This article is basically arguing that farm teams should be able to afford pro athletes... Having engineers who "perform in the top 10%" is a nice-to-have, not a requirement for startup success.
Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
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Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#12Well, Hacker News seems to be hurting this website, so here's Google's cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RD5ZRW...
The definition if Irony!!!
Google is hurting us, so use a system by Google to read how Google is bad for (some) business(-es) which you could not read if Google didn't exist, while at the same time this article wouldn't exist if Google didn't exist!
(and right about now I'm watching myself looking at me seeing me)
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#13I'm old enough to remember when the big 5 colluded to keep salaries low...
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#14Optimizing for compensation is a silly idea at an engineer's salary.
I am a whole lot happier in a small company that pays me a reasonable salary and is fun than a huge company where I have to play politics and jump through hoops on command.
EDIT: Plus I get a lot more responsibility and exposure to everything involved so that I am better equipped to strike out on my own.
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#15I hate posts of this nature. There are no hard facts; it's a collection of thoughts communicated as 'facts' via a blog post.
Plenty of Google engineers become start-up co/founders. If you are good at what you do, the start-ups will magically find money for you.
If the a start-up is an equity-heavy sweatshop. You don't have to make $200K to know who is taking advantage of you.
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#16Maybe starting a company in an area consumed by rampant cost-of-living and salary inflation isn't the smartest idea.
Besides, your Uber for Cats startup probably doesn't need GoogSoftppleBookazon-grade engineers to slam together a mobile app and some CRUD services.
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#17If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. There are also plenty…
Very true. For both of our companies [1][2] we pay a fair salary plus a quarterly bonus on top of that based on what we can give (based on the company's quarterly profit results). We also offer remote retreats (so far Cape Town, Thailand, Martinique, Spain and Skiing in the Alps) and the biggest contributor to everyone's satisfaction is that we let everyone work from where ever they want and as much as they want as long as it is planned properly.
The result: we've had a couple of employees who received job offers from companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. But after going to the interview process and talking to other employees there they've all (with the exception of one) decided to stay with us, with a significantly lower salary, but a lot more freedom and work-life balance.
Not saying that we've a better offer than Google & co, but saying that our offer is different than theirs and there are enough people out there who care more about other things than just money.
EDIT: formatting
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#18I am naive... however, some opinions...
If the startup is truly revolutionary|innovative, shouldn't we see VC's pounding down the doors to give them money? If they have money, shouldn't they spend that on their personnel (assuming they are not manufacturing robots or something) if we are talking software?
Seems to me that startups want to have their cake and eat it too. If you have money to pay, then pay competitive wages. If you don't, offer equity. If you have something worth a shit, people will want to work for your startup.
The next facebook, unless it is the next facebook, isn't going to sell a lot of people. I look at the YC list of startups and shake my head... most of them don't make much sense. They might be winners, but I would ask for a large paycheck instead of equity for most of them.
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#19If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. There are also plenty…
>But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies.
They don't have that option at startups either, because the startups all want people who'll be at the office 18 hours a day with "team spirit".
I think this article is useless. Startups are only for people who are under ~25 (maybe 30), have no families, are willing to spend all their waking hours pursuing someone else's dream, and think they're going to make bank doing it and are willing to take that gamble. This is not the kind of engineer who goes to work at most large companies; they're two entirely different hiring pools.
Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups
#20Here are some options, but notice how controversial they are:
1. Employ younger, inexperienced people and train them
2. Import immigrant developers
3. Hire people in different geographies
As an alternative, why not:
1. Hire older workers
2. Hire the unemployed American workers
3. Hire in America?
Well, because it costs more? Does it?
I don't know, I am just trying to open up the conversation here.
Edit: made language more neutral