Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 418 posts

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#141

Post by Retric »

Cyberdog wrote: post #135
dsacco wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't undermine the author's point. As another commenter said, people are really underestimating the likelihood of earning a $250k salary at a large company. It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area. The author's core point is that you are much more likely to become a senior engineer at a large company (and thus earn ~$250k in salary)…

> It's really, really doable at a large company within 5 years if you hit senior level and live in a metropolitan area. If, if, if, if. Just by numbers, most devs don't meet these criteria. And even in the periods of time which I personally have, I still was not making anywhere near this kind of money. These numbers are inflated and out of reach to the vast majority of developers in the workplace today, full stop.

So, is hitting the startup jackpot. If a 250k job has 5% odds, and a startup jackpot has 1% odds then it's really worth thinking about.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#142

Post by tvural »

I appreciate some of the writer's points, but he's so eager to prove his point that he makes some obvious mistakes. The 38% of founders who failed took on average a few months to do so. Quality of research papers is produced is not a measure of how interesting work at a company will be - was Steve Wozniak churning out papers while he worked on the Apple II?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#143

Post by mcguire »

Although, overall, I think this article is reasonably right, there are quite a few things sketchy about it. But I'll just start with the first that comes to mind:

If Google and Facebook are your median exemplars, I really want to know what your sample is. Those aren't exactly large companies. Amazon, too. Apple and Microsoft may be, at least in this industry, but I still have the feeling that the total number of the technical people that this article seems to be addressing is much larger than the total employment of the "large companies" (and small ones).

Also, another minor issue: During my years at IBM (technically, contracting for IBM, but even then you couldn't pay me enough to sign on), I did get to work on very interesting projects and learned a great deal from some very smart people. On the other hand, everything I did was shovelled into the trash can immediately after I finished it. Project cancellations, reorganizations (IBM: I've Been Moved), etc., these are fun facts. Of course, I don't expect start-ups to be any different in this regard, given their failure rate.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#144

Post by didip »

balls187 wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200k for sr in the valley is not weird. Remember: it's not year 5 of your career . It's year 5 of your tenure at one company . It's a little unusual for people to stay longer than 4 years at most companies.

What companies are paying 5 year senior enigneers $200k base salary in the Valley???

I can come up with a few on top of my head: Netflix, Apple, Google

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#145

Post by autotune »

As someone in The Bay Area looking for work as a sysadmin with a heavy interest in automation/devops (obligatory plug), it's not a question of Big Company vs. Startup, it's a question of who is hiring and has at least been open to interviewing; these have almost unanimously been startups. I'd like nothing more than the stability of a large company with interesting projects and decent pay but lets be honest, how many of us will really have the chance to work for Google or Facebook vs the earlier stage startup that's a bit more risky but has a product you find worth supporting and has reached out to you based on their interest in the projects you've been working on?

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#146

Post by mcguire »

huangwei_chang wrote: post #114
jarjoura wrote: post #96

250k a year in 5 years at a big corporation, really? Yea if you're lucky to work on a project/team higher-ups care about and are also willing to bust your ass working long hours to meet insane deadlines. Also, you better be someone who is excellent at communication and charismatic if you want to get invited to the table of interesting work. There are a lot of brilliant hyper-competitive people who work at these big c…

It guess it also depends on what level one is when joining the company. I guess this article is for people with an undergraduate degree in CS?

...from Stanford or a similar school.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#147

Post by thenewwazoo »

balls187 wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200k for sr in the valley is not weird. Remember: it's not year 5 of your career . It's year 5 of your tenure at one company . It's a little unusual for people to stay longer than 4 years at most companies.

What companies are paying 5 year senior enigneers $200k base salary in the Valley???

Facebook, Salesforce, LinkedIn. And that's just what I have either direct or first-hand knowledge of.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#148

Post by sudo-i »

Paul Graham/Sam Altman/Michael Arrington/etc... are just spreading their messages as they are always, because in the end more startups/more smart people at startups, the more it has an impact on their wallets.

It's just a fun as arguing which is a better phone, Android or iOS... it's super old and a boring, divisive conversation.

Re: Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation

#149

Post by balls187 »

didip wrote: post #144
balls187 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What companies are paying 5 year senior enigneers $200k base salary in the Valley???

I can come up with a few on top of my head: Netflix, Apple, Google

Do you have sources for this information?

Is 200k median salary, or an outlier for the top senior engineer there?

Post reply on HN