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That reads like something written pre LLM, pre mass layoffs and pre section 174. Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to. As
by Sytten 1y ago
That reads like something written pre LLM, pre mass layoffs and pre section 174. Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to.
Aside, as a small startup I am generally upfront with the salary since if you are not in the range we can afford it is not worth having a discussion.
- mgraczyk 1y agoIf you have ~5+ years of experience and live in the US, things haven't changed. Regardless, negotiating matters more than ever. At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary but a lot of the same advice applies.
- ikiris 1y agoStartup equity is the equivalent to the old Foxworthy bit "You can't write me a check?" I said, "No, I -- a check? Hell yeah, I can write you a check! I thought you needed money. Tell you what, I'm just gonna pay the whole thing off right now! I'm gonna be a congressman when I grow up."
- mgraczyk 1y agoIt's not really, because it's finite. You don't generally dilute the options pool when you hire new employees, you give them some slice of a scarce options pool
- achierius 1y agoSure, but there's an extent to which the the board and its constitutive shareholders already expect to be giving away options for new employees, and as such will have allocated a pool for such purpose -- both for the "standard" package, and for "hard negotiators". For traditional tech startups (i.e. ones not so flush with cash as OpenAI), giving these away is far easier than giving away more real-world, honest-to-god cashflow, because that directly drains your runway, while all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse.
- mgraczyk 1y ago> all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse But at the time the employee is negotiating this has already been decided. The company has some valuation and you are offering some known percentage of that scarce resource. You could argue that the valuation itself is the thing being manipulated (which is partially true), but that doesn't change the cost of the offer to the company in units of equity %
- paulddraper 1y agoMy bank account says otherwise, but it depends.
- ikiris 1y agoSo do all the lottery winners. It doesn't really change how a lottery works, or the likely financial result.
- mgraczyk 1y agoWhat fraction of lottery participants win, vs startup employees? It's rare and there is luck, but the quantities matter. You are much more likely to make money from a startup and it's much more under your control as an employee
- reillyse 1y agoThat’s an interesting thought experiment actually. If you think about the amount of money given up as a startup employee you will definitely get some winnings. For example, say as a startup employee you are earning/being compensated 80,000 a year in equity. If you bought $80,000 of lottery ticket’s each year how much would you win. Depends on the lottery but most lottery’s have a rough payout of approximately 50-70%. Let’s say it’s 50%. So you would expect to receive back $40,000 per year. Do half of all startups equity turn into cash, I think not. So probably more likely to make money from the lottery.
- paulddraper 1y agoLess than half of startups have exits… But most startup people don’t work at most startups.
- reillyse 1y agoI've worked at startups that have had exits and the employees got zilch. I think even in the startups with exits the probability of an employee having their equity turn into cash money is very low (also I doubt 50% of startups have exits - I hear a number of 10% more often and even that seems high, I'd imagine 10% of YC startups have an exit and they are the most likely to succeed so I imagine when you add in all the other startups that percentage gets far far lower).
- danjl 1y agoStartups also have more non-cash options. E.g. they can offer more than 4 weeks of vacation, unlike many enterprise companies. As a CEO, when I gave people 6 weeks of real vacation, they would never leave, since they cannot get that at bigger companies in the US. (We also stongly encouraged them to use their vacation, because a healthy work-life balance is better for the company.) Startups also have more flexibility on WFH, travel options, and other non-cash benefits like providing more authority over your schedule and tasks. They are typically strapped for cash, unless they are not actually startups anymore because they raised $100M, and just like the moniker.
- autarch 1y agoI'm working at a mid-size company, c. 5,500 employees. We have unlimited vacation (for US employees). I have taken about 6 weeks every year with no issues. I made sure to check that this was okay before accepting the offer, because unlimited can also mean "no one ever takes vacation".
- danjl 1y agoThe problem with unlimited vacation is that the majority of engineers never have the guts to ask for it, just like they don't know how to negotiate. Unlimited vacation is a benefit for the company not the employee. It avoids taxes and complications due to carryover constraints.
- autarch 1y agoTo clarify, unlimited vacation is the company policy for all US employees. I'm just saying you don't need to work at a startup to get 6 weeks PTO.
