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I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot aff
by memset 3y ago
I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup.
However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and interested in the work. (If this is you then message me!)
I had one person today - with lots of FAANG experience who’d recently gone freelance - tell me that they weren’t willing to work with me to write code but they were willing to do advising for $450/hr. We just weren’t on the same page.
I don’t know what’s going on, and I hurt for people who are looking for work. I’m launching more slowly than I’d like because I am not able to find a partner to build things with who is willing to work for less than what they made after 10 years at Google.
- ohthatsnotright 3y agoHere I was thinking $95/hr was pretty good for app development.
- SauciestGNU 3y agoYears ago when i was much more junior my rate was $85, and if I couldn't get paid more than that today I would be totally ok, but a little disappointed.
- throwaway4220 3y agoWow this is about how much the average radiologist makes after 10 years of postgraduate studies
- cvhashim04 3y agoBrb going to radiology school, given how finished tech is
- jujube3 3y agoAI is coming for radiology
- datavirtue 3y agoBig time. Hospitals are going to greedily roll out AI.
- edgyquant 3y agoWhy do you believe radiologists somehow are more deserving than high level engineers?
- rlawson 3y agoHa! I have a son who is a radiologist and what docs have to go through makes the worst sprint of your life look like a walk in the park. And they train that hard for years. Patients can die if he messes up. The worst thing when I mess up is the product is a few days late. I have been coding for 25 years, make half of what he does and he deserves every penny of the difference.
- resource_waste 3y agoI used to make airbags. People could die if I mess up. Heck, literally hundreds of thousands of people. (see Takata) One time, I saw someone cook raw chicken at a restaurant. A $10 an hour worker can cause people to die if they mess up. Don't let the Physician cartel make you think they have some magical powers because they have the AMA and ACGME working to limit the supply of Physicians. The fact that you are treated by 1 Physician instead of a team of Physician is something Physicians greedily imposed on us.
- thelastparadise 3y ago> One time, I saw someone cook raw chicken at a restaurant. Isn't cooking just what you're supposed to do with raw chicken?
- hirvi74 3y agoNot to be pedantic, but there is actually raw chicken sashimi apparently. I heard about a place in Tokyo that serves it. The restaurant sources from super small local farms and sear the raw chicken in boiling water for a few seconds, chop chop, and then down it goes.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
- Simulacra 3y agoWow, maybe it's just Silicon Valley salaries? Or Silicon Valley hubris?
- bb88 3y agoI think he's focusing too much on the runway, and not enough on growth frankly. Investors these days want a return on investment in 18-24 months, not 5 years.
- memset 3y agoI agree to a point - regardless of what investors want, I might want to have runway to give me more time to iterate and experiment with ideas before running out of money. My point was also that this particular developer would consume a huge amount of opportunity cost for other types of hires or expenses that would move the business forward.
- bb88 3y agoHonestly, people in SV iterate with new startup ideas when the last startup fails. Your first lover is never your wife.
- phillipcarter 3y ago400k salaries would also be on quite the high end for your average FAANG! While they may take home that (or more) in total compensation per year due to stock, they'd have to be on the very high end of seniority at a big tech company to have that much in cash.
- jaredklewis 3y agoRight, but FAANG stock is very liquid. I’d you squint, it’s cash.
- phillipcarter 3y agoIt is, but X over 4 years instead of X over one year is a pretty big difference. I suspect a lot of the ex-FAANG folks know this and are trying to push for it thinking they'll get that deal.
- mook 3y agoI don't think that's what you intended, but I initially read that as equity for the company previously known as Twitter. Yeah, that over 4 years is definitely very different than over one…
- VirusNewbie 3y agoHuh? It’s on the higher end but getting 200k stock a year vested is common enough for senior engineers at FAANG.
- phillipcarter 3y agoGiven enough time, yeah. 400k salary doesn't have the time requirement. Of course if you're lucky the stock vesting could be worth more than the equivalent cash, but probably not so much now that ZIRP is over.
