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I used to really enjoy working for startups. You get to work on a completely open-ended project from a clean sheet of paper, with a bunch of fun people and the

I used to really enjoy working for startups. You get to work on a completely open-ended project from a clean sheet of paper, with a bunch of fun people and the energy that comes from building something fast. The "risk" that this article talks about was actually a bonus in my mind. It meant that, more often than not, the whole company would suddenly evaporate out from under you at some point and you'd find yourself out on the job market again. Since this is an industry where Changing Jobs == Big Fat Raise, having a chance to do so with a perfectly valid excuse ("we rode our $4M straight into the ground, so here I am") was a definite upside. Not to mention that finding yourself on the street after 6 months coding non-stop while living on somebody's couch will invariably leave a fella with a nice stack of cash. The sort of cash that goes a long way if one were to squeeze in a quick nine month trip to SE Asia before hopping back aboard the next startup for another fun, fast trip into the side of the mountain. If you're young, unburdened, and looking to get exposed to a lot of cool tech in a short time (and still get paid for it), joining somebody else's startup is totally the way to go.

Swizec 15y ago
I must be doing it wrong. Somehow coming out of a startup has never left me with a big wad of cash.
- jasonkester 15y ago
  Was that startup not paying you a salary while you were working there? Were you somehow managing to spend your entire paycheck every week? These are the most basic of life skills, and if you find you're not rapidly saving lots of money while making any form of salary greater than $50k/year, that's a big red flag. Seeing as how a dev worth his salt will be making at least double that, I don't have an answer for you as to why you ended up without any savings after working at a software development job. Care to elaborate?
  - lrem 15y ago
    Ah, $50k/year... Well, US has its upsides. Europe too, but salaries are not one of them. In France you can reasonably expect to make €30-40k/year[1], 3rd part evaporating as various taxes. Prices are not adjusted for the difference. Many other countries are a lot worse than that. [1] - yup, I've seen "well funded" startups searching for top talent willing to work for €36k/year
    - michaelochurch 15y ago
      US salaries are almost always quoted pre-tax, and the amount of tax varies based on location. If you make a high salary ($150k+) and live in New York, you can easily see half of it go to taxes. So that's about $6-7k per month. When you include employer-side taxes (social security and medicare) and the several tiers of tax (federal, state, local, property tax, sales taxes, various weird shit like hotel taxes) the tax rate in the US for middle-class is not very different from that in Europe. Where the tax schedules differ is that, in the US, genuinely rich people can avoid paying. Working, middle, and upper-middle class people pay just as much in tax in the US as they do in the EU. The US does have about 5 locations where developers can make more than anywhere else in the world. The Bay Area and New York are among them, but they're also ungodly expensive (house prices over $1 million). In the rest of the US, prospects aren't any different from the rest of the world. The $80-100k entry-level salaries are not happening in "middle America". Those are usually being offered in the Bay Area or New York. For the record, what actually makes the middle class poor in the US is not taxation, but the Satanic Trinity: housing, healthcare, and education costs. Even "good" health insurance is garbage with more holes than rotting cheese, and college tuition can easily top $40,000 per year. It probably is slightly better to be a really good (top 5%) programmer in the US right now, but I don't think that's for purely economic reasons. I think the advantage of the US is that it's easier to get venture capital, so there are more experimental ideas. It's probably easier, in short, to get a good job here... but the difference in compensation is probably not enough to justify moving over here unless it's a much better job.
      - Duff 15y ago
        Don't overstate it -- unless you're remarkably inept with your financial affairs, you're looking at about 35% tops for taxes in NY.
  - Swizec 15y ago
    Well, one way to elaborate is that I have never in my life earned more than $50k/year. Or anywhere close to that for that matter. Then again, I've never had a salary salary either. The only time I've worked anywhere completely full time, was a two month internship that paid mostly with the fact that "Holy cow I'm spending two months in the US for free, this is awesome!" These days I freelance ten hours a week while finishing my degree. The pay is good, but there just aren't enough hours to build any sort of proper savings.
    - jasonkester 15y ago
      Ah, that explains it then. Since you said "coming out of a startup", I assumed you'd actually been "in" one. Sounds like you've done a bit of freelancing for clients that happened to be startups, which naturally isn't quite the same thing as working full time for one. Best of luck building up the hours!
      - Swizec 15y ago
        I did found a startup once. But as the founder of a flop, I was left financially quite devastated. Took a while to bounce back :)

