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Ask HN: What up with these startup salaries?

• PaulHoule 12y ago
  In Silicon Valley though they have pool tables and dart boards and a refrigerator full of munchies. Also it doesn't get cold so it is a lot easier to live outside than it is in NYC. Real companies in SV do pay real money but for the average startup it is the 22 yr old who has no experience that hopes the 19 yr old working for him doesn't realize he is faking it before he makes it. They are not going to get a good marketing director at that price but they can find one who doesn't think he needs health insurance.
  • krenoten 12y ago
    Biased by my own experience and I can't speak to the average, but there are certainly plenty of small companies with pool tables, dart boards, and stocked refrigerators in NYC. Having seasons is preferable for many people. For the people who don't like the seasons, they are usually comforted by the infinite cultural novelty that is crammed within these streets. Both are nice places, but I'm pretty skeptical that anyone is paying less there "because it's nicer".
    • phamilton 12y ago
      I'd argue the opposite. Cost of living is higher because it's nicer, aka the "sun tax". Startups therefore have to pay more because it's nicer.
      • krenoten 12y ago
        busts out the Korzybski - any time you get Aristotelian with equivalences you almost certainly step in a pile of truthless crap, so let's become a little more respectful of language. Housing and rental prices roughly approximate demand. "nicer" differs from demand by virtue of passing through the filters of averaging and composition with myriad factors, which an individual may never fully comprehend. Preference often significantly differs from average. Complexity accomodates deviation. NYC far exceeds the complexity of the bay area, thus accommodating a far greater range of deviation from any such single metric :P
    • RickS 12y ago
      I believe he was being facetious - seemingly flashy perks are very commonly used a substitute for actual money, and it works stunningly well. 5k in catering and laundry will shave 20k off an entry level salary more often than it should.
      • deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        • RickS 12y ago
          Astute of you to mention Palantir - I spent some time there a few years ago. To their credit, they took stunningly good care of me as an intern. Fair rate, and every perk I've ever seen listed by any company ever. However, I was very surprised to find that they were making hires at the intern pay rates with even fewer perks. Seems to be somewhat of a bait and switch. Then again, they're on the short list of places where I'd actually consider the equity worth more than the paper it's printed on.
  • untog 12y ago
    Also it doesn't get cold so it is a lot easier to live outside than it is in NYC. Just reminds me of people sleeping in their cars in Silicon Valley. I still absolutely cannot believe that people do it, but to each their own I suppose...
• lion_del 12y ago
  I understand your point of view - these numbers do not make much sense to me at all - I'd imagine any good engineer would understand his value in the current market and look to maximise his return. But I imagine these people are following the trends they see in other posts, and also hoping that other factors of the job (company, mission, people, coding environment) add weight to their opportunity. The biggest irk I have with a number of these posts is indeed the equity offering. Whilst I can't comment, or be correct on all the companies, most of them seem quite early stage. I would expect them to offer a larger amount of equity (higher pcg). This to a lot of early stage hires can be a big a motivator. If the company offers a large chunk then it shows a commitment to that person that they value their contribution and see them as critical in the success of the company.
• carsongross 12y ago
  The problem is a dearth of technical talent. We need to let in more technical workers to address this issue.
  • intortus 12y ago
    Or maybe get better at finding and attracting all the talent that already exists in the US. A lot of people won't go near a SV startup with a 10 ft pole.
    • busterarm 12y ago
      Yup. Once and never again. Even as remote.
  • op00to 12y ago
    Maybe I've been trolled, but ... if technical talent is scarce, wouldn't salaries be higher, based on basic economics? I don't see how flooding the market with more technical workers will increase salaries.
    • jjoonathan 12y ago
      Yes. It's a joke: VCs (to include PG) claim that talent is scarce because it is in their self interest to lobby for measures that would increase the talent pool and decrease salaries. They will continue to make this claim no matter what the market says about how scarce talent actually is. carsongross is mocking their fib for transparently contradicting basic economics.
  • ssharp 12y ago
    Shouldn't a lack of talent mean that existing talent should be paid more?
    • zecho 12y ago
      You would think, but management can often have difficulty seeing how macro trends affect them. From their perspective, they shouldn't have to pay more for the same and adding new staff at higher pay than old staff seems unfair. My previous job had difficulty finding talented engineers, party due to comparatively low salary offers. When I and two others left our team of 8 and two more made it known they were actively looking because we saw all trends outside our office, it became clearer to management. Only when 3/8ths of their staff left did they make major changes to their existing packages. And even then, pay is significantly below market. (Though they have the best time off and fringe benefits in town.)
• blfr 12y ago
  Maybe compensation is more negotiable than it seems? Or people are willing to lower their rates to associate with the YC brand? Maybe they treat it more like an internship in preparation for starting their own company? Perhaps work conditions are so great that it doesn't feel like work at all. Finally, startups might be willing to take a chance on applicants lacking credentials. Just guessing here. We would need to ask someone who accepted an offer and they might be, understandably, reluctant to discuss it in public.
• boredprog 12y ago
  Throwaway for obvious reasons, though you might figure out who I am if you know me personally. For early stage startups, I was being told 100k + 1% was standard in NYC. This was by several places, or you could just go look at AngelList where they often explicitly list it. I ended up getting rejected by tons of NYC late-stage startups (Percolate, Recombine, Betterment, YCharts, Digital Ocean, SquareSpace, Airtime), and I'm 90% sure that compensation expectations were a big reason, since I usually got past the tech screen but things broke down once we started talking compensation. I also got knocked out by some tech screens because they are crapshoots, and when I do 15 code screens I'm bound to make a few mistakes. The market is in a weird spot, tons of companies desperately want engineers but they are freaked out by how fast salaries are climbing. They really don't want to go into bidding wars over people, and they really don't want to give new hires more then current hires and then be forced to give their entire engineering staff raises. Based on some conversations, I think they actually expect salaries to go back down but I think they are delusional, I hear an incredible amount of companies that are planning on ramping up hiring. Now granted if I could reliably predict macroeconomic trends I wouldn't need to work for someone else, so I'm just guessing. I do think there might be an "app"/"big data" bubble but there are so many traditional businesses ramping up on software hiring for things like ecommerce, logistics, and operations. Companies will say they can't find talent and will pay whatever (i.e. pg), but it's bullshit, cost is still an enormous factor and they are working hard to keep it down via information asymmetry, bait-and-switch tactics (had several companies tell me one number on Hired and then go significantly lower in person), immigration lobbying, etc. De Blasio just signed some "tech talent pipeline" thing, which is pretty ridiculous given how many places rejected me. If talent was really short, they wouldn't make people with 8 years of experience and a portfolio explain the difference between a linked list and array over the phone, they would be upfront about salary numbers (and actually show up with that number rather than one that was 10k lower) etc etc. There is a ton of VC money out there and a lot of companies still think it's 2009 and they can get people cheap, a lot of average engineers are now VP of Engineering at some random startup with no team, and still thinking they can fill out that team with people making less than them. In reality, you have to pay me _more_ to take a lower role, not less like they expect. Also this is unrelated to salary but I got rejected by tons of places for seemingly no reason, when it's not compensation expectations I think it's a general sense of elitism and "we have a high bar", "we need false negatives". It's idiotic to do that then complain you can't find people but they all do, I think they take a sick pride in rejecting people and feeling selective, even if it hurts them. I'm pretty sure if you are a qualified heart surgeon, most places looking for heart surgeons will hire you, but if you are a qualified engineer you go through an insane interview process and no matter how good you are, 70% of the time you get rejected for some bullshit false negative reason. Feel incredibly lucky I snagged that Google offer. There is not tech talent shortage, it's 100% about cost. Meanwhile, in-house counsel with comparable experience can easily swing 160k base, the VCs and the CEOs pay themselves well, etc etc. They still view engineers as rank-and-file bitches who are at the bottom of the totem pole and whose salary must be kept low. /rant
• lettergram 12y ago
  Let me start off with, I agree with you, the salaries and equity seem a bit low. $125k is a bit high though, a few of my friends who went straight to Google out of college only have a salary of $95k - $125k. However... 1) Funds are limited, yes that's not a lot of money, but I have several friends who went to work at startups because they enjoyed the atmosphere. 2) A fair number of people accepting those job positions have zero experience and/or dropped out of college. 3) Some of the people who join startups at those wages are based out of other countries, where those salaries are massive. I know two people who are working remotely for starups in that fashion and they love it. 4) 1% equity is very, and YC is pushing to increase that. However, if it wasn't working they wouldn't/couldn't do it.
  • boredprog 12y ago
    Google total compensation is far, far better than the average startup given the same base.
    • phamilton 12y ago
      Agreed. Anecdotal example one year out of school (not me but a friend): 120k base plus 15% bonus plus 300 RSUs over 4 years means total comp is in the 170k range.
• AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  Probably two things going on. 1. The "significant positions" are relative to the size of the company. Startup X's director of marketing /= Twitter's director of marketing. So the competence needs aren't the same and as a result the salary reflects that. 2.Funding levels aren't there to offer higher salaries. There is no good answer to either of these. I see stupid comments on here all the time like, "Well if you can't pay me 200k a year with unlimited vacation and healthcare and a 401k then you aren't ready for those positions." Fine, go work for Google and don't worry about startup jobs, that shouldn't prevent Startup X for trying to fill that position with those skills. People also need a reality check. 110k is double the median salary for California [1], so if you are getting those offers anywhere else than SF you are making out like a bandit. Their ownership is purely symbolic, in a relative sense, and it's a symbol of how little they own relative to a founder. This is naiive. An employees risk is several magnitudes less than the founders across many factors. That said, some of the first employees get shafted on equity/pay and I think that is worth addressing, but again it is based on market rates. The other thing you can choose is to go work for a employee owned company if you choose. [1]http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/16/156688596/what-americans-earn http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/16/156688596/what-ame...