- fatnoah 3y ago
- abnercoimbre 3y agoI do not wish ill-fortune on my programmer colleagues, but I went indie to run conferences, making very little in comparison [0]: - I've regained perspective on the value of hard-earned money and the plight of the working man AKA majority of America. - I have no sympathy for complaints that you can't find FAANG salaries anymore. Zero. [0] I live in Seattle in a studio apartment, so I'm all right.
- twojobsoneboss 3y agoGod forbid you wish to start a family in Seattle without your partner making bank
- infamouscow 3y agoWhat makes you so special? This is merely an entitled rant made by a surplus elite that has finally realized they're not very elite if conditions aren't absolutely perfectly in their favor. The real elite look inward and improve themselves. Only the pathetic, mediocre, and unimpressive point their fingers outward. 99% of the US population has it 10x harder and still manages to raise good kids. I can see why most people have nothing but contempt for tech workers.
- twojobsoneboss 3y agoHave you seen the family formation rates recently? Way more people are deciding against kids now, with costs and salary not keeping up being usually the major factor… and this is across the board, not just tech
- infamouscow 3y agoOver the last several decades society has removed every incentive for a young, educated, financially stable man to start a family. There's tremendous downside risk, and very little upside. Then there are those that want to start a family, but can't because of finances. I don't have any solutions.
- swatcoder 3y ago> cannot afford FAANG salaries Avoid recruitment channels (like HN!) where FAANG people and FAANG-apirants congregate. > with lots of FAANG experience Use FAANG experience as an exclusion filter, not an inclusion filter. First, as you said, you can't afford the compensation that they're used to. Second, FAANG companies can absorb tons of bad talent in their hiring process and have mechanisms to both push that talent back out and table it internally once it's known for what it is. There are many awful FAANG engineers. Some of the top performers in the world work for FAANG companies and they're often better at recruiting those people than almost anyone else, but FAANG experience does not identify someone as one of those top performers. It's a really misleading and noisy signal on resumes. Third, even among talented people who shined in their roles at FAANG, they did so in a radically different work environment than you'll be offering them. The way they spend their days, the pace of deliverables they're calibrated to deliver, the amount of support/independence they need, etc are nothing like what suits your organization. Some may do well (or better) in your startup, but many are not going to be suited to it at all and (if hired into FAANG early) may not even have had the experience to know for themselves. TLDR; you are not a FAANG company and looking anywhere near FAANG-associated candidates is your problem.
- bb88 3y agoI disagree. Managers on average are worse than the average coder. And FAANG managers are no exception. At some level it becomes more about winning intra-company fights, than moving the company forward. You gotta look at the applicant as a whole person: personality, skills, ability to push the needle forward, etc.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoI’ve worked at startups, and non tech companies, and FAANG. The latter absolutely had the least amount of bad engineers.
- aklepatc2 3y agoI would be glad to apply and can do some decent Golang backend work for a much more reasonable $$. How would I do it?
- bb88 3y ago> I had one person today - with lots of FAANG experience who’d recently gone freelance - tell me that they weren’t willing to work with me to write code but they were willing to do advising for $450/hr. We just weren’t on the same page. I don't know. If you're not hiring them full time, it might be a bargain, and save you a bunch of money. Particularly if you're trying to architect services from the ground up. Some people are "force multipliers". In that the work they do can save 10x the engineering time. Dennis Ritchie was maybe a 1B force multiplier. I was paid $100k/year about a decade ago and saved the company I worked for $4M. In short, you don't know what you don't know. How much is it worth for you to find out?
- swatcoder 3y agoIf this is your approach to hiring consultants, I'd like to set up a meeting. :)
- bb88 3y agoSure, as long as you're okay being terminated without warning. And we're expecting results quickly. Like within the first hour.
- seoulmetro 3y agoThis made me laugh. Can't tell if it's a joke or not. Are you looking to hire robots or something?
