Having done a 2 year stint at an ecommerce startup, I will have to say that there is not too much fun or goodness to be found in the work itself. In a solid but

Having done a 2 year stint at an ecommerce startup, I will have to say that there is not too much fun or goodness to be found in the work itself. In a solid but fundamentally boring business idea like this, there are two approaches I've seen work for employee retention: vastly overpay everyone (the "wall street" strategy) or create a weird corporate "FUN" atmosphere (the "zappos" strategy.) As much as the zappos strategy freaks me out it probably works better in he long run than overpaying because the shrewd but overpaid programmer will simply stick it out a few years, amass a bunch of cash, and then bail to go back to school or start a startup or trek across the world or whatever more interesting thing they had plans on doing with he money. The weirdos who really like the nerf ball fights will stick around forever on average wages. Also with big ecommerce operations there are a huge number of specialized non programming roles like "merch planner: womens' flats" who are stuck working for one of maybe 5 companies in the world so even a corny, but positive culture change is an HR win over a competitor.