  • bayesianhorse 12y ago
    If someone works for a start up at lower rates, and very little equity, then they also carry a lot of risk. The pay-difference amounts to an investment, whose profit entirely depends on the value of the equity, which is close to 0 in most cases.
    • AndrewKemendo 12y ago
      Agreed, which is why I stated as such. Determining equity/pay balance for employees is very difficult in the very early stages. This is why we lean towards the high side for pay vs equity because it is immediately tangible. I think it is largely dependent on the hire what this ratio should be and shouldn't be a formula - despite what "the industry" says. At the end of the day it's whatever the individuals think is fair.
• make3 12y ago
  you also have to factor in the fact that, as high as it is, housing cost in SF and in the Bay are still double digits percentage lower than NYC. Living in San José or Palo Alto is something like 30% less expensive then in NYC. That's big, considering you might be paying 35k a year for your housing.
  • carterschonwald 12y ago
    Actually seems to be the other way around in my experience.
  • AngusMcQuarrie 12y ago
    Not sure where you're getting your information from. SF became more expensive than NYC a couple of years ago. http://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-priciest-us-cities-to-rent-an-apartment/ http://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-priciest-us-cities-to-re... http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/12/most-expensive-city-to-live-us.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/12/most-expens...
  • Ologn 12y ago
    Not really. If you feel compelled to rent a one bedroom apartment in the West Village or Williamsburg maybe. There are plenty of cheap, low crime places to live within the city limits with access to the subway and local supermarkets etc. They might not be the center of hipsterdom, but they are affordable. In the Bay Area, Caltrans trains do not go south between midnight and 5AM. Same with BART trains leaving San Francisco. This was a problem when I was out there. New York is not like this - PATH, LIRR, Metro North, and NJ Transit have trains running at all hours. There are plenty of affordable places with a 20 minute commute to Manhattan, and even more within a 25 minute commute, and more within a 30 minute commute etc. I see people move to NYC, insist on living in a nice part of Manhattan, then complain how expensive their apartment and groceries are and how small their apartment is. There are plenty of nice, cheaper places they could be living if they were willing to be part of the dreaded "bridge and tunnel" crowd.
• artemk 12y ago
  There are a number of details to understand that explain the salary / equity. The first thing is the range. More jr. candidates are on the lower end of both salary and equity. Yet relatively close to market rates. More sr. candidates are on the higher end of range and usually have to decide if they value equity or salary more, for the final compensation package. The second thing is the type of start ups that offer this level of compensation: early stage / seed-funded. These are not Uber, AirBnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. especially given that many companies that post on HN are graduates of YC, these guys have their first major investment to work with post-demo day. They aren't working with $25-50-100 million. They have $1-2 million to make the most out of. This limits the ability to pay market rate. Yet allows for engineers to be on the ground floor of a potentially a huge opportunity (or not). Third thing is the equity...and a bit of a reality check. The founders came up with an idea, worked on it for quite a while, with $0 salary, applied to and got into YC, raised (in all absolutes) a large amount of money (you try getting someone to give you $1 million), gave up some of the equity for that funding, and you want what, 10%? 20%? What sounds fair? Unless you're the first engineer, with a background of leadership that will make you qualified to lead the growing team, 1% is extremely fair. If the company is truly successful, you're looking to make over $1 million. Even if you're underpaid by $50k, that's 20-years worth of difference, which you'll see in under 5 years. Of course there's no guarantee, but that's business. The other question to ask is are you getting options or RSUs - huge difference. And finally, the low salaries are typically brought up to market rate after series A (the first big round). This round is usually raised with 0-2 years of the seed round. So you take a risk of $50Kx2 and stand to make $50x20. That doesn't sound that crazy.
  • tomp 12y ago
    > If the company is truly successful, you're looking to make over $1 million. Even if you're underpaid by $50k, that's 20-years worth of difference, which you'll see in under 5 years. You can't evaluate the "equity" part of compensation like that. The chances of that happening are very low, and you're most likely to get diluted further. E.g. the chances of >$100M exit are 10% (which is a huge overestimate), it takes 5 years, and you get diluted 50% (so you end up with 0.5% of the company): you get $1M, which is $200K per year, with a probability of 10%, so the expected value is $20K. Sure, the exit might be an order (or two) of magnitude higher, but the chances of that happening drop even more rapidly. Of course, you might be risk-loving, accept the equity not for the expected value, but for the variance, but then again, I don't think it's (usually) worth it.
• four 12y ago
  You have taken the words right out of my mouth! I, too, would like to understand the reasons. I just read the Chariot Lead Designer post with dismay. (https://angel.co/chariot/jobs/45415-lead-designer https://angel.co/chariot/jobs/45415-lead-designer) Now, the other comments are interesting, but speculative or general to the point of not providing applicable knowledge. I will come back to see if anyone who set these terms will tell us their reasoning. My interest is practical. I have been thinking about compensation lately in case I have the good fortune to: 1) get into YC S15 and 2) survive and 3) need to hire. Also, I mentor designers and so am a sponge for compensation data and explanations.
  • 300bps 12y ago
    I just read the Chariot Lead Designer post with dismay. In my opinion, the only person that takes that job is someone without a current job who is getting desperate. They'll work there for however long it takes them to get a better job and then leave them abruptly.
  • mycroft-holmes 12y ago
    60-90k in San Francisco? Can you even make it in SF with that salary?
    • joesmo 12y ago
      You might be able to get by with 90k, assuming you're frugal, though given the rents today, it would be wise to live outside the city. 60k would be a pretty crappy existence in SF these days.
      • jwatte 12y ago
        60k is what an experienced teacher makes. Who do you want to teach your children? Would you want them to live in your community?
        • joesmo 12y ago
          I would want them to make a decent wage (much more than 60k in SF) for their hard, essential work. Whether they live in the "community" or not is irrelevant (except for their commute, in which case, yes). It won't lead to better education or a better experience for the children.
• falcolas 12y ago
  One of the things I've noticed in the NY market is that you're competing against the financial giants, who offer correspondingly huge salaries, and who tend to churn through people very quickly. If you want to lure someone to your company, you have to compete a lot more on salary than you might have to in SF; in the back of their mind they're comparing you against the big bucks they could make down the street.
• logicallee 12y ago
  <s> Let's also talk about the incredibly short shrift founders get who are bootstrapping pre-product. Why do I need to complete a product and make sales, get funding, before I can pay myself a salary? Building a company require resources. I have to eat and pay rent. But my company, without resources, can't pay me, even if I'm 100% of its labor pool, being a solo founder/CEO (on the startup I'm referring to - there's another I'm involved with with a cofounder); No salary. Why can't I just write a SMALL check to myself, why do I need either investment or sales to do this? Can't the money just NOT have to come from somewhere? This is rather unfair, I hope people here will agree. The only way I see out is building massive value. Unlike your example, where you get 1% while having a six-figure salary and chance to learn to do it all and become a millionaire on your own next, I am not even earning 5 figures. how is this fair? Maybe I shouldn't be doing a startuuuuuuu -oh, I see what your problem is :) :) :) </s> Seriously. Why do you want to work for a startup if you don't want to end up with 1% of a $100M company, while receiving six figures for the privilege (i.e. someone is paying you, six figures, to play the lottery; and being highly technical and having direct effect in your role, you both have asymmetric information and can build the lotterys' RNG yourself, e.g. by building the best product on the market and protecting that status.) Finally you get to learn everything it takes to found your own startup and receive funding later. there are a million BigCorp's that compete without regard for startup aignment or risk/reward. what makes you want to work for a startup anyway, given what you've described? Wouldn't you be a better match for Microsoft or Google? honest questions here and a perspective from the other side - someone with a large founding appetite rather than salary requirement.
  • eropple 12y ago
    The odds are hilariously against your startup being a $100MM company. They are not hilariously against your company being shitty, exploitative, and--my favorite--promising to prepare J. Random Engineer to "found their own startup" while instead leeching their free time and their weekends for your dream of socialmobilelocal. And let's be very clear about something: "making six figures" does not mean you are not being exploited. The magnitude of that exploitation certainly differs from that of economic underclasses, but the attitude does not. And I am mostly out of startups these days because of the attitudes expressed in your post. I cheer for a bubble, because it'll wash some of the toxicity out--and you espouse a lot of it.
• weissguy 12y ago
  I don't have any insightful macroeconomic explanation to offer. Just my $0.02: if you are complaining about earning $80,000 to sit behind a computer screen and type all day, you are one entitled SOB. There are 10 million people in China and India who would probably cut off their right arm if it meant they could work for a well-funded startup in the Bay Area for $40,000 a year. They'd make it work even if they had to live in RV's in Fremont.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • noir_lord 12y ago
    So what? By your logic we should all feel fortunate we have a toilet that flushes or fresh water out the tap because not everyone has those and maybe we should but that wasn't what he asked was it. He asked why is there such a big apparent difference between similar roles in different places, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to ask and could have done without the holier than thou spiel.
  • amolgupta 12y ago
    "Sit behind computer screen and type all day" is the worst thing I have heard about my job and "cut off their right arm if it meant they could work for a well-funded startup" the worst about my country. It requires great skill to build a company or be the part of first 10 employees. You cant just pick up a person on the street who knows how to type and expect them to build a Google. And as far as the India/China situation is concerned, you get to brag only because of the currency conversion rates. Lookup the number of Indian and Chineese employees in top US copmanies and startups and also do some research about the startups in these countries, if you know how to type into a search engine.
