Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily make more than $150k base per year. Venture backed companies should pay their employ

Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily make more than $150k base per year. Venture backed companies should pay their employees well though. If you're worried about food / shelter or constantly wondering if a shift in jobs would give you a disproportionate gain in quality of life then you're not focused on the startup. The biggest advantage of raising a lot of money is so that you can pay a lot of money and not have your team worrying about "I'd have loved to do that trip to Paris, but can't afford it. If I quit for Google, then I'd be good to go. That said, I'm a believer that founders shouldn't be the highest paid employees.