- danjl 1y agoUnlimited vacation is in no way the same thing as 6 weeks of actual vacation. Look into it a bit more. You'll see that unlimited vacation is really just a scam. In your case it's worked out. Actual vacation days are tracked and part of your salary. For example, if you leave, you are entitled to the wages of your remaining untaken vacation days. Unlimited vacation is a favor that your manager is granting. The company is not obligated to grant your request. You have no legal right to take the days off as you do with real vacation.
- Trasmatta 1y agoYeah, as someone with 10+ YOE, there seem to be tons of opportunities with good packages right now. Companies still seem to need lots of senior devs: the market looks much much harder for anyone with less experience right now
- mixmastamyk 1y agoDo tell.
- 0x5f3759df-i 1y agoMaybe if you have 5+ years experience at FAANG or something. I have 5+ years experience at a no name place and can’t even get an interview anywhere. Maybe my resume is shit but I’ve tried many different versions with no luck in the last 4-5 months.
- mgraczyk 1y agoYou may want to try moving to the bay area or NYC for a few years if you're not already in one of those places. It's much easier to get a good job, then you can move away after you have the "right" experience. Also follow the advice in the article, in particular find people you want to work for and DM them
- braden-lk 1y agoThere's been this vein of advice from the past decade that's in the realm of "just work at FAANG". Always rubbed me the wrong way; they make it sound so easy, lol. The couple of interviews I managed to get after hundreds of ghostings, I was absolutely demolished in the interviews. It seems like if you get nervous doing math problems in front of people who really don't want to be there (and tell you to your face), you don't get to work at FAANG. Just started my own business instead.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoClearly the advice can’t be for the literal 50th percentile HN reader in 2025… because nowadays there are hundreds of thousands of readers. And all the FAANG combined probably don’t even have half that many positions, with negotiable salaries, in total worldwide.
- rsanek 1y agoi mean, even if we only include Apple Microsoft and Google you're already up to more than half a million employees
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
- SoftTalker 1y agoOnly consider equity if there is actually a market value for it. Early stage startups hand out equity options that likely will not ever be worth anything.
- eadmund 1y ago> At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary Never take equity over salary. Equity at a startup is a lottery ticket. Would you agree to be paid $10,000 less for $10,000 in lottery tickets? For $20,000 in lottery tickets?
- have-a-break 1y agoHonestly at work LLMs seemed to make me less productive. For side projects they help but I've seen papers indicating this is the case for industry. We as engineers have let the recruiters and VC funding brainwash us into lower salaries. Kind of looking forward to a rebound.
- JonChesterfield 1y agoI'm decently excited about the new world of hugely increased quantity of terrible code. Not absolutely sure how to go mining yet but it has opportunity written all over it.
- rednafi 1y agoThis is my experience too. All these LLMs and agents are great for bootstrapping projects faster than ever. They help immensely with bringing down the activation energy. So I do a lot more tinkering around in multiple languages that I wouldn’t have otherwise. That said, once the project goes beyond a certain threshold, LLMs offer little more than a highly capable autocomplete. In larger codebases, the current context window is too small for the tools to even answer questions properly, let alone make any non-trivial changes. Productivity starts going down once you try to use LLMs in a large codebase and expect them to be as helpful as they were in a smaller one. Often, these authoritative little shits will whirl you around in a doom loop and still won’t find any useful solution. And suddenly you find yourself having to clean up the mess. I’d still say the productivity benefit is positive, but at the same time, the hype around these is bonkers. Employers are holding onto the hype cycle to bring down wages through FUD.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago> LLMs offer little more than a highly capable autocomplete I find LLM autocomplete extremely annoying compared to traditional intellisense It is wrong way more and I don't want multi-line autocomplete, it's too intrusive
- GardenLetter27 1y ago
- peab 1y agothat's because it was written in 2012! The original essay is here: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ (Originally written: January 23, 2012)
- onion2k 1y ago2012! is a very long way in the future.
- jiveturkey 1y agothe author updated and republished it this year, and clearly thinks it is still relevant.
- jiveturkey 1y agothe author updated and republished it this year, and clearly thinks it is still relevant, post-mass-layoffs and post-section-174.
- dakiol 1y ago> Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to There is negotation power but only if you pass all the interview challenges. Only at that point you are in a position to name your number (of course you won't ask $500K when you know the company you are applying to pays around $200K... because you have done your previous research on that; you'll ask something between $200K and $250K and see how they react). Layoffs and AI hasn't change this (sure, thing, 5 years ago companies were hiring more and perhaps were more relaxed about this, but that didn't change the fact that you can only negotiate when they want you)