261–270 of 392 posts
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$1M is not FU money for someone in a major metropolitan US city with kids.
If someone doesn't hit FU at $1M in the bank, you probably never will, which is ok. $1M is about 20 years of coast on a modest bay area mortgage + family healthcare.
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I think we may be past the point where even this would work - too many startups are offering deals that are transparently awful in a way that discredits the startup ecosystem at large. I've gotten a few early-stage startup offers recently and every single one came out to be over a 50% paycut (even accepting their generous valuations) despite the fact that I made it relatively clear where the total comp needs to be fo…
You are not wrong, and FWIW I am a force for sanity on the boards I am on. I am a comp realist and I will always pay for quality, I am strong advocate for that. The behavior of startups is not intrinsic, it is the product of incentives. If I created a startup tomorrow, I am confident that I could pull world-class engineers out of FAANG. But to your point, I would not play games with compensation. I hire the people I…
This is easy. Offer relatively competitive TC with a real potential upside to the equity package and a work environment that's attractive. BigCorp is mired in politics and decision-making that's grounded in risk mitigation. Do something legitimately interesting and folks will come. Give them some agency and the ability to really get things done and they'll stay.
It's fun to watch the Bay losing its startup spirit and becoming a land of mega corporates. It might resemble Atlanta in 20-30 years. There are so many other places where joining a startup is the best option you have (excluding remote gigs). I guess most startups will become remote-first and lure people who care either about the team or the problem being solved. Building a startup employer brand will be of paramount…
Or it might indicate a lower probability of creating another company that produces FAANGM levels of cash flow.
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Rough numbers, but I'm thinking roughly $200k, $230k, $260k. It's an order of magnitude estimate, take that for what it's worth. If the new grad is instead investing $300k, the calculus remains about the same.
I think it's fair to say that someone who can get that sort of job right out of college probably should. However, I'm not sure that the vast majority of engineers can do that.
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If someone doesn't hit FU at $1M in the bank, you probably never will, which is ok. $1M is about 20 years of coast on a modest bay area mortgage + family healthcare.
Bay area on $50k/yr? Is that some kind of joke or did you mean to type 2 years?
[1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran... [2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-scho...
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If someone doesn't hit FU at $1M in the bank, you probably never will, which is ok. $1M is about 20 years of coast on a modest bay area mortgage + family healthcare.
And the remaining 30 years of life you have low ability to earn income, but face higher taxes and healthcare spend. To me, FU money is passive investments which yield a couple hundred thousand a year from businesses that can keep up with inflation.
If someone doesn't feel comfortable leaving a job to bet on a startup project with 20 years of mortgage payments in the bank, it is unlikely they ever will.
It has always been mindboggling to me that startups are still so all in on the Bay Area. Most problems mentioned in the article go away if/when you are willing to staff developers in an area that is not as ridiculous in terms of cost of living as the Bay area. According to StackExchange data, the 50th percentile pay for a Full Stack Developer with a Bachelors degree and 3 years experience (a profile that would seem r…
Well, this assumes that the x %ile in smaller markets is interchangeable with the x %ile in the more expensive ones like SF, Seattle, NYC, Boston. But I know lots of people from cities like St. Louis who live in these much bigger tech cities because if you’re in the higher range in comp. for your years of experience, it’s just a much better deal being in the more expensive city. So I would guess that in these smaller…
Even if I concede to your assertion that a vast majority of the top 10-20% of developers from these cities leave for the big tech centers- most startups are not doing the kind of work that requires their tech team to be made up of "rockstar" top 10-20% developers.
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>Not if you're a 1,000+ engineer org with an SOA. That's the problem. With a sane simple architecture instead of 40 years of crap on top of crap you wouldn't need thousands of engineers to spin up instances. >In reality the overhead isn't that bad. Over 1e2 times if the solution is in software, over 1e5 times if it's an fpga. Around 1e8 if you do it in silicon. You make the savings from not hiring the 1000s of engine…
> 40 years of crap on top of crap It's all new. > wouldn't need thousands of engineers to spin up instances If thousands of engineers had to worry about deploys, that'd be a problem. The deploy team is small. K8S makes this dead simple. > Over 1e2 times if the solution is in software That's ridiculous. Where did you get those figures? > 1e5 times if it's an fpga. Around 1e8 if you do it in silicon If you're writing c…
> It's all new.
Now I’m tempted to reply, “No wonder that 1000+ engineers can pile up crap that fast” :)