  • pastProlog 12y ago
    > if you are complaining about earning $80,000 to sit behind a computer screen and type all day, you are one entitled SOB. What does that make the LP's, and VC's, and angels, and accelerators, who do no work, and sit on their yachts whining how much money that the workers who do all the work are making? I do all the work and I create all the wealth. If I am being paid $80k, then on average I am creating $100k, or $120k etc. for the company. It's a joke that the parasites who live on my sweat, and their toadies like yourself would use the word entitled. Yes, I am entitled to the wealth I create, in fact I am entitled to more than that. If the wealth I create does not go to me who worked to create it, who is it going to? To the lazy heir LP. You advocate more going to these parasites which just reflects how you think - like a parasite.
• jkaljundi 12y ago
  On the 0.5-1% equity, here is an old post by Venturehacks/Angellist outlining the early stage (series A) option pool shuffle: http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle So while the table lists 0.5-1% for early stage lead engineer, it might be bigger for team of 3, 5 or 10 people in seed stage. "To allocate the option pool from the hiring plan, use these current ranges for option grants in Silicon Valley: Title Range (%) CEO 5 – 10 COO 2 – 5 VP 1 – 2 Independent Board Member 1 Director 0.4 – 1.25 Lead Engineer 0.5 – 1 5+ years experience Engineer 0.33 – 0.66 Manager or Junior Engineer 0.2 – 0.33 These are rough ranges – not bell curves – for new hires once a company has raised its Series A."
• joesmo 12y ago
  It seems like all the positions you mention, at least for developers, are looking to hire junior developers with that salary (though they may not realize it themselves). In my limited experience with NYC jobs, the salaries tend to be a bit lower than SF or Silicon Valley, despite the equal to greater cost of living. For senior positions in the Bay Area doing web development and such, I see salaries in the $140-$175 area, with most being around $140-$160k. Actually, these numbers haven't really changed in the past four years or so, which makes the discussions about salary inflation puzzling to me. I'm sure you can get more at Google and such, but these are the typical offers and ranges I've seen at various companies, most of them startups of some sort. NYC should be on par. There might be more companies that don't want to go as high, but there will be plenty of companies that do in both cities. There is no shortage of tech workers, but companies seem to have trouble finding qualified ones anyway. What puzzles me about this, is why a company would refuse to hire someone they really want because of salary, yet settle for someone that they're not that impressed with simply to save $10k or so a year. EDIT: Note that I ignored the equity completely in this case as it's really irrelevant (generally worth nothing).
  • dannylandau 12y ago
    That's a good point you are making. There seems to be a congnitive disconnect when employer says that they are looking for 10x engineers, but then not willing to pay them even 10K extra. In my opinion, and experience with hiring engineers, the 10x'ers are definitely worth the extra salary and a lot more!
    • TimPC 12y ago
      It's almost at the point where the combination of 10X, standard 'senior' developer role and salary is a contradiction in terms. There are some highly talented developers doing very senior roles on teams, some founding their own businesses and a large number doing contract work. Very few 10X'ers value themselves at below 2x and almost no companies have structures that allow them to play double an average developer salary for talent.
  • busterarm 12y ago
    SF cost of living crossed over to being higher than NYC five or six years ago. I'm from NYC and remember going to SF in 2007 and things were noticeably more expensive then. That's part of the reason that salaries in SF are a fair bit higher.
• throwawaythisis 12y ago
  Based on personal experience and observation of some startups around here this is the dynamic that I've seen and what could be happening: - startup gets some funding, but not a lot, and needs (more) developers - startup founders think they can find good developers at rates that are similar to those of 'regular' developers outside the Silicon Valley / HN bubble / web development scene. Possibly because these founders are non-technical and mostly have experience in bigger, more 'boring' companies where developers aren't 'essential' (or don't seem to be), or groomed inside the company and happy with lower salaries. - startup finds out that nobody will take the jobs at the offered salaries - startup decides to be more creative and - if they're very lucky - find: 1. competent, usually remote developers who are willing to work for much less than the going rate in home country 2. oblivious developers or developers just out of college who have no clue how much they can make Unfortunately, what I suspect often happens is that they end up hiring subpar developers who just want to get paid an acceptable salary and know nothing about their potential value in their field, or developers who are under-qualified for the specific challenges that many startups face (web-based, mobile apps, rapid development, need for independence and taking initiative because it's chaotic). And the founders of these companies, if they're not technical, might never quite realize that in the end they're probably wasting more money because the codebase is terrible. While I would never argue that the only competent developers are those in the 'SV/HN/web bubble', I do think it makes sense that there's a correlation between developers who are oblivious to their value and the rest of their field, and developers who are still stuck in older, less efficient approaches to many startup's problems. Pay your developers well!
  • jwatte 12y ago
    "they're probably wasting more money because the codebase is terrible." A terrible code base that serves customers is better than a beautiful codebase that goes unused. I think your criteria is expressed poorly. Perhaps you meant that bad developers are unable to produce code that serves customers well? Add in, a terrible product. (Product != codebase)
    • sfennell 12y ago
      I do agree that a product that functions on bad code is better than no product at all. If there where very terrible design decisions made in the beginning. This could have a very negative impact as the business starts to add customers. A terrible codebase will _eventually_ fail to serve customers for a few different reasons. Scalability is huge and may be very difficult to find performance problems and fix. maintenance time, and time to add new features are places where a terrible codebase will eventually impact a customer.
• mbesto 12y ago
  You are right, YC companies are under-market in the straight line terms of salary and equity. My theory is that many people are willing to work for YC companies for less money in the early days. Why? 1. Lower risk (wether perceived or otherwise) 2. Better mobility ("I was hire #2 at prestigious YC company XYZ") 3. Better personal networking ("Hey founder, can you put me in touch with XYZ at YC company Foo") Note - As many people point out, the same engineer who would work at a YC startup would make much less than going to Google/FB, etc. This is a pretty well known fact.
• joshvm 12y ago
  Anyone know what the equivalent standards are for the UK? Perspective: the average gross salary here is between £25-30k or around $46k max. $125k or £80k is senior staff pay in most organisations. Even among general engineering positions (not necessarily coding), a 'good' salary here is £35-40k. From what Google tells me it looks like wages top out at around £50k for experienced devs.
  • shubb 12y ago
    Outside startup in the UK, experienced developers outside London get 40-60K, with very talented ones getting more. However, plenty of decent experienced developers also get less than that. Salaries are pretty random when it comes down to it. In my network, I also see fresh graduates getting hired on anything from 18K to 35K, and I'm thinking of one who just settled for 18K after a 6 month job hunt and one interview who I'd rate among the better ones.
  • justincormack 12y ago
    I only know London, but senior people get more than £50k. It is slightly confused by finance, which pays much more, and people who contract - lots of companies pay little for permanent staff but pay £500 a day for long term contractors, which makes no sense, as if they upped their permanent rates they could hire good people instead.
    • twic 12y ago
      This is for established companies rather than startups, right? My experience here has been the same - as a good developer with several years experience, it wasn't hard finding offers at 65k from big tech firms (plus substantial but slow-vesting stock in one case). I spoke to a couple of startups, and they didn't want to pay that much, but I would guess that they could have done 55k. If I went contracting, I think I'd be looking for 550-600 a day.
    • nvarsj 12y ago
      It makes some sense. Overhead of a permanent employee in UK is pretty high. I've heard estimates as high as 50% of base salary, maybe more. On top of that are the usual perks, 3 months notice, and an onerous process to get you fired. Once permie, you're basically guaranteed employment unless your company goes broke. Compare that to the contractor. There is virtually no overhead for the company. They claim VAT, and expense your rate. And it's very easy to get rid of you, or hire you. A company can ramp up and ramp down as the need arises for new projects - which has a lot of appeal. It's interesting for me coming from the U.S.. I think it's largely a result of the regulation. An at-will permanent employee system, like in the US, seems to benefit in-demand professions a lot more than the UK/EU regulated system.
• sillysaurus3 12y ago
  The reason YC companies are offering salaries like that is because people accept them. If people didn't accept them, they would offer higher salaries. They'd have to. And if people are accepting those salaries, then that's fundamentally what the position is worth. Why would they offer more money? There's no such thing as a salary floor for a position. There's a salary floor for a specific developer. It's based entirely on what that developer is willing to accept.
  • kasey_junk 12y ago
    I completely agree with your market forces answer to the salary compensation numbers. So it's not interesting why YC companies are offering salaries like that, rather its more interesting to wonder why they are willing to accept the developers salaries like that filter for. The developers who would accept those salaries either are a) worth less than the median salary b) don't know their value in the industry c) are naive about the true value of the equity part of the compensation or d) are happy to not maximize their earnings. All of those filters seem to bias towards inexperienced developers without others who rely on their income (ie young developers from relatively financially stable backgrounds) or those who have no other choices. So that seems to imply one or more of the following: - software is the first craft ever where experience does not improve performance. - writing good software is not important. - neither is long term team cohesion, as that is very difficult to maintain in the face of chronic underpayment. So the most likely thing this implies, is that the successes YC companies are shooting for on not predicated on writing long term sustainable good software. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. But I worry that when that isn't explicit it has negative ramifications in environments where writing good software is important for success. If people confuse success as a YC company with success at writing good software they may take the wrong lessons away.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • DenisM 12y ago
      Before you start your own first startup you wold do well to work for someone else's. Learn on their mistakes, on their dime, make connections while you can. It's far more expensive to do it all on your own dime.
