Those enviable high salaries and benefits
As the capital of science and technology in the world, Silicon Valley naturally has an enviable high salary. Many people may think that the salary of the domestic internet industry is already very high, but there is still a big gap compared with Silicon Valley.
In the past 20 18 years, among many technology companies in Silicon Valley, Google topped the list with a median annual salary of 247,000 US dollars, while Facebook ranked second with a median annual salary of 230,000 US dollars, Twitter was 6.5438+0.73 million US dollars, and companies such as square and NVIDIA also exceeded 6.5438+0.5 million US dollars. Amazon, which is located in Seattle and has a very large proportion of logistics employees, has a median annual salary of $29,000, which is already a relatively high income in the domestic Internet industry except for first-and second-tier enterprises.
The management mode of technology companies in Silicon Valley is also relatively open. As we all know, OKR's management mode and relatively free working hours. Take Google Beijing as an example. For free meals, employees and their families can enjoy about 300,000 medical insurance, more than 50,000 maternity insurance for female employees, paternity leave for male employees 12 weeks, paid annual leave for at least 15 days, and so on. This lax management policy makes today's great Google one of the most famous technology companies in the world.
Behind envy is the pressure beyond ordinary people.
Take Google as an example. Google is a well-known big city around Silicon Valley, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. After the development of the western United States, the Bay Area was even more prosperous than the east coast.
There are many high-tech companies near the Bay Area, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Intel. There are also many top universities in the world, such as Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of Technology and the famous Hollywood.
It can be said that the smartest and richest people in the world are gathered here. Correspondingly, it is a strong competitive pressure and ultra-high housing prices. Everyone only thinks that Google's welfare is good. I never thought that your entry into Google means that you have to compete with a group of people from top universities in the world. This kind of competitive pressure can be imagined. Many times, even if the company doesn't ask you to work overtime, you often have to work overtime after 10 when you come home from work. After all, only in this way can you gradually widen the gap in the competition with others, otherwise you will be pulled away by others.
The low-digit housing price in the Bay Area has reached 600,000 US dollars, while in slightly better places, such as Los Angeles, the housing price is basically above 6.5438+0.5 million US dollars, and the average price in Silicon Valley is as high as 6.5438+0.7 million US dollars. Needless to say, it is already sky-high to convert into RMB, which is even worse than relying on real estate to prop up the economy. Buying a house in Silicon Valley with an annual salary of more than $200,000 is also very stressful for you.
Besides, the education and medical expenses of children in Silicon Valley are very high, which means that you have to spend most of your money on children's training, which is not too expensive. You have to buy a car. You can't eat in the company 24 hours a day.
Programmers, commonly known as code farmers, are the mainstay of the Internet age. All happy families are alike, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Obviously, Silicon Valley is not alone.
From my point of view, I think code farmers working in Silicon Valley (i.e. programmers, network engineers and computer engineers) may face the following troubles in their work:
First, most code farmers will still feel like "Li Ya Mountain" in the face of high housing prices. Silicon Valley is located in a narrow 25-mile valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the arrival of venture capital, more than 1500 high-tech companies have gathered in this area, and more and more people who pursue their dreams have begun to flood into the gold rush, and house prices have also risen.
Secondly, especially in the special geographical environment of Silicon Valley (the Bay Area is surrounded by mountains on three sides and faces the sea on one side), the land resources available for development are limited, which leads to insufficient housing supply and further pushes up housing prices. At present, the average price of a house in Silicon Valley has exceeded $654.38 +0.6 million. According to authoritative research, the average annual income of code farmers in Silicon Valley is $20,654.38+0.42 million (the average annual income of Americans is $43.5 million), that is to say, under the premise that house prices do not rise and income does not decrease, whether eating or not working, it is 654.38+0.65.438.
As a result, nearly 60% of code farmers in Silicon Valley, including employees of Apple and Google, all said that their wages were too low, and they could not afford to buy a house despite their six-figure wages. In order to solve the housing problem, there are even many RVs on the streets of Silicon Valley.
Second, in the face of high-intensity, high-heat work, mental pressure is great. No matter at home or abroad, in today's "user experience is paramount", the work intensity of code farmers is very high, and the "996" working mode of working overtime and staying up late is normal, especially in the critical period of project promotion, we should always be prepared to face the unknown bugs and user feedback problems in the program and must solve them in time. A website stability engineer at Google starts work at 9: 00 every morning, leaves the company at 7: 00 every evening, and works overtime until 10 at night after returning home. He needs to be vigilant at all times, because he must respond to the problematic web page within 5 minutes. "Go home with a backpack and a fully charged laptop at seven o'clock every afternoon. If I receive a message that there is something wrong with the webpage on the way, I must immediately pull over and log in to the system within 5 minutes to start troubleshooting. Therefore, despite the high salary and attractive benefits, programmers are facing great mental pressure.
Secondly, programmers need strong logical thinking, so most of them are rational, face the machine all day, have less contact and communication with the outside world, and are not dominant in relieving stress, which is easy to form an unhealthy cycle.
Any job is not easy, and it is worthy of respect. Just be happy and encourage you!
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Let me tell you a good place. There is no blatant gender and age discrimination, and it is not publicly put on the table. No one dares to say that working overtime is your blessing.
Learn to integrate into American life, not just in a certain circle.