Swizec 15y ago

I must be doing it wrong. Somehow coming out of a startup has never left me with a big wad of cash.

jasonkester 15y ago
Was that startup not paying you a salary while you were working there? Were you somehow managing to spend your entire paycheck every week? These are the most basic of life skills, and if you find you're not rapidly saving lots of money while making any form of salary greater than $50k/year, that's a big red flag. Seeing as how a dev worth his salt will be making at least double that, I don't have an answer for you as to why you ended up without any savings after working at a software development job. Care to elaborate?
- lrem 15y ago
  Ah, $50k/year... Well, US has its upsides. Europe too, but salaries are not one of them. In France you can reasonably expect to make €30-40k/year[1], 3rd part evaporating as various taxes. Prices are not adjusted for the difference. Many other countries are a lot worse than that. [1] - yup, I've seen "well funded" startups searching for top talent willing to work for €36k/year
  - michaelochurch 15y ago
    US salaries are almost always quoted pre-tax, and the amount of tax varies based on location. If you make a high salary ($150k+) and live in New York, you can easily see half of it go to taxes. So that's about $6-7k per month. When you include employer-side taxes (social security and medicare) and the several tiers of tax (federal, state, local, property tax, sales taxes, various weird shit like hotel taxes) the tax rate in the US for middle-class is not very different from that in Europe. Where the tax schedules differ is that, in the US, genuinely rich people can avoid paying. Working, middle, and upper-middle class people pay just as much in tax in the US as they do in the EU. The US does have about 5 locations where developers can make more than anywhere else in the world. The Bay Area and New York are among them, but they're also ungodly expensive (house prices over $1 million). In the rest of the US, prospects aren't any different from the rest of the world. The $80-100k entry-level salaries are not happening in "middle America". Those are usually being offered in the Bay Area or New York. For the record, what actually makes the middle class poor in the US is not taxation, but the Satanic Trinity: housing, healthcare, and education costs. Even "good" health insurance is garbage with more holes than rotting cheese, and college tuition can easily top $40,000 per year. It probably is slightly better to be a really good (top 5%) programmer in the US right now, but I don't think that's for purely economic reasons. I think the advantage of the US is that it's easier to get venture capital, so there are more experimental ideas. It's probably easier, in short, to get a good job here... but the difference in compensation is probably not enough to justify moving over here unless it's a much better job.
    - Duff 15y ago
      Don't overstate it -- unless you're remarkably inept with your financial affairs, you're looking at about 35% tops for taxes in NY.
- Swizec 15y ago
  Well, one way to elaborate is that I have never in my life earned more than $50k/year. Or anywhere close to that for that matter. Then again, I've never had a salary salary either. The only time I've worked anywhere completely full time, was a two month internship that paid mostly with the fact that "Holy cow I'm spending two months in the US for free, this is awesome!" These days I freelance ten hours a week while finishing my degree. The pay is good, but there just aren't enough hours to build any sort of proper savings.
  - jasonkester 15y ago
    Ah, that explains it then. Since you said "coming out of a startup", I assumed you'd actually been "in" one. Sounds like you've done a bit of freelancing for clients that happened to be startups, which naturally isn't quite the same thing as working full time for one. Best of luck building up the hours!
    - Swizec 15y ago
      I did found a startup once. But as the founder of a flop, I was left financially quite devastated. Took a while to bounce back :)