• cpwright 12y ago
  In NY, at least for a developer Google and Facebook have to compete against banks and hedge funds for talent. In my experience, Google can pretty well go toe-to-toe with them if they desire. So that finance offers higher compensation, means Google also has to offer higher compensation. Now some speculation, if Google is offering higher compensation than they otherwise would, so will other companies competing for the same talent. Even if you only think they are fiercely competing at the high-end of the market, I would believe there is some trickle down to the mid-range, which when then also go down to the lower end.
• Alex3917 12y ago
  > I would love to understand the logic here I actually don't think this is unreasonable. Even if you are employee #5, you probably didn't work on the product for a couple years without paying yourself, pay 30k+ out of pocket for a patent, designers, and other initial expenses, raise the money to hire employees, etc. At most startups, even if they are successful, there still isn't enough money to make everyone super wealthy. So I think it's reasonable that the bulk of the equity goes to the folks who took the most risk, and everyone else gets a decent salary, a reasonable work week, enough equity to be worth a nice bonus if the company is sold, and ownership over whatever side projects they create. Now if the company really was started two weeks ago and you're getting paid dramatically under market then that's a completely different story, but a lot of times even the earliest employees are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
  • fapjacks 12y ago
    I think this is an error in thinking. If the company goes under, everyone is out of a job, not just the founders. The "risk" here is completely overstated for the founding members versus early employees. And the "CEOs can only fail a couple of times" is laughable anecdote. This isn't Baghdad, it's a startup. The risk is about equal for everyone involved.
• tomasien 12y ago
  In New York, people have given up on equity. I hear this time and again in the NYC tech scene - building a company is hard in NYC because people don't believe equity is worth anything because of the bullshit that happened in the first bubble. In New York especially, there were a lot of shenanigans with equity in 99/00 bubble/crash era where companies got sold and employees got nothing because of liquidation preferences and other things. The eco-system has not regained its trust and the mythos of worthless equity persists. Your point about "what is that compared to the person next to you" reflects this: you're thinking about equity relative to others as important, vs. the odds that 1% turns into various amounts of money. YC companies get soft landings/acquihires at a high rate and also often become worth a lot. 1% equity in a YC company you believe in is equity worth having. (key words: you believe in).
  • hyperpape 12y ago
    What is the average exit for a YC company, and how many years will that early employee need to work to keep their payout? Saying it's worth having is pretty vague.
  • sillysaurus3 12y ago
    1% equity in a company that exits for $10M or less probably isn't worth having. Since many companies exit for $10M or less, that means getting 1% equity usually isn't worthwhile. 1% equity in a $10M exit would net you $100k. Given a four year vesting schedule, that's $25k/yr. Since you're working for a startup, your salary might very well be much less than $25k/yr of what you're normally worth at other companies. Aggressively negotiating your salary at a non-startup company can get you that much and then some. So it's about whether you believe the company will make a >$10M exit, knowing that most companies die and many exit for $10M or less. It's also about other factors. For example, whether you get paid depends on liquidation preferences, and how much you get paid depends on dilution and taxes. Also cost of living. I've heard that decent apartments in SF can go for $3k. (Zillow seems to confirm that many apartments are around $3k.) Compared to a $1,500 apartment in a place with reasonable cost of living, that's an extra $18k/yr that you'll need to pay just to live there. Actually, that's $18k/yr of post-tax salary, so more like $36k/yr of salary.
• MalcolmDiggs 12y ago
  IMHO the publicly listed salaries are usually BS. For one reason or another, they feel compelled to list something regarding salary, but they also don't want to "show their hand", so they list a humble level of comp. But in reality, when you're in a salary-negotiation with any of those companies, the comp-level listed in their hiring ad goes right out the window.
• qzcx 12y ago
  Considering I got offers of $65K, $83K and $95K fresh out of college this year, I would say they aren't looking for experienced developers.
  • pconner 12y ago
    In what cities?
    • qzcx 12y ago
      Boise, Idaho; Fort Collins, CO; Madison, WI respectively
• percept 12y ago
  http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/01/25/cheat-sheet-10-richest-cities/21394881/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/01/...
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• SeoxyS 12y ago
  AngelList has a page where you can explore startup salary data and filter by location (and other things): http://angel.co/salaries http://angel.co/salaries Full disclosure: I work at AngelList.
  • throwawaynyc 12y ago
    I hope someone from AngelList read this comment: I live in NYC and was job hunting about a year ago because I wanted to move on after four years at my previous company. I am currently employed at a new startup and very satisfied with my current compensation. I spent a lot of time on AngelList jobs page looking for companies aligned with my interests and I finally interviewed at two of them. When we got to the salary negotiation stage, their pay scale were nothing close to what was advertised on their AngelList jobs page. I also have to say, that I don't care about equity (I've had some disappointments before regarding equity). I ended up at a different company that I found on Stack Overflow Careers. (I don't have any affiliation with SO) I don't know if someone else has had the same experience with AngelList companies, but I think they advertise high salaries only to get more visibility and a better ranking on search results. I don't know if there is a way for AngelList to control this, maybe allowing candidates and employees to add reviews about the interview process could be an idea.
    • dzohrob 12y ago
      Hi there, I run AngelList Talent. I'm really sorry to hear about your bad experience. Our guidelines require companies to list fair and accurate compensation [1]. We receive and act upon candidates' reports of bad company behavior -- from unprofessionalism to salaries not matching the ranges they've posted -- every day. Many companies who get reported are banned from using the service. And to help combat this specific problem, I've recently (in the last month) made our job posting form much more explicit about our rules around compensation and recruiters. Your suggestion that we accept reviews from candidates and employees is a good one -- it's on our to-do list for the next quarter. I think it'll go a long way towards solving this problem. We can't catch every job or every bad actor -- there are about 17,000 active listings on the site right now, with many more posted each day. But we're working to improve the experience for both sides, and we rely both on algorithms and reports from users like you to make that happen. I'd really like to hear more about your specific situation. If you care to share, ping me at dave@angel.co -- I'm based in NYC and have a vested interest in making sure our marketplace operates well here. Thanks for your time and for bringing this to our attention. [1] angel.co/help/talent#rules
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• kabdib 12y ago
  My experience with equity: $20K into a startup, which was sold to midrangeSoftwareCompany, which was in turn sold to Oracle. Wound up with 17 shares of Oracle, worth about $2000 at the time. Another experience: $2K of "hell, I'm leaving so why not buy the shares I vested in". Eight years later the company is wildly successful (public and valued at $1B). I call them up, and my shares are worthless through some stock shenanigans. A third: $5K investment turned into $21K. Yay. I guess I almost broke even on the Silly Valley slot machine. Lastly: I did much, MUCH better with options and other stock-related stuff at a couple of large companies, spread out over 16 years. It's not unreasonable to make a few million on these in the course of your career. Get a good salary. Don't trade a good salary for equity, because in general it's a bad deal and you're just going to get screwed. If you're good and you take a low salary for the "developer class" equity that I've seen, take a hard look and see if you're getting anything else worthwhile (an education in technologies you wouldn't be using otherwise, good contacts, a possibility you'd be identified as a principal "must have" in an acquisition, with incentives to match, etc). Otherwise you're being taken advantage of.
  • nhstanley 12y ago
    I don't have as much personal experience (only one colossal flop, $4k invested + ~20% lower salary), but I've got enough experience in the industry to have come up with this hard and fast rule: If you didn't found the company and aren't getting 10%+, equity is meaningless. If they insist you take equity ("Don't you have faith that we'll be successful?"), you can offer to knock off 1% of what you would have expected in annual salary without it (even that is arguably too much). Otherwise it's absolutely not worth it. Companies love trying to get you to take a 5-40% pay cut because "It's a startup" and "we'll give you equity". Total BS. You will be better off spending an hour every week minding your money in other ways, with your appropriate salary.
    • Firegarden 12y ago
      Actually you would be better off coding something yourself in your spare time and giving it away for free. As soon as you can get recognition or an audience you are building some intrinsic value that will pay itself out some day.
• 31reasons 12y ago
  All of this boils down to one word : GREED. Most people starting startup in bubble by definition greedy. They are not there to change the world per se, like Elon Musk. They want to have more equity when they sell the company. Period. I believe first 5 people in the company should be given double digit equity.
  • archgoon 12y ago
    Elon Musk is able to do what he does largely because he made himself rich off a startup. If you want to be Elon Musk, you have to be rich.
    • wahnfrieden 12y ago
      Even PayPal was bootstrapped partly with what he made off a previous startup.
• alain94040 12y ago
  $60K seems low to you, but it's infinitely better than the deal those startups would have offered before getting into YC. Before YC, it's "please join us for equity, we have no cash to pay salary at all". 5% of equity with $0 is a deal that very few people can afford to take. With $60K, at least you are getting some protection. If it becomes intenable after 6 months, you can always quit. There are multiple price points available for people to join the startup life, so it's a good thing. Of course startups would love to pay much more, but when all you have raised is $150K, you can't offer huge salaries to many people.
  • busterarm 12y ago
    As a junior developer, coming from a decade or so in IT, I would actually take the $60k/yr gig, in NYC, if it were the right company and with established opportunities to negotiate pay increases. Other companies might pay more, but if I can get the right skills/mentoring and get up to that pay in a year or two, I can take the short-term financial hit.
  • bagels 12y ago
    My favorite offer was $0 + less than 1%, while another place was offering 140k. The guy got irritated when I showed the math on how this was a poor offer.
    • busterarm 12y ago
      It takes a certain amount of balls to ask someone to work for free. Hell, I'm not even sure how that would be legal - especially in NYC. That said, I see folks in New York doing this sort of thing all the time, just mostly in creative fields.
