, it's true about almost all other countries / areas, other than China. US & British cousin cultures have a slightly easier time as well in general, as they can often immediately tap right into the US as an early market. That's why eg Shopify was able to so quickly scale itself, despite the smaller size of Canada's economy, they're doing a monster business in the US. Tech companies that have pulled that off coming out of Scandinavia are still semi-rare, such as Mojang or Spotify (Mojang famously was able to use the global scaling to immensely reward its employees).

<comment><USER12> Excellent point</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we de-risked our SaaS pricing strategy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/2017/02/13/how-we-de-risked-our-saas-pricing-strategy/ <comment><USER2> I really like the pricing model where prices are both per seat, and price per seat increases as you add features.

It gives you nice geometric growth for the bigger clients (lots of features × lots of users), but also allows you to have a very low cost for the smallest clients (less features for 1 or 2 users).

For some reason, a lot of companies instinctively give discounts for big customers. If anything, you should be charging your enterprise customers _more_ per user, rather than less. They have the money. This geometric pricing model lets you charge big bucks for big customers, and even leave room for a nice discount percentage if it comes to that. Salesforce has been using this model for quite a while, and it appears to have been working nicely for them.

<comment><USER3> Big business decision makers like to pay more because it's a signal that they're dealing with someone that's going to be in business in 3 years. But their finance departments like to save money to an obnoxious degree. So charge them more per seat for enterprise features and offer them a discount that'd still more than your basic seats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have two questions, which are not answered in the article:

\- How existing customers react, when they discover the new pricing on your website?

\- At some point, do you migrate "old" customers to the "most recent" pricing model, to avoid having to maintain tens of pricing model in parallel?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I'm getting so tired of all those posts about how to grab the maximum amount of money from your customers. When I started selling my software, I read a lot of these articles, and was constantly stressed that I am leaving money on the table.

But at some point I realised that it doesn't matter. You don't need to make the maximum possible amount of revenue.

If you sell your product for a lower price, you allow more people to use it.

Sure, make your product cheap and you might leave money on the table with big enterprise customers. But if it's cheap, maybe a school can afford it.

That must be worth something too, right?

I'm not saying that you should give away your work. But once you make enough profit, why not try to maximise the positive impact your software has on the world?

<comment><USER6> If I was a solo SaaS founder, I'd rather have 100 customers paying me $100/month apiece than 1,000 customers paying me $10/month.

Your time is worth something, and customer support is a very real burden. In the case of a $10/month user, answering one customer support email more than wipes out all of the revenue you've earned from them that month.

<comment><USER7> Is there a sweet spot for customers?

1 customer is a high risk.

10 are better.

But 1000 are Bad again?

<comment><USER8> higher customers = less volatile risk of churn, but the volatility in churn rate for 100 customers is probably about the same as the churn rate for 1000 customers, but 10x the support burden.

<comment><USER7> Hm, then how is it that companies like Google have millions of users and virtually no support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _If I was a solo SaaS founder, I 'd rather have 100 customers paying me $100/month apiece than 1,000 customers paying me $10/month._

I go back and forth on this one, since I have both $10 and $300 plans.

One one hand, it's frustrating to watch those $10 plans trickle in every day, barely making a dent in revenues. Fortunately, support needs are pretty low for my product, so more customers doesn't necessarily mean more work. And at least it's not a big deal to lose a customer (especially a high maintenance one).

On the other hand, while it's really cool to get the email announcing a new $300 signup (which translates directly to a $3k/year raise in my salary), it hits pretty hard when one of them leaves.

I think it'll always be a case of "the grass is greener".

</comment><comment><USER10> IMHO pricing per user / per month works well when clients are early and/or small startups, once the client has 50, 100, 200 employees then they must move out of these services because they get too expensive.

From the app from the article: 40$ per user / per month \- 10 people startup => 5k a year \- 100 people startup => 50k a year

When it becomes too expensive you only have a few options: \- keep the heavy users in and remove other people from the service \- have a shared user for people that don't use the service that often (If identity is important, who did what, then this becomes confusing) \- move away from this solution, consider competitors

SaaS companies should consider medium to large companies and think about pricing caps, light agent roles, etc.

For example: the first 100 actions are free for each user, after that one simple fee is applied of 40 per month / per user. I don't know what is a proper solution yet.

<comment><USER11> The trend has been to offer single-sign-on and user provisioning as the carrot to upgrade to enterprise (e.g. Slack), which nearly doubles the cost. For a 200 employee business that's $3K USD/month. Even smaller startups should be using SSO and automated deprovisioning for security. And Slack isn't going to be the only service that wants to double prices for enterprise features while still charging per user.

For those prices, we can hire a full time employee just to be the admin for your service and get them doing more productive things on top of that. Charging per user is not sustainable when you get into the higher numbers, so we'll look at alternatives, host our own services long term, and/or hire a dedicated admin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately mobile SaaS through the App Store is a pain for testing. Price updates are passed down to existing accounts last I looked.

