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> right now there is no good solution. Partially because there is no good way of understanding the value of an employee. This is the perception among many star

> right now there is no good solution. Partially because there is no good way of understanding the value of an employee. This is the perception among many startups, but I think this is more perception than it is reality. Exceptional engineers are several times more valuable to most startups than an average engineer, but almost all will hire an average engineer for $115k before they hire an exceptional one for $175k. There's no rational basis for this, but it is the path of least resistance. You won't need to defend hiring an engineer for $115k to cofounders or investors. This is counter-intuitive, but the solution is to actually pay more for remote engineering jobs. When you do this, you're widening your talent pool to the entire world - and then you're selecting from the very top of the pool. We've been doing this for years, and it's been one of our most significant competitive advantages.

kmonsen 6y ago
Yeah, I feel we are a bit in an inverted world. Startups in my opinion need better engineers as they are in the hard part of making them product while the large companies mostly need people who can follow existing processes and do as they are told. Both types of companies hire the opposite because of economic incentives. I also agree with your solution, but not sure how practical it is short term. Long term that is probably what will happen.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Large companies also need excellent engineers because novel engineering problems emerge at scale and as a large codebase evolves over the years. You can't really attack those problems by only doing what you're told. If nothing else, someone has to figure out what the plan is.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    For sure, but they need a few of those and a lot of average engineers with leadership skills to maintain everything. At least that is what I think having mostly working in very large FAANG's. The really hard part is in starting new projects, or maybe that is just hard for me.
genewitch 6y ago
whatever happened to the mentality, that "nobody ever got fired buying IBM" - seems to me that 175k for a corporation paying an exceptional engineer would see that as a steal. I think a lot of the discussion is assuming FAANG rates, and realistically, exceptional engineers at those companies should be getting paid absurd, outrageous amounts of money. However what you're talking about is a smaller company, and sure, you can hire two average engineers for only 2/7th more money than one exceptional person.

kmonsen 6y ago

Yeah, I feel we are a bit in an inverted world. Startups in my opinion need better engineers as they are in the hard part of making them product while the large companies mostly need people who can follow existing processes and do as they are told. Both types of companies hire the opposite because of economic incentives. I also agree with your solution, but not sure how practical it is short term. Long term that is probably what will happen.

humanrebar 6y ago
Large companies also need excellent engineers because novel engineering problems emerge at scale and as a large codebase evolves over the years. You can't really attack those problems by only doing what you're told. If nothing else, someone has to figure out what the plan is.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  For sure, but they need a few of those and a lot of average engineers with leadership skills to maintain everything. At least that is what I think having mostly working in very large FAANG's. The really hard part is in starting new projects, or maybe that is just hard for me.

genewitch 6y ago

whatever happened to the mentality, that "nobody ever got fired buying IBM" - seems to me that 175k for a corporation paying an exceptional engineer would see that as a steal. I think a lot of the discussion is assuming FAANG rates, and realistically, exceptional engineers at those companies should be getting paid absurd, outrageous amounts of money. However what you're talking about is a smaller company, and sure, you can hire two average engineers for only 2/7th more money than one exceptional person.