ValleyWag is sort of the ZeroHedge of the Silicon Valley – – it will take any opportunity to take shots at, or be snide about, the industry it is observing. It probably comes as no surprise to you that I read it every day.
One recent post, however, ticked me off a bit. Here’s the headline:
Now a couple of things jumped out at me. First, I may be a little naive and behind the times, but I seriously don’t think the twenty-somethings hacking code are pulling down nearly three hundred grand a year, and second, even the table right beneath the headline was showing figures about half the amount cited.
It turns out the headline is being more than a little disingenuous. Most importantly, it is (almost incredibly) including Mark Zuckerberg’s exercised stock options as part of the overall compensation in the country. Thus, there’s an $80,000 per person “boost” based on Zuck alone. Memo to whomever wrote this article: Zuck doesn’t send an $80,000 check to every tech worker in the county. He gets to keep that money.
The figure is also rolling up benefits, both tangible and intangible, into the figure.
There’s no doubt that being a programmer these days, especially in the Silicon Valley, is a lucrative profession. But putting out stories like this is, at best, dumb, and most accurately, shameless click-bait.
