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How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

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Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#41

Post by [deleted] »

jasonkester wrote: post #19
dsolomon wrote: post #15

What a load of crap. If companies paid that much then unemployment would be next to nil.

I've noticed you make comments like this every time salaries are mentioned around here, with usually the same reception. You seem to honestly believe what you're saying, and you seem to be genuine when you say that you've observed lots of low salaries in your portion of the industry. http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dsolomon But you'd benefit from knowing that it's not like that, pretty much anywhere else in th…

[deleted]

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#42

Post by 001sky »

pork wrote: post #30
potatolicious wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the ugly, ugly truth about startups. Employees have so little equity compensation it's almost hilarious - and yet founders will hand out 0.1% offers and expect you to take huge haircuts for the privilege of owning a tiny sliver of a 7-8 figure exit ( potential exit, actually). Having seen the stock and bonus structure at Amazon and Google, I can confidently say that your expected outcomes are considerably…

I'm sorry, do you mean "paycut" or is this some sort of idiom I'm not familiar with? What does hair have to do with it?

Haircut = any asset monetized below par value (100%)

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#43

Post by confluence »

> We know Mark Zuckerberg did not build Facebook to get rich. His vision of “making the world more open and connected,” is Facebook’s real raison d’être.

Sounds like ex post facto rewriting history bullshit to me.

You start companies to make money (otherwise you'd start a non-profit). You may or may not have other reasons for starting the company. However saying that you didn't want the money after you become rich is false modesty and a form of social signalling.

Founders may or may not want to change the world - but they unequivocally want to make a lot of money regardless of their other reasons.

Indeed, most of these other reasons should be classified under the "reality distortion field" umbrella.

These are used so that founders can say "Come with me and help me change the world!" - when what they really mean to say is "Come make me filthy rich and get paid less for pleasure of doing so you ingracious B player!".

Psychological arbitrage is a real factor in start-ups and a lot of social negotiation. Be careful when dealing with others and remember - everyone is trying to screw you in some form or another (see Facebook founder fight over rights to stock).

Trust no one (this is a PR piece and I'm 100% biased).

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#44

Post by aidenn0 »

confluence wrote: post #43

> We know Mark Zuckerberg did not build Facebook to get rich. His vision of “making the world more open and connected,” is Facebook’s real raison d’être. Sounds like ex post facto rewriting history bullshit to me. You start companies to make money (otherwise you'd start a non-profit). You may or may not have other reasons for starting the company. However saying that you didn't want the money after you become rich is…

There are exceptions; Elon Musk clearly started SpaceX because he couldn't afford to develop the technology at a non-profit. Similarly it is common for well-off people who are retirement age to start a business that has no possibility of making any significant money just to have something to do.

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#45

Post by noahc »

portlander52232 wrote: post #38
noahc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think unemployment is caused by out of work programmers. It's more the folks who have no or low skill jobs and those effected most by the recession such as construction workers. It's hard for me to imagine a construction worker being able to transition from the blue collar culture to the white collar culture that most of these jobs fall into. Again, It's not so much that construction workers are stupid, but i…

Actually, since the recession, unemployment increased by the same proportion in all sectors of the economy. That is, software engineering unemployment is about twice what it was before; construction unemployment is about twice what it was before; etc. etc. etc. This indicates that the problem is not structural (i.e. not due to people having the wrong skills), but due to a shortfall in demand: everybody tightened thei…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/unempl... seems to suggest otherwise.

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#46

Post by exxec »

I'm from Germany, and 100k$ sounds enormous to me. This are saleries only top tier manegement is getting paid. But I'm curious about your additional costs like health insurance, unemployment insurance and so on. Also I'm curious about how much taxes you have to pay and whats a common net-salery (right word? opposite to gross^^)

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#47

Post by donavanm »

exxec wrote: post #46

I'm from Germany, and 100k$ sounds enormous to me. This are saleries only top tier manegement is getting paid. But I'm curious about your additional costs like health insurance, unemployment insurance and so on. Also I'm curious about how much taxes you have to pay and whats a common net-salery (right word? opposite to gross^^)

After taxes, insurance, etc figure $65-70,000 net or "take home". Then you can invest up to $16,000 with deferred/sheltered taxes for 401k (private pension).

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#48

Post by lifeisstillgood »

confluence wrote: post #37
potatolicious wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the ugly, ugly truth about startups. Employees have so little equity compensation it's almost hilarious - and yet founders will hand out 0.1% offers and expect you to take huge haircuts for the privilege of owning a tiny sliver of a 7-8 figure exit ( potential exit, actually). Having seen the stock and bonus structure at Amazon and Google, I can confidently say that your expected outcomes are considerably…

It's a founder generated myth - come here and work for me cheap in the hopes I become a billionaire and change the world blah blah blah. The funny thing about equity is the guy who starts benefits disproportionately by simply being there earlier than others of equivalent technical ability. Contrary to popular belief - most founders are selfish morons compared to some of the people they hire later to make them rich. I…

  most founders are selfish morons compared to some 
  of the people they hire later to make them rich.
Lets hope there aren't many startup founders reading this forum - or they might get worried :-)

Anyway, enough silliness, is it feasible to create an expectation or culture that rewards early hires in line with the (expected) drop in salary - the argument being that if I could earn 150K contracting for a year, but work for you at 50K, I should expect to garner 100K worth of equity.

Or are we going to see a simple return to the basics of start-ups - it takes money to start a company. You need lots of it to hire good people. Or is it really feasible to do everything with three guys in a room?

Or is it simply that heaving a compny into existence takes more than just technical know-how. it really is about hustle.

I honestly doubt that start-ups that become profitable and breech the magic 1m /pa are purely taking the employees pay cuts and moving them around - I mean that money does not really exist.

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#49

Post by Evbn »

mcherm wrote: post #24
chrisa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fairly common way to do advancement in large companies, and is usually based on experience. "Software Engineer I" is entry level, "Software Engineer II" has 3 – 5 years of experience, etc.

Can you fill in "etc."? I'd be interested to know what definitions they used for the levels (and whether it was consistent across different sources of data).

Beyond II (intermediate dev, not a college hire, the majority of working engineers) there is no meaning beyond "suitably impressive resume or reputation at the employer".

Re: How Much Should Startup Employees Earn? Wealthfront Tells Us With A Clever Tool

#50

Post by Evbn »

svdad wrote: post #20
at-fates-hands wrote: post #7

This is actually a pretty interesting tool. Not sure how accurate it is, since its telling me I should be making the same salary I've made at large corporations the last two years. Based on the interviewing I've been doing, most of the start-ups around here (Midwest) were offering close to 30-40K less than my corporate gigs.

In SF Bay area, my experience in the last year or so has been that salary comp is pretty much the same between start-ups and big companies, the only exception being super-early-stage startups (i.e. pre-series A) where they really don't have the money yet. The difference is that at bigco, they add bonus and equity grant that have real value, while at startup, they add some % of equity with unknown value. Companies lik…

Amazon pretty famously does not adjust base salaries upward compared to other big companies.
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