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Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

thestartupconference.com

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Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#141

Post by darkmarmot »

watertom wrote: post #66

The biggest thing hurting startups is the fact that big companies provide health care. Having Businesses provide health care, IMHO, is the biggest issues facing job growth in the U.S. Having been on the ground floor of 3 startups, the biggest issues wasn't salary it was health care, the only people that you can recruit are those young enough not to care, either because they are single or they don't have children. If…

I left at startup because of healthcare issues. Having healthcare tied to one's employment is terrible in so many ways for both the individual and the economy as a whole. Maybe one day someone will cut that chain...

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#142

Post by st3v3r »

Maybe startups, instead of going for the lavish offices, should put more of that VC money into salaries and health benefits. Or try to offer a better work/life balance. This entitled idea that startup founders have that they can pay shit wages and work people to death needs to go.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#144

Post by beambot »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #140
znq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is there's no way to know how true the promises are. What do "flex hours" mean to them? Is it conditional, if so, on what? How far does their trust really go? Compensation doesn't have this problem. You can't offer me $160k and then pay me $120k six months down the road. I mean, you can, but not with a straight face. The soft benefits you described are one CTO/manager/investor change, or engineer bus acci…

So you're saying startups are riskier...? Don't think anyone here will disagree with that. ;)

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#145

Post by throwaway2016a »

holydude wrote: post #103
throwaway2016a wrote: post #21

I work at a startup that isn't profitable yet so our salaries are very low... - Our typical junior makes $50 - 60k - A typical mid makes $65 - 75k - Seniors (including CTO) make $90 - 110k In greater Boston. It is VERY difficult to hire at those rates. We had someone come in interviewing for a senior that I would place as a mid (generously...) and he accepted another offer for $150k. At our scale he would be making $…

"We had someone come in interviewing for a senior that I would place as a mid (generously...)" Exactly. Do not be so cocky. This is free market and while you are entitled to your opinion why should a candidate try too hard to get a position that pays less than half of what he will get elsewhere just because his skills are not up to your standards ? You cannot really assess my skills in an interview the same way I can…

Don't be so quick to judge.

Placing someone at mid / senior / junior is not "cocky"... it's pretty subjective if you do it right. The guy missed questions that over 50% of our applicants knew the answers to.

I'm not talking the "implement this obscure algorithm from scratch on a whiteboard" kind of question HN is so fond of. The hardest coding question we ask is Fizz-Buzz.

But we can't / won't pay him more than we pay other employees with similar or higher skill sets.

If we drew a bell curve of all the applicants we had, this guy would be in the middle.

His resume was impressive though. My guess is the company that hired him didn't do their diligence and only weighed the resume.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#146

Post by thesmallestcat »

beambot wrote: post #144
thesmallestcat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there's no way to know how true the promises are. What do "flex hours" mean to them? Is it conditional, if so, on what? How far does their trust really go? Compensation doesn't have this problem. You can't offer me $160k and then pay me $120k six months down the road. I mean, you can, but not with a straight face. The soft benefits you described are one CTO/manager/investor change, or engineer bus acci…

So you're saying startups are riskier...? Don't think anyone here will disagree with that. ;)

The risk I described is separate from startups. A company of any size/age/growth rate can substitute soft benefits for compensation. To be clear, I was not talking about the job stability risk of working at a startup, or startups at all.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#147

Post by jboggan »

I'm leaving Google this week to start my own company again. The prospect of eventually sitting on the other side of the table and competing with these big companies used to bother me but I've realized that the personalities I'm looking for don't flourish at Google, and vice versa.

Google engineers (those that stay past the first vesting event) tend to be very risk averse, even for engineers. I'm not talking about technical risk and skill but I mean career and life risk. There are relatively few motorcyclists and skydivers. On our last team Vegas trip I kept track of how much everyone was gambling as a proxy for their risk appetite and decided that Googlers like a sure thing, not a risky payout down the road.

My point is, you may want Google's talent bar (who doesn't?) but you aren't truly competing for the same people. Give me some smart pirates and a fast ship.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#148

Post by ryanpepper »

pm90 wrote: post #119
Toenex wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, what do Google et. al. pay in the UK? I work in a small medtech in Manchester UK (like a scaled down Boston!) and simply currency adjusting these numbers would make for attractive offers here. For example I've a PhD in computer vision, 20 years building and selling medical device approved imaging software in the EU & US and have yet to be offered anything close to $100K (yes dollars) and options that…

If you have a PhD AND 20 years of job experience, I am sorry to say you are doing something really wrong if your base salary has not crossed the six figure mark. Maybe companies in the UK don't pay as much as those in the US; I wouldn't know. If that is the case though, I would suggest that you work in the US for a few years and maybe move back and try to negotiate a better offer. Having EU/UK citizenship makes it mu…

The starting salary for a new graduate in the UK is probably in the range of £25-£33k, unless you're really lucky and do something like investment banking which is about half of what comparably qualified grads make in the US.

On the other hand, there are additional things that are paid for because of various legal differences between the the UK and the US (such as paid maternity leave, paid sick leave, and employers have to pay a tax for each employee called National Insurance which effectively funds the state pension system). The law also gives all employees 5.5 weeks of holiday (though there often some restrictions on when it can be taken).

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#149

Post by throwaway2016a »

meddlepal wrote: post #136
throwaway2016a wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have flex hours. We've toyed with short work weeks but it hasn't taken off (yet). We do have the typical stocked fridge and beer and foosball. But so does everyone else. We've actually found that given the choice between a perk and more money, people almost always take the money up to about $100k. After that priorities change. > How does your company handle IP assignment also for personal projects? If I can work o…

Flex hours aren't really the same as cutting the work week by 8 hours. It also requires you do not just expect people to make up the lost day by putting in 10-12 hour days on the regular. It's a deeply cultural thing and requires top-down executive and mgmt buy in.

Well if you put it that way, it wasn't really on the table for us then. We would have expected employees doing that to do 10 hour days the other days of the week.

I love the idea of not requiring that but the math just doesn't work out for us. We have specific goals we need to hit to make payroll and losing 8 hours a week from everyone wouldn't work.

We are actively working to improve our processes so we can make more money with less hours spent though. When we crack that nut we can consider something like that.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#150

Post by csomar »

spapas82 wrote: post #127
jasim wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll get programmers from developing countries with a good 10 years on them for $70k if you can build a company around a completely async remote culture. And I'm not talking about fad-following framework-crazed devs, but rugged pros who'll cost a premium if they were in a developed country.

Hello, this is not only true for developing countries but even for developed countries. I'll speak about my country, Greece. The average wage for a junior developer is a little less than 20 000 euros per month (around 1000 years/month x 14 months + 4000 for insurance etc) while for a senior may be a little more (but probably less than 30 000, depends on years and kind of work). Wages of more than 35 000 euros are sel…

I'd be careful with that calculation. Is the 20k EUR / year figure includes Taxes, Social Security and Office Space. The figures being thrown here (in the US) are pre-Tax/Social Security.
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