Benefits matter, or why I won't work for your Y Combinator startup

You have to decide how much marginal value an engineer can provide. If it cannot pay for an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, there are other options. Personally, I took a steep discount for years for the privilege of working where I chose. (And when my current contract is closer to ending, I may entertain that again.)

However, don't mistake experience for entitlement. ___

As for your other part, is is possible that we will look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. However, that day will have to wait until we're no longer capable of individually generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue for our respective companies.

Holiday 28 days minimum - as per law https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/entitlement

Rarely offered health care but - for all its flaws - our National Health Service is pretty good.

Shares - yup, they're almost always going to be worthless.

Pension - every company has offered me at least 5% matched pension - some more. The Government is mandating that even small employers will have to put you in a pension scheme soon - which is good.

"Soft" benefits like gym membership / conferences / etc depend very much on how confident the business is in itself. If it can afford them, it likely will - because they know that people can get them at mega-corps.

Pay - ah, there's the kicker. Yes, most startups try to save on the salary costs. Usually they get a pretty rude awakening when they try to hire someone with more than 5 minutes' experience. So they try to make it better with "up-titling". I could have been "Global Head of X" at a company barely looking at sales outside the city.

Joining a start-up is fun. But, like a pyramid scheme, you've got to get in early if you want to reap the share bonanza benefits.

I do wonder why the UK scene doesn't seem quite so vibrant - especially as healthcare costs (which I understand to be the biggest burden in the US) are essentially nil.

I mean, all the psych research says that it takes at least 4+ days until people really get work off their mind, and the work-mindset starts a few days before returning. So vacations start to be effective at a minimum of 2 consecutive, uninterrupted weeks (coincidentally a legal requirement in a bunch of countries). If you're taking vacation in small blocks or continue to think about work on vacation, then you and the company lose the working days spent, but aren't getting the expected recovery/productivity/burnout-prevention/etc benefits for which vacations are actually implemented.

I recently discovered a blog with some interesting proposals on how to run a company, and an economy, in a radically different non-sociopathic manner. I submitted the link to HN , but didn't receive any traction. Perhaps you may find it interesting:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5402277