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Comment by NotSammyHagar | Hacker News Reader

Degrees from standford or mit only matter in your first job, or to idiots. There is a shortage of good practitioners. In the startup I worked in, in seattle, we basically failed because we could never hire the 15 more people on top of the 5 we had. We paid market prices plus the usual worthless questionable stock options, but everyone we liked had multiple offers. My new company wants to hire 20 devs a month for the next 2 years. Microsoft keeps shedding people but amazon, google, facebook, oracle, hp, emc/vmware everyone is hiring like crazy.

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> We paid market prices plus the usual worthless questionable stock options, but everyone we liked had multiple offers.

And they didn't take yours. I don't mean to be critical, but in my experience, when a company says they pay "market prices", they mean the market in their imagination instead of the real market. Maybe the offer wasn't big enough. There was some reason those candidates turned you down.

And sure, maybe you couldn't afford to make bigger offers. Not all businesses are viable. If I could hire labor for $0.50/hour I'd own a business, but I can't.

> emc/vmware

VMWare was in the news recently as cutting 900 jobs. Maybe they are hiring. In which case I expect we would find that expensive senior developers are being laid off and cheap new grads are being hired.

right, fair points. i agree market rate is usually code for bullshit. a year or 2 ago vmware was a competitor. as far as salaries, I can say something about the range we paid. I thought it was high for a startup. an intern might make 75k (I know google and msft pay more), a person with a few years (~5) of exp makes 130k and a senior engr makes 150+. a very senior eng. or lead might make over 180k. sure, google pays more. but these are decent salaries.

> .... only matter in your first job, or to idiots.

Today, every job is your first job. We are all contractors, constantly re-interviewing and justifying ourself to our customers.

And the idiots are in charge. Every founder who needs my help seems to be a 20-something kid who thinks knowledge is something you can pick up at a trade show or week-long intensive at some resort.

Your last line doesn't make sense. If they think that, then they are going to fail. Hence, they won't be in charge...

In an ideal world yes. In realworld, many "founders" are not there because of any great skill to competence. I now a couple that are just rich kids playing with a few million of family money. They hire their friends and work on getting investor money to keep the party going, but nobody has any real hope for the long term. Being involved with a tech startup is almost a fashion trend for some people.

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