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Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?
I am seeing YC startups hiring for supposedly in-demand roles (e.g. Senior TypeScript, Senior ML) and offering 50-80k$/year.
This sounds very low to me, even if those are fully remote positions. As far as I know, this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain).
Anyone has more insights around this decision? For example:
- Are they targeting extremely low-cost of living countries? Have they seen more success with that strategy?
- Will globalisation finally equalize developer salaries across the globe?
- Do they offer something else which is unusually attractive?
Intrigued to learn more.
- neximo64 3y agoChance to get equity instead?
- lisasays 3y agoOr a fancy title to pad your resume with. Or perhaps reasonably legitimate experience, actually, that can't be had in your current day job or ever could be.
- ddorian43 3y ago> Do they offer something else which is unusually attractive? You can literally read the job description. Answer:no. Source: I've read the descriptions. > Intrigued to learn more. They are just companies. They either don't have money, or have money and want to lowball (it's good time to lowball).
- ceejayoz 3y ago> it's good time to lowball There's lowballing, and then there's insulting.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoWhy would that be an insult? If they can find someone good enough at that rate, then why would they pay more? And if they can't, then they'll just need to discover the market floor by experience.
- antisthenes 3y agoWhen you're scraping the market floor, there are much higher chances of hiring someone who will bring negative value.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI agree, but it seems to me that it's still the employers choice whether or not to take that gamble. So I'm still not understand the basis for feeling insulted my an employer testing the market in this manner.
- michh 3y agoIf you’ve just been laid off from big tech and have been applying for three months in the current climate you might want to take the insult and hope the startup succeeds in a way that brings you the rewards later. I don’t like it either but that’s where some of my friends are at right now.
- jollofricepeas 3y agoInsulting is relative and depends on where you live. There’s senior engineers all over the world willing to work for a stable wage of $50k USD. - Brazil - Ukraine - Pakistan - India - Mexico
- hotpotamus 3y agoIs the dignity of work worth nothing to you? Think of the poor job creators.
- kjghkjghkjgh 3y ago99% of programming jobs outside of America must be insulting to you.
- replygirl 3y ago0.0001%-chance-of-unicorning tax
- sontek 3y agoStart-ups in general don't have a lot of cash and burn rate is the death of most of them. The standard deal from YC is $500k. So if they pay $80k/yr after operating costs, insurance, etc. They can probably hire 3 people outside of themselves and only be able to do it for 1 year. If they competed with companies who are paying at the 90th percentile they wouldn't even make it a year if they hired 1 person.
- dagw 3y agoThey're not paying $80k, they're paying $80k plus an equity lottery ticket that hopefully has a chance of being worth millions.
- bilsbie 3y agoI almost never come across a startup I’d actually want a lottery ticket in. The business models just seem naive or sometimes absurd.
- dagw 3y agoIndeed, and guess this works as a secondary filter. They don't want people who don't truly believe in the company to apply. At an early stage start-up you want people that are passionate/naive/delusional enough to want to work lots of unpaid overtime.
- rchaud 3y agoThe value of the startup lottery ticket is based on how fast you can hire, how much hype you can build and how many users you can acquire. Most startups are a money pit, their only value is in acquiring their customer base.
- Ancalagon 3y agowhat is the proportion of YC startups that have had successful exits where the _employees_ received millions from their equity grants?
- pydry 3y agoNot enough to justify an $80k salary.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoNot in SV, for sure. If you're in KY it's pretty good. Can get a decent house for $190k, and as much land as you want. Gotta live in Kentucky tho.
- danpalmer 3y ago"Senior" means different things to different people. I've interviewed "senior" engineers who I wouldn't hire into an internship, and I've interviewed regular (non-senior) engineers who are exceptional. It also means different things to different companies. At a startup, a "staff engineer" might just be the best engineer on a team of 5-10, but at a big tech company it means a completely different thing. I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup. Apply to a job description, not a job title.
- re-thc 3y ago> At a startup, a "staff engineer" might just be They're clearly wizards that hold a staff. > I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup. That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech? > "Senior" means different things to different people. It usually just means old.
- danpalmer 3y ago> > I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup. > That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech? It's no one's fault, it's that different companies need different things and can utilise productivity in different ways.
- okdood64 3y agoYea, a lot (not most) of seniors at Big Tech spend 50+% of their time writing docs that never result in anything or otherwise really did _not_ need a doc, or "generating ideas" and "fielding questions" from someone 3 teams away from them. The mid-levels engineers are doing a lot more of the grunt work of writing code. At a small company, new ideas are great, but you really need someone that can just sit down and pump out code. Move fast, bias for action. Source: I've worked at various sized companies from 5 person seed, to 300 person high growth, to Big Tech.
