Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

I think the "not with a straight face" thing depends on what you're willing to get in writing up front and then insist on. As you say, companies can cut pay like they can change any other terms (depending on jurisdiction, natch, but mostly true in the US). The difference is that they know people take that very seriously. So if you want those other things to stay true, you have to be just as serious. Agreements don't enforce themselves.

Solutions

1. Hire candidates that these big companies overlook, or that aren't interested in experience-blind trivia style data structures & algorithms interviews

2. Hire in locations where the cost of living is low

3. Allow your engineers the freedom and flexibility to work remotely. A side effect of this is that it opens up your candidate pool outside of your geographic confines and allows you to accomplish #2

4. Shorten your work week, or even remove the mandated work week altogether. To most this probably sounds blasphemous, but engineering is the type of work that doesn't have to be confined to a M-F 9-5 schedule.

5. Increase equity (0.1% is an absolute joke for most startups)

Hiring remotely is the easiest way to compete with fat corporate compensation packages. I would gladly take a pay cut if it meant being able to forgo my $2k/month rent in NYC and digital nomad around Europe and Southeast Asia.

>On our last team Vegas trip I kept track of how much everyone was gambling as a proxy for their risk appetite

Yikes. Gambling is just a dumb idea in general (it is literally designed to make you lose money)... unless you are gambling with other's money. ;)

There is a diff between "With enough work, this risky thing could work out" and "With enough luck, this risky thing could work out if I stop while I am ahead"

I used to work for a proprietary financial trading firm, where we turned the founders' pile of money into a bigger pile of money. It's the purest "only care about the money" circumstance, and even there they occasionally cared about things other than money. E.g., the people they worked with.

More broadly, though, you misunderstand what companies are about. They're just a collection of people who get together to do a thing. They are only soulless to the extent that the people there are. (Or decide to pretend they are.)

The best places I've worked and visited actually care about the thing they're doing. E.g., I have friends who do catering. They love making people's events go well. They love making people happy. They fucking love the physical acts of making food and serving it to people. Sure, they have to get paid, or the enterprise isn't sustainable.

They are, legally, a for-profit business. But if clubbing seals or trading bonds got them 10% more annualized ROI, they wouldn't do it. Because they're not really there for the profit. They're there to please and delight people by doing something they enjoy.

In my view, this complaint is just one step above an acquaintance who claims to have an amazing idea, and all you have to do as an engineer is make it into a reality and then we'll be super rich

Oh... but you can't really pay me that much (or at all), but once this idea comes to fruition, I'll be so glad I invested all my time and energy.

This is what I hear when a startup can't pay a competitive salary. If you can't offer to pay a competitive wage, you shouldn't be in the business (or you really do have an amazing idea, and the engineers are willing to take that bet based on merit or based on trust the founder has previously established)