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Sounds like the market is telling startups that early engineers are worth more than 0.1% of stock options.
I had more of a financial background before becoming a software engineer. I was shocked when I found out "equity" given to early engineers is so puny. Why would someone work long hours for low pay with higher risk for 0.1% of high-risk small business?
If 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, what makes your salary "fair", if it results in an offer that's significantly lower than BigCo? How do you decide what's fair?
Both sides are happy with it?
Just wanted to reply exactly that. Obviously fair is very subjective and different to both parties involved. But we try to find a good combination of salary + bonus and also investment in the company itself (be it retreats or taking risks with new products like Bugfender), which then results in temporarily lower bonuses, but an expected bigger payoff and possibilities for everyone in the long turn.
I don't think the average engineer with 5 years of experience makes 250k; not even in the top 10%. And startups DO pay that much, it's just reserved for powerful exec hires. Just pay more if you want the best engineers. Asking for a world where top talent works for less money is stupid.
The average engineer at google with 5 years of experience makes at least 250K. To put it bluntly: I'm pretty sure the average cash compensation (that is, disregarding RSUs entirely, which is likely at least another 100k/yr) is going to push 200K. The same is substantially true of the main competitors to Google (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft).
The reason startups have trouble is that engineers can smell bullshit and know they are in demand. You can make a great offer (e.g. substantial equity, support growth, be an actually transparent leader, etc etc) and hire great talent.
Problem is everyone wants to have and eat their cake. I've founded a startup; founders are not special and their whole job is to build a good team. So stop whining!!!
If 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 l…
I don't think the average engineer with 5 years of experience makes 250k; not even in the top 10%. And startups DO pay that much, it's just reserved for powerful exec hires. Just pay more if you want the best engineers. Asking for a world where top talent works for less money is stupid.
The average engineer at google with 5 years of experience makes at least 250K. To put it bluntly: I'm pretty sure the average cash compensation (that is, disregarding RSUs entirely, which is likely at least another 100k/yr) is going to push 200K. The same is substantially true of the main competitors to Google (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft).
I don't think the average engineer with 5 years of experience makes 250k; not even in the top 10%. And startups DO pay that much, it's just reserved for powerful exec hires. Just pay more if you want the best engineers. Asking for a world where top talent works for less money is stupid.
If 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…
There were also tangible side effects. You couldn't generally expect them to work on what they perceived to be work which is low profile but actually important for some unquantifiable metric such as morale of the customer support team. You couldn't generally expect them to play by the same rules when it came to check in policies, documentation standards etc.
But best of all, the actual code they wrote would uniformly fall on either end of the astronaut architecture spectrum - either completely ignoring maintainability and turning the entire team into Schlemiel the painter, or being so convoluted that they themselves couldn't make quick progress a few years down the line on the code that they wrote.
Optimizing 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had more of a financial background before becoming a software engineer. I was shocked when I found out "equity" given to early engineers is so puny. Why would someone work long hours for low pay with higher risk for 0.1% of high-risk small business?
Because: they're fresh out of college and haven't met anyone burned by an IPO/bubble burst & realised how that could be them.