Comment by shon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shon | Hacker News Reader

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In my experience the salary difference isn't usually that large. Sometimes it is, and some companies do pay unusually low salaries in exchange for options, obviously increasing risk, perhaps to an undesirable level.

I'm CEO and co-founder of a funded company. We pay competitive salaries + options. I don't begrudge someone who isn't interested in options. Options are actually expensive to me. We are still fairly early stage (Series A funded) so the founders own most of the company and the option pool primarily dilutes the founders. I want to give options to someone who wants them. I'm fine paying more salary in lieu of of options.

I think of options like a profit-sharing plan in a mature company. If the company does very well then the employees should share in that success. Some folks feel that paying very low salaries and heavy options breeds loyalty. I personally don't subscribe to that. I prefer to pay something competitive and have options as nice upside for the employee.

> In my experience the salary difference isn't usually that large.

Speaking as someone who recently did a round of interviewing with a mix of established companies and startups, $50k is a _very_ conservative guess. The difference between my Google offer and the highest startup one was ~$100K - if you drop to the average startup offer, it goes up to ~$150k. And that was at ~3.5 years of experience - it gets worse as you become more experienced.

It's hard for me to imagine how sure of a bet a startup would have to be for their equity to be worth $150k/year.

Interesting data point. Thanks for sharing. I'm no longer in SF so may be out of touch with current salary gaps.

That said, this is makes sense to me. Google's stock options aren't making employees wealthy these days. Yet it's still a fantastic company and obviously compensates with salary. On the other hand, no startup that I know of can pay 3-400K salaries for 3-4 years exp.

Also it should be said that the type of work you likely do and the culture at a large public company will likely be very different from a small startup. Culture, ability to influence direction, large potential upside (though unlikely) are reasons people continue to pick startups despite lower salaries.

This is NYC, FWIW. I've never lived in SF.

To be fair, the Google offer does include RSUs. However, since you can immediately sell those I think its fair to treat them like cash.

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