• pbreit 12y ago
  $60k and 0.5% for engineer ar employee #5 sounds low. But you're missing that YC companies are attractive employers and a lot of people are motivated as much or more on what they are working on and with who. And that a reasonable case can be made that YC equity is more highly valued than non-YC equity. Also, it's likely that $60-80k salaries are temporary reductions pending funding.
• Tyguy7 12y ago
  I don't really know the market that well, but I've had trouble securing more than $85K as a full stack developer. It seems in Southern California that the max pay for that kind of position isn't much more than $100k.
• darkstar999 12y ago
  Is $125k decent in NYC for a vital position? It seems low after adjusting for living expenses. I'm guessing you are factoring in equity as well.
• jurassic 12y ago
  I've had a few unsuccessful negotiations with series B startups who balk at paying market rate even though they have piles of cash. I believe it often comes down the the fact that they have grown headcount relatively slowly at the same time market rates for competent developers have risen quickly. The veteran engineers from the company's earlier days are often true-believers in the company/product, and probably joined for below-market at a time when market rates were lower. As a result the comp structure at these companies gets into a really weird state where a new market-rate junior hire cost about as much or more than the seasoned technical staff they already have on payroll. That's a tough pill for companies to swallow, and even if you do manage to hire you'll have a mutiny on your hands if you don't do something quickly to close the 40+% gap between the comp your existing employees are getting and the market.
  • Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    That's why companies who have raised any serious funding in B-round or later or have revenues to justify it ought to raise early engineers' salaries to bring them (closer) to marker rate on a continuous basis. There is no good reason not to do that.
  • suhail 12y ago
    That's true, this can happen. At Mixpanel, we proactively true people up throughout the year, each year. It's not that hard of a pill to swallow when you weigh the decision of that person leaving vs paying them $10-20K more.
    • pacaro 12y ago
      This is the real insight that to few companies understand. Possibly because of relative lack of experience of management and/or HR department. If you're in SF and your rent is rising by 10% p/a then your salary needs to be keeping track unless you already have FU money. Or you work a couple of years to get a little vested, then jump ship using your unvested equity as a bargaining chip in your next negotiation "I'd be leaving so much on the table..." I guess that there's a reason that the average tenure is ~2 years
  • 12y ago
• interleave 12y ago
  "I would anticipate a floor on pay of $125k. I don't care if that's a designer or a developer or a marketer or what" We surveyed 250 vc-backed startups who raised more than $2,319,116,164 and found that it's much, much more complex than $125K for everyone. If you are interested, you can get the report at http://ventureassembly.huddlemetrics.com/get http://ventureassembly.huddlemetrics.com/get Again, disclaimer: I'm part of the founding team.
• ugh123 12y ago
  If you're talented with a strong, provable track record you can negotiate 150-180k easily. With that, though, expect equity < 1% which is normal.
• endophage 12y ago
  Depending on the specific position and language in use, $110k might be reasonable for an SV job. $60k is non-top tier college grad salary. There is definitely competition for great software engineers, but what most people assume is you throw a rock and you'll hit a great software engineer in SV. That's just not the case. There are lots of very good engineers, but a much smaller pool of great engineers. We all hear the stories about companies paying ridiculous salaries in Silicon Valley but bear in mind Glassdoor pegs the average engineering salary around $110k for SV. The guy from Google who was in the news a year or so ago because he was earning ~$3 million a year had done something special to get there. The guys earning the big bucks have proven track records and expertise that commands a high salary. I agree with other people here that you shouldn't take a pay cut for equity, but don't be surprised when you see lots of job postings around $100k. Also consider that there are a lot of startups that raise 6 figure seed rounds and under $10 mil Series A that you don't hear about, compared to the (mostly over) hyped startups that raise millions in seed and tens of millions in Series A. They literally can't afford to pay people enormous salaries.
  • pgwhalen 12y ago
    Are there really SV dev salaries as low as $60k? That struck me as a bit low coming out of school even in Chicago, and I did not go to a "top-tier" school ("flagship" but nothing special state school).
    • GeneralMayhem 12y ago
      Similarly, I turned down $60k to start in DC, and my school was probably worse for engineering than yours.
    • mattmurdog 12y ago
      $60 is typically how much offshore folks get paid so I can't imagine any local devs making that little.
  • Bahamut 12y ago
    We pay our junior engineers $90k at my company in the Valley.
• jim_greco 12y ago
  NYC is tough. You're competing against a lot of finance companies for talent. Developers are used to a higher base salary than $125k and a yearly cash bonus. People value stock a lot less because it's not part of the typical comp package and they haven't seen the rewards it can generate like they've seen in the Valley. Personally, I doubt companies in the Valley are getting very good developers for $60-$110k salary and 0.5%-1% equity. Why would any smart developer do that when they can go to a later stage VC company that has a lot larger chance of success and get market salary + 0.1% equity.
• mrcsparker 12y ago
  This is because you are looking at startups. These are products that no one is sure will work, and the company is trying to get a product to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. The codebase doesn't have to look great and the product doesn't have to be perfect. The question is: is there a market for this thing? Why pay more than you have to just to get the MVP out the door? This isn't cynical, this is how it works. Once the product is proven, then you can bring in a second group of people to take it from V1 -> V2. Since this is HN, no one really talks about what happens once a company moves beyond startup, but there is a second market of developers that are brought in once a product is proven and needs to reach the next level of maturation. A lot of people reading this post are in this market right now: there are companies which you can hire that will help you re-architect your code, architecture, development process, devops, etc. It used to be a lot harder to get a job at a company as an unproven developer. Now there are a lot more options. If you have a lot of experience and you are thinking of entering the startup market, you should look at starting your own company.
• guest 12y ago
  Basically, people are full of shit and trying to cheat you. Generally their businesses fail in a competitive environment.
• lisa_henderson 12y ago
  In New York City I was just offered a job at a startup, as a senior engineer. The company is small (only 5 people) but they have many customers, they are profitable, and it is fairly certain they are going to be successful. They had, for years, offered sysadmin services to companies in New York City, but during that time they built a meta-framework on top of Chef, a framework that allows the automation of a fantastic range of sysadmin tasks, and now they've built a GUI on top of it, so less talented people can do a wide range of tasks. They plan to grow for 5 years and then sell for something between $25 to $100 million, depending on how much growth they get. I was offered $90,000 and 1% of the company. This is a startup where the risks are fairly low, considering that they already have customers who love them, and they are cash flow positive, and they are growing quickly. For a risky startup, I would have asked for 4%.
  • socialist_coder 12y ago
    $90k for a senior engineer in NYC is comical. I hope you countered or didn't take it. You can make 3x that amount at Bloomberg or somewhere similar.
    • jim_greco 12y ago
      $90k is not good, especially for 1% in a 5 person firm. However, I wouldn't throw around numbers like $270k as if any developer off the street makes that in New York City. No firm, especially Bloomberg, is going to pay someone new to finance that.
  • ryandrake 12y ago
    > it is fairly certain they are going to be successful Anyone here ever heard that one before?
  • ryanSrich 12y ago
    $90k in NYC is a pittance. You can make that much as an Uber Driver [1]. Making any less than $200k in NYC pretty much guarantees roommates. If you're single, no kids, no plan to have kids, no plan to get married or aren't already married and have no student loans. Well then yeah, take the risk on half your worth. If not, I highly recommend looking into a reputable company with reputable market rate salaries. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-salary-90000-2014-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-salary-90000-201...
• pmorici 12y ago
  Have you considered it is a negotiating tactic on the part of the company? If they listed starting salaries at $140k that puts a floor on any salary negotiation with a prospective candidate. Where as if they open ridiculously low then come up 20% above the job add number in the initial offer the candidate might think "wow they really want me" count themselves lucky and accept that thinking they got a good deal. It could also be meant to target candidates outside the Bay area where 60-110k might be a decent salary.
  • greenyoda 12y ago
    However, if they advertise a ridiculously low salary, they risk being ignored by most competent developers.
• whiddershins 12y ago
  OP here: Couldn't see the post because I have noproc set, but wow - front page and many awesome comments. I wanted to clarify a couple of (perhaps erroneous) assumptions in my original question: - I see many comments comparing these salaries to recent grads hired by i.e. Google, but I didn't intend to use the words "skilled" and "talented" interchangeably. Recent grads aren't usually as effective as people with experience, and salaries tend to reflect that. I can see many reasons why a founder might be interested in hiring someone with little to no experience, but the job postings didn't specifically say "junior" in them. - I see many comments referencing the realities of what is affordable. Yet some of these startups are advertising more than one job opening. Therefore, it would appear they are considering hiring three people instead of one person for 3x the salary. My question is informed by real world experience and written material: advice, essays and quotes including obvious and much repeated ones by Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and Bill Gates which emphasize the concept that great employees are magnitudes more effective than good ones. Every knowledge-industry employer I've talked to agrees. Much startup advice emphasizes how bad it is to grow your team too quickly, and how a low performing employee hurts far more than a high performing employee helps. Given some of the companies are hiring for multiple positions, this could imply the salaries are considered competitive, and paying more wouldn't get a better employee.
  • suhail 12y ago
    The reality with your second point is that it is very hard to know for sure which engineer will be 10x better due to your interview process. Great people aren't just great technically, they also are great humans too (who can mentor, collaborate, be humble, and see the forest from the trees). Often you don't find out later until 3-6 months into a working relationship. I think you're placing a lot of weight on the initial offer because many smart companies will issue huge stock grants and salary bumps for their best employees to retain them. And I would argue that I know this to be the case because I chase a lot these continuously, long employed people each day that have incredible golden hand-cuffs.
