451–460 of 968 posts
Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…
I truly believe there are tons of already built products out there that get turned offline because they never were marketed correctly.
- Get responsibilities you couldn't get at a big company. Don't have a graduate degree in underwater basketweaving? Wearing many hats at a start up means you might get to do some basketweaving anyways. A few years of experience and wins to demonstrate with that and now you can get good basketweaving jobs everywhere.
- Learn about lots of things. Learn a little about a lot. Learn what niche work you like. Learn learn learn. (caveats below).
Cons of startups:
- Terrible comp. Enough said elsewhere in this. Also, handcuffs are weird, and the current tax system means that if your company does well, then the IRS might handcuff you even harder than the company does.
- Environment that encourages overoptimism/kool-aid. This is true everywhere, but startups seem worse. That lottery ticket? Going to be worth millions for sure! Our competitors? They're idiots! Our employees? The best!
- Terrible work life balance. Everything is on fire always, and you're running out of runway and "passion" is so important.
- Fewer experts to learn from. Startups have fewer people, tending younger and greener. 30 years experience at OldMoneyCorp? That's an old stagnant legacy company, so that experience doesn't count. Oh, and they have kids so won't work here anyways. This means you'll do more things wrong and spend time learn things you didn't need to. Self guided learning is hard and has lots of backtracking.
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This is such a massive point right here ... there is so much talent, either already in "far flung" parts of the country; or currently in a place like SF, but who long to move "back home" for any number of reasons. Having startups be more remote-friendly by default would be a huge boon for everyone involved.
Sounds like you should found a remote friendly startup! Plenty of money floating around. Find another remote friendly guy and go to town! Seems how most remote friendly places have started...
Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…
Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out…
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FAANG + Microsoft + Uber + Airbnb hire thousands and thousands of engineers in the Valley and Seattle every year. 400K is L5-L6 salary (senior engineer, first level manager). There are a TON of engineers making that money. They are not really outliers, and FAANGMUA is also not really outlier considering Google itself has 80K employees and Amazon and MSFT have over 200K employees.
FAANGMUA. The acronyms just keep getting better.
Wow, when did we all lose our souls? So many pro "FAANG" comments. Working at a big tech company totally sucks. Its soul sucking. Personally speaking, I made about 300k at a FANG adjacent company - and I hated every moment of it. I quit to make less money at a startup. And I'd do it again. Today, especially today, what is there to be proud of in working for a FANNG company? Google is working with the Pentagon on war…
Wow, when did we all lose our souls? So many pro "FAANG" comments. Working at a big tech company totally sucks. Its soul sucking. Personally speaking, I made about 300k at a FANG adjacent company - and I hated every moment of it. I quit to make less money at a startup. And I'd do it again. Today, especially today, what is there to be proud of in working for a FANNG company? Google is working with the Pentagon on war…
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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 years. Outlier would be 750K or more, which means the engineer is one of the most valuable members of the team.
The median T5 Google eng does not have 200k base. (It's less than that) and lol bonus is not 200k. Bonus is 15% of base. Not sure where you are pulling your numbers from but Facebook is very similar. Most senior devs at big tech are not making 200k base (more like 150-190k). It is more like top 20% making that base. But base doesn't matter. The money is in the RSUs anyway.
I'm pulling these numbers from direct contact with recruiters in these companies, and in some cases job offers.
Incidentally, there's an anonymous reply from a Facebook engineer under one of my other comments in this thread. His total compensation last year was $450k.
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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, even if I pay you $950K, I'm still making money. Assuming my business scales, I'd hire as many engineers like you as possible, and pay them the same. Why not? I'm making a profit for each one…
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, even if I pay you $950K, I'm still making money. Where does the money come for dividends, taxes, and overhead? If there is enough supply of engineers at the same quality, no one will pay more.