Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

news.ycombinator.com

121–130 of 200 posts

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#121
post #84
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like people just don't want to leave their life behind... Those listed things are like the bottom of the reasons

On the other hand, I know dozens of people that left their life and higher salaries in the US behind to come to the EU for those stated reasons.

Dozens even!

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#122

> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like portugal/spain). median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale. I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are. [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/...

> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

that's global market already. If apple, google, msft be confident they can hire thousands of high quality engineers in Spain for $30k/y, they would sure open dev offices there and cut jobs in California.

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#123

> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like portugal/spain). median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale. I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are. [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/...

> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale. that's global market already. If apple, google, msft be confident they can hire thousands of high quality engineers in Spain for $30k/y, they would sure open dev offices there and cut jobs in California.

I'm an Irish dev living in Spain getting paid Spanish wages. I'd easily be on double in Ireland.

It is what it is.

The only thing holding back Spanish devs is a relatively low level of English by other European standards.

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#124
post #120

> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain). lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about

Is it wrong? Assuming he refers to top talent, $50-80k isn’t enough to get anyone. You’d hardly be able to hire a top developer in Southeast Asia for this kind of money

No one is taking about average employees

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go? What you're forgetting is that taxes differ quite a lot from country to country. That, and cost of living is a factor too. If food and housing costs half as much, then even though you're paid less, you're not really poorer for it. I think many American developers are…

From what I read on the internets, housing is also absurdly expensive in London, Lisbon, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai etc. Adjusting for the local level of salaries of course. So not sure what your point is?

Absurd compared to the local living wages, not compared to SF

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#126

> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like portugal/spain). median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale. I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are. [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/...

>I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are. Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are. It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?

The OP was talking about startup roles. At that stage there is little revenue to speak of, and the salaries on offer are going to correspond to how much financing they were able to obtain.

VC funding of software startups in the US easily dwarves whatever is being offered in other parts of the world.

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#127
post #30

"The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Spain is €55,437." "The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Portugal is €39,094."

Dont thrust those numbers. 50k € is a very high salary in Spain for a software developer. The average is probably closer to 35k €

I don’t know of many tech startups that want to hire average developers for their core team.

The average is low, yes, but there are also well paid roles that the kind of person a startup in SV would want are probably already doing.

Anecdotally, I’ve been offered jobs paying 80-100k€ based off Barcelona as I’ve been dreaming of coming back to Spain (I didn’t, sadly, as even though they were good local salaries they were a lot lower than what I made)

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#128
post #12
post #7

They're not paying $80k, they're paying $80k plus an equity lottery ticket that hopefully has a chance of being worth millions.

I almost never come across a startup I’d actually want a lottery ticket in. The business models just seem naive or sometimes absurd.

The value of the startup lottery ticket is based on how fast you can hire, how much hype you can build and how many users you can acquire. Most startups are a money pit, their only value is in acquiring their customer base.

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#129
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a startup, a "staff engineer" might just be They're clearly wizards that hold a staff. > I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup. That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech? > "Senior" means different things to different people. It usually just means old.

> > I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup. > That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech? It's no one's fault, it's that different companies need different things and can utilise productivity in different ways.

Yea, a lot (not most) of seniors at Big Tech spend 50+% of their time writing docs that never result in anything or otherwise really did _not_ need a doc, or "generating ideas" and "fielding questions" from someone 3 teams away from them.

The mid-levels engineers are doing a lot more of the grunt work of writing code. At a small company, new ideas are great, but you really need someone that can just sit down and pump out code. Move fast, bias for action.

Source: I've worked at various sized companies from 5 person seed, to 300 person high growth, to Big Tech.

Re: Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read on the internets, housing is also absurdly expensive in London, Lisbon, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai etc. Adjusting for the local level of salaries of course. So not sure what your point is?

Absurd compared to the local living wages, not compared to SF

Comparable to SF, but unsupported by the easy money.
Post reply on HN