    • pjungwir 12y ago
      This is totally understandable, because in many ways programming is a "market for lemons": good programmers disappear off the market, there is a high chance you'll hire a bad one, and there is severe information asymmetry because it's so hard to tell how someone will perform. But if it's true that good employees wind up in golden handcuffs, companies should advertise that! It's been several years since I've seen a salary that is competitive with freelancing, but if a company had a published plan about performance-based raises and could point to some happy employees who could verify that theory aligns with practice, I'd be more willing to consider their offer. Conventional wisdom is the opposite: the only way to get a decent raise is to leave. One obstacle to using high raises to attract talent is that a company would have to be more transparent about what salaries everyone is earning.
• endlessvoid94 12y ago
  Repeat after me: not all startups are created equal.
• brikis98 12y ago
  Depending on where you are and the size/stage of the startup, those numbers seem roughly in the right ballpark. To compare, check out the salary resources[1] and equity resources[2], which have calculators and tables that show you typical numbers. [1] http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/salary/ [2] http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/equity/
• fullstacknyc 12y ago
  I was an untested front end developer and took a position for around 60k without equity in NYC. Later it got bumped up to 72k still no equity (though I largely feel like equity is a "too good to be true"). I've since become a full stack developer (dev ops to front end, etc.) and increasingly more frustrated with my pay. Have taken on a lot of responsibility and a lot of my choices re. tech stack have made me the de facto person to come to with questions. I interviewed at a big company and they told me that regardless of what happened I should be out there trying to make more (I didn't tell them how much I made, I only said that at a small startup with very little funding, I would be afraid that my compensation might reflect negatively on my abilities and that I didn't feel comfortable disclosing it). Super grateful that they took a chance on me. Really happy that I got a chance to earn my stripes and was trusted enough to dig into and shape the infrastructure, but I've been thinking about jumping ship mostly for money. I feel like I should bring it up, but I have the distinct feeling there isn't any more money (they share the financial info from time to time). I thought I'd just share some anecdotal info from my time on the ground. I put my email in the profile and would love some advice if anyone has some (it's a throwaway account).
  • lsc 12y ago
    >Super grateful that they took a chance on me. Really happy that I got a chance to earn my stripes and was trusted enough to dig into and shape the infrastructure, but I've been thinking about jumping ship mostly for money. I feel like I should bring it up, but I have the distinct feeling there isn't any more money (they share the financial info from time to time). I think this is one of the more useful comments here; companies offering $60K/yr are looking for the untested, the brand new and the long-term unemployed. People that need a chance. I mean, no judgement; those people need jobs, too. And sometimes, sometimes you can find someone really good in one of those categories. There's a huge difference between a not so good and a really good developer, so you can sometimes do well as a company hiring from that pool, but you are shutting yourself off from all the good people that are proven, so it's a lot more work to find good people. fullstacknyc: My advice to you? Ask for more money, in a non-confrontational way. Leave out the "or I leave" bit. Regardless of the answer, spend some time interviewing around. If you can get a 30%+ raise, and you almost certainly can, well, I'd switch jobs, personally. If nothing else, it feels good to know you can.
• LogicFailsMe 12y ago
  In Silicon Valley, my startup offers over the past two years have ranged from $160-250K with 0.5-0.75% equity. Here is the best writeup on startups I've ever read: http://www.geocities.ws/drhenke/startupmemo.htm http://www.geocities.ws/drhenke/startupmemo.htm I expect to hear how tone deaf and pessimistic the above advice is, and said pessimism will lead to this post being downvoted, but I have found it most helpful. It meshes with my own philosophy that the only startups I'd choose over a well paying BigCo position are ones that offer a founder's position with 5+% equity. Risk should be proportional to reward. To put this into perspective, a friend of mine was the 20th or so employee at a startup that was eventually purchased after dying and coming back to life over a decade or so. In exchange for a decade of his life and going without compensation for nearly a year, he got ~$400K. A nitwit co-worker who had 50x his equity in the original incarnation that died and who had nothing to do with its resurrection and its eventual purchase got ~$20M on the basis of having a 3-letter title in that original startup. Don't end up like my friend.
  • czbond 12y ago
    The advice here and in your link are very well thought out. I have too founded 2 companies, 1 died - 1 under $10M. I have a penchant for the work in startups - but without a significant stake, it's hard to quantify putting in the hours at a significantly reduced rate.
  • myth_buster 12y ago
    Thank you for the link to the memo. I'm looking at joining a startup after a decade in enterprise and am doing my research. Where would one find the details to the questions in the financing section (burn rate, money in bank, valuation in next financing)? I was able to pick info on funding rounds from crunchbase, # of employees from Co. site but that's the most I've got. Any pointers will be helpful.
    • troels 12y ago
      You can always ask. If you want to do the math your self, for most companies the cost is predominantly determined by salaries. If you can figure out the number and positions of employees, you should be able to estimate it fairly accurate. Figuring out how much they make on the top line is slightly harder, but you can usually estimate it if you can find out how many users they have (which is often not very secret) and if you can guess at how much they make per user (usually roughly the same figure across an industry - so again, not overly secret) If you make your calculations up front, you will know which variables you are least confident about and can try to pry about them at an interview.
• BhavdeepSethi 12y ago
  This is so true. I've been interviewing for summer internships with various startups in NYC/SF. I'm not a fresh graduate. I have over three years of quite relevant work-experience. The consistent opinion of all the start-ups are that they treat their interns as full-time employees in terms of responsibility, ownership, etc. It's only during compensation that they start talking about risk, start-up status, etc. If you really want to treat us like full-time employees, you should consider paying the interns like full-time employees as well.
• abalone 12y ago
  The culture here is higher risk and geared towards building the next unicorn companies. That is why equity plays such a significant role. > Their ownership is purely symbolic, in a relative sense You're downplaying the significance of a 0.5-1% stake. 1% of the next Facebook would definitely not be purely symbolic. Late stage VC investments are lucky to get a few percentage points in a company; this is the only opportunity in the company's life where a non-c-level employee could get that kind of a stake. It is a lot less than what founders get, but if you don't like that you can always try your hand at being a founder yourself. There are of course countless anecdotes that can be told about how someone's equity stake didn't amount to much. Because the majority don't. But we are geared towards trying to be a part of something that is truly very big and world changing, and that is riskier.
  • UK-AL 12y ago
    but its not going to be 1% at that stage, its going to have far far more dilution as you raise more money.
    • abalone 12y ago
      True but my point still stands even if there is dilution. 0.5% of Facebook would still be worth a billion dollars. Even at a company that's 1/100th as successful as Facebook that's a $10M stake.
  • greenyoda 12y ago
    "1% of the next Facebook would definitely not be purely symbolic." But what percentage of companies are going to be the next Google or Facebook or Apple? Companies that make their founders billionaires and their employees millionaires are very, very rare. If you were an early employee of any of these companies, you probably couldn't have predicted how big these companies would be today.
    • abalone 12y ago
      There are also exits along they way via acquisitions that can produce good outcomes. But overall yes, it's true that it's quite rare for a startup engineer to become a multi-millionaire based on a few years work early in their career. However it does happen and it's an opportunity uniquely available in the startup sector. The great thing is you have a choice. You can go work for an established company and make $150k+ or a startup that you believe in and would have fun at and maybe have a shot at really big money 5-10 years from now. Up to you.
• purplelobster 12y ago
  Given that 125k is apparently "low", and barely liveable in Silicon Valley, can someone please break down the costs for me? Even at a rent of $2-3k, you'd have ridiculous amounts of money left.
  • tdicola 12y ago
    Given that the median home price is over $1 million if you want to own a home you're going to be paying closer to $4k/month for a mortgage. After taxes that 125k is closer to 90k take home and once you put away more of that for retirement/savings you're looking at only $2k/month to pay all the bills and pay for food. For a single 22 year old it's no problem, but for someone trying to raise a family and support others it will be scraping by.
    • purplelobster 12y ago
      Well, there seems to be no limit to the price of housing then, $4k is ridiculous. Whenever I see these Silicon Valley salaries I can't help to be envious, but I guess I underestimate the costs...
    • barrkel 12y ago
      A house is something you can sell. If you need to pay a lot of money to service a big mortgage, that doesn't mean you're worse off than someone paid slightly less somewhere where housing is cheaper. Depending on how much your loan costs you (and property taxes, and everything else), you're still potentially coming out ahead. Rent is a deadweight loss. OTOH, the cost of a loan combined with the risk of relying on property as your primary lifetime investment may make it worth it.
      • juliangregorian 12y ago
        I see this viewpoint expressed way too often on HN by people who should know better. Mortgages are not all upside. See http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calc...
• graycat 12y ago
  At one time around DC, for mostly US DoD and NASA work, there was a shortage of people good in math and software. So, once in two weeks I went on seven interviews and got five offers. At one point I was making in annual salary six times what a high end new Camaro cost. Now that would be ballpark $240,000, and jobs were plentiful. That's something like the situation when companies really want good employees. Net, so far Silicon Valley doesn't really want good employees. Neither do NYC or Boston. Not yet.
• mrbill 12y ago
  Every time I've been offered options / equity in lieu of higher salary, I've taken the higher salary instead and ended up better off. Some people don't want to play the odds game and would rather just have the money to use now.
• ykumar6 12y ago
  A $125K floor-rate in the SF-bay area sounds about right. The competition for developers hasn't let up, and many startups ($10M+ in funding) are using cash as a weapon. This IMO represents the biggest threat to early-stage startups out of YC or other incubators. Anything less than $100K is not a liveable salary in San Francisco.
