dunpeal

59 ms·

511.
by dunpeal 8y ago
You seem bitter for some reason. I wish you well. FYI, I got offers from FANG companies, specifically the ones you mentioned. There used to be a gap, but on the last round the AMZN numbers were effectively the same as Google's. My gues
512.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> Easier said than done. Lots of people leave school without the faintest clue what they want to do. The rest of the startup game - building a product, pivoting correctly, building a team, overcoming oowerful rivals - is such a huge chal
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by dunpeal 8y ago
> If a founder can't afford employees at market rate, they shouldn't be hiring yet. That's a little bit too strict, and as such is not a position founders are likely to accept. Sometimes they need employees before they can
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by dunpeal 8y ago
You're probably right, it's just my first time encountering this.
515.
by dunpeal 8y ago
The median employee at FB is making $240k. We can safely assume the median engineer is making more than that. I never claimed that median engineer is making $400k. This entire thread is about the senior engineers and their payout after 4-
516.
by dunpeal 8y ago
You made the following claim: > There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them This claim is false. There are a lot more than "a handful" of companies
517.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> Founders don't work many more hours per day than early employees at x100 less than early employees. They work many more months/years before earning an income at all. > > By the time the employees start to get hired, a l
518.
by dunpeal 8y ago
What you're saying is that the difference isn't between companies - MSFT vs FB - but between areas : Seattle vs Bay. I'm mostly aware of pay in the Bay and a few similar areas, and it is largely equivalent at the levels po
519.
by dunpeal 8y ago
Still a lot better than stock options in a startup that isn't even close to liquidity.
520.
by dunpeal 8y ago
Obviously, I'm keeping it simple. My point is, profit per engineer does have a lot to do with how much I'm willing to pay that engineer. I'd rather pay as little as possible, but if necessary, I'll pay almost as much as
521.
by dunpeal 8y ago
I'm obviously including RSU in the "bonus" portion, in addition to cash. There are also companies who pay these kind of total bonus figures in cash, but in big tech it's typically paid in stocks. I'm pulling these n
522.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> Particularly when the first round of early employees don't have a lot of experience, but have a significant amount of influence and sway simply by nature of being an early employee. As is often the case... Very often the first ge
523.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> Many, many people are committed to jobs for reasons other than money, across all walks of life. This is often true for engineers, too. Of course. But there's a reason why SV begun this expensive tradition of giving engineers subst
524.
by dunpeal 8y ago
It correlates with how much a business will be ultimately willing to pay a developer, if they have to. If I'm making a $1M profit on you, I'll be willing to pay you up to a high fraction of this amount if I have to. Financially, e
525.
by dunpeal 8y ago
I agree with what you wrote, but the reality is that startups can't pay market rate in most cases. So they should at least offer more equity. Or, you know, they can try to keep getting away with offering 0.01% non-preferred stock, and
526.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> It's a job. Early employees working 12-14 hour days are not doing themselves or the startup any favors. I worked in early stage startups. There is absolutely a strong sense of a small, intimate team working hard for a common goal.
527.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> If a funded company (series A, say) is offering you equity as a large part of comp, you have to ask yourself why the VCs don't buy back that equity for the cost of paying market rates for talent. Because the company wants to align
528.
by dunpeal 8y ago
Yup, they just realized "hey, why should we pay random engineers millions of dollars on successful exists?". They never stopped promising them, they just stopped putting any terms in the equity plans that would lead to them.
529.
by dunpeal 8y ago
These numbers are realistic for any senior engineer working there for over 3-4 years.
530.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> "unlimited PTO" nonsense Absolutely. I've seen multiple startups with this ridiculous policy. The net effect of it is that people hardly ever take any time off, and certainly less than employees with more sensible polici
531.
by dunpeal 8y ago
400k is not unusual for a senior engineer working at big tech for several years in the Bay, Seattle, NYC, or even a city like LA. Base salary will be around 200K, and bonus would be another 200K. Can easily be 50-100K more than that on some
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by dunpeal 8y ago
> Because founders take at least 100x the risk of an early employee, and 100x the personal risk and commitment. Simply untrue. Many early startup employees work intense 12-14 hour days. Are you saying founders work 1,200-1,400 hour days?
533.
by dunpeal 8y ago
Absolutely. Also, startups are intense, which goes both ways. Intense can be great if you're looking for that, and the startup is doing well. Intense can be terrible if the startup isn't doing well and/or the atmosphere has g
534.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> Many of the most valuable, hard-working engineers I know at startups have a few years of big company experience in their recent past, and are choosing to do the startup thing all in. I completely agree with this, except for the "a
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by dunpeal 8y ago
That's absolutely true. The assumption "that you will always get more autonomy at startups" is fanciful. In reality, many if not most startups are run by inexperienced and often immature managers and engineers who are substan
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by dunpeal 8y ago
Most people who think of 400K (or even 200K in some previous discussions) as "outlier pay" are probably just not familiar with big tech pay and how much revenue they earn per engineer.
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by dunpeal 8y ago
> If I were building an engineering org today I'd either go remote-only There's a reason why so few startups go the remote-only route. How many remote-only startups ended up a success? I can't recall a single remote-only
538.
by dunpeal 8y ago
> I see a lot of people working at startups who got tired of doing things at big companies that just weren't that interesting to them. Those folks have often made enough money that they can afford to work at a startup for a few year
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by dunpeal 9y ago
You claim: > The objective is not "control" of the tech sector as the article pretends, it is just greater collaboration. From the article: > This quasi-nationalization applies to China's startup scene, too. One recent
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by dunpeal 9y ago
> According to that Wikipedia page, The Equation Group refers to "a collection of tools used for hacking" Are we reading the same Wikipedia page? Here's what mine says: > The Equation Group, classified as an advanced pe

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