- kjghkjghkjgh 3y ago"The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Spain is €55,437." "The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Portugal is €39,094."
- jorgemf 3y agoDont thrust those numbers. 50k € is a very high salary in Spain for a software developer. The average is probably closer to 35k €
- sgt 3y agoHow much would 50k EUR be in Spain after taxes, more or less?
- jorgemf 3y ago35k (bear in mind we have a public health system, the universities are like 3k a year and the rent is less than 1k, if you are fired you have up to 2 years of your salary, etc)
- mpeg 3y agoI don’t know of many tech startups that want to hire average developers for their core team. The average is low, yes, but there are also well paid roles that the kind of person a startup in SV would want are probably already doing. Anecdotally, I’ve been offered jobs paying 80-100k€ based off Barcelona as I’ve been dreaming of coming back to Spain (I didn’t, sadly, as even though they were good local salaries they were a lot lower than what I made)
- mindondrugs 3y ago> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like portugal/spain). median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale. I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are. [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/...
- gamesbrainiac 3y agoThose figures are wrong to be honest. Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more. Plenty of senior folks in Spain making $100k+. In Barcelona, you can make north of $70K easy; even for non-senior devs. I agree with OP. The salary is way too low for a senior European developer to consider because taking a US job means that there are no employment protections that you'd usually get; employment is at will for contractors. Source: I live in the EU.
- littlecranky67 3y ago> Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more. I doubt that statement. As a German living in Spain since the pandemic, I dealt with this and my social bubble is full of tech expats dealing with this, too. Living in one EU country and working remotely as an employee for another one, is almost legally impossible, and full of unnecessary hurdles for both employer and employee. Everyone of top-talent grade I know who does this, is basically either self-employed (as I am) or operates a "legal construct" such as having empty "mailbox flats" in the country they work for (breaking all sorts of laws by doing so). The EU itself has never harmonized income tax laws; actually all of the EUs political system always tries not to touch the tax subject at all. As a result, each EU state has an individual double-tax treaty with all other members states. Yes, do the math - there are hundreds tax treaties between EU member states. Non of them are based on some EU guidance or blueprint, and oftentimes older than the EU itself (german-spain treaty dates back mostly to the 1960s with some minor additions in the early 2000s). Finding legal advice alone is almost impossible (i.e. a lawyer that speaks either of your languages and both legal systems recently well). And if you do, good luck, your fellow civil cervant at your tax offices will screw up your fringe case anyways. Worker-protection laws apply by country of residence, but the employer is bound by their national ones too. If you live in Spain and work remotely for a german company, legally you are bound by spanish worker laws. That is, you get spanish bank holidays off, minimum wage laws of Spain (and Germany!) and so forth. Even when figuring out all legal subtleties, it is simply not manageable for any companies HR department to deal with all country specific regulations and changes, let alone in different languages. I run a company myself and could not employ a person from another EU country within reasonable effort; the only way to go is hire them as contractors or through payrolling agencies. Both will not make them your employees, which has a lot of other legal consequences (holidays, employee patent/inventions laws, but also stuff like you can't really enforce any policy on them without going through the intermediaries).
- GGroen 3y agoI am not so sure. 80K$ a year would be considered high here (even for a senior) and I live in a medium size city in the Netherlands.
- drakonka 3y agoIf it's anything like Sweden, working as a permanent employee for a company in the Netherlands with that salary also gets you relatively high job security, pension contributions, 6-8 weeks off a year, unlimited sick leave, sometimes a collective agreement with guaranteed pay bumps or bonuses, often additional wellness allowances, etc. Some companies employ through a local entity which gets you some or all of those same benefits. Often that's not the case. Which is not a bad thing at all imo. It just means that $80k would probably not be high enough to be equivalent with what you'd get locally when it comes to total comp.
- Workaccount2 3y agoSide question: Do people typically get to use all those weeks off? I get 5 weeks off, but it's incredibly difficult to still hit my deadlines if I take any days off.
- t0mas88 3y agoNot sure about Sweden, but in the Netherlands it's very normal to use the full 5 weeks. I think Sweden is the same.
- akvadrako 3y agoThat's not your problem, unless you are coming up with those deadlines yourself. In my experience almost everybody uses their vacation days in NL.
- drakonka 3y agoIt took me a while to get into the habit when I first moved to Sweden, but after a couple of years I did start using all my weeks. Having a really long (4-5 week) summer vacation really really helps with recharge and coming back more fresh and productive. Some people do end up with days rolled over into next year, but there's a limit to that accumulation after a few years, so if that's happening eventually managers and leads strongly encourage you to use more of those days. As for deadlines, that's up to the company and project management to plan for. When I first joined a Swedish company and sat in a technical planning meeting I wondered why July was completely grayed out on our shared calendar, and was promptly told that almost nobody would be here because that's the most popular summer vacation time.
