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Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

thestartupconference.com

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Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#91

Post by mathgenius »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
krschultz wrote: post #7

If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. 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. There are also plenty…

I've heard that Google often has A class talent doing B or C class work; e.g. an expert in PL will often be working on ads. Sure the pay is great, but it can feel soul sucking. A startup can be appealing to some talented people if the work is interesting, even if the pay isn't as good.

Indeed, until today I had not understood the great attraction to working at a megolith such as google: big money.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#94

Post by umeshunni »

canistr wrote: post #65

The other problem is that with so many startups nowadays, none of them offer a compelling enough vision or mission that would entice someone away from the Google/Facebook/Microsoft's of the world. A lot of them are either still working on their product-market fit in a niche field or they are hire front-end devs for some CRUD analytics tools. I'd much rather go work at a non-profit, NGO, or government-based organizati…

> none of them offer a compelling enough vision

Bingo! You could get 0.1% equity and low pay to work on yet another food delivery or social photo chat app or you could work at M/G/F/A/A for $200k+RSUs and at least know you have competent co-workers and management.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#95

Post by drewg123 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
krschultz wrote: post #7

If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. 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. There are also plenty…

I've heard that Google often has A class talent doing B or C class work; e.g. an expert in PL will often be working on ads. Sure the pay is great, but it can feel soul sucking. A startup can be appealing to some talented people if the work is interesting, even if the pay isn't as good.

I knew several people in roles like this when I was there. They had somebody who had done a PhD in OS research working on startup scripts.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#96

Post by ashark »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
krschultz wrote: post #7

If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. 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. There are also plenty…

I've heard that Google often has A class talent doing B or C class work; e.g. an expert in PL will often be working on ads. Sure the pay is great, but it can feel soul sucking. A startup can be appealing to some talented people if the work is interesting, even if the pay isn't as good.

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 knows you didn't go to MIT and then cram algos/structures for 6 months to update developer docs 8 hours a day.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#98

Post by allsystemsgo »

krschultz wrote: post #7

If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. 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. There are also plenty…

Yes to remote.

I was at SXSW. All the startups I talked to bemoaned their hiring problem, yet none of them wanted to even consider remote workers.

Sorry, I'm not sympathetic to that.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#99

Post by throwaway2016a »

jasim wrote: post #47
throwaway2016a wrote: post #21

I work at a startup that isn't profitable yet so our salaries are very low... - Our typical junior makes $50 - 60k - A typical mid makes $65 - 75k - Seniors (including CTO) make $90 - 110k In greater Boston. It is VERY difficult to hire at those rates. We had someone come in interviewing for a senior that I would place as a mid (generously...) and he accepted another offer for $150k. At our scale he would be making $…

You'll get programmers from developing countries with a good 10 years on them for $70k if you can build a company around a completely async remote culture. And I'm not talking about fad-following framework-crazed devs, but rugged pros who'll cost a premium if they were in a developed country.

Yeah. There is significant management overhead. And things like standardized QA and requirements become very important since a miscommunication can cost a whole day due to timezone differences.

I have been working hard to improve our processes but we aren't there yet.

Re: Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

#100

Post by mbesto »

thedevil wrote: post #41
bla2 wrote: post #5

Sounds like the market is telling startups that early engineers are worth more than 0.1% of stock options.

I had more of a financial background before becoming a software engineer. I was shocked when I found out "equity" given to early engineers is so puny. Why would someone work long hours for low pay with higher risk for 0.1% of high-risk small business?

It's because those same software engineers have 0 financial background. It's not different than a software engineer going into a financial firm and saying "I can't believe none of these guys know how their technology works".

The most financial exposure these individuals have is reading the $Xmillion Series X funding, or $Xbillion exits that they see on TechCrunch on a daily basis. Their risk is assessed on those headlines.

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