• Firegarden 12y ago
  I have been a full time contract programmer since 2001 and at that time I was 22 years old. I have always worked hourly and delivered software per the clients requirements. The last 2-3 years I have made more money than I have ever made and it was coded 100% remote (from Hawaii). I had one meeting at the clients place. Made somewhere around 180K and this was me full time with a part time developer subcontracted out which didn't actually bring in much additional revenue < 10%. It did bring throughput. As of about a month ago I was let go as the top developer in the Saas company because I was deemed too expensive by the board. I am pretty sure the CTO didn't want to give up me as a resource. All of a sudden I have realized that overseas developers have become a priority and it is my feeling that as an hourly developer my days are limited in making $80-$100/hr (corp 2 corp contract). It is my feeling that I have 2 possible directions. 1) Start an outsourced overseas development company and use my 'Software Architect" title (which is so funny to me because architect is thrown around so much in software) and manage resources overseas. 2) Start selling software on a per usage basis or in some value add model. I believe both of them are solid bets however #2 takes more commitment. At this point I think the reason salaries are topping off is because of the global market. That is just my take from being in the industry. Thank you.
  • j4pe 12y ago
    Interesting story. I had a similar one, but I was traveling while I did contract work and ended up meeting an array of these overseas guys. The best contract devs rarely end up in the outsourcing factories that would be hired by companies like your client; they're independent. Some friends and I set up a co-op last year; I bring in a lot of US work on commission.
    • Firegarden 12y ago
      Interesting to know. Causes me to second guess the overseas development company options but I still wonder if being the solutions architect / US based agent to PM and sell the work perhaps I can capitalize. Eg. If I charge $40/hr for my work and sell the outsourced hours at $40/hr with a $30/hr cost basis I could run a team of 4 dev's and still make a decent hourly rate. I always thought I would find some efficiency in this model by reusing software libraries but that has never panned out.
• zkhalique 12y ago
  I personally prefer to partner per project. I think I should make it an acronym, PPP. Giving away 30% of the project's net income for the lifetime of the project makes a developer more invested, and is better than giving away 2% of your company. The $$ comes quicker for the developer, and you as a company take on less risk. Vesting company options with a cliff can really screw a developer. Vesting equity in a particular app or project makes the incentives align correctly.
  • DenisM 12y ago
    Never heard of this before, but it makes sense. Does it work well for you in practice? Are you not worrie your product is made a loss leader, driving your share to zero?
    • zkhalique 12y ago
      No we aren't. Consider this: your company could be producing more products than it currently is. You have tons of ideas but not enough resources to do them all. With PPP, the cost of a developer now becomes just attracting and onboarding them. What are the chances a given project will succeed? They are less than 30%. So, the expected value of this strategy vs paying for the developer is positive, especially if you don't have the $ to spend on all kinds of projects and see what works. So you can certainly justify it for projects that you wouldn't have otherwise undertaken. The projects that you have to develop for sure, are another story. And then there is everything in between. This is just a great way to structure those deals fairly and align incentives instead of trying to optimize your own share. If the project fails, then you lost nothing. If the project succeeds -- and the developer is more incentivized that it will -- then you get a partner with whom you are both interested in increasing the revenue. We've done it with our apps and have been happy with the results. It works especially well with startups without a huge budget, but a platform and technology that can be used by many people. We've actually open sourced our platform, and in the future plan to do an entire accelerator program around this concept. In our situation we have a few more things: * We have a clause that if the developer leaves and we spend X amount (at our discretion) on the app, then 30% of X is coming out of the money due to them, with the proviso that they won't ever get less than 10% in any given month. And of course they get 30% only if they launch version 1.0 of the product, and complete all the deliverables. * We have a quarter million monthly active users, so the developer is interested in working with us vs stealing our idea and going solo. Because if they launch through us and we handle all the QA, production, launch etc. then we can get their app a big userbase from day 1. They are as happy as we are to give 30% to Apple for taking care of all the sales, fulfillment, credit card processing etc.
• emmett 12y ago
  Where are you seeing these numbers from? What stage of startup? If Uber offered you 1% equity and $60k/year you'd have to be an idiot to turn them down at this stage. If an unfunded just-an-idea startup did, you'd never take it. Basically: you can't evaluate equity in a vacuum. It's entirely company-and-stage-of-growth-dependent. Those offers might be awesome or terrible.
• vkatluri 12y ago
  Always reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949323
• greedoshotlast 12y ago
  In Silicon Valley developers are gods, in NYC wall street bankers are gods.
• lpolovets 12y ago
  I did some research on salary/equity grants last year and published a blog post on the subject. The dataset was most Silicon Valley job postings on AngelList (at that time). Based on my data, $60k salary is very much on the low end (i.e. 10th percentile of salaries). .5-1% equity may or may not be low-end -- it definitely depends on company size. That said, you will almost never see >1% equity once you get past the first few hires (except for VP roles). Post link: http://codingvc.com/analyzing-angellist-job-postings-part-2-salary-and-equity-benchmarks http://codingvc.com/analyzing-angellist-job-postings-part-2-... Edit: You are right that compensation is generally lower than for non-startups. To be fair, a lot of people look beyond compensation when pursuing startup jobs. They're looking for more ownership, less bureaucracy, a chance to learn, a chance to form very deep personal and professional relationships, and so on. And of course, there is the equity lottery ticket (which usually doesn't end up being worth very much..)
• ninjakeyboard 12y ago
  I worked at a startup that was bought by google and my options weren't worth anything. Strike price has to be pretty low for things to turn out well for you.
• montz 12y ago
  Even 0.5-1% is at the higher end if you join early. And 100K at a startup is probably for the well funded ones. If you join later even at 50 person startup, the equity goes down to 0.0015. Everyone believes their startup is the next FB. With that small of a percentage ownership, you'll only make money if it's a $1B exit. Otherwise all employees get screwed. Lost opportunity costs, lost physical/mental health but I guess gained good experience and scratch the startup itch. Honestly at this point, the VC's have fully gamed the system to work it in their favor and employees are commodities. If you hear any thing else it's a lie. Incase, you wanted to compare base wages at companies, I've created salarytalk.org to publish base wages at companies in USA based on jobtitle/location/state. While you don't have total compensation, adding 20-30% to base wage is often close enough. This data is from US department of labor for foregin labor, which is a significant part of the employee base, so the data is highly accurate.
• maaku 12y ago
  Cost of living is much less here in SV vs NYC. Still, what you're seeing is a joke. I wouldn't take such a job.
• desireco42 12y ago
  I completely agree with you :) there.
• morgante 12y ago
  All I have to contribute is that I agree. As someone trying to hire engineers, I genuinely don't understand how companies can get away with such paltry offers. Probably the most ludicrous to me is Buffer's ridiculously low pay: https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/ https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buff... I'm offering a minimum of $125k with significant equity in a well-positioned company, but I rarely see good engineers interviewing. Yet somehow these other companies are building engineering teams for way less. Ultimately, I think it comes to developers way over-valuing hype. Appearing on Hacker News regularly, or showing up in Techcrunch a lot, or getting funded by YC, can apparently provide an automatic $50k bonus on all salaries you offer.
  • michaelbuckbee 12y ago
    In Buffer's defense they are all remote and they seem to have rather sane cost of living factors built in.
    • morgante 12y ago
      I don't know if that's much of a defense. Even in SF (an "A" location), they seem to be paying below market: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE81a2wzcHYxV1pacWE1UjM3V0w0MUE&usp=drive_web#gid=1 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE8...
      • raquo 12y ago
        There is visibly less competition for remote workers because fewer companies hire that way, so yeah, that could explain lower salaries at least in part.
      • carrotleads 12y ago
        Interesting to see that engineer's get paid less than content and happiness heros. The blame for that rests with the senior engineers and not the graduate or middle level ones...
  • 12y ago
• seannaM 12y ago
  A) Working in startups is more interesting/fun (If you can have fun being stressed out) than most companies. A lot of people will compromise compensation for fun. B) The benefits of income have diminishing returns (Very scientifically through the tax system, but also because you mostly only become able to buy things lower on your priority list.) C) Lots of people make do under 60k, software engineers are mostly able to make do as well as them. (A couple of exceptions for engineers who live in very expensive cities, have a lot of student loans, or are likely to burn out quickly)
• Avalaxy 12y ago
  "I'm only getting paid $100.000 per year and it's so low, boohoo" Jesus. I live in the netherlands, which is a first world country with a very high cost of living, and the average senior developer here only gets paid half that money. If you earn more than that you belong to the 1% most earning people on earth. Have some perspective please instead of whining about how bad you have it.
  • imaginenore 12y ago
    This is the dumbest comment I've seen on HN this year. Even if he were in the top 1% (which he isn't), why shouldn't he strive to earn more and become top 0.1%? Just because developers in your country can't negotiate better salaries, doesn't mean the rest of us should suck it up and only eat the breadcrumbs offered.
    • ziles88 12y ago
      His comment was offhand, but was rooted in truth. Wake up, this is a 'bay' thing. People in this thread are throwing around salaries that amount to more than any doctor, lawyer, or politician makes in most major world cities. A lot of people in here need a reality check, comparing their 'profession' of front end jQuery to what a doctor does - I can't believe the person above made that remark. You're all worth what the market will pay, yes, but have some humility please. We all know we're in a bubble here, no need to get a big head about it and act like 100K+ is your god given right to what amounts to one of the least capable, accountable, and professionally trained careers in the developed world. Pipe down, nobody in the late 90's bubble talked like this.
      • imaginenore 12y ago
        This is not a 'bay thing'. I make much more money than he complains about, and I work remotely for US companies. Most developers are underpaid, most don't even know by how much. We provide a lot value, we automate things resulting in tremendous savings for the businesses. Most doctors don't need to learn constantly. And we're not talking jQuery. Yes, there are hacks out there who only know it, and they do deserve a low pay. Most front end developers need to know a lot more than just jQuery to make a modern website. HTML/CSS/JS/optimization/image compression/SVG/frameworks/cookies/local storage/browser compatibility/W3C validation/debugging/data structures/algorithms/etc. The list goes on and on. If programming were easy, everyone would do it. There's a reason developers are expensive.