- dazed_confused 3y agoI now understand why people were asking for so much up front…
- bb88 3y agoYes it's a joke, but also not really. If I have an issue and I'm paying a high paid consultant to solve it, well he needs to solve it, right? Particularly if he's not writing code. A $450/hr consultant better be able to save $4500/hr. A $1000/hr consultant better be able to save $10k/hr.
- rsanek 3y agohow much are you offering in equity? the issue i had the last time I went through this is that startups seem to expect you to work for 1/4 the pay but receive only single digit percentages for being the first engineer. it just doesn't make sense to take that much of a pay cut unless we're talking 10-25%, and I found nobody that was.
- AlchemistCamp 3y agoIt doesn’t make sense to try to hire devs whose experience is at the largest companies in the world for an early-stage startup position. You’ll have a mismatch not only in risk tolerance but also skills. The way to go IMO, is to hire someone who’s experience has been startup-focused and offer generous equity to compensate for the fact you can’t pay market rate.
- Ancapistani 3y ago> And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I don’t understand this. Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market. I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been; I have room to grow but I know exactly where that room is and how to make it happen. I’ve done everything from knocking out new tickets every day from a queue to architecting large distributed systems. I love my current job that consists mostly of two things: figuring out what the product side of the org actually wants/needs and making sure it gets done, and supporting all of the other engineers with internal tooling and support. I make $170k base. There is equity to consider there as well, but equity in an early-stage startup that doesn’t yet have a firm exit strategy. That’s not compensation - that’s a lottery ticket. You can get junior engineers in my area for $60-70k, and mid-career around $120k. I’m at the point where I believe I could _justify_ a salary of $400k… just not in my current role. Not in any engineering role that consists primarily of actual engineering work. That’s the kind of money I’d expect if I were looking at an engineering director or CTO position. I’m very comfortable at my current rate; moving “up” into those roles would require significantly more of my time and energy. My kids are teenagers, and I want to be able not only to spend time with them, but to actually leave work at work sometimes and focus on supporting them. I don’t plan to target those roles for another ~7-10 years.
- bcaxis 3y agoI'm in a similar boat. Rural Midwest. Worked for 23 years now in professional development. Started in big companies, then moved to smaller companies/startups. I'm very very good at what I do and my salary is up to the point where small companies are starting to choke on it a bit, and I'm just a tiny bit higher than yours. Been a senior, team lead, principal, architect, dabbled in some management. Also with successful product launches under my belt. If I want to move up in salary - it probably won't be in startup land unless I find a relatively big one and I'm CTO. More likely that I'm just going to start my own companies even if I have to do everything myself. It feels like jobs, while somewhat available, just aren't what I'm looking for anymore. And the market is turning, or has turned, unfriendly to the super senior. From my experience the 400k base is very very niche. Plenty of top end engineering talent out there available for less.
- lippihom 3y agoI'm a founder in this exact same boat. Had enough calls with ex-FAANG that have gone this way that if someone has worked there I basically don't even bother.
- gedy 3y agoI appreciate you sharing that as a "never been FAANG", though my annoyance is many companies still bias towards a "wow ex-FAANG" attitude and interview like them, even if comp is a lot lower.
- rossdavidh 3y agoThere are many good programmers available, who could quickly learn Go, who would work for a fraction of that. Look for someone who knows how to program (in any language), who knows the problem space you're in, and they will be able to learn how to adapt to Go fairly quickly. 400k is not at all the market rate.
- zrules 3y agoI think there are people that simply cannot afford to go lower than 400k if you’re looking in the Bay Area. Or it’d take a relatively big hit in lifestyle. Mortgages are really expensive, kids in school or day care, payment to the new Rivian, etc. Just offering perspective of the other side for the forum.
- blibble 3y agothis is no different to me wanting a Bugatti Chiron for $20,000 compromise: you'd be able to hire some of the top engineers in the world that live in Europe at half that salary or accept your business isn't viable and fold
- zahllos 3y agoEven in Switzerland, one of the most expensive places in Europe, I would consider 150k USD to be a good deal - and I'd have to pay all the tax and social insurance parts out of that too (I have a company). For 125k in almost any other country on the continent you'd be extremely competitive, if not beating, any local offer.
