what startups are offering $250k salaries fresh out of college? In fact, what companies are offering $250k salaries to any engineers?
Employee Retention
61–70 of 95 posts
Re: Employee Retention
#62In my experience the biggest retention issue is for an employer to deliver what was promised during the hiring process. Employers that are competing for talent are known to paint the picture of how they see their ideal instead of how things really are. This sets the new hire's expectations to an unreasonably high standard, and when those expectations aren't met they walk. Being honest with potential hires and showing…
One thing I never understand about the bait and switch is how employees don't get everything in writing :(
Most of the things baited and switched probably wouldn't be required to be put in writing or not, because they aren't legally binding anyway. Even if the legally binding things are put in writing, usually we're talking about at will employment anyway, so they could just fire you instead of making good on a 'promise'.
The types of things I'm talking about with bait and switch are related to what projects you will work on (say you will be put on Team X's sexy initiative, then on Day 1 told you that Team Y's maintenance isn't going well and your skills are needed there), what the future holds for the company (over-optimistic about funding promises, sales estimates, delivery dates, etc.), or how you will be able to progress.
Does the management team have a history of promoting from within or will they hire a former co-worker for the role you are in line for? Can you look at tangible past results and numbers as evidence.
It's not very likely to get these types of items in writing, and unless it's legally binding you don't have any remedy in most cases.
Re: Employee Retention
#63This guy might be a VC that I can actually like. His point on terrible equity allocations is spot-on. If you're giving a dime and a half (0.15%) to your first employee engineer, at a valuation of $5 million, you're not going to get someone good. If you account for equity at-valuation, bad people become cheaper if you're a startup but good people become more expensive (i.e. you'd have to offer $75k per year of equity…
The difference between good and bad is only 40k?
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Re: Employee Retention
#64I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of…
All 3 of your points are achieved if the startup is growing fast and its product is succeeding. It seems like you'll optimize employee retention by making sure the work is worthwhile, even if it's hard, rather than by making sure people don't do too much of it. (I don't disagree with work/life balance in general, but I'm pointing out that your data supports Sam's point that you should give people generous equity for…
Yes - people like to win. If the product succeeds, and the start-up is racing upwards, people will forgive a lot of other things.
I think on work/life balance, there are populations who care about this, and populations who don't. And this changes over time. When I was younger I was happy to throw my whole life into tough projects. Now that I have a family it's tougher to go "All in" with projects.
Re: Employee Retention
#65Great article, but I got a really good laugh out of this.
"But very often, the hard technical problems are important to the world (e.g. Google, Palantir, Facebook)."
Let me know when Facebook starts doing something important to the world.
Re: Employee Retention
#66Do people really pay $250k to engineers right out of college, or is that an exaggeration?
Facebook's new grad package for 2013: ~100k base (higher for Master's students) + 100k signing + 100k in RSUs (sometimes higher).
Re: Employee Retention
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but I find your attitude despicable. I hope I never get to work for you.
LOL I'm discussing the view from outside of how SV "works". Its an open question who dislikes that particular aspect of the topic more, you or I.
Then we're good. :)
Re: Employee Retention
#68The author recommends having a mission so employees feel like they're working for a greater good. So is this why every job on Hacker News goes something like "Help us change the world of [industry]," where [industry] can be something as banal as t-shirt printing or pizza delivery? If you don't believe me, here are some examples from the jobs board: Mobile Hacker? Come work with the team that's reinventing farming Sim…
Sam recommends having a mission but never wrote "for the greater good". At worst one could accuse the founders of uninspired copywriting as they attempt to state what they are aiming to do, which is to make something people want, and more specifically to do that in a novel way. People want light, but it makes little sense for someone to compete with GE to make lightbulbs in the exact same way as GE--if one liked what GE was doing the time and money would be better spent working for and investing in GE.
And while they are low-margin business and not exciting, if someone were to genuinely find a new and useful take on tshirt printing or pizza delivery odds are the startup would be worthwhile. There are lots of tshirts printed and pizzas delivered.
Re: Employee Retention
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The prospect of changing something is often what attracted the founders to the idea in the first place. The most successful founders are not usually in it just for the money. If they were they'd have taken that $50 million acquisition offer on the way up.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, the main reason founders refuse acquisition offers is because they believe their startup has a great future and will be worth a lot more later. I don't think the thought process is ever, "Well, $50 million is great, but you know what? We're enjoying what we do so much that we'll turn it down even though that's the most we will realistically be able to get."
Or even more simply, their investors offer to let them to cash out a few million worth of shares as idiot insurance. This still doesn't really explain why a 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg had the cojones to turn down $1 billion. Very few people in the world would have done that.
Re: Employee Retention
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dating is absolutely horrible for men in the south bay. That 1 hour barrier puts many brakes on even getting a date with all the single women live in SF and the north east bay area. SF is where all the other young people are. The south bay is suburban families.
It's chicken and egg, innit? If there was an economic incentive for people to live in San Jose (say, the tech scene was revitalized from actual startups as opposed to the Adobe/Cisco/eBay/Yahoo!/IBM dinosaurs, and Pinger), then there would be greater demand for SJ to densify, and have attractions, and thus invite more young people to live there. But because young people don't want to live there as it is, companies ar…
Even if you have a bunch of young people in one area, it doesn't mean they will mingle with the rest of the city. Stanford for example keeps within it's own bubble for the most part. There are PhD students who never even go to university street in Palo Alto for example. A Stanford alum I dated for a few months confirmed the same thing. It's only been relatively recently that many tech startups have been moving to SF. It used to be the south bay where many startups lived.
You live in SF/Berkley as a single person, you move down to the south bay to raise a family in stable suburbia with 'good schools' vs. the dice roll that is SF. That is the pattern. More tech companies and mostly male tech workers wont solve it. Downtown SJ is already a bit dense as it is.