- konha 3y ago> As far as I know, this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain). That’s a very typical salary range for developers in most parts of Europe. If your definition of “strong talent” means competing with top of market pay (FAANG etc) you’re right though.
- qwytw 3y ago80k$ salary in any European country is way more than 80k if you add the 10-30% of taxes paid by the company which are shown on the payslip and all the other benefits. In total that should be paid way more than being the 80k you'd get working as a contractor for an US startup with no employment protection and/or severance pay.
- Traubenfuchs 3y agoYikes. Those are (central) European numbers, but we get free insulin, free dentistry and free brain & heart surgery, several mandatory weeks of paid time off and months of notice period. I guess the 100k or even 200k, or 300k starting meme finally died at a time of record inflation no less.
- cosmolev 3y agoAt first, I thought you were referencing the absence of the sugary drink tax when you were talking about "free insulin."
- School-Cotton 3y agoOther than the months of notice period, American tech workers get all of those things.
- Traubenfuchs 3y agoAlso between jobs / when unemployed / being laid off?
- JB_Dev 3y agoPretty much, yea. You easily make enough money to pay for COBRA. Then if that runs out you can get (an admittedly bad) plan from the marketplace. But it all comes back to point (1) - the amount you make more than makes up for it.
- codegeek 3y ago"Pay for COBRA" Yes but COBRA can cost upto 102% of the cost which was mostly covered by your employer before. Now that you are laid off, you have to pay the whole thing (sometimes employers are nice to still cover when they lay you off but mostly they don't). For a family of 4, it can easily be $2500/Month depending on the state you live in.
- 3y ago
- bilsbie 3y agoSo these employees are giving them 100k-400k of venture capital in the form of discounted labor. But they get nowhere near the respect an investor of that amount would get. Asking to sign onerous ndas. Doing fizz buzz on a whiteboard. Etc. One time I refused to sign an nda for an interview and the founder basically blew a gasket. Spent half the interview talking about how bad it was I wouldn’t sign it.
- rockyj 3y agoJust to add my opinion, 60-80K is an expected decent/common salary for an experienced programmer across EU (UK salaries are higher). Programmer salaries above 100K are very uncommon outside a few companies and US/UK.
- oezi 3y agoAbove 100k is uncommon in Europe for most professions.
- SXX 3y agoIn UK there are very few companies that hire above $100K: mostly hft, gambling, fintech and subsidiaries of US companies. Almost all other UK tech companies hire senior developers for 65K-75K GBP. At the same time both job security and work life balance will be very different experience.
- iExploder 3y ago> programmer salaries above 100K are very uncommon if you work for local companies yes, salary above 100k is common in Europe once you start looking at companies that compete on global market
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y agoKeep in mind that you'd probably need to be contractor to work for the company (as it costs money to get employer of record, never mention employer contribution) so you should give that amount a hefty discount.
- yanslookup 3y agoOne take I haven't seen.. It's sort of like when otherwise successful "name brand" organizations offer unpaid internships (let's not get in to whether that's legal or not.) This selects for the type of people that can afford an arrangement like that. Put another way, already wealthy founders, supported by wealthy investors, also want wealthy employees, or at least the demographic that fits already wealthy people.
- askafriend 3y agoThere is not a single name brand engineering organization that does not pay its interns extremely well.
- thomasfromcdnjs 3y agoAn example from today was a YC company and they had an ad on the front page. https://deep-ivy-ltd.breezy.hr/p/055a500d0e8701-ml-research-engineer?ref=upstract.com https://deep-ivy-ltd.breezy.hr/p/055a500d0e8701-ml-research-... 45-60k ● Very strong Python skills, with deep expertise in PyTorch, TensorFlow or JAX ● Very strong skills in recursive programming. Check out the Ivy Container class 45-60k would be a Wordpress developer in my opinion, I'd imagine deep expertise in ML cost a lot more.
- lisasays 3y agoAs they none-too-delicately state in the same blurb: "We are hiring worldwide." So clearly that's what they're aiming for.
- danwee 3y agoBut they are not hiring worldwide. Their openings clearly state: UK (and remote, within UK). So, I don't understand how they are hiring in the UK with such low salary ranges
- red-iron-pine 3y ago40-60k British pounds puts you near a max of $80,372.82 USD. still underperforming but not insane for junior devs not in California
- lisasays 3y agoAh, didn't see that. Tech companies contradict themselves (or otherwise say patent nonsense) in job postings all the time, unfortunately. By default these job boards seem to often be clusterfuck operations, with everyone shoving random detail into the reqs and no one there to curate the resulting message.
- justin66 3y ago"Paid? You kidding? You don't get paid. You work on commission, that's better than getting paid."
