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Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

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Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#341

Post by smallgovt »

st3v3r wrote: post #340
smallgovt wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we live in a capitalistic society where supply/demand ultimately controls price, not what's fair. I.e. On average, engineers get paid what they do because if they demand any more, another peer of equal caliber, on average, will take their job. VC's get paid, on average, what they do because no other VC will do it for less.

So basically a bunch of classist bullshit.

Whether or not that's true, you have little to no power to change it.

Unless you have some genuine superhuman value for justice , you'll be better off spending your energy learning how to work within the system versus being angry/complaining about it.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#342

Post by throwaway2016a »

HelloNurse wrote: post #331
throwaway2016a wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also what I meant when I said... > I work at a startup that isn't profitable yet so our salaries are very low... ... was "too low... if we could afford it I'd pay three times that much" not "oh look what a great deal we are getting! Haha, suckers!"

If the candidate received and accepted another offer for twice what you would pay him, it is hard evidence that you pay half market value. Planning to pay people half market value is madness. If you cannot afford salaries, you need a business plan that involves more profits and/or more "runway" of sacrificial capital or debt.

Hey... I know this is a late reply but so was your's :)

We pay about 70% below market. Unfortunately I am not the one that makes the decisions or the business plans. I am just barely high enough in the org to be privy to what people get paid.

For what it's worth I 100% agree with you.

The result is we get software engineers with much less experience. For what it's worth... they have all worked out very well. But I think someone with more experience would work twice as fast and therefor work out to about the same cost anyway.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#343

Post by oceanghost »

zerr wrote: post #318
ashark wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their attention span for products and tendency to half-ass things that aren't highly visible (Android SDK and documentation comes to mind) supports this notion. It's exactly what I'd expect from a company hiring 100% A players but needing 95% B-C work—avoid and shirk until you can land on a greenfield project, work on that until it's boring, then jump ship to another company or a more interesting project, because god…

Being/becoming good at CS-riddles (i.e. passing Google-like interviews) doesn't necessary correlate to being A player on the real job. So one might say Google employs a lot of B/C players (who just passed their interviews) where being A is a requirement for the job.

"CS riddles" test exactly what they're meant to.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#344

Post by oceanghost »

natosaichek wrote: post #167
Arizhel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. They don't have that option at startups either, because the startups all want people who'll be at the office 18 hours a day with "team spirit". I think this article is useless. Startups are only for pe…

I'm 35 and have only worked at startups. I'm at the largest company I've ever worked for now, and we've grown since I started from ~20 to ~80 employees. Previous companies I was in the first 10. I think you need to pick your startups better. Every company I've worked at has pad me reasonably well(admittedly less than the big companies), has not required more than 40 hours/week except literally for one or two days aro…

Out of curiosity, what "freedom" is that exactly?

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#345

Post by oceanghost »

jboggan wrote: post #147

I'm leaving Google this week to start my own company again. The prospect of eventually sitting on the other side of the table and competing with these big companies used to bother me but I've realized that the personalities I'm looking for don't flourish at Google, and vice versa. Google engineers (those that stay past the first vesting event) tend to be very risk averse, even for engineers. I'm not talking about tec…

"My cognitive type is the only one that can succeed."

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#348

Post by phil21 »

AlexC04 wrote: post #293
phil21 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you almost played this right, with one caveat. You should have taken the flight to the west coast and done the interview, with minimal (hour or two) to no prep at all. Why? First, you never know. Maybe they legitimately want your skillset - why fake up some crap you hate for a job you don't need? Second, you'll get practice taking interviews in a very low pressure situation. Worst-case they laugh at you and y…

Failure really hurts me on a psychological level. I don't have any interest in half assing stuff. If I can't crush it, I don't want to play. The cost of the flight & hotel is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. By that I mean relative to stuff like going to a place you want to see, the value of spending a vacation day, etc... I do agree that the meeting smart people is fun... but the full on crash-and-burn…

I am horrible at checking my comment replies, so sorry about the lateness. Hopefully you see this.

This is a fair point, but I simply want to point out that was half the reason I suggested it. Learning how to fail :)

I very much understand the mental aspect here though, so that's a tough one and my advice is not for everyone. I will say that at some point in your career you will fail though - or you aren't pushing yourself very hard. I believe this was one of the harder things I had to "train" myself to deal with; the mental load of failing at something and how to recover.

If you're not in a mental space to make that experience a positive for you? Absolutely skip it.

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