- mamidon 3y agoHey memset, If you're still looking for someone, I'd be happy to chat with you. I'm an ex-Facebook engineer, but I'd be willing to consider a part time thing if it covers my living expenses. I've got my own startup idea I'd like to execute on, but I'm not willing/crazy enough to eat through my savings for X years.
- yunwal 3y agoJust FYI, I’m unable to easily find your job listings. LinkedIn shows nothing and I don’t see a careers page on the website.
- JonChesterfield 3y agoOpen source should help. Lots of people are cheaper if their work is public (it's better personal marketing and it means they've still got access to the code if they quit or the company folds). It's worth giving serious consideration to whether the expensive 500k a year dev will outproduce five 100k, or ten 50k developers. There are serious non-linear scaling properties to increasing the headcount of engineering teams. The traditional answer to this problem is equity, but note that engineers have noticed that illiquid equity is a different thing to salary.
- zengid 3y agochange your stack from Go to C# and you'll find amazing folks who'd work for a quarter of that salary.
- John23832 3y ago>And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. 400K+ in SALARY is rarefied air. That's basically just Netflix for most software engineers. 400k in total comp is different.
- alex_c 3y agoI am fascinated by this - how wildly different experiences can be in different pockets of the industry. The only way I can see 400k+ salaries is if your requirements are a very restrictive Venn diagram of: * Geographical location (assuming in person, Bay Area / SV?) * FAANG experience (is it an actual requirement?) * Seniority (does not necessarily translate to ability... but it does translate to higher asking salary!) * Niche technical or industry skills * Golang experience (which wouldn't explain 400k+ by itself, but may restrict the candidate pool further) If you're seeing $200/hr, that is high but not unreasonable for a good freelancer and smaller engagements. $400k for a 1 year full time freelance contract is pushing it. $400k/year for a salary position seems borderline crazy to me!
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIt's also possible that the developer who quoted $400k was probing the current market rate for his/her skills. When I was laid off almost a year ago, it wasn't clear how much of a pay hit I'd need to take to get a job in the new market conditions.
- dysoco 3y agoConsider hiring remote if possible from South American countries like Argentina; just don't go super cheap on the salary, $100-150k/yo still is a lot to us and I'm sure you can get some really good engineers, PhDs, whatever with that salary. You can go lower if you don't need expert-level. I'll not apply because I doubt I'm qualified but if you have a link with the job posting I'd be glad to share with my circle.
- sneed_chucker 3y agoWhy bother with the legal headache of paying people internationally and a language barrier when you can get good people in the states for $100-150k as long as you're outside of super high COL areas?
- Danidada 3y agoWhy bother? To save more than 300k per year per employee. Just pay them via Payoneer or a similar fintech. For 70k you can get Argentinean top talent. They are in the same timezone as US East+1 and the top talent has usually a pretty good English level
- vaidhy 3y agoAre you looking at only ex-FAANG employees? I doubt you cannot find anyone to write good golang code worldwide for a reasonable pay.
- carlmr 3y ago>because I am not able to find a partner to build things with who is willing to work for less than what they made after 10 years at Google. Are you looking for a salaried employee or a partner. A partner would share your vision, but get a significant portion of the company. A salaried engineer doesn't have an upside if and when your company takes off. It could change the dynamics a lot.
- tomaato 3y agoWhy do you need to compete with FAANG? I'm in New Zealand. I'm paid approx $120k USD as a staff engineer equivalent at a conaultancy, and I think that's about market rate if you're good. I've never worked for a FAANG (was at Xero in the early days though). You could hire three and a half of me for the price of one ex FAANG person in your city. NZ is English speaking and has a fair amount of time zone overlap with the US west coast. We do have proper labour laws though :P
- CoastalCoder 3y agoNot to distract from your main point, but I wonder how other employer costs (payroll taxes, insurance and other benefits, etc.) vary between the two countries. That could affect the 3.5x number.