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Wages have gone up a lot since then, I would be very surprised if Fog Creek offered less $90,000 these days - that's about what most software companies offers s
by mdkess 15y ago
Wages have gone up a lot since then, I would be very surprised if Fog Creek offered less $90,000 these days - that's about what most software companies offers start at. Heck, I hear that Facebook is offering $100,000 base salary for kids right out of school, so by all means they could be paying more. Also of note - the transition from $75,000 to $90,000 just means a wage increase of just shy of 4% per year, which seems expected.
- nvarsj 15y agoFog creek is going to be competing with other companies in NYC, not in the bay area. I expect that the majority of candidates on the west coast are not willing to move. Also consider that Facebook is in a bidding war with Google, MS, and Apple - which has spiked starting salaries in that market.
- RandallBrown 15y agoFog Creek is absolutely competing with companies in the Bay Area. I'm not even talking about Google and Microsoft's New York offices. Maybe west coast candidates won't move but what about all of the people that live in other parts of the country? Most people I know are scrambling to get out of the midwest as fast as they can.
- adrianparsons 15y agoFacebook and Twitter now have NYC offices. Ebay is opening an office here, too (http://www.commercialobserver.com/2012/03/ebay-in-talks-for-36k-sf-deal-on-sixth/ http://www.commercialobserver.com/2012/03/ebay-in-talks-for-...).
- mdkess 15y agoIn many ways, NYC is an even harder market to compete in, due to the financial industry. If you are a good hacker, hedge funds will offer $150k+/year to start - and if you're able to deal the intensity of it, that'll quickly go up. I know guys in their late 20s making over $300k a year writing code for these firms. These are salaries that most software companies can't match, even if they wanted to.
- illumin8 15y agoThis is why $75,000 a year is not a fair salary. Joel is intentionally hiring college students because they are uneducated about what their real job prospects are if they are willing to move to NYC.
- tedunangst 15y agoHaving worked at Fog Creek, I thought the total compensation was fair. Here, total compensation includes things like never working weekends, never working late, never getting yelled at, never getting phones thrown at you, and all sorts of other perks that probably equate to different dollar amounts for different people. ymmv.
- KaeseEs 15y agoThose things are all worth $0 because they are the baseline for an employer. When accounting for these things in a total comp calculation, I do it something like this: $comp = (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5) - (6 + 7 + 8) where [1] Salary / cost of living index for area [2] adjusted value of health care plan [3] adjusted expected bonuses/profit sharing [4] retirement contributions per annum [5] dollar value of stock options given * chance of options vesting at some worthwhile value (tricky to calculate for startups) [6] expected hours per week over 40 * .025 * [1] [7] estimated value of environmental and other stress [8] cost in time, gas, stress, vehicle wear & tear, inconvenience of commuting Now, it may well be the case that other companies that you looked at had large negative values of 6 & 7, which makes Fog Creek look great in comparison, but I think that as a profession we're screwing ourselves in the long run if we think about uncompensated overtime as the norm and working normal hours as some sort of bonus :)