Apps are also a bit different requiring more b2c orientation and simplicity - at least with my limited resources. I chose what I felt was an unique way to capture user confidence via temporal "tiers" \- monthly, quarterly, and annually with discounts per.

I think I chose a decent discount as I have a relatively even subscription distribution - challenge is - it's near impossible to model MRR, Churn, LTV when Apple limits the data and strips UUID from subscription.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for the article.

My only issue with it is that you never actually outline a methodology for working out the main problem you highlight other than just do it. It would be helpful if you quantified (perhaps using %'s rather than hard figures) this trade off.

" A lot of people fear changing pricing too often because they think it will scare away their customers. And for some—that might be true. But never experimenting with your pricing means you may never learn the value of your product and its potential for growth. "

</comment><comment><USER14> So it sounds like the takeaway from this is to A/B test your pricing. It sounds like the author has started to develop a testing culture, and that's going to pay off hugely in the future, but I would recommend adding some rigour to the testing process, doing real A/B testing rather than eyeballing it like it sounds like they're doing now. We have made this change over the last year and it has been transformational for how we develop our product.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting read. How do you account for seasonality if you're comparing prices over time? Or fairness if you're A/B testing at the same time?</comment>


Facebook Home And The Promise Of Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/14/facebook-home-and-the-promise-of-android/

<comment><USER2> I don't get the fragmentation argument here - there is nothing about Facebook Home that prevents it from being used on Android 2.x - all of the functions it uses are available there. The choice of Android 4+ is simply to make development easier. This is exactly the same as choosing to only target Chrome and ignoring IE6, which many new developments (Google included) now do. The whole argument about the differences between Android and the Web in this case simply don't hold up, as it's exactly the same situation.

<comment><USER3> "Fragmentation" is a horrible name, and sometimes people use it to refer to problems that don't actually exist, but there is a very serious problem with Android updates: While iPhone users can expect prompt updates directly from Apple, Android OEMs and the carriers they do business with effectively make phones you buy at the carriers' shops nearly impossible to update. That's horrible, and the Nexus branding and technology program hasn't fixed it. Way too few Nexus devices, way too many OEMs.

All that said, targeting Android 4.x+ is rational. Facebook Home is going to push some capacity boundaries. No reason to buy trouble by targeting earlier revisions.

However, neither my TF300 nor my Nexus 4 are listed as compatible. So Facebook has somehow taken a crummy situation and made it even worse. It apperently isn't compatible with all 4.x devices.

<comment><USER4> "However, neither my TF300 nor my Nexus 4 are listed as compatible. [...] It apperently isn't compatible with all 4.x devices."

It is running perfectly fine on my Nexus 4.

<comment><USER3> The Play Store does not offer to install it on my Nexus 4, which is on AT&T via Straight Talk. All choices are greyed-out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think its a pretty insightful point that Android as enabler for third parties is so good. That point is often missed, even when Amazon showed you could create a nice new product with it. According to the age poll most people here won't remember back when MS/PC Dos was mostly a command line and people like Norton made a "visual shell" which gave you behavior like windows. Later Microsoft added APIs for windows and then people wrote their own environments around that too. Similar to the Unity/Gnome/KDE/... differences on Linux, heck even on the same Debian distro. Historically, its been hard to stay the leader if other systems can innovate and your system can't. (granted with exceptions)

Bottom line is that the point that Facebook didn't _have_ to make a phone to make a phone experience is _much more interesting_ than the actual app itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> Disregarding if Facebook Home is a good: Android is rapidly evolving into directions no one would have imagined 12 months ago.

Nobody has to ask Google for permission what they are gonna do with Android -- no one had to ask what they are doing with the web, either.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, just heard about this. I can't imagine installing an App and having it completely muck up the notification bar, look and feel and more for the phone.

If all you do is use Facebook on your phone then I guess this is magnificent.

<comment><USER6> Me neither. But look at the mainstream, the youth. Mobile, FB and picture sharing is _the_ new mass media.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is FB's first step into building an own mobile OS (or own distribution) since the main task of a mobile device is still communication with close contacts -- and that's all Facebook is about.

<comment><USER8> And I won't be surprised if Facebook OS is a fork of Android.

<comment><USER9> I see it more likely being a fork of Firefox OS or something new that takes the same route.

All Facebook should need is a browser for their OS, if they provide a browser as good as or better than Chrome for Android they should be fine. The Facebook apps we use on desktop are just browser apps, and it'd be very easy to win developers over that way, plus the App Center is already there serving web apps.

And going with the web should help them stay away from competing with partners like Apple and Microsoft.

All in all their bottom line is Facebook as a service, all they need is to provide something that brings users to using Facebook more and to see more ads.

They've likely even thought of this themselves but are waiting it out to see the web mature more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>