• damm 12y ago
  There's two problems with the startup salaries. 1) They really do want someone that cheap. But as an Engineer we know the Cheap comes out Expensive; so if you respect yourself you should know better not to apply. 2) Really it's a different location. You could(2014, don't know if this is still true) find a DevOps employee for 220k for intermediate/experienced level. If he flies to NY his starting Salary is about 300k Additionally; we have a surge of _disruptive_ capitalism. I have seen a company try and drive down the salary for a job in the area; they get what they pay for. Respect yourself and when your gut says this job is a Lemon; either ask for more or tap out.
• crdb 12y ago
  (Bearing in mind this is not from the Valley POV, but I recognize a lot of the same dynamics here in Singapore) Psychologically: The founder is stuck between a rock and a hard place. With limited cash to work with (seed rounds are tiny here), that extra 10-20% could translate into 10x that in revenue if used on say, Google ads instead of your salary. On the other hand, equity is also scarce; the founder has just given up 6+ months of his life and career and taken enormous risks to start the business, it's starting to take off at last (hence the hiring ads), he got some funding closed after months of negotiation, so he considers that his equity stake was "earned" and a newcomer "series A/B employee", even at early stage, should go earn theirs as well. There's often not much equity left anyway, not enough for control even after a seed round, so founders often don't have that much to give up. More cynically, this often leads amongst less technical founders and management to the "let's hire young, cheap guys, they work harder too, these experienced guys have ridiculous expectations". I've stopped counting the number of times I heard that (sitting on the management side, advising other companies, etc.). Just last quarter, it was a major angel investor who told my client in his advisory meeting "you should get some unpaid interns from universities to do QA, and offer the best ones a paid internship". Just last week, a colleague who wants to start his own thing refused my offer to introduce him to experienced engineers I've enjoyed working with, because he'd rather "go for cheap people who'll work for free initially". (As an aside, this fear is misplaced. I know of at least two CTOs who worked for "free" for 3-6 months until either revenue or funding happened; the second was in his 40s and had 3 kids...) The investors are a significant source of pressure. Not to say they all do this, but a lot of the more "MBA" types consider headcount a KPI to be optimized, so they push you subtly or overtly to reduce salary, hire cheaper people, negotiate harder, and so on. Think of it as reducing the cost of buying out of the money options (from their point of view). One HNWI who I once considered a friend stopped talking to me after I pitched him an idea, he offered me seed funding on the condition I take no salary until revenue, and I declined (having better options). For some reason, that made him very angry... It's considered a key business skill amongst those people to get "cheap" talent and a failure of your management skills if you do not. This is even more the case when your choice of tech stack and management style encourages wild growth in the engineering department (think Rocket Internet companies with dev teams in the hundreds) and where that 25-50% discount on market rate translates in quite substantial savings. Finally, both from investors and founders, comes the idea of "hedging". Why don't a lot of startups use Haskell or Lisps? Not because they can't find talent (there's plenty) but because it's a lot harder negotiating with a Haskeller with 10 years experience and a PhD, even with the "Haskell discount" priced in (they will take less money to work in a more interesting stack) than with a fresh grad from a local university with some basic understanding of RoR or Django and hopes they will become the next Zuckerberg. This makes the latter a lot more replaceable, and investors don't want their companies hostage to the tech talent. The rest is really stuff that is somewhat right. It IS nicer psychologically for certain personalities (mine included) to have more responsibility, less bureaucracy, a friendly and slightly hipster work environment, a younger set of colleagues full of hope and energy, and a fast feedback loop (it's easy to become indispensable and add a lot of value everywhere in a startup). It IS somewhat true that you will gain experience - if only seeing what not to do - that will be very valuable once you start your own thing, and that spending a couple years on a reduced salary hopping a couple of 10-100 employee startup jobs can be a better use of your time as a future founder than doing AI research at Google.
• anon_53482 12y ago
  I'm a mid to top tier programmer in the bay area. I got into a pre series A startup for 90k a year (on a W9 rather than a W2 so -20% after taxes and computing no vacation or sick days) + .1% equity per month to make an iPhone app. I had two co-workers who were sub par. They left the company. I'm currently taking over the rest of the programming (backend/web stuff). The system I'm inheriting is pretty bad. Security holes, bad EC2 setup and the web front end is unmaintainable. I can handle the work but the time required to fix everything is significant and I feel underpaid. I got promoted to VP of engineering but my pay and amount of stock I get didn't increase. We're in the middle of raising series A. We are strapped for cash until series A is completed. I'm meeting with my CEO soon and would like to talk about a significant pay increase as well as more equity. I don't want to seem like a jerk and say I want at least $175k per year as well as .2% equity per month now or i'm gone since we're in the middle of raising series A and I'm the only programmer. I also don't want to keep kicking the can down the road. How do I go about asking for fair compensation? How much money and equity would you guys ask for? Anyone have any ideas like get 120k now and after series A raise it up to 175k? Little more about myself. Came from a top 15 CS program, placed in a couple programming competitions, was part of a company that previously exited as a back end dev, been programming for 17 years and I'd I've been at start-ups since I graduated in 2007.
  • carrotleads 12y ago
    My solution : act like a even big time jerk, justa reasonable one looking after your self-interest and double your equity demand and make it iron clad so you are not shortchanged after the fund raise. there will be negotiations to dial down your demands invariably and you can keep your "jerk" like demands as the absolute floor...
  • Firegarden 12y ago
    What I find the easiest is if you are not dealing directly with the CEO or person approving the raise. In that case you can just let your supervisor know you need that rate to stay on board. If you are dealing with the CEO or person approving the raise and you feel the need to justify yourself I would keep it short and simple like "In order for me to move forward in this position my salary has to be at $175K". There really isn't much else to say. Just like 50 Cent - you must to be able to walk away - and that is your power. You 100% should ask for the raise or leave. Don't get caught up with letting OPP affect you. OPP = Other peoples problems. For example the CEO is a f#ck up for a large variety of reasons so he gets you believing they are in the middle of "raising series A" or whatever else bullshit that you have no control over therefore has nothing to do with you. It's all about you mo fo. His problem is actually more like he is "in the middle of raising series A and is about to lose a top developer who knows the code base". Don't worry if the CEO is worth his weight he will solve that problem. Catch my drift? You only live once my friend - DO NOT LEAVE MONEY ON THE TABLE.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• bicknergseng 12y ago
  Furthermore, depending on a number of factors, $60k is not a legal wage for a salaried software engineer in California. The minimum for an exempt employee as of 1 Jan 2015 is now $41.27 hourly, $7,165.12 per month, or an annual salary of not less than $85,981.40 for full time, overtime exempt employment [1]. Let me say that again for anyone working in CA in software as a salaried, overtime exempt employee: If you make less than $85,981.40 a year and cannot collect overtime, your employer is not paying you a legal wage in California. You should do some research and consider contacting a labor lawyer. Edit: [1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf
• JDiculous 12y ago
  Yea it's unreal. Startups are looking for "rock stars" to work 50+ hrs/week for entry-level salaries and pathetic amounts of equity. No thanks.
  • Firegarden 12y ago
    Right exactly which raises the point - why work at a start up if you will not hit it rich like it was 1999? The short answer is to work with really smart people who will teach you what you need to know to become them.
• nicholas73 12y ago
  I took an easy corporate job with middle to low salary, and the equity bonus I get is whatever I manage to create with my saved time and energy. Anyone else chose this path?
• PETERLEE1768 12y ago
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• PETERLEE1768 12y ago
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• djmds 12y ago
  Hi, I'm italian. I had a "good" chance with an italian startupper based in SF, I worked from home in Italy while waiting for my visa. Never seen it. I had a contract for 4.2k$/month plus stock options but he said that he could not send more than 3k$/month in italy to avoid IRS checks, so I agreed to get 1.2k$/month in sign in bonuses when I'd have been in San Francisco. My salary began to be late after may (I billed June in November), my visa was never ready... and in November I broke up. I just said him to fk off losing my 28k$ credit just because this "good person" said me that I WAS A ROBBERY because I did not give him an algorithm. The fact was simple: he did not payed for that algorithm, it should have been done in December. I did a lot of other works till that moment, like: tutoring juniors, managing comunication with frontend team and backend development with SF resources (during italian night), I did releases and saved his ass when some SF guy did some mistakes! So by the end, he payed a Senior Software Engineer the great amount of 18k$/year. I was getting mad, so better say a "fk u" than going crazy. He proposed to pay me a small amount of money to get an agreement where I declared to never speak bad about him... he was a fool! I'll never agree with that. My idea is simple now: MONEY NOW! WORDS LATER! Don't get fooled by these people. Shares are not going to make you rich in the 99.8% of the cases! I passed a year listening to stories about our successful future, about milionaire investments that he never got and about how beautiful would have become my life in silicon valley... this kind of people is made by great liars... trust them only if they give you warranties and expirations to refund you (I bet nobody will never give that to you because "it's a startup")! I got no contracts, I got no money, my ceo was a "good italian" entrepreneur in silicon valley, the same "good italian" as our politicians: they speak good, they act bad... I will never trust someone like him again. I will just start a procedure for an international fraud just to do my citizen duty. Take care and be warned!
• beaubouchard 12y ago
  I am sort of new to the whole startup scene. How much should I value equity if the company is only a year old? Is there a formula or some better way I can gauge it's worth?