- tazeg95 3y agoFrance : €30,000 a year
- gilfoyle_7 3y agothis is called market correction , even though soon this is going to change.
- Patrickmi 3y agoWhen pretty much your expenses and taxes takes 85% That’s what I find it low
- squokko 3y agoA fully remote position will be filled by the qualified person willing to work for the lowest wages. You'll be competing with the hundreds of thousands of great developers in Spain, or the hundreds of great developers in Botswana, or perhaps the lone great developer working in Vanuatu. Welcome to the global economy
- frontman1988 3y agoBecause that salary is great in India which probably has at least 10x developers than Spain. And with that money you can really hire really good Indian developers who can speak English well enough, slog hard unlike the pampered Europeans and are hungrier to prove themselves in general.
- bruce511 3y agoI'm not sure why you are being down-voted but I have suspicions. But you are not wrong. Sure there are lots of Indian labor shops that have tarnished the reputation of specifically-Indian outsourcing, but there are also plenty of -very- smart Indians (and others globally.) I get that this out-sourcing harms workers in high-cost-of-living countries, but then again they're the ones who promote remote-work, while at the same time demanding salaries well above their country median.
- darepublic 3y agoI'm not sure why I get this pay boost but I'm going to shut my mouth about it and keep my fingers crossed
- thiht 3y ago> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain). lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about
- mpeg 3y agoIs it wrong? Assuming he refers to top talent, $50-80k isn’t enough to get anyone. You’d hardly be able to hire a top developer in Southeast Asia for this kind of money No one is taking about average employees
- thiht 3y agoYes it’s wrong. Also there’s no definition of top talents.
- lsferreira42 3y agoYes, it is! Here in Brazil $80k turns in 400k BRL or 33k per month. This make you go to the top 1% salary by a very large margin.
- bruce511 3y agoI don't know about Portugsl or Spain, but $50k would put uou into "wildest dreams" category in a Lot of countries. And you'd be surprised at how much exceptional talent is out there. Apparently with 8 billion people to choose from the supply pool gets a lot bigger than those who live in very expensive cities. Luckily wfh means companies are much more likely to hire remote workers now. Well lucky for folks like me anyway...
- thiht 3y agoI'm in France, we have a slightly higher income than Portugal and Spain (less now than in the past I think but still), and even there 50k€ is a very good salary. 80k€ puts you in the top 3% in France (2023, for salaries).
- VirusNewbie 3y agoThey don't prioritize hiring good people.
- _tom_ 3y agoAnyone have historical data? If this is not what they paid last year and before, it's clearly offshoring. If, as some speculate, it's just part of the comp and equity is. The other, then it would have been the same last year.
- dahwolf 3y agoAlways funny to see SV people not understanding SV, thinking the rest of the world is underpaid. SV is an planetary anomaly. Hundreds of billions (if not more) of capital free to invest in highly risky undertakings. That's why you earn 200K or more. An enormous surplus of capital with a high tolerance for failure. That type of capital simply does not exist anywhere else in the world. And this only strengthens the SV effect, like a gravitational force. Trust me, it's not because Europeans have more holidays. Companies simply cannot afford to pay these salaries anywhere in the world except in SV. Because they quite simply don't have these types of budgets. To put things in perspective, if you'd travel around the world and call out the number 200-300K/year, people everywhere will assume you own a factory or are some other huge deal. They most certainly will not think of a microservice developer.
- _8j50 3y agoThat is ridiculous. What SWEs get paid is not dissimilar to what pilots and engineers get paid (with experience) in the US. People get paid what it costs to replace them. You're just trying to justify SV "enterpreneur" greed with that logic. If you can pay someone 10k/yr in the US you probably would even with a $20M valuation and 10 person head count. The insane SV valuations are also unheard of and all these marvelous tech companies are also not being born in London or Vietnam or some other place, they are in the US and they also pay that much just to starve the competition of talent. This is why even as an SWE making $300k you should think seriously about forming a nation wide union and this is also why they're copying each other with layoffs because their profit and what they pay employees is increasing at a similar rate. "Well 200k is a lot of money by comparison but multiple 10M+ rounds for 5+ years with no profit is totally normal" lol. You all should also fight agressively for laws that prevent companies from outsourcing talent, unless you haven't learned from the 2000s. To all of you founders and execs, go to countries with cheaper salaries and bigger taxes, nobody is stopping you. The nerve on these rich people, it's not enough they evade taxes and pay less than small businesses but they also have to nickle and dime their own employees!
- dahwolf 3y agoYou're making so many incoherent disconnected points that I'm not sure what you're actually trying to say.
- joeman1000 3y ago$80k USD is $122k